Week 10, time to complete everything! In ,my final lesson of work experience, I tidied everything up and ensured everything was complete, this meant completing my blog and making sure it looked its best, completing my CV and checking it through with my peers, checking my treatment plan and making sure I am up to date and planning out when I should be completing the rest.

The last lesson also consisted of making a plan for myself, how will I plan out the rest of my college year? When will I complete any outstanding work and how long will it take me? This is important because it helps you to stay organised and complete everything on time.

On week 9, I did some salon reception experience. On reception, I was asked to carry out a number of different responsibilities, this included counting out the £40 float, answering calls and applying anything that were needed on the calls, cleaning the reception area, taking some hospitality calls, booking in clients, signing them in on arrival and departure and taking their treatment payments.

Everything in reception is professionally recorded on a system called 'Premier Spa'.

On week 7 and week 8, we are asked to bring in clients as an opportunity to catch up and complete assignments and any outstanding treatments. This could include any treatments we have learned throughout the college year, including manicures, pedicures, facials and makeup treatments.

This session would act the same as any commerical session, you would book in your client and call them in when they arrive, you would welcome them in and ask them to put any belongings in the brown tub. Once the treatment is complete you would ask your client if they are happy and would like a drink and then take them back to reception so they can pay for their treatment.

This week it was time to create our CV's, we did this on a website called reed CV builder which gives a helpful guide to create a CV.

 

This website gives you a template with a number of different topics for you to fill in, once filled in this creates a full CV which can be used for any job you want to apply for, you just have to ensure that the information you are adding, links to the job you are applying for, this will make the employer think you have specifically created it for that job.

  In week 5 of our work experience, we did some interview prep to prepare us for any interviews we may have in the beauty industry and what we should expect. This is where our trade tests fit in as this may be essential in any interview we may have, this could be for a job, apprenticeship or even a course related to the beauty industry!

In the interview prep lesson, we practiced the skills needed to create a good CV, personal statement and the best ways to answer interview questions. Our personal statement would be created from the job advertisement by highlighting the main points needed for the job and adding them in our personal statement. We also had a number of potential interview questions to practice on each other and to give feedback and who's better to give you feedback than your peers! Below is a example of a job advertisement for the beauty industry, as you can see each job lists the skills and abilities you need.

Today was my turn to do the trade test, again like last week I had to do a manicure treatment on a client.
My task was the same, to complete a full manicure in red in a trade test style to prepare me for any future interviews.

In this test it allowed me to find my strengths and weaknesses

Today we started some practical work in our work experience sessions, we started off with a practice trade test to prepare us for trade tests we may have to do when applying for a job!! 

My friend Katy was the therapist this time and had to present everything the way she would as if she was working in a real salon. She would set up her work area, make herself look professional and presentable and introduce herself to me (the employer) as if she was in an interview for a real job.

The task set was to complete a full manicure with a dark colour within the time set of 30 minutes, this is so we knew how far we could go in the set time and would help us work on what we needed to improve on, this was a really good opportunity to prepare us for real life situations.

Lisa Eldridge is a famous makeup artist with a really strong blog which is inspiring the ideas towards my own blog!

In her blog she shows clear pictures of her work and carefully describes the products and techniques she uses and why she recommends them as good products, I found this really interesting mainly because i'm always looking for new products to use myself and better ways to apply them!! 

 

Today we set up our blogs.  

For our beauty therapy work experience, we must set up a blog to update consistently, this is very useful for our qualification as it's a good opportunity to use as references when impressing future employers. It also helps us to give evidence of the experience we have had in greater detail. Practice of creating blog also helps a business to gain clients who will recognize the experience of the therapists and will be much more reliable towards clients wanting to find a good, professional salon. To set up our blogs we had to create our Gmail account and research into our end goals so that we knew what we were aiming our blog towards.
I have had some experience in salons as work experience so this is a big head start as I have already had some experience and already know how this industry works.

I think my target today would be to research some makeup artists blogs so that I have some tips on how to write the best blog suited to my end goal!