Hair Stylist Resume Example & Writing Guide

Getting a hair styling job worthy of your skills and artistry can be a laborious process. It involves optimally highlighting your competence to recruiters and employers with whom you’ve most likely never interacted before. That’s why you need an effective hair stylist resume that portrays you as the perfect candidate.

The importance of this document can’t be overstated. Its purpose is to simultaneously grab attention and convey valuable information about your credentials, abilities, and work history. It’s an intricate piece of written communication that needs to be fine-tuned for the best chances of success.

In this article, we’ll go through broad rules and general guidelines about resume writing, look at some examples, and then finish it with a couple of expert tips. Let’s get started!

The Ideal Format for a Hair Stylist Resume

The ideal format for most hair stylist resumes is chronological. This is the most common format in the job-seeking field, and if you’ve ever seen a resume, chances are it was using this one. The chronological resume format puts your latest—and likely most important—jobs and accomplishments first before listing the rest down from there.

That creates an established structure that recruiters are most familiar with. Moreover, the majority of applicant tracking systems (ATS) are configured with this format in mind. However, there are two additional prominent formats that you can use in specific instances.

These are:

Hair Stylist Resume Layout

A hair stylist resume layout refers to its visual aspect. As a creative professional, you know the importance of a striking appearance. The key to keeping resumes clean and professional is not to overdo the design. Here’s how you can achieve that:

Hair Stylist Resume Sections

Your hair stylist resume needs to be split into thematic sections so that it can be easier to read. There are five mandatory ones, which are:

After that, you can have as many optional sections as you can fit, as long as they are relevant to the job that you’re applying for and can improve your chances with recruiters. Some of the optional sections include:

Of course, ensuring that you’ve added all the important bits along with valuable optional information while keeping everything to one page can be challenging. That’s why we recommend you use our resume builder.

We created a plug-and-play software solution where you can create your resume in minutes! Pick a template that you like, input your details in predetermined spots, adjust the sections, colors, font, and other features, and download a submission-ready document.

Hair Stylist Resume Template

Speaking of hair stylist resume templates, here’s one that you can check out as an example:

How to Add Contact Information to Your Hair Stylist Resume the Right Way

The right way to add contact information to your hair stylist resume is to list it in a factual manner. That means adding the following details in the header of the document:

The information above is mandatory for every hair stylist resume, but there are some optional bits you can include, like your address, a relevant social media page, personal website, portfolio, and more.

Here’s what that looks like in an example:

Another thing to keep in mind is not to include sensitive personal information. Details about your age, gender, religion, political affiliations, etc., will likely get your resume discarded for privacy concerns. Even if you list your address, you should only include your city and state.

How to Write a Hair Stylist Resume Objective/Summary

A resume objective or summary is all about getting your foot in the door with recruiters. It’s a brief introductory paragraph that highlights your key strengths with the purpose of capturing attention.

Resume objectives are focused on skills and goals, while summaries are concise rundowns of your most prominent achievements. Both should be 2–4 sentences long, with objectives being tailored toward entry-level candidates and summaries being perfect for experienced hair stylists.

Upcoming Hair Stylist Resume Objective

Being an up-and-coming hair stylist, you likely don’t have sufficient work-related achievements for your resume. That’s why you should write a strong hair stylist resume objective to emphasize your skills, motivation, and career goals.

Here’s a good example:

Now compare that with the following bad resume objective that lacks any tangible information:

Established Hair Stylist Resume Summary

As an established professional, you want to draw the recruiter’s attention with a well-written hair stylist resume summary. It should be a short synopsis of your resume that highlights a couple of key accomplishments.

Let’s check out a good example first:

Now let’s see how not to write a resume summary:

Hair Stylist Resume Professional Experience

One of the easiest ways to get a job is to showcase your professional experience in an optimal way. Let’s find out how you can do that.

General Tips

To start with the essentials, here are the four parts that every work experience section should have:

If you have multiple past jobs that are relevant to the position that you’re applying for, you should list them in reverse chronological order. Still, the key to creating an outstanding section is getting the most from the fourth point: achievements.

First off, you want to emphasize notable results and accomplishments over everyday tasks that any other hair stylist does. Then, you want to use bullet points, as they are concise and easy to read. Having 3–5 bullet points for each previous job is usually the optimal amount.

As far as emphasizing your professional experience goes, it’s crucial to follow the “show, don’t tell” concept. That means you want to provide solid proof of your competence by adding numbers and statistics to relevant results. That adds measurable value and weight to your otherwise unsubstantiated claims.

Finally, you can leverage action verbs and power words to make the entire section stand out.

Hair Stylist With No Experience

Writing a hair stylist resume with no experience shouldn’t prevent you from crafting an outstanding work history section. The key is to leverage other efforts that can show how you can excel in your new position. This includes internships, personal projects, volunteer work, and more.

In the following example, a candidate highlighted their former job as a receptionist to showcase skills and achievements relevant to the role of a hair stylist:

Experienced Hair Stylist

Being an experienced hair stylist involves more than just being good with hair treatment, coloring, cutting, and styling. It includes being a multi-skilled professional who can contribute to an organization in more ways than one.

Here’s an example where a candidate highlighted not just their hair styling prowess but mentoring and leadership competence, selling skills, and more:

Hair Stylist Resume Education Section

The education section of your hair stylist resume should be brief and to the point. It’s often enough to list your highest degree in the following format:

In practice, that looks like this:

If you’re an entry-level candidate with a modest work history, you can put more emphasis on your education to prove your competence. In that case, you can add a bullet list with notable results and achievements, including relevant courses, certifications, extracurricular activities, projects, academic awards, and more.

Hair Stylist Resume Skills

Resume skills, along with your work history and education, paint a complete picture of who you are as a professional. At first glance, this is a simple section where all you need to do is list your abilities. However, there’s much more you can do to make your hair stylist resume skills section pop.

Here are some tips on how to make this part of your hair stylist resume spotless:

Hair Stylist Hard Skills

Hard skills depend on your education, training, and experience. The ones you can add to your resume include:

Hair Stylist Soft Skills

Here are some soft skills that recruiters love to see on resumes:

Hair Stylist Resume Other Sections

Other sections can add a lot of value to your resume as long as they are relevant to the job that you’re applying for.

Awards 

Awards demonstrate excellence and show that your extraordinary feats have been recognized by other professionals in the field. Adding this section to your resume is one of the best ways to validate your skills and experience.

Personal Projects

Having personal projects highlights several positive traits that recruiters want to see in candidates. It’s a strong indicator of the passion for the craft that extends beyond simple work. On top of that, it showcases initiative and creative vision, both of which are highly sought-after by employers and hair stylists.

Conferences/Lectures

Attending conferences and lectures shows commitment to continuous learning and improvement. They are important in any profession, but especially for hair stylists who need to keep up with the latest trends and practices in the fashion and styling community.

Publications

Publications are a great showcase of expertise in the profession. Having notable publications in everything from magazines to online blogs and articles portrays you as an authority in the field. Publications add credibility to your hard skills while further emphasizing your communication and teaching competence.

Languages

Knowledge of multiple languages can help you cater to a wider clientele. This skill improves a crucial ability in the service-related industry: communication. It helps you better understand and serve your customers. You should list your language skills in descending order, starting with the one you’re most proficient in.

Hobbies & Interests

Hobbies and interests give recruiters and employers a bit of insight into your personality. These seemingly innocuous details can help set you apart from the rest of the candidates. Make sure to mention something that you’re truly passionate about, and don’t be surprised if that topic comes up during an interview!

Does a Hair Stylist Need a Cover Letter?

A cover letter is usually not mandatory, but it can vastly improve your chances with recruiters. Simply going the extra mile to write and submit an additional document already shows diligence and commitment.

Moreover, a hair stylist cover letter is perfect for supplementing your resume. Use it to emphasize additional valuable details about your skills and knowledge and to include details that didn’t fit your resume in the first place.

3 Tips for Creating an Outstanding Hair Stylist Resume

Before we finalize this comprehensive guide, here are three expert tips that will help you transform your resume into a job-winning document:

Hair Stylist Resume Example

Use this example

To wrap things up, here's a hair stylist resume example. It can help you visualize everything you've learned so far and assist you when creating your document.

Closing Thoughts

The projected job growth rate for hair stylists is above average at 8%. Still, the competition can be fierce, and you want to use every weapon at your disposal to get ahead.

With that in mind, you can think of your hair stylist resume as a brief description of your skills and experiences. Make it short—so that it doesn’t bore the reader—but impactful and attention-grabbing. That way, you’ll have your interview and job in no time!