In the first year after starting TITAN Aesthetic Recruiting, I received many calls and inquiries from prospective aesthetic providers who had paid thousands of dollars to attend training courses and then couldn’t get a job. They perceived themselves as being trained or “certified” and sent out many resumes, but didn’t get responses or interviews, let alone jobs. There were a lot of reasons, but the big ones were – and still are – the following:
- They didn’t know their market or the type of aesthetic business in their local area that might hire a naive injector.
- They had learned a little bit about HOW to inject, but hadn’t learned anatomy, developed a clinical foundation or studied the “WHY” behind injecting.
- They didn’t know the parameters of the job, compensation trends or what THEY needed to do and learn to be attractive to a potential employer.
And it IS hard to get a job as an new aesthetic provider. Historically, there have been a lot of naive injectors that were hired by a practice, trained and mentored by physicians or other providers and finally become valuable to a practice after about a year. Unfortunately, that is the time that many injectors then leave to start their own business or go elsewhere for more money. So a lot of businesses are really gun shy to hire and train new injectors. They will look for experienced injectors because it is much more profitable to be the second or third employer for an injector and not the first.
So if you want to be an aesthetic provider and don’t have experience, how do you convince someone to hire you?
First, you have to invest in yourself and really learn the industry, your local market and the job. To help prospective aesthetic providers do this, I wrote an Ebook called “Preparing to Be An Aesthetic Injector“. This eBook teaches you the history of the industry, the parameters of the job, the manufacturers you might work with and basically how to create your own residency program to prepare you for a career in aesthetic medicine. If you can show prospective employers that you have created a plan to teach yourself about the field of aesthetics and don’t expect them to teach you everything, you will have a much better chance of getting your foot in the door.
The next thing you need to develop is your understanding of anatomy. You are going to stick needles in people’s face and inject one of the most potent toxins in the world. You could hit vessels, nerves, or the wrong part of the face and cause terrible adverse events or even permanent damage if you do not have a healthy respect and knowledge of facial anatomy. So learning facial anatomy should be the first clinical knowledge you invest in for your new career and something you continually research and learn as years pass. There are online and live courses to help you gain this key foundational knowledge from luminaries in the field such as Drs. Steven Liew, Jonathan Sykes, Chris Surek and Sebastian Cotofana.
And finally, you really have to know if you are suited to this job. Aesthetic providers must not only be excellent clinicians, but you also will have to sell, work closely with other aesthetic team members, be a social media expert and marketer, enjoy educating and be self-motivated to continually grow your practice. This is not the career for the burnt out hospital provider who thinks that aesthetics is just standing in a room injecting all day or the naive young provider who just wants to be an Instagram star. You won’t work 9-5, 4 days a week and you won’t make $150,000 your first (or second or third) year. Nothing is covered by insurance or reimbursed in aesthetic medicine, so if you are not bringing revenue into your practice, there is no money available to pay you.
The TITAN Injector Preparation Series
Because this is a LOT to learn without some sort of guidance, TITAN created a process to help you discover and research all of this information so you can begin transitioning into an aesthetic career. The Injector Preparation Series has two courses – “Preparing to be an Aesthetic Injector” and “Teaching Your Brain to Inject”. Both were created as the first and second steps to take in preparing for an aesthetic provider career and to learn this information BEFORE you take a hands on injecting course or class.
Course #1 – This course includes the “Preparing to be an Aesthetic Provider” Ebook, the Preparation Checklist, the Essentials section of the Complete Face online cadaver app and 1 hour of consulting time with Mary Beth Hagen to conduct the TITAN Aesthetic Aptitude Screening™. Click HERE to learn more or to purchase.
Course #2 – This course, “Teaching your Brain to Inject”, is an online webinar/home study course taught by Aesthetic Nurse Practitioner and trainer, Kevin Harrington. We’ll cover more about this course in the next blog article, but if you can’t wait, click HERE for more information
Other Tips
There is a lot you can do on your own to invest in your knowledge, so keep a list of everything that you do or study as you are preparing yourself for an aesthetic career. If a physician or employer looks at your resume or your Linked In profile and only sees your academic training and non-aesthetic work experience, many potential employers will “write you off” without ever talking to you. Conversely, some potential injectors did more than 100 webinars during the COVID quarantine time. That type of self-directed learning can help you stand out from even experienced injectors that don’t continually update their skills and knowledge.
To all prospective injectors, I wish I could say you could just send out a resume and get a job, but in Aesthetics, that just rarely happens. An Internal Medicine physician doesn’t just attend a weekend course and then send resumes to Cardiology offices if they want to be a cardiologist. The same is true for you in the specialty of Aesthetics. But if you show that you are preparing yourself, they will be more open to taking a chance on you.
So get started today!
Follow TITAN on IG (@titan_aesthetic_recruiting) or Facebook (TITAN Aesthetic Recruiting page) and/or think about joining the TITAN Aesthetic Membership program where you will get a LOT of networking and clinical support and info).