As a self-employed hair stylist, you might work in your own salon, rent a booth alongside other independent stylists, or even travel to your clients’ homes to revamp their look. No matter where you work, you determine your own rates, schedule, and service lineup.
But how do you get your resume in order? How do you show your ability to book your own calendar and style each client’s hair with finesse?
We’ll help you create a resume that’s flawless! We’ve already helped plenty of self-employed hair stylists like you with our three self-employed hair stylist resume templates and resume tips.
Related resume examples
What Matters Most: Your Skills & Job History
As a stylist who works with hair independently, your skill set should include some extra stuff that doesn’t go on an in-house stylist’s resume. Think of the self-starting aspects of your job, such as creating your own calendar and setting your own supply budget.
Recruiters want to see that you know how to handle yourself! Show them you can acquire and retain clients by keeping your skills highly relevant to your profession. Now’s no time to be generic!
Get specific with your skills. How do they make you a great stylist? Instead of touting “communication,” why not specify stuff like “product up-selling” or “appointment booking” instead?
9 top self employed hair stylist skills
- Hair Cutting
- Client Booking
- On-Site Appointments
- Calendar Management
- Budgeting
- Supply Management
- Negotiation
- Flexibility
- Product/Service Sales
Sample self employed hair stylist work experience bullet points
Sweet skills! But what have you accomplished with them so far as a self-employed hair stylist? Recruiters want to see examples of your success!
By sharing your experience with customer experience, time management, and sales, you show recruiters precisely why you’ve already earned a rental booth. Even accomplishments from seemingly unrelated jobs can spin to your advantage if they feature relevant skills.
No matter where your experience comes from, you’ll need to measure your impact. Provide quantifiable metrics (percentages, dollars, and rates) for profitability, client retention, and a good professional reputation.
Here are some samples:
- Managed budgeting system to save 26% in supply costs each month
- Designed a streamlined, automated rebooking system, attaining a 98% rebooking rate
- Clarified styling process, product costs, and style upkeep with clients, boosting sales margins by 34%
- Collaborated with fellow stylists to create social media campaigns, increasing bookings by 38%
- Operated and organized booking systems for independent hair stylists, increasing client base by 4 clients monthly
Top 5 Tips for Your Self Employed Hair Stylist Resume
- Get creative with context
- Bookings, profits, and return/satisfaction rates can leave you with a lot of percentages! If your metrics start to feel repetitive, see if there are some contextual details like ad campaigns or salon specials to reference for extra interest.
- Check those colors
- You might specialize in fashion colors, but you’ll want to tone things down a bit for your resume! Recruiters can only devote a few seconds on average to your resume, so keep it highly readable and avoid going overboard.
- Make it quick!
- Since recruiters want to pare down that stack of applications on their desks, you’ll want to impress them quickly to make it into the “keep” pile! Streamline your points to concisely deliver your hair styling achievements, their processes, and their measurable impact.
- Balance collaboration with independence
- This is a nuanced area for self-employed hair stylists: You’ll need to provide examples that demonstrate both your ability to work in various settings. Tweak this balance for each job application. Are you applying to work in a booth alongside other stylists, or are you aiming to travel to your clients instead?
- Don’t forget your license!
- Always specify what type of license(s) you have—preferably in a little section right near your education so that your cosmetology or Licensed Hair Stylist certification has its own spot to shine.
One-page resumes only, please! Again: Recruiters don’t have much time to spend on their initial read-through. Leave any extra-incredible accomplishments that don’t fit on that page for when writing a cover letter.
Depends: A resume objective can translate your qualifications nicely if you’re switching into hair styling from a totally different profession. Or, you might have varied experiences that could look more cohesive with a resume summary. If your experience section is clear-cut, you might need neither!
People are most likely to remember a resume that connects with them! Look at the job description again and align your resume accordingly. Do you resonate with the salon culture? Do you have any niche skills they mention?
Stephen is the co-founder and CEO of BeamJobs. He started his career in data fulfilling the dream of little kids everywhere: working for an insurance company. He then moved on to work in edtech for a company called Chegg before venturing out to start BeamJobs. Things have come a long way after countless “learnings” (fancy word for mistakes), and BeamJobs has now helped 2.5M+ people create their perfect resume. Stephen and BeamJobs have been featured on awesome sites like Business Insider, Chicago Tribune, Dallas News, Baltimore Sun, the Daily Press, Zendesk, HubSpot, and loads more.
