How to: Hire estheticians for your medical spa or clinic. Part 2

Read: How to hire estheticians for your medical spa or clinic, Part 1 here.

Interviewing & hiring estheticians, part 2

One of the common problems interviewers have is they spend the entire interviewing process talking about their own company. (I've fallen victim to this myself.) The interview is to decide if this person is a potentially right fit for your company and you personally. My own opinion is that it is always harmful to hire the wrong person, even temporarily. As an have had a spot that we have not filled for two and a half months because we have not been able to find the right person yet.

Besides conducting the interview in a professional manner -- for example, you can't ask how old the person is. You can't ask whether they're married or have children or planning on have children. What you're looking for is information that is going to help you discern how beneficial this person is going to be to the clinic.

Here's a list of questions that I always want to know:

1. What is your background with the day spa industry?
My own preference is that I would like to hire estheticians that have little or no experience in day spas.

2. How much money do you need?
I ask this question because it's a lot more open-ended than what are your salary requirements or how much did you make at your last job. I want to find out how much money this person actually needs in order to live. How many cars they have, whether they need full-time. I want to know some background information that is going to help me decide financially if this person will be able to make enough money in order for them to both feel successful and to cover all of their needs.

3. What made you choose to move into the field of aesthetics?
The answer that I am not looking for here is it was easy. That's not an uncommon answer, by the way.

4. Why do you want to work here specifically?
What I'm not looking for is somebody who will work anywhere. I want someone who is attracted to the fact that they have researched the industry and know about my business and have decided to come in and try to get a job here.

5. What are you wanting to do over the next 2-3 years?
I am not really looking for somebody who says this is my career and I'm never going to leave you. With staff members that are typically young and female there is inherent insecurity. They move, they get married, they have kids... They are not an employee group which is usually associated with bedrock stability.

6. Why should I hire you?
There are some questions that I want to ask right out of the starting blocks and am fairly forward with; not in a harsh way, but in an understanding way. Rather than telling me what your strengths are and telling me what your weaknesses are, which people just bullshit through anyway, I like to ask, tell me why I should hire you. If an aesthetician can't answer that question after a little bit of meaningful thought or they can't come up with a good reason to hire them, they're not going to be great at handling patients on the fly in a stressful situation. People tell you the truth in those situations. If somebody says don't hire me in some way, don't hire them.

7. How much money do you think you should be making?
This is a little bit different from how much money do you need. I'm trying to uncover what this person thinks about my business.

During one interview an older, mature esthetician who had been in the field for 20 years actually said this: "Those doctors are making a lot of money and I want some of it."

That kind of came out and that interview was over; although we finished with the rest of it.