Tips for Attracting and Retaining the Best Lash Artists Employees for Your Studio

It’s always an exciting adventure when you decide to bring on new staff, especially new lash artists! You must treat your company with the respect it deserves to succeed. It is much more difficult than one might think to find the ideal lash stylist who not only possesses perfect art but also is the ideal match for your salon’s culture and stays there for the long term.

You are not the only one concerned about increasing employee retention and the number of applicants your studio receives for open positions. You’re in luck because we’ve compiled this comprehensive guide on every tried-and-true strategy and advice in the book to assist you in achieving both of these objectives!

Be familiar with the vision and values of your studio

What is the driving force behind everything you do? What is it about your work as a lash artist, nail tech, or hair stylist that you and the other employees at the salon enjoy so much? Is it because you care so much about other people? Do you get a kick out of making a client’s day by performing a transformation or giving them advice that makes them feel better about themselves? Are you fascinated by the science behind lash extensions and other beauty services, or do you take pride that your salon is a secure and soothing refuge for your customers for a few hours?

Regardless of what it is, you should set aside a few minutes to write it down, first in a paragraph, then in a sentence, and last in just a few brief lines. Make an effort to capture the spirit of your lash studio, including the ambiance, values, and mission that characterize your studio and set it apart from all of the other businesses in the area that offer comparable services. Once you’ve decided what it is, make sure everyone knows it! You may remind yourself and your employees of what sets this lash studio apart by posting the “paragraph” and the phrase on your website, posting simply the phrase on your studio’s Instagram and Facebook pages, and even getting the word posted on a wall in some other location. Be sure to include these clearly defined missions and values in the job descriptions as well; if you do, you will have a better chance of attracting applicants whose values are consistent with those of your salon, which will result in employees who are much more likely to remain with the company for the long term.

Spend time identifying the abilities you desire

While drafting job descriptions or adverts for the position, ensure you spend a little time establishing the precise abilities you want your new employee to possess. Do you require a lash technician who specializes in mega-volume lashes or one who has a killer lash lift technique? Consider all these qualities to save both your and the applicants’ time. Regarding soft skills, you may require someone far calmer than the ordinary lash stylist in the face of demanding, rude clients. Go through the top three skills you need in your next recruit, and simplify it to a few specific catchphrases — such as “2-3 years Russian and mega volume experience” or “proven aptitude to graciously handle tremendously challenging clientele.”

An added benefit of this exercise? You’ll instinctively be able to comb through resumes and applications by maintaining keywords and phrases that show mutual agreement on these talents now that you’ve put what you’re looking for in words. This drastically minimizes the time you spend narrowing down applicants. Keeping these important attributes in mind will also help you construct interview questions to analyze practical implementations of these skills in the candidate’s career history.

Let employees be themselves and be creative

Being a lash artist is a naturally difficult, creative endeavor that requires a variety of talents, including lashing. Still, it also requires scientific understanding, professional skills, multitasking, marketing on social media, business skills, and salesmanship. Nevertheless, not every lash technician treats each of these critical components similarly. Some stylists, for example, may feel more at ease letting clients lead with what they want for their eyes; others perform better when allowed to take charge and direct clients toward their expert judgment of the type of lashes that look best on them. Neither technique is incorrect, and unless an employee’s tactic is repelling clients or costing the studio a lot of money, it’s in your best interest to give them flexibility and control over how they operate. Pushing people to behave in ways that are diametrically against their personality will reek of inauthenticity to even the most sophisticated clients and will eventually cost your business. As tempting as it may be to force your lash artists to do things one way, this will only backfire in the long term.

Have compensation arrangements that are fair and competitive

Whether you like it or not, compensation is typically one of the most important motivators for employees to stay, leave, or even apply for a position in the first place. After all, without enough money to pay bills, enjoy life, and deal with emergencies, employees are significantly more inclined to jump ship the moment a higher-paying opportunity presents itself. Make sure your remuneration structures are treating your artists the way they deserve, and you’ll keep current employees satisfied – and prospective ones coming in. Spend time researching what is typical in your area and how you intend to build it. Will it be compensated? Commission-based? Booth-rental? These figures are frequently affected by your city/town and organizational structure.

Consider the advantages

Workers require and desire to feel cared for! Almost all employee benefits in the United States are related to the company. Consider providing substantial paid time off policies to salaried personnel so that no one can choose between paying their expenses and enjoying hard-earned vacations or time with loved ones. Try to establish an environment in which hourly and tipped employees do not feel guilty about taking time off when they need or want to (within reason) and in which their careers are not jeopardized. This can be pricey, so think about what you can contribute.

There are other benefits you can offer that are not only related to travel. For example, if you want to subsidize a portion of your healthcare, you can consider a monthly monetary reimbursement. Platforms are built exclusively for small enterprises to receive healthcare reimbursements (Stride Healthcare and Take Command Healthcare are two examples!). Consider a Volunteer Day for your team, Mental Health Days, a learning and development budget (reimbursement for attending classes), free coffee/tea, eating lunch once a month, and other incentives your staff would appreciate.

Be supportive of those who decide to leave

As much as we’d all like to keep our favorite lash artists, it’s not always possible, no matter how much you sweeten the offer. The secret to employee retention and attractiveness is to treat those who leave with the same respect and kindness as you would if they stayed. When employing new employees, we advise against putting excessive non-compete clauses in their employment contracts that prohibit them from working the same position within an unreasonably vast radius. (More often than not, outrageous non-competes usually don’t hold up in court. Several states, such as California, have abolished non-compete agreements outright because it is unfair to prevent someone from working where they live.)

The lash industry is relatively tiny, and lash artists in one city or county are likely to know each other, if not be friends. No one will want to work for you if word gets out that you don’t care about your employees’ professional development when they leave, and fewer people will apply for jobs at your company. Furthermore, you never know when former colleagues may choose to return or work with you again!

Provide flexible working hours

Many lash artists work part-time while pursuing other activities, like esthetics at another salon or returning to school. On the contrary hand, even eyelash stylists who work full-time in one studio are likely to have a full, busy life outside of work! Offering flexible schedules is essential for retaining employees. When employing a new artist, take note of the available days and times — and recognize those by just making those hours part of their bookable schedule. Workers who feel supported in working in the ways that best suit them are more likely to stay.

Another advantage of offering variable studio hours? You might even get additional customers! If a new employee prefers to work earlier in the morning or later in the evenings than your salon is generally open, consider incorporating those hours into your studio’s working day. You’ll get more business from people who were previously unable to get lash services because of their busy work schedules if you offer them the option to do so during their lunch break.

Maintain an open and safe workplace atmosphere

It’s one thing to hire terrific staff; it’s another to keep them long-term. Maintaining an open, safe atmosphere in your salon or studio where each lash artist feels supported, safe, and allowed to speak up when dissatisfied is one of the best strategies to enhance staff retention. Encourage employees to come to you with issues and suggestions without fear of losing their jobs, and employee wellness will rise. Confident and satisfied employees provide exceptional customer service, which benefits your salon’s reputation. Potential employees will notice that they will be treated professionally and appreciated when looking for new positions, and they will make applying to your studio their top priority!

Provide variety in the job

A few employees may be quite content doing the same thing every day. Such employees are quite unlikely to be lash artists! Most lash technicians become lash technicians because the lash industry is constantly developing and dynamic, with much to learn and connections to many other cosmetic services. Of course, no two customers had the same experience.

The key to attracting and maintaining new employees is to preach the role’s fascinating and broad array of prospects — and to practice what you preach! To attract the best lash artists, emphasize in all your job postings that they will be given the freedom to try new things and grow professionally (within reason, of course). When interviewing potential employees, have ready samples of the types of opportunities available. If a lash stylist indicates an interest in ultimately adding lash lifts or tints to her book, demonstrate that you make time to train them and allow them space to practice. If a lash artist wants to extend into non-lash services like brows, body waxing, or massage therapy, support them as much as you and your budget allow!

Contact people on LinkedIn directly

As daunting or fruitless as it may appear, LinkedIn is a terrific technique to reach out to potential employees whose profiles appear to be an excellent fit for your available position. Send short, direct private messages to such candidates. Don’t be put off by folks who have impressive resumes but are already employed! Many people begin new careers due to unsolicited LinkedIn contact from hiring managers. Furthermore, if you give them a better position than the one, they now have, they are more likely to react and continue the interview process with you.

Of course, the fact that you’re the one reaching out to them doesn’t hurt! Potential employees are far more likely to accept a job offer from someone who initially reached out and made them feel wanted.

Invest in employee development

Lash artists want to know that their potential is recognized and nurtured. Remember how we stated you should provide variation in each job at your salon? Now is the time to put your money where your mouth is! Consider paying for or sponsoring master classic artists’ volume training. Encourage your more experienced staff to oversee their teammates as they learn new skills and practices. (If you suspect several of your employees would benefit from a particular training, be wise and urge them to participate in cost-effective group or salon/spa management training tailored for multi-employee studios.)

How does this affect the recruiting of new lash artists? Promote what you do! If it’s within your budget, adopt an employee policy that you’ll fund training classes or compensate for time spent learning new abilities. After that, include this policy in each job description and follow it in practice! Workers who sense their studio is financially and temporally dedicated to their success are considerably more likely to stay and refer people they know and can vouch for when new roles become available.

Request that other artists you know help you spread the news

As wide as the lash artist community may appear, it’s also a little village! Each of your personnel attended cosmetology or esthetics school and completed lash training. They may still have pals or contacts from their earlier days or know people via workshops, seminars/webinars, or conferences. Many of them, especially those who graduated recently, are likely to be active on alumni networks or listservs. Ask them to reach out to these communities; they’re likely to know or hear about candidates you couldn’t find on your own.

Communicate with the candidates

Give potential prospects the courtesy you expect from them! Don’t keep employees waiting for responses or next actions; send updates on their application status as soon as possible following each step in the interview process. Inform them if the deliberation is too long or if unexpected delays occur. Don’t ghost candidates, no matter how awful a decision they are or how confident you are that they are not the one. It’s not fair to have candidates bugging you with questions, and it’s not fair to them to be left wondering what their next steps should be or if they should look for another job. Furthermore, if a candidate has a negative experience with you, they are significantly more likely to disparage your salon or advise others to avoid it.

Keep the interview process as brief as possible

We also advise keeping interview processes as brief as feasible. While we recognize that it is impossible to learn everything you need to know about potential hiring during a thirty-minute phone screening, it is also unnecessary to go through several interview processes to have them meet everyone on the team. Keep the number of interviews with a candidate to a maximum of two or three, and have as many of your present employees as you can meet with them all at once for the final round. If they are interviewing for a lash position, ensure the final stage is a thorough demo. You might consider being the model to feel just like the clients! Any additional interviews will likely waste your and their time; if you’re still confused about a candidate after round three, they’re unlikely to be the one. Reduce your losses, respectfully inform them, and move on to discover the lash artist of your dreams!

Organize a gathering for local lash artists

If you know or have the contact information for a sufficient number of lash stylists in your area, try arranging a casual happy hour at a local restaurant or bar where all lash and beauty professionals can get to know each other in a fun, no-pressure situation. You are not required to accomplish this alone! Your studio can sponsor it, or you and the other lash techs in your salon can co-host it to relieve the stress of doing it alone. If the event takes off, you can even make it a regular activity, perhaps once a month.

Post your positions on social media frequently

Being a medium visual institution, your salon should already have an Instagram account where you upload regular, professional images of your artists’ great lash jobs. If you haven’t already, consider increasing your posting frequency to once per day or every other day to help improve engagement and views on your salon’s page. When it comes time to advertise for new roles, you’ll reach the broadest potential audience.

Instagram isn’t the only place to look for a new lash artist! Join Facebook groups for lash artists and beauty professionals, and advertise your job posts everywhere; most of the larger Facebook groups have thousands of members from all across the country and even other countries and should be able to increase your listing and help you locate the appropriate person. Of course, LinkedIn is a terrific way to find new hires, with the added benefit that anyone checking their LinkedIn is usually looking for career growth and professional development.

Maintain a professional website

While this may appear a no-brainer, you’d be shocked how many smaller salons and studios don’t have decent websites. Even if you’re not a large, pricey New York City salon, you should have an accessible, aesthetically beautiful website that reflects your business and beliefs. Before applying for openings or attending interviews, potential applicants will Google your studio to get a sense of its professional ambiance and read up on your present employee profiles, firm size, and mission.

Even though it doesn’t appear so, it’s worthwhile to invest a few extra dollars in hiring a professional to create a good website for your studio, integrate your current booking system into it, and do routine maintenance and upgrades. Not only can such a website provide validity to your studio, but it will also allow you to contact clients who do not use social media and cannot find you on Instagram or Facebook. An added benefit? On a genuine website, you can keep a distinct “Careers” or “Job Listings” tab and write out longer, fleshed-out descriptions of the role(s) you’re hiring for. Instead of copying and pasting a shortened explanation in each new piece of content, you may simply link to the entire description when posting adverts or sending emails.

Provide referral incentives

You probably already have a similar incentive program for your customers; now is the time to apply it to your staffing efforts. You may provide a referral incentive, studio credit, or free or discounted services for a month to anyone who helps you find your next lash technician. Nothing encourages people to come forward with their brilliant friends and family members like the promise of a reward at the end of the tunnel.

Always keep business cards on hand

Always have at least 3-5 business cards in your wallet. If you haven’t already, now is the time to start! They don’t have to be fancy; simply include your name, title (lash artist/lash services professional/whatever best suits your professional persona! ), phone number and email address, workplace, and a link to your social network. Include your position as a salon manager or senior staff there as well. You never know where you’ll meet possible new employees, whether at the next beauty trade show the grocery store, or on a night out with pals. There is no such thing as being overly prepared!

Invite students/artists/industry, tour participants

Many students enrolled in programs to become cosmetologists, or estheticians may have a hazy understanding of lash extensions. Still, they may not be aware of what a typical day in the life of a lash artist entails. Even licensed cosmetologists and estheticians with experience in other areas of the beauty industry are subject to the same requirements and restrictions.

If you can, giving students and people who are interested in becoming lash artists brief tours of your salon is a fantastic way to forge connections with the next generation of lash artists while also making sure that your salon is at the forefront of their minds as a potential place to work if and when they choose to submit a job application. Take away the mystique surrounding the eyelash business by extending an invitation to students or prospective eyelash technicians interested in coming to your salon to spend a couple of hours learning about the ins and outs of working as a lash stylist. Show them around the salon, describe a lash artist’s equipment, tell them how long sessions typically last, and be available to answer any questions.

Provide for trial periods of employment

Consider offering trial runs so you may try out prospects you like but aren’t sure if they fit you. For example, perhaps you’ve met a fantastic cosmetologist recently completing lash stylist training. She’d be the ideal candidate based on all of your other criteria, and she’d fit right in with your salon’s culture…except she lacks the necessary experience.

If you don’t need her immediately and have the means, try hiring her for a three-month trial term to see if she can learn quickly or well enough for the full-time post. Let her shadow your other lash artists and work with a few low-risk clients. At the end of the trial time, if you don’t believe it’ll work out immediately, you can part ways on cordial, professional terms — and with a fresh name to keep in mind for the future after she’s obtained the needed expertise.

Internship and job-shadowing programs should be established if at all practicable

Consider developing an actual, regular internship program that coincides with holidays and gaps in the school calendars of local cosmetology and esthetics schools if your salon is on the larger side. Employ 1-2 paid interns per cycle to shadow your current lash artists, study the business and day-to-day life of a lash tech, and gain experience engaging with and consulting clients. (You may even have them start offering consultations for your lash artists, partnering with them to create the greatest looks for their clients, or saving the stylists’ time between visits by providing new clients with the correct aftercare spiel + demonstration!)

Of course, they can’t physically take on clients if they aren’t licensed cosmetologists/estheticians and haven’t completed their lash training. They can, however, assist in the salon, isolate or place a few lashes with real lash extension tweezers under close supervision from one of your lash techs, and otherwise gain every other crucial skill that will be useful in their future jobs.

If an intern proves exceptional, you can offer them full-time roles once they have completed all requisite programs. Furthermore, because they will have acquired everything they need to know from your studio, you will not have to worry about educating them in subjects that outside hires are unfamiliar with, saving you time and money!

Organize competitions

Encourage beauty students and other lash artists to visit your studio and show you their work! Invite talented lash artists to your door by organizing social media-wide competitions for the finest traditional, hybrid, and volume sets. To encourage existing lash technicians to participate, offer incentives such as a large percentage off any one-time service at your salon. Not only can sponsoring such a competition bring more attention to your salon, but you’re also likely to locate your next lash tech from the mini-portfolios you’ll receive in the form of contest submissions. Consider indicating (but not committing!) in adverts that victors will likely put themselves in the running for employment offers if you feel safe doing so.

Final Thoughts

The following are some suggestions for bringing a lash artist to your salon. I hope that you may find some value in reading this post.