Creating Careers By Don De Sanctis

Without a doubt the COVID-19 pandemic has really shaken the hair and beauty industry. As a business owner I was faced with many complications when this pandemic arose such as unwell and quarantining staff and loss of customers due to the fear of the virus.

This pandemic brought a lot of disappointment to many business owners across all industries. All this disappointment led me to start thinking outside the box- how can I bring something into the industry to lighten things up? With this thought process progressing and, in conjunction with Barbery the Craft of a Barber, we came up with an extraordinary idea- lets create free careers.

Many people lost their jobs and had to upskill and find other career options to make ends meet. We wanted to help this group of people and offer them a pathway into a barbering career for not even a cent.

We approached the State Government and were granted funding to allow us to deliver a ‘Pre-Apprenticeship’ 6-week program, as well as mentoring and all the tools a barber needs. Yep you read that correctly- they get absolutely everything for free!

We were given this funding on 1 condition; these upcoming barbers need to be guaranteed an employer after they complete the course. So not only were we educating people new skills that could take them globally, but we were also securing them a job with employers from all over South Australia.

This program is offered to anyone over the age of 16, not currently enrolled in school and in both metro and rural areas. Our metro class runs from Barbery the craft of a Barber’s school, located 7km from Adelaide CBD. Our rural class will run from Moonta Bay, however, is offered to anyone in rural South Australia!

When creating this program, we decided to extract 7 units from the Certificate III in Barbering course and intertwined these units into our program. We did this to ensure the success of the students in this program once they are in a salon. They will be more proficient because they will be up to speed with cutting standards. This also makes them more appealing to future employers as they are viable to the business owner with these skills learnt in just 6 weeks.

We were given a limit of 25 students to take on in total.

25 careers created.

25 new opportunities.

25 new faces bought into the industry.

I couldn’t be more excited for this program to begin; I will be mentoring the students alongside Barbery’s highly skilled lecturers and staff.

The program begins on the 28th of February 2022 and dependent on its success, we plan on offering this program multiple times throughout the year to keep the industry growing and help get the unemployed – employed with a newly acquired skills.