Hairdressing - A job for life.

In the sixties Warren Beatty was one! In the eighties Dolly Parton and Darryl Hannah were one too! And more recently Queen Latiffa played one! What were they? Hairdressers of course! Custodians of the hairdressing industry world-wide often wonder why more people don’t choose hairdressing as a career when leaving school and, as a person who has made a life-long career from working in the hair and beauty industry I am dedicating this article to making our readers aware of how exciting and rewarding a career in hairdressing can be.

Forget the stigma that seems to be associated with hairdressers. Hairdressing is a ‘cradle to the grave’ industry – it is a job for life. From a baby’s first hair cut to pampering little grey-haired ladies, the hair care needs of almost everyone on the planet changes as they journey through life. The knowledge and skills one acquires to create haircuts to suit faces, reverse the ageing process by making grey hair disappear and simply giving people the very best hair they can have is incredibly rewarding. Plus, there is almost no redundancy in hairdressing, in fact good hairstylists are in short supply virtually everywhere in the world, except in Italy, funnily enough, which has the highest number of hairstylists for the population. A number of years ago my wife and I considered moving to Australia.

During the initial application stages she scored higher points as a qualified hairstylist than I did with all my sales and marketing qualifications put together. The fact is that hairdressing creativity is almost a language on its own. By simply having a picture of what the client is looking for, a competent hairstylist can create exactly the same look – no words other than body language required. The importance of hair in terms of everyone’s self-image cannot be understated. Whether it is to control hairloss in young men, give us the latest trendy hairstyle or something more elaborate for those special occasions in our lives or merely give us a hairstyle that makes us look good and feel great; nothing, except good health, affects our personal success more than the way we wear our hair. Success with professional salon products requires on-going training which provides yet another career opportunity for professional hairstylists.

The major suppliers of salon products need technical representatives to ensure their products are being used correctly and to teach new and exciting techniques to cut, volumise and care for hair. This often means lots of traveling, sometimes overseas and, on the odd occasion moving around the world on international transfer. Every year in South Africa hairstylists spend many hours and vast amounts of money to enter the industry’s most prestigious competitions such as Paul Mitchell Hairstylist Of The Year, L’Oreal Colour Trophy and Wella Trend Vision. So, as you can see, a career in hairdressing can be one of the most lucrative and fulfilling jobs on the planet..