41. Salon recruitment 101

Hi, everyone. This is the weekly Build Your Salon podcast with me, Phil Jackson. I'm here with the tools you need to generate the profits you deserve so that you can lead a fuller life. Hello and welcome. I'm going to start today with a little bit of a marketing lesson for you, and it's going to sound very 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. Now, let me explain this. So there are industries which are hard work to market. They're what we call the not obvious industries. And there are other industries which are obvious industries. Let me explain the distinction. If your hair has grown too long, most people will choose some form of hair salon or a home hairdresser to get that sorted. That'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, let's say, a business coach and somebody is struggling with their business, they don't necessarily go to a coach. They might choose to do some training or they might choose to research something online or just spend £200 on books on Amazon around business. So it's a not obvious business. So that's a lot harder to market because, first of all, you have to persuade the customer that that's the route they should go down. Secondly, you have to persuade them that they should go down that route with you. Now, in the hair and beauty industry, we don't have that. Most people know when it's time to come to a salon. They know what the need is. They know when they should be making those appointments with hair or beauty specialists. All we need to do is convince them to come to our salon rather than somebody else's. How does this relate to recruitment? Well, it's about not doing too much work when it's time to recruit. Let me explain. Most people do nothing around recruitment until either their business plan tells them they need to recruit an extra body or somebody leaves, usually the second one. Most of the time, outside those two instances, salons are doing nothing to recruit. That makes it really, really hard work because what you're asking your recruitment advertising to do then is firstly to make somebody think, hmm, perhaps I'm not happy in my current situation.

Secondly, to think, hmm, 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 we try and cut down on the work a little bit. And what I'm saying is that we need to be recruiting continually. So you need to have recruitment in mind even when you don't want any extra bodies. So you need to be recruiting all year round whether you need somebody in position or not. Now, that might sound counterintuitive because you might say, well, what do I do if people start applying for jobs that I haven't got? You keep their details. So what you have is a little black book in the back of your desk somewhere so that if somebody leaves without you realising or if someone goes on maternity leave that you weren't expecting. Well, all of a sudden, you've got a list of numbers that you can call and say, hey, we spoke a little while ago. Are you still interested in that position? It positions you as an expert in your industry because you're taking recruitment seriously. I'll tell you what else is really strange. If you say to those people, we spoke a few months ago, are you still interested in the position? And they say, no, I found another job. The next question should be, do you want me to keep you on the list or shall I just cross you off? They nearly always want to be kept on the list because they know that in this day and age, recruitment isn't forever. It's so rare that we can keep people past the 5, 6, 7, 10, 15 year mark. 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. So let's say you have a look at your schedule and you are posting every day in November on Facebook. So you've got 31 posts going out there once a day. Well, that's fine, but we should take a percentage of those. Let's say five or six of those posts. I'm not saying you advertise a position, but make five or six of those posts appealing, not just to your customers, but also potentially to other salons as well. Also potentially to other stylists or therapists that might be looking for work a little bit further down the line. So start building that awareness up. You can do this either with talking about industry trends, again, positioning you as an expert in the industry and the kind of salon that they want to work for, or share things that are showing off what a fantastic team you have and what an amazing place it is to work because you're positioning yourself as an expert,

but also positioning your salon as the kind of place that's desirable for stylists and therapists to build a career. So continual recruitment, go now, 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 focused 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 the link that's in the description. 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. Hey everyone. It's Phil again. I hope you enjoyed the episode. If you did, please subscribe and be sure to tell your friends. For more help and information on running your salon and your life, head over to buildyoursalon.com. I'll see you there.