One of our favorite ways to work at Talent Match is through the insights provided to us in our data. Every year for the last 5 years we have polled the workforce and inquired about their needs, wants, and desires. 

This year our 2023 data shows us that 41% of salons say their top hiring focus is on finding experienced talent.

This is quite a big shift from the days when every employee-based salon said things like “I prefer to get them from school so I don’t have to take on their bad habits”.

The shift comes from the demand we have coming from clients. This demand may be a reality in your business because of your work to accommodate your staff’s new schedule preferences or maybe it’s because you’ve lost staff- but either way, we know that finding experienced talent is a key desire and need for most salon owners so that they can get the clients coming in taken care of.

We get asked all the time at Talent Match how to find experienced talent and if we can help salons hire hairdressers with experience. The answer is yes we can, we have 3 strategies for recruiting experienced talent. 

One of our favorite strategies is what we call a rebound strategy and its emphasis is on bringing people who used to work for us back.

This strategy has two elements- the staff that used to work for us and the staff that currently works for us or will in the future and then will leave. Why split it into these two groups? 

We have big opportunities as an industry to consider how we help people exit and our goal should be to increase the population of stylists leaving us more likely to return to us. Maybe our history doesn’t leave us with many return options, but the future can. 

One stakeholder in our 2023 survey was the rental stylists and 62% of them said they would come back to work as an employee if all of their needs could be met. (watch for the next blog where we’ll talk about the needs list!) This represents a giant opportunity for salons with teams. 

Now you have to think about the team who has left you and ask yourself some questions about the possibilities of getting them back.

• Did they leave on good terms? 

If the answer is no, did they feel safe enough to leave on good terms? This is a strong leadership question and our natural tendency is to place blame on the stylist that left for the way they left but I want to invite you as a salon leader to think about how you can level up the way you help them exit. 

Ask yourself these questions:

• Do you start discussing an exit strategy at their onboarding? 
• Do you create a space that’s safe to say “I’m thinking about a change”
• Do you have a follow-up plan to stay connected to stylists that leave? 

The three bullet points above are essential to your ability to create a rebound strategy in your business that will allow you to bring back old talent. 

Which one is in your way of successfully rebounding a stylist who left in the past?