Cosmetology Resume Sample

You must exhibit professionalism, creativity, and concern to earn the trust of your clients so they can address their most intimate matters and personal appearance concerns with you.

So follow these three tips to learn how to write an effective cosmetology resume that showcases these top skills and gets you hired in the beauty industry.

1. Tailor your hard and soft skills to the salon you’re applying to

All beauty salons are not created equal — some focus on a particular clientele, while others have a broad customer base. Additionally, some concentrate on providing skincare treatments, whereas others mostly style hair.

Because the cosmetology industry is so diverse, you should tailor your resume to each company you’re applying to by including hard and soft skills that they’re specifically looking for.

Hard skills come from hands-on experience or formal training, so look carefully at the job description and list the cosmetologist skills that match the salon’s specific job requirements.

For instance, if you know that a salon primarily provides manicures and pedicures, emphasize your experience in nail care. By contrast, if you’re applying for hair care roles, list your skills with cutting, styling, and coloring hair.

Here are more essential hard skills for your resume:

By contrast, soft skills relate to how you interact with customers and colleagues in a professional setting, so make sure you include them on your cosmetology resume. Soft skills are also essential for cosmetologist resumes because they show you can tend to clients attentively and provide them with top-tier services.

For instance, a company with a broad range of customers might want to hire someone with great interpersonal skills who can quickly build a rapport with clients. However, a high-end salon might need someone who is an excellent listener and communicates only when necessary while quickly anticipating their client’s needs.

2. Use a resume objective to showcase your value

The first thing the hiring manager sees on your cosmetologist resume is your resume objective (or career objective), which is a 2–3 sentence statement that creates a positive first impression of you by:

1. listing your relevant certifications, training, and education
2. mentioning your years of experience and what tasks you performed
3. conveying your most winning traits and how you’ll contribute to your new employer’s business

Take a look at our applicant’s resume objective with colored underlines and how it showcases their value:

Certified cosmetologist with 5+ years of experience delivering beauty solutions to clients, including hair, skin, and nail solutions, and providing quality advice on cosmetic and beauty product use.

First, the applicant immediately highlights their skills and knowledge by leading with the first word, “certified.” By doing so, the hiring manager knows straight away that they’re dealing with a qualified candidate.

Second, the candidate lists the most crucial tasks they performed in their previous roles that their new employer will be seeking.

Our candidate immediately reveals that they have broad knowledge about the industry by listing all of the services that clients and employers desire. Our applicant demonstrates that not only can they give clients a great makeover but also provide them with the guidance and know-how to select, evaluate, and apply products and techniques independently.

In the second (and in this instance, final) sentence of their resume objective, the applicant clarifies their best attributes and connects them back to the company they’re applying to:

I aspire to leverage my record of high-quality customer service and my aesthetic laser operator certification to provide Live & Let Dye’s clients with unforgettable beauty experiences.

Here, they emphasize two pivotal things the hiring manager is looking for: a concrete skill set (i.e., a customer-friendly personality) and a much sought-after certification in the beauty industry (i.e., their aesthetic laser operator certification).

Including this certification or education is key to getting noticed because it immediately separates your resume from those of less qualified candidates.

3. Highlight your work experience with hard numbers and details

The professional or work experience section of your resume allows you to advertise what you’ve achieved in the past. In the beauty industry, there are numerous specialties, and hiring managers are interested to find out what roles you can fulfill in their beauty salons.

Check out how our applicant highlights their diverse specialties:

Examine and treat clients’ hair, skin, and nails safely during COVID-19 by sanitizing tools regularly and adhering to Fargo’s health and safety guidelines

In addition, it’s vital that you not only tell the hiring manager what you’re capable of but that you prove it too. This is called quantifying your career accomplishments on your resume.

In other words, instead of simply stating that you successfully sold cosmetics to your clients, prove it by providing hard numbers. Figures like hard numbers provide more context for hiring managers to see what they stand to gain by hiring you.

For example, the applicant provides great product recommendations to their clients.

Here’s an example of a work experience bullet point that uses hard numbers by including percentages:

Recommend cosmetics, lotions, and gels to clients with a 43% higher buying rate compared to my colleagues

Additionally, the applicant emphasizes their professional experience by applying their aesthetic laser operator certification in real-world situations and providing more details:

Perform 15+ laser procedures per week for diverse client needs, including hair removal, tattoo removal, acne treatment, and wrinkle amelioration

Then, to showcase their leadership and business organization skills, our applicant notes the following:

Trained and oversee 10 new hires

Schedule 12+ daily client appointments