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Create your free business website! www.ascpskincare.com 11 Congratulations! You've realized your dream of becoming a licensed skin care professional. This is an exciting but unnerving time for those who have earned the credentials for an esthetics position, yet lack the clients, confidence, and experience needed to compete for such a job. So many questions come to mind at this point: How long does it take to build a clientele? How can I get on-the-job experience if I can't get a job to gain that experience? What does it take to impress an employer? How much should I expect to be paid? Very soon after leaving school, you realize just how unprepared you might be to begin making a living in your new career. You may have been told about the great money and working independence available to career estheticians. Now that you're ready to enjoy these spectacular benefits, you may suddenly discover something no one told you: this dream isn't easy to achieve. Here are some tips for helping you get your foot in the door. What Employers Want Imagine you are an employer at a day spa or salon. You have all the bills to pay, employees to manage, marketing to do, and a hundred other responsibilities that go into making the business survive. Who are you going to hire? Would you look for an inexperienced, confidence-poor esthetician as your first choice? One who will need lots of training, probably lacks sales skills, certainly has Wisdom for the new esthetician by Douglas Preston nothing in the way of ready clientele, and, statistically speaking, is highly likely to quit the job within 60 days? Probably not. And yet, that's exactly what a freshly minted esthetician represents to the business owner—a potentially expensive and time-demanding waste of effort. No employer wants to be the one who teethes the new professional through this uncomfortable and often disappointing experience. You can't blame them, either. If you can't initially find anything in esthetics itself, improve your chances by gaining experience in closely related jobs—spa/salon receptionist, department store cosmetic sales, or any customer service or sales role. These translate into additional value in the eyes of an employer. Prepare a résumé that emphasizes the things employers love: flexibility, reliability, self-motivation, and the love of retail sales! These qualities might give you a competitive edge over more experienced job candidates. Just be sure to understand that what you produce in the spa and what you're paid will be closely related, so focus on applying to businesses that are already busy with customers and aren't expecting you to build foot traffic right away. Growing Pains New estheticians learn about the profession as they go, and many are not so happy about what they discover at first—schedule demands, workplace requirements, slow hours, and low pay. Before you graduated, you just assumed there are flocks of customers who schedule facial appointments every month, right? Umm … not so right. In fact, the routine facial client is a very rare individual. After all, before you got into this field, how many times did your family or close friends pay for professional skin care treatments on a regular basis? If they are like most people, the answer will probably be "not very often," if at all. There certainly are regular skin care clients out there, but when compared to the number of people who frequently use hair, nail, and even massage services, the esthetics customer is found in very thin numbers. Successful estheticians will tell you that growing a client base is a long and patience-challenging process; it's often the one factor that thins the ranks of skin care pros after their first year or two. To be successful in esthetics you need lots of patience and the faith to know