Tag Archive for "cosmetology continuing education"

Posts Tagged ‘cosmetology continuing education’

How to Become an Expert in Cosmetology & Beauty

Posted on: August 27th, 2012 by Beauty Schools Directory 1 Comment

Erika Brown is worked hard and overcame all obstacles to become a proud graduate of Paul Mitchell School, an American Board Certified Haircolorist, and a Makeup Specialist. She works at a salon she loves and specializes in hair coloring and the art of special occasion styles. She runs her own cosmetology blog, Confessions of a Cosmetologist, and enjoys inspiring others in the cosmetology field. You can also keep up with Erika on Facebook.

Do you ever wonder why some people achieve great success in their careers and others don’t? Some of us spend our lives wondering what the secret is when it’s really quite simple. It doesn’t matter if you’re a barber, nail tech, hairstylist, esthetician, or even a shoe salesman… there are two main types of people in any career. They are leaders and there are followers. Do you want to be the one with happy clients and a full schedule? Or do you want to be the one getting nothing but complaints, bad tips, and a pink slip? Anyone can become an expert in their trade, but it’s all about how much you’re willing to work for it. Here are just a few benefits of becoming an expert in the cosmetology field:

Clients will trust you.
Your career/business will grow.
Clients will search for you by name instead of just your salon or spa.
You will set yourself apart from the rest.

Ask yourself if you want those things in your career. Even if you are just starting out in beauty school, deciding that you want to be the best now will only improve your learning experience. For those of you who are already well into your career always remember, it’s never too late to be the best! If you think you’ve reached your highest level of personal success, think again. Each milestone you achieve you should be asking yourself, “What’s next?” You may be wondering how all of this makes you an expert at what you do. It’s all about goals and providing the best services you can. You can do a great job every day, but if you don’t have goals to apply that energy to where will you be going? If you’re ready to go up instead of in circles ask yourself what type of career goals you want to reach and the “expert” part will come with ease!

When I decided to take my career to the next level I thought I had nowhere else to go. I was a standstill because I had stopped setting goals for myself and never thought about achieving more than working at a great salon. Then one day my manager announced an upcoming course for becoming an American Board Certified Haircolorist. My eyes lit up! Finally, there was something that I could strive for and improve my passion. When I found out how hard it was supposed to be, that was only more of a motivator. I knew that if I could call myself an expert of my craft I would have the confidence and skills I needed to succeed.

Becoming ABCH Certified was one of the most grueling learning experiences of my life and it was more than worth it. I am now more confident than I ever thought I would be in my cosmetology career and I picked up great skills along the way. ABCH was my window to new opportunities and all of us have a window somewhere… you just have to find it.

Everyone knows the obvious benefits of becoming an expert in your field. Making more money, having a larger clientele, and personal satisfaction are just a few great things that result from working hard and wanting to be the best you can be. But there are two benefits that are often overlooked. Knowledge will give you the power to achieve more success in your career than you can imagine. Knowledge creates confidence and confidence is the key that unlocks most doors in the beauty industry. Without knowledge and confidence who will want to be your client? Having confidence means knowing you give the best manicure, haircut, or massage in town. It’s knowing that your clients come to you for your skills and professionalism.

If you’ve never heard of any certifications for your field, don’t sweat it! I didn’t know about ABCH until I had been doing hair for several years. Even if you’re not ready to take that leap towards a big certification, everything you do to improve your talents will be one step towards becoming an expert. Imagine yourself as a master esthetician, celebrity makeup artist, or certified haircolorist…clients will seek you and trust you over others in your field. Nothing is unreachable, and the sooner you have your heart set on it the better! Here are a few steps to becoming an expert:

Recognize your weaknesses and take classes to improve them
Focus on what your clients want and do your best all the time
Improve your professionalism
Remember that you can learn from anyone, anytime
Set goals and go for it

Thousands of students enter the beauty industry every year, but only few strive to become the best. Becoming an American Board Certified Haircolorist gave me the confidence and knowledge to never second guess myself or my skills. I had my heart set on being recognized as a master colorist and having the paper to prove it, but I got so much more. That’s why it’s important to set goals in your life and your career. Do you want to be the leader, an “expert” in your field? Or are you okay with being a follower and always settling for second best? No one becomes an expert overnight, but if you never try you’ll never know!

I always knew that I wanted to pursue a career in cosmetology but I never knew how hard I would work for it. After struggling through a few semesters in college I decided to enroll in cosmetology school and get going on the career I had my heart set on. To my surprise, it was both an exciting and stressful experience. I worked full-time and took night classes, I was doing one or the other seven days a week. I thought I would never finish, and doing my passion to make a living seemed painfully far away. Now I work at a great salon, have a cosmetology blog, and I’m an American Board Certified Haircolorist. I specialize in hair coloring and the art of special occasion styles. I love doing hair and inspiring others in the cosmetology field!

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How to Become a Cosmetology Instructor

Posted on: August 16th, 2012 by Sasha 5 Comments

Once you’ve established yourself as a successful cosmetologist in the beauty business, you may be wondering where you can go from there with your career. You always have the option to become a more predominant name in the field through marketing and expanding the services you offer. However, if you’re looking to advance your career in another direction, there is also the option of becoming a cosmetology instructor, especially if you enjoy sharing your passion, wisdom, knowledge, experience and skills with others.

After completing your education as a cosmetologist and honing your craft during your time spent working on the floor of the salon, you may choose to enter into the world of teaching cosmetology. There are so many prospective cosmetologists looking to work in the beauty field. By becoming an instructor, you can inspire and share your wisdom with those aspiring students and make a positive impact on their lives and futures. These bright, young pupils are looking for someone to guide them in the right direction, and you could be that person. The experience that you’ve accumulated working as a cosmetologist can help inspire and influence the next generation of beauty pros.

Check into your state’s requirements to make sure that you meet the licensing criteria to become a cosmetology instructor. Although each state has its own set of regulations and rules, a majority of states deem it necessary that you have a minimum number of years of experience working as a cosmetologist in a professional setting, in addition to furthering your education and earning your license to instruct. For instance, in the state of Kentucky, you must have your cosmetology license for at least a year, and you must have at least a 12th grade education. Once you meet these standards, you will be able to apply to a cosmetology instructor training program, where you must complete 1,000 hours of training before you’re eligible to take the instructor examination. Other states have completely different requirements, so be sure to check!After you’ve earned your cosmetology instructor license or met the requirements for your particular state, you’ll be eligible to teach others the art of beauty. As an instructor, you’ll be responsible for teaching students the basics of cosmetology. This is accomplished through both hands-on instruction and a portion taught through books, in a more classroom-like setting. You may have the opportunity to work from home through teaching online courses for advanced continuing education only; however, most opportunities for instructors are in beauty school classrooms or in a more salon-style environment.

Throughout the day, you’ll provide students with information about the field, as well as give demonstrations on the different techniques and processes. You’ll also watch over the students as they physically perform the tasks and offer critiques and guidance for them to improve their technique. Not only will you teach students about cutting and styling hair or whichever other beauty specialties they pursue (makeup, nail tech, skin care, etc.), but you’ll also educate on safety precautions and proper sanitation practices. Before you can teach each lesson though, you’ll need to plan it out, so that it follows the guidelines based on your state’s curriculum requirements. At the end of their time learning from you, you will have prepared them to successfully take the written and practical cosmetology exams.Have you enjoyed working as a cosmetologist throughout the years? Would love to introduce others to the rewarding experience that you had? If you answered “yes” to these questions, then teaching cosmetology might just be an amazing opportunity for you to further your career and help others in the process.

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Beauty Professionals are Responsible for Continuing Education

Posted on: July 18th, 2012 by Heather No Comments

Every beauty professional should make a commitment to continue his or her education every year, regardless of whether your state requires it to renew your license. Continuing one’s education ensures that a beauty professional always stays updated on the latest beauty treatments, techniques and technology, safety and sanitation procedures, and products and regiments to recommend to your clients.

Continuing one’s education as a beauty professional also continues to establish one’s credibility in the beauty field. The beauty field can be very competitive, especially in affluent and beauty-centric cities like Beverly Hills or Manhattan. A hairstylist can make sure that he or she continues to win the respect of clients and colleagues by continuing to take classes. Clients enjoy knowing that their cosmetologist is always being educated in the latest hair, makeup, nail, skin and hair techniques and can apply this knowledge in their own appointments. Customers trust their hairstylists and nail techs to know what’s hot and make recommendations to keep them as fashionable and trendy as possible.

Before you sign up for a cosmetology continuing education course, it is important for you to know whether the course credits can be applied toward your state’s requirements. If your state has license requirements for continuing education, then you need to ensure that you obtain the required number of credits each licensing period at a board-approved continuing education facility. You should also pay attention to the outline of a course in the syllabus. A course syllabus will help you understand what the workload will be like for a class as well as the meeting hours for the class.

Choose a course with a workload and schedule you can handle as you balance it with the demands of a current job. Weighing these two factors will ensure that you excel in the continuing education course. The good news is that most cosmetology continuing education classes range from 2 hours to 16 hours and can be completed quickly and affordably, often in a few evenings or over a weekend and you’re done.

One other factor to consider is the testing requirements for a course. Some courses may require that you pass a written exam. Other courses may only require that you log a certain number of hours in order to pass. Before you pay the money to take a continuing education course, know in advance what testing methods you can anticipate so you can be prepared and study accordingly. You can find out the requirements for your particular state by looking at the board of cosmetology’s license requirements for cosmetology continuing ed in your state. Understanding these requirements will ensure that you sign up for the right course and further your education in a way that supports your career and makes it easy to renew your license.

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Do You Need Continuing Education Hours to Renew Your Cosmetology License?

Posted on: May 14th, 2012 by Heather No Comments

As a professional in the cosmetology field, you may wonder if you have to take continuing education classes in order to stay current on the most recent information and laws. You may also wonder if this is a requirement to renew your cosmetology license. The answer is quite simple; you must take continuing education classes in the field in certain states but not others. But no matter what state you’re in, it is almost always beneficial to brush up on some old information and learn some new.

In the state of Texas, attending a continuing education class that is approved through the Texas Department of Licensing and Regulation is a requirement in order to renew your license. You may obtain the needed hours any time within 24 months prior to when your licensure needs renewed. For instance, if your license needs renewed by July 12, 2012, you may take the class as early as July 12, 2010. Besides the cosmetology continuing education hours, you have the ability to take continuing education classes to be certified as an esthetician or a nail technician as well.

If you live in the state of Ohio, it is necessary for you to take a continuing education class in cosmetology. For estheticians, manicurists and hairstylists, you must take a course as well in order to renew your certification; however, you may only participate in the hours needed for your program, and you must complete courses related to each specialty you work in. For instance, if you work as a nail technician and an esthetician, you will need to take both the manicurist continuing education class and the esthetician continuing education class. In order to renew your license, you only need eight hours worth of class. The continuing education courses available include a wide variety of options like OSHA Recording, Pedicure Essentials and Bloodborne Pathogens.

Although most states require you to take at between 6 to 16 hours of classes, some states such as Pennsylvania do not require you to take any classes. According to the Pennsylvania State Board of Cosmetology, you must renew your license, and you will receive a renewal four within four weeks of when your license expires. The state of Tennessee does not require cosmetologists to take continuing education course either. However, instructors are required to take 16 hours worth of classes.

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Real Beauty Industry Advice from the King of Beauty PR

Posted on: September 3rd, 2009 by Beauty Schools Directory 6 Comments

Beauty Schools Directory: Tell the world a little bit about BeautyPRPro – what exactly do you do?

Alex Irving: Sharon and I started BeautyPRpro in 2008 to meet a real need. Salon professionals and salon or spa owners had nowhere to go to learn about “real world” beauty public relations and how to “get good at getting press.” There’s a lot you can do for yourself without the assistance of a public relations firm, you just need to know some of the tricks of the trade. Doing PR is like doing magic. It seems impossible until you know how the tricks are performed.

Before we started BeautyPRpro, putting all that basic info into one place, it was either the school of hard knocks, or you had to be lucky enough to work for a salon owner who was good at it and willing to share their knowledge with you. Young stylists, colorists, nail techs and estheticians learn many things in beauty school, but PR isn’t one of them. Neither is marketing, photography, or business/people management – all critical tools for financial as well as creative success.

We began blogging last September on our niche topic – beauty and salon public relations, which, in many ways, is uniquely different from general business PR. Although all the basic principles of good public relations apply, the beauty industry has special needs. When you first subscribe to the blog, you get a free copy of our e-Book Life-Changing PR for Salon and Spa Owners and that’s a valuable starting point to get you ready to get more out of what we go on to discuss and explore in the twice weekly blog posts. There’s a great deal of excellent reference material there.

Beauty Schools Directory: In your blog, you mention helping industry professionals “grow their public persona.” What does that mean to a beauty professional or business?

Alex Irving: It means how do people really see and experience you? How does a camera see you? How does what you say make people feel about you. It relies on your ability to tell a “story,” the story of “you” and what you believe, and that takes some thought and practice to have it flow naturally. It doesn’t mean you become actor pretending to be other than who you are. It means you need to look at yourself a bit more critically and understand how what you do and say is perceived by others.

Your image is a unique selling proposition. What is your image? Ever thought about it? What do you wear to work? How do you speak? What drives you and motivates you? How do you feel about your clients? How do you feel about fashion? Where do you see hair, clothes and makeup trends going next season? Are you concerned about leading the pack, bringing the most current looks and styles to your clients? Can you communicate who you are and what you believe to others? Bottom line is, you need to craft your story, rehearse it and know what you have to say. That is every bit as important as having good technical and creative skills. That is your public persona. We wrote a couple of posts on this topic – How Do Your Clients See You? and All The World’s a Stage – Are You Ready?

Beauty Schools Directory: What would you say are the most frequently missed opportunities beauty professionals should be seizing on to grow their business and clientele?

Alex Irving: From the PR point of view it is industry professionals not leaving home to broaden their horizons. Too many professionals are stay-at-homes. The beauty industry is worldwide and the most successful beauty pros are those who are out playing in the bigger ballgame, learning, growing, meeting people, making beauty industry contacts and having experiences they can talk about with (and impress) their clients and the media.

I’m talking about getting involved with beauty industry organizations such as the Professional Beauty Association and attending events such as PBA Beauty Week in Las Vegas, International Haircolor Exchange (IHE) in St. Louis in 2010, American Board of Certified Haircolorists (ABCH) Summit in Los Angeles, etc. It’s about going to the fashion collections for the Milan or Paris Fashion Week. When you are there amidst the action, you are sipping the future, taking pictures of yourself in context and sharing all that with the media and your clients when you get back home. Here’s a post we wrote on that topic as well — Seeing a Beauty Industry Event through the Eyes of a Beauty PR Pro.

Beauty Schools Directory: How do you feel the recession has impacted the beauty, cosmetology and esthetics industry? Is there still opportunity for new beauty professionals to break in?

Alex Irving: Beauty is one of the most recession-resistant industries there is. Of course there has been a downturn in retail sales and clients are creating longer times between services, but there are always services! Women, men and children do not stop getting hair color, cut and styles, facial treatments don’t stop. In fact salon and spa skin care business increases as plastic surgery and more radical and expensive anti-aging solutions become too expensive to do right now.

And, yes, beauty jobs are just a bit harder to find. But they are there in any economy. Applicants need to have their skills, personality, and attitude ready for work and ready to come to the fore during the interview. A good job in beauty is always there for the right person. If someone motivated, ready to work hard, learn and contribute comes to me for a job, even if I don’t have one I hate losing a great applicant. I always try to find a way. Beauty is all about people – finding great people with good skills.

Beauty Schools Directory: Your PR agency, Esche & Alexander Public Relations, and your BeautyPRPro Blog have a huge presence online. What role do you feel the web currently plays or will play in marketing oneself as a beauty business?

Alex Irving: Make no mistake, in today’s world, marketing is every bit as important to your financial success as your skills with color, shears and razors, nails or skin care talents. People look first to the web for what they need and want. Google is not just a noun, it’s an action verb. Blogging, Facebook, Twitter, Friendfeed, Twitpic, YouTube, Google, and all of today’s web marketing tools are mandatory to reaching out and touching your clients when they are not in your chair. Make no mistake; you need the web to be successful in beauty in the future. We’ve blogged on this topic here with Show Yourself! – Get a ‘Gravatar’, The World Wide Web Is a Very ‘Sticky’ Place, and Twitter for On-Line Scheduling or What?

Beauty Schools Directory: What marketing advice might you offer to newly graduated cosmetology students who are just beginning their career path in beauty?

Alex Irving: Well, it’s sort of marketing advice. Don’t become a booth renter out of school! I don’t care what anyone says. Our industry loses too many talented young professionals who hear how great booth renting is, but don’t yet have the marketing skills to develop their own traffic or the business savvy to run their own business. They end up falling by the wayside and leave the industry feeling like failures. We all lose.

Find a great salon owner that offers their staff ongoing training and continuing education, brings in the clients through their marketing efforts, and supports you in achieving your personal and professional goals. There are many good salon owners are out there. Your first job is to find them and let them help you grow.

Final thought? I say congratulations on choosing the beauty industry as your future. Your cosmetology license is your ticket to ride in one of the most exciting career tracks in the world. I look forward to your comments on http://www.beautyprpo.com.

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Feathered Bangs and Continuing Cosmetology Education

Posted on: August 27th, 2009 by Beauty Schools Directory 3 Comments

Ok – the 1980s are over. Take a look at photos of your parents when they were teenagers. Is their hair the same as yours now? Their clothes? I doubt it. Styles change over time. The once popular bouffant, feathering and perm styles are no longer part of today’s hair culture. Imagine going to a hairstylist who was still using techniques and styles that were 20 years old. Chances are, you won’t get the cut you want. Imagine going to a salon that wasn’t up-to-date in safety and sanitation procedures. Terrifying, right?

Luckily, there are countless continuing education options for cosmetologists to avoid problems like these. Many states require some continuing cosmetology education for cosmetology license renewal and provide options for seminars and classes to complete those hours. There are also online cosmetology classes and courses to take at beauty schools and community colleges. The beauty school you graduated from might be able to give you some guidance or offer some continuing education classes themselves!

Get your groove back. Even after you’ve finished your required hours, it is always wise go above and beyond your state cosmetology license renewal requirements! The more you know, the better you can serve your clients. When you know the best new techniques and the latest, hottest styles, you can get younger clients that seek someone who is knowledgeable in these areas. Those young clients who are impressed by you early on will become loyal clients in the long term, returning to you when they need a simple cut or an entire overhaul, and recommending you to their friends and family.

Knowing the newest styles and techniques can definitely help you grow your beauty business, but other areas of continuing education can help you as well. There are numerous options for continuing education classes that cover how to start and run your own cosmetology business. In these, you can learn customer service skills and how to handle difficult clients, as well as new safety and sanitation procedures. With the help of continuing cosmetology education you can have a nice, clean salon with knowledgeable and modern professionals that keep the clients coming in.

What cosmetology continuing education classes have you taken? How often do you continue your career education with additional beauty school classes? Which have been the most or least helpful? Does your school have continuing education programs?