Colleges are innovating to address therapist skills gaps

The skills gap among college leavers is an issue that provokes strong opinion in the beauty industry – and has done for years. Employers across the sector claim newly qualified therapists lack the customer service, retail and sometimes even treatment skills required to start work in a real business. And with cuts to both funding and course hours, those accusations have only got louder.

With pressure from all sides, we felt it was time the colleges had a right to reply. Our education focus in the March issue of Professional Beauty delves deeper into the challenges education providers are facing and some of the innovative ways they are overcoming them.

Working beyond the core curriculum, some of the most forward-thinking lecturers are putting in extra hours to give their students more real-world experience. Many are also reaching out to brands and employers for support with training in career-focused topics such as interview skills and the hottest new treatments that haven’t made their way on to the syllabus, and we hope more will start to answer that call.

Uniting the wider beauty industry is one of the key aims of the Professional Beauty brand and if you’re picking up the “show issue” of the magazine at the exhibition at Excel, you’ll see new zones dedicated to international distribution, wellness and medical aesthetics.

We’re excited to be growing the Professional Beauty magazine stable, too. Having launched Professional Spa & Wellness in 2012, we’re now gearing up to unveil Aesthetic Medicine in April. Aimed at the clinic and medi-spa market, the magazine will analyse the latest advances in non-surgical treatments for face and body. If you’re expanding your own business into any of these markets then sign up to these specialist mags and let us know what you think.