Skin care and make-up consultants assess and recommend to clients skin creams or lotions and make-up to improve or enhance skin tone, colour, and texture. Skin care and make-up consultants are employed at beauty salons, retail establishments, image consulting companies or modelling agencies. They may also be found working independently.
In this job, you analyze a client's skin, determine what products or colours are appropriate, demonstrate a few options, and recommend a program for the client to follow. You should know how to treat various types of skin and have a thorough knowledge of the products you use. You should also keep informed about new product developments and ensure your customers use safe products.
The hours can be long and you must be ready to work some evenings and weekends. Your pay may be based on a commission, an hourly rate, a salary, or the type of job performed, depending on the establishment with which you work. Customers may also give you tips. Some retail outlets establish quotas for the number of clients you are expected to serve.
Skin care and make-up consulting is a service and to do it well you have to sell your skills to potential clients. Skin care and make-up consulting is highly competitive. You have to build a strong clientele, establish loyalty and encourage repeat business.
You are expected to step directly into a position with a minimum of preparation. You will receive training, however, if you are to use a new product line. Many consultants become familiar with one or two product lines and promote them before being hired.
One way of getting into this line of work is to approach a cosmetics company and ask to be trained in their product line. Another is to become involved with direct sales of products and operate independently. These two operations do not provide as much theoretical knowledge, training or practical experience about skin care and colouring as do schools, but they allow you to enter the field more quickly.
Training seminars are a necessary feature of skin care and make-up training consulting. New products, styles, and techniques are always appearing and consultants are expected to know about them. Some training may deal specifically with selling strategies.
The field of skin care and make-up consultants calls for independent, motivated, confident people who enjoy working with the public. In dealing with the sensitive issue of image, you must be discreet with your clients and sincere about the products you support. You have a responsibility to be honest about a client's appearance or skin and be candid about what the best solutions available to the customer are. Though success depends on an aggressive approach towards sales, your main goal should be to earn your clients' trust and thus generate repeat business.
Obviously, you have to practice what you preach. You cannot earn the confidence of clients if you are not well-groomed yourself. If you specialize in make-up consulting, you need a creative eye and a strong colour sense. It is also expected that when you identify more serious skin problems that you cannot solve, you will refer your clients to appropriate medical care.