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Money Talk is Not Taboo
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Helping salon owners convert their culture story into a recruiting magnet ✨

“When a job seeker asks about salary and benefits at the first interview it’s just disrespectful.”

This is outdated thinking. 45% of today’s workforce wants to understand compensation at the first interview!

As I conduct research with our workforce I am always excited by gems like this datapoint that seem are so easy to embrace. The money conversation is an example of something that does not hurt anyone if our beliefs and habits around it evolve. 

Compensation is the most fundamental reason that a beauty professional would be seeking employment inside of a salon. 


Beyond our basic need of monetary security, we look for other important elements to jobs -but if those elements don’t align with the compensation someone needs to live their life, then it is likely the candidate won’t be able to accept the position anyway. 

In the interview process, both parties have responsibilities for their part of discovering if the role is a good fit. 

https://youtu.be/jAC06mJTw7c

As a salon owner, your biggest responsibility is to assess the candidate against your business values, business culture, and business needs. 

The same responsibility lies with the candidate to assess how they think they would it inside of your business. Alignment on all fronts is where you will find long term sustainability in an employee.  

If you find yourself thinking that money talk on the first interview is taboo, I’d invite you to ask yourself, why has it ever really been taboo? Who gains from withholding the information for future interviews? 

I would argue that everyone loses if we spend time talking about everything but money and waste hours of both business time and someone’s personal job seeking time. 

In the salon world, we would not want to spend 3 hours giving a client a consultation only to then offer the price and have them say, “no thanks, that is more than I want to spend.” 

We strive to get to the price of the service early in the consultation – at least a rough ballpark – so that no one was wasting precious time

As salon owners hiring, I recommend you revisit the conversations you have in your first interview and ensure they include the money talk. 

You don’t have to go into exact specifics but consider going high level over these few things:

  • Our compensation plan starts at $$ 
  • Our benefits package looks like… 
  • Growth potential is based on our pathways which look like this…. (Lay them out clearly)
  • We do ABC to help you achieve growth here (showcase your education overview)

Once you have delivered this information to the candidate, I recommend that you ask the question, “Does the information I just covered align to what you were hoping for?”

Let’s remove the power card that has been played by businesses for so long and help the candidates help us! 

The more clarity applicants have about our business, the more capable they are of making an informed opt-in to work for us. And long-term retention of a team member exists when they have fully opted in. 

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