TALENT TOPICS
CONTINUED
as a customer, they’re likely to join your team already pos-
sessing a measure of loyalty to your spa and pride in its
brand.
4.
Share the Benefits of a Career in Spa
While every school is different, I’ve often heard
from ISPA members that there’s a broad per-
ception among spas that massage schools encourage ther-
apists to pursue careers as independent practitioners.
Therefore, one way to increase the number of newly-
minted therapists who are interested in working at your
spa is to extol the benefits of working at a spa instead of
on one’s own.
A number of ISPA members have had success with
teaching classes about spa to massage therapists;
during these classes, they focus in on how spas provide
an immediate client list while handling scheduling,
offering traditional benefits and eliminating the hassle
of running one’s own business. These members also
highlight the social benefits of working and collaborating
with a team of spa professionals.
To make life in a spa more attractive to new graduates,
it’s important to keep in mind why massage therapists
are interested in working on their own in the first place:
flexibility. “Massage therapists like flexibility,” notes
Booker. “They don’t like a full book, generally speaking.”
If you’re willing and able to offer therapists, estheticians
or nail techs flexible hours or part-time work, while still
offering the traditional benefits of working at a spa, then
attracting new service providers should be easy.
It’s also critical to share with students that spa offers a
path for career advancement—lead therapist, spa man-
ager, spa director and more, depending on where they
work. According to the staff at Lexington Healing Arts
Academy, most massage therapists that they train—espe-
cially those that practice independently or in a clinical set-
ting (hospital, chiropractic)—don’t fully understand that
they can move beyond massage therapy. “I think it’s
unclear what that career path looks like,” Booker says,
adding, “I think most of them just think, ‘I’m a massage
therapist,’ and that’s it. That would excite them to know
that they could become spa director.”
5.
Let Them Know When You Have an
Open Position If all else fails, this is an easy
way to help your local schools and help your
spa. When I spoke with Lexington Healing Arts Academy,
they mentioned that one of the easiest ways to help a pro-
gram is to simply let them know two things: that there are
jobs available in the industry, and that there are jobs avail-
able at your spa. Keep your local schools informed of your
job openings and they’ll be champing at the bit to place
their students at your spa. After all, placement is perhaps
the most important metric to massage and cosmetology
schools, so they’re already incentivized to nudge gradu-
ates towards your job openings.
Of course, you can simplify it even further by sharing
the ISPA Job Bank with them. While only members can
post jobs, anyone is able to search the database. Post your
open positions to the Job Bank and then share the URL
experienceispa.com/job-bank-search-openings with any
local schools. If there are multiple schools in the area, this
is an easy way to keep all of them informed about your
spa’s openings without having to communicate individ-
ually with each one.
When In Doubt, Talk
In the end, the best thing you can do is to talk to your
local schools. They know what the next generation of
massage therapists, estheticians, nail techs or stylists look
for in an employer. Use their knowledge to shape how you
lead your team. In turn, offer yourself as a subject-matter
expert on spa in order to help them recruit more students,
prepare them more effectively for work in spas and, even-
tually, place them into open positions at your spa. In the
end, schools and spas are both chasing the same goal: to
fill those 28,420 service provider positions. n
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