41. Salon recruitment 101

I’m going to start today with a little bit of a marketing lesson for you, and it’s going to sound obvious, but bear with me, there is a message which is relevant to recruitment in the Salon Industry coming up very soon. The message that I have for you around marketing is that the less work you need to do, the more likely your marketing is to be effective. So, there are industries which are hard work to market; the not obvious industries, and then the obvious industries. Let me explain the distinction, if your hair has grown to long most people will choose some form of Hair Salon or a home hairdresser to get that sorted. It’s an easy industry because the customer has already made the connection with the kind of service they want to receive. If, however you are a business coach and somebody is struggling with their business, they don’t necessarily go to a coach. So, it’s a not obvious business, so it’s a lot harder to market because firstly you must persuade the customer that that’s the route they should go down, secondly you must persuade them that they should go down that route with you. How does this relate to recruitment? Well it’s about not doing too much work when it’s time to recruit. Most of the time, Salons are doing nothing to recruit. That makes it hard work, because what you’re asking your recruitment advertising to do then is firstly to make somebody think perhaps I’m not happy in my current situation, secondly to think maybe I need to apply for another job and thirdly that they need to apply for a job with you. That’s a lot from one marketing campaign. So, it’s no wonder you’re not getting the results that you deserve. So, what I’m suggesting is that you need to be recruiting continually so you need to be recruiting all year round, whether you need somebody in a position or not. Now that might sound counter intuitive because you might say what do I do if people start applying for jobs that I haven’t got. You keep their details, so that if somebody leaves you or go on maternity leave, you’ve got a list of numbers that you can call. It positions you as an expert in your industry because you’re taking recruitment seriously. So how do we go about this continual recruitment. Well you need to look at the marketing that you’re doing and you need to allocate a percentage of that marketing to recruitment. Start building that awareness up, you can do this by either talking about Industry trends, but also positioning your Salon as the kind of place that’s desirable for Stylists and Therapists to build a career. Figure out what it is that you’re going to be marketing for the next month, take five or six of those posts and make them more team focussed or outward looking or industry facing. I hope that’s been useful to you, if it has don’t forget to click subscribe. I do a broadcast like this every single Monday and I would hate you to miss out on the content that I’m sharing. If you need more help with recruitment check out this link: http://bit.ly/2hbtUmA, I have a whole product called the Salon recruitment roadmap, designed to help you fill the spaces you have in your staff team. If you’ve already subscribed I will see you again next week. Take care.