Strengths & Results

Strengths & Results

We are often asked the question as a hair educator, ‘What are your strengths and how do you measure success?’

The strength question is impossible to answer without really first talking about why we’re passionate about delivering education in the hair industry. The hair industry has given us everything. Hairdressing been the cornerstone for multiple generations of my family, and it’s built the lives of the team and provided security and supported all our dreams.

We believe that every person who joins the industry deserves the same opportunity to be able to build amazing successful careers. And our goal is for anyone with a passion for hair to have the same opportunities our family has been so fortunate enough to have been afforded through access to incredible education and mentors, so that they can make their own dreams a reality.

In saying that, we try and do things a little differently than other RTO’s. Our apprentice builder program is fully digital, and includes an industry first apprentice video assessment upload capability. We have an online education presence unrivaled in formal training.

MIG’s YouTube channel has a million views, and over 10,000 subscribers. We publish content and education thought leadership by our industry media and our social platforms in order to try and attract the next best and brightest.

But how do we measure success, we measure it by our results. We’re blessed to be working with Australian Apprentice of the Year Paige Cameron from Cobelle Creative. We work closely with Queensland Hairdresser of the Year Amy Gaudie training her Urban Chic team. We’ve qualified 3000 industry professionals over the past 30 years. And we’ve twice been education organisation of the year finalist, once at Hair Expo and once at the Australian Hair Industry Awards.

At MIG, we work with many great salons and barbershops to train their people. We’d love to be your trusted education partner. And if you’d like to find out how we can work with you, it would be great to connect. Thank you.

What Constitutes Training?

What Constitutes Training?

Let’s talk about training and particularly training in the apprenticeship context. Training can come in many forms. Most commonly students think training is when one on one training happens, but this is really only one form. So let’s break it down shall we because there are six official forms of training.

Firstly, face to face training with your RTO. And this can be attending college but it can also be when college comes to the salon or barber shop for training either on models or theory session.

Secondly, telephone or zoom meetings with your RTO. And this type of training can be as simple as a checking call, or it could be a zoom meeting to work on underpinning knowledge or to track progress. At MIG, we developed some great skills during the COVID lockdown period with this.

Thirdly, working with your in-salon supervisor or your mentor in the barber shop is really important because it helps to build those practical skills, work on speed and timing.

 Practice, number four, practices is king. Practicing your skills on models and clients helps to embed the skills that you’ve learnt either at college or in salon. 

Observation, this is a common form of training but observation is one of those things that really helps you to understand industry and how it works. When you’re watching how your senior barbers and hairdressers communicate and work with their clients it helps to make sense of everything there is in the world of training.

And finally, theory, not everybody’s cup of tea but every part of the Certificate III in either hairdressing or barbering has a theory component. So understanding the underpinning knowledge that goes with all the practical skills helps to build confidence moving forward in your career.

 At MIG, we work with many household names in hairdressing, to work on the capacity and the technical skills of their people. We’d love to connect with you and to work with you to help you build great skills within your team and to put in place great training structures that work.

 The thing that we say to every one of our students though, as they work through this process, and develop the skills to become great hairdressers is to:  Be Creative, Have Fun, and Dare to be different.

Apprenticeship Incentives

Apprenticeship Incentives

The start of 2021 has seen an incredible upswing in the numbers of new apprenticeship signups that’s coming through the doors. We’re really hopeful, fingers crossed that the signs of national recovery are happening in 2021. That this growth will happen across the board and it will have a huge pipeline of hairdressers coming through the system. Fueling this demand is the incredible sums of money that is coming our way through the boosting apprenticeship commencement wage subsidy. It’s a $1.2 billion scheme and it’s designed to support businesses to take on new apprentices. The funding is for all trades, but in hairdressing and barbering I suppose it’s there to attract skilled workers that can act as the future building blocks of our industry.

In real terms, the boosting apprenticeship commencement wage subsidy means that a salon who engages an apprentice might be eligible for up to 50% of their wage. That’s a maximum $7000 a quarter, amazing figures. But that’s not all, there’s more funding as well.  We’ve been blessed for new entrants, with funded programs through the job trainer scheme. Job Trainer is a $1 billion dollar by funding partnership between federal and state government and it’s designed to provide low cost or fee free courses targeted at 17 to 25 year olds who are looking for work. So what does that mean for hairdressing, it really means Certificate II in Salon Assistant.

Traditionally Certificate II in Salon Assistant is the domain of school based trainees. But what it will offer is a fee free or low cost option for organizations to provide industry with new entrants who have some basic skills and can hit the ground running. While the following list isn’t exhaustive, the qualification includes the building blocks and the key elements of that qualification include a number of things. It includes salon procedures, includes an understanding of shampoo and basin, blow drying, reception and communication, being able to greet prepare clients, and then obviously, color application and massage.

The Cert II in Salon Assistant can provide a perfect introduction to the trade for an aspiring hairdresser. And it could also, in my mind help reduce the high rate of cancellation that can be the bain of a lot of salons. Successful completion of a pre-vocational programs such as Cert II helps to sift out those who are unsure if hairdressings for them.  Ideally, a strong industry based program run by a college like ourselves will incorporate lots of industry placement and that will allow salons to have a look at potential staff and invariably try before they buy. Because of the free nature of the Job Trainer program it provides industry an unprecedented opportunity to compete for new entrants with other careers. And for us it also helps us make the most of opportunities to deliver programs in college that exciting and contemporary.

Programs will need to be really focused on developing key soft skills and furthermore, ongoing success of Cert II programs only really works if your colleges align themselves really closely with salons. In the end, increasing the number of qualified salon assistants is pointless if salon owners are unwilling to take them on due to a lack of skill, and the lack of the ability to add value. So finding ways to make that happen is really important, particularly from a college perspective, in making the skills that they have really industry relevant. For salon owners looking to access those who completed the Job Trainer, qualification or engage with those who are undertaking qualifications as part of the program over the coming months, the best course of action is to contact your RTO like ourselves, as we obviously have a huge role to play in attracting new people to our industry.

With substantial government funding in place by the boost apprenticeship commencement wage subsidy, and the new entrant job training program, it’s the first sign of green shoots and new growth for the future of the industry in some time. The challenge for us is to excite and inspire those who’ve been newly attracted to industry. But above all, the challenge is to retain and nurture those people once they come so that they decide to stay.