Are we doing hair, skin, or nails today? As an entry-level esthetician, you consult with clients and dole out appropriate self-maintenance plans and treatments like manicures and pedicures, facials, and body waxing. You may work closely with a more experienced esthetician to ensure that each client walks away with optimal results.
But how can you make your resume as beautiful as your last manicure turned out? What skills and indisputably qualifying experiences do recruiters want? And which resume template will best display those skills?
Don’t fret! We’ve spent years helping countless professionals like you and have put together three entry-level esthetician resume examples and handy tips to get you on the way to something beautiful.
Related resume examples
What Matters Most: Your Skills & Professional Experiences
Your skills are the building blocks for your new career. Recruiters want to skim over your technical abilities with ease and compare them with the job’s needs. That means you should be comparing your skills list with those in the job description!
Look for keywords like “Manicures/Pedicures” or “Treatment Planning” that you can match in your skills section. List programs and tools by name. Keep your list as relevant to the job as possible.
That usually means getting really specific, and we recommend honing down your skills as a way to show your unique approach to the esthetician role! Don’t say “communication” when you can specify that you’re great at listening to clients’ needs.
9 most popular entry level esthetician skills
- Eminence
- MindBody
- GlowAI
- Client Consultation
- Maintenance Plans
- Manicures/Pedicures
- Ovatu
- LightStim
- Darsonval
Sample entry-level esthetician work experience bullet points
Your job skills are amazing to have, but they’re more like tools of the trade, and recruiters need examples of how you’ve used them. How did you benefit your last employer by improving efficiency with your active listening and strategic thinking?
Basically, recruiters want to see solid examples of the positive impact you’ve made for other estheticians and clients alike. Did you improve general practices by suggesting a new client feedback system? How did your display ideas help upsell limited-time products?
And do not forget the numbers that go with those success stories! Your readers will be eager for quantifiable data that measures your impact. Consider satisfaction percentages, client return rates, and any other positive star ratings or reviews substantiating your contributions as an entry-level esthetician.
Here are some samples:
- Attended to 16+ clients with strained facial muscles and reduced their pain by 87% within two sessions
- Promoted Eminence and SkinCeuticals products to record a 38% surge in sell-through rates
- Streamlined customer scheduling via Meevo and increased weekly bookings by 77% while maintaining 0 instances of double-booking
- Administered effective wrinkle and acne treatments using LightSim, boosting customer satisfaction ratings by 46%
- Maintained a customer-friendly environment, earning a personal feedback rating of 4.8/5.0 stars
Top 5 Tips for Your Entry Level Esthetician Resume
- Keep it short and sleek
- You should aim for a one-page resume. Recruiters don’t have much spare time, so they can only spend a few seconds on average initially reviewing your resume. Keep it short, streamline anything you can, and leave them eager for more!
- Bulk up your resume with internships
- If you’re struggling to fill the page with qualifying experiences as an entry-level esthetician, think back to any internships you’ve had. Did you shadow an esthetician or stylist in the past for a school project? If it relates to your current goals and strengthens your capabilities, list it!
- Choose your writing tone deliberately
- Revisit the job description for this one and pull up the company website, too. Look up what it takes for you to understand the brand and company culture. Then, write your resume with a tone that fits the style of the work environment as if you’d been there doling out skin care treatments all along!
- Use references if needed
- If you step back to look at your resume and still crave some more reinforcements, call upon your references! If you have any memorable professors, previous coworkers, or former employers who know how ambitious and creative you are, ask them to write about it so that you can attach a couple of professional letters of recommendation alongside your resume.
- Pick an awesome-looking layout!
- Any of our three entry-level esthetician resume templates would look great on you! Once you try them out, pick the one that plays up your best features, just like you’d pick the best products to recommend based on a client’s needs. (Psst: A side column is ideal if you included internships, volunteer initiatives, or academic awards to boost your credibility.)
Cover letters are a great place for an entry-level applicant to expand on their existing work experiences and how they translate into qualifications as an esthetician. They’re also great for experience points that are good, but a little too “clunky” to present well on your resume.
Yep, you can still leverage those work experiences to your advantage! Not every entry-level esthetician is fresh out of school. If you have experience in a hair or nail salon, you’ll naturally find some overlapping skills. But you can still find translatable organizational and interpersonal skills in almost any profession.
No, you don’t need to worry about filling your whole resume page, especially at an entry level. Present your top-quality information as beautifully as possible while keeping things readable and sleek. A little bit of breathing room is fine!
