Here at Espiritu, we are always looking for talented staff to come and join our team. We don’t have ‘recruitment windows’ or limit ourselves to searching for candidates for a particular job – by doing so we might miss someone absolutely amazing!
If you are interested, read all the information below, check out our values page and pop to our Contact page to send us an email.
Qualified Professionals
Generally we are looking for qualified Hair Stylists, Beauty Therapists or Spa Therapists. Maybe you would like to do hair AND beauty – well we allow that too at Espiritu!
Equally, if you’re a therapist or practitioner offering a service that we don’t already have at Espiritu, we’d be interested in hearing from you to rent a room.
What do you need to know?
We give a lot and appreciate our team, and feel that the tendency to take staff in the hair & beauty industry for granted is terribly wrong. But in return we expect excellence, and this is harder than you might think. We will support you and mentor you in your growth, but mediocre will never be acceptable to us, so think first before applying! We encourage our clients to return if they are not 100% satisfied with their service, so you need to be able to listen to their concerns and accept their feedback (although this hardly ever happens) and be willing to either give them a 100% refund or fix the problem. In return we pay well, there is a good commission rate, great product commissions, rewards, incentives, holidays, sickness pay, compassionate leave and soon a pension. Service commission is achievable, and salaries are paid on the 25th of every month to make paying your bills easier.
The atmosphere is key to our success at Espiritu, so you will be expected to take responsibility for your mistakes (we have a no blame culture, and believe everyone has room for improvement, so mistakes are welcomed, hiding them or blaming someone else isn’t). You will be expected to support the less experienced staff in their learning, and the more experienced staff with their projects. There is a no-tollerance policy on bullying or bitchy behaviour. Where improvements are needed, we look for positive, factual approaches to a situation.
We are looking for team players as a priority. You will also have responsibility for your column, but we will help you if you need encouragement and mentoring in how to build your clientele and improve your customer care factor with product sales. So ambition is encouraged, but you will never be pushed to sell a service or product to a client which doesn’t suit them, as honesty and trust with our clients is key. You will need to learn about the other teams and their services, so that you can help your clients by cross selling where it’s helpful to them.
Everyone cleans and helps on reception; no one is too important to help out, and no one is considered a ‘lesser’ member of the team.
There is a no rush policy and no wait policy for our clients. So we don’t want you to squeeze people in and upset the following clients, or reduce the quality of your service by having too little time. There is flexibility on the length of service times to ensure that you have the time to provide an excellent service.
This industry isn’t the most convenient for hours, and we can be flexible. But there are late nights and we would normally need you to do one of them. However, this tends to mean working a shorter week e.g. 4 days instead of 5. We also open on Sundays and Mondays, but aim to give full time staff 2 consecutive days off. There is also a team meeting, that you would need to attend, even if it wasn’t on your working day. We try to make it as convenient as possible and it is currently only once a month, and you will be paid for the extra time.
Training is important for all levels, as everyone loves to progress and we love to encourage this. We help provide you with access to models, so that you can speed up the process and encourage you to be really proactive. For younger/newer team members, remember that this can be a considerable investment in time and resources for us, so there is a clause in your contract if you leave earlier than expected: You will have any training fees you have had 6 months prior to your leaving removed from your final pay cheque and 50% of any training you have 7-12 months prior (internal training is charged at £10ph).
There are other big benefits of working with us including including free staff exchanges available on hair cuts, colour and finger nails (we find it helps on skills sharing and so that you know who in the team to recommend to which client). Products are at cost and there is a 50% discount off any other services (although they are often available for free if someone is training – which they often are, as we have a large team). There are even discounts for your close family!
You will find that we are not a ‘traditional’ hair or beauty salon, and honestly for some this is challenging and they choose not to stay. For anyone whose biggest priority is great customer service, this won’t be a problem. Any ‘thinking out of the box ideas‘, are very much welcomed. For example, we have a simplified hierarchy within hair, in order to make things easier and less complicated for our clients. We also brought in a ‘quality control checklist’ to hair for new employees, which is considered normal in the beauty industry, but less used in the hair industry; it helps us to maintain consistency in our services. Another example is that our Spa services are a full hour, and clients are given much longer to get undressed, and come round from their treatment.
Our ethos is about ‘Helping Our Clients To Enjoy Their Lives More‘: so the effect of your service needs to last longer than just the short time that they are with you at Espiritu. Maybe you give them more confidence to tackle their work challenges due to a stunning hair cut, or the rest they need to go back to their family with a bounce with your manicure, or the rejuvenation they need to enjoy their week more. That is why you need to ensure that it’s not just your technical ability that is fabulous, but also the environment you are working in (tidy and clean), your product knowledge, you client connections and your thoughtfulness when booking services. Proactively looking for ways to improve your knowledge, skill and service constantly is something that we encourage here at Espiritu.
Does this excite you? Would you love to work somewhere, knowing that you would be appreciated, our clients are cared for, and there is no ‘them and us’ approach from the bosses? Then contact us, even if it is just for a little chat to start off with.
Apprenticeships
Whether you’re a teenager looking for a weekend job or a school-leaver with a real flair for hair or beauty, we’d love to hear from you. Starting out in hairdressing or beauty isn’t the most glamorous job in the world – we know that, so we make sure we offer you great training and support so your career can take off in the direction you want it to.
We offer a unique opportunity to combine hair and beauty. But bear in mind this will require a lot more work and a great deal of motivation on your behalf. It will also take longer to fully qualify from our perspective (which is different from getting your NVQ’s).
We also offer a business admin apprenticeship based around a customer service-reception-admin-marketing assistant combination of roles. With strong internal systems and procedures, there is loads that you can learn about business, especially from our strategy director.
If you’re considering applying for an apprenticeship or weekend job with us, you should consider the following:
- Transport – have a look at our directions page and see if you can get here! There are some buses that pass relatively close by but we need you to be here on time, every time. Parking is free and readily available here at Battlers Green Farm.
- You might need to attend extra evenings for model nights as part of your training.
- You need to love people and be able to smile every day
- You need to be excited by hair or beauty or both – if you don’t eat, breathe and sleep it, then we’ll assume you aren’t interested enough in it.
