The Blowout 12 | The one with all the red flags

Summer's over, and somewhere between the last beach day and the first pumpkin latte, a lot of people quietly opened a job board. This issue is about reading listings with a sharper eye, and getting your resume ready before you need it.

Let's get into it.

Red Flags vs. Green Flags in a Job Description

Pay
🚩 "Competitive" or "DOE," full stop. That's not a number, it's a placeholder for a conversation they're hoping you won't start.
✅ The structure is spelled out: hourly rate or commission split, retail percentage, and when/how bonuses kick in. If they've thought about how they pay you, they'll say so without you asking twice.

The vibe
🚩 "High energy" or "fun team" is the whole pitch, no texture behind it. Could mean anything. Often means loud.
✅ They describe the floor honestly: the music, the pace, the personalities. "We blast Bad Bunny on Saturdays and it's chaos in the best way" tells you more than "fun team" ever will.

Duties
🚩 The job ends at "assist the team." Convenient, since "the team" quietly expands to include folding towels and mopping once you're hired.
✅ Laundry, cleanup, and front desk coverage are named up front, not discovered. A salon that's honest about the unglamorous 20% respects the other 80%.

Growth
🚩 No mention of what happens after month one. You're hired into a role, not a trajectory.
✅ There's an actual path: when you move from assisting to behind the chair, how a book gets built, what triggers a pay bump. Silence here usually means nobody's thought about your future, including you.

Scheduling & time off
🚩 "Flexible schedule" with no detail on what that flexibility costs you, like whether you're on call for no-shows or expected to cover every Saturday indefinitely.
✅ They tell you the actual rhythm: which days are non-negotiable, how PT/PRN or vacation requests get handled, whether there's a real day off built in.

Back from summer? Your resume should catch up too.

A lot can happen between June and September. You might have graduated or added a certification or maybe you switched salons. Whatever changed, your resume probably doesn't show it yet.

The SalonJobs Resume Builder is made for beauty professionals. You answer a few simple questions and it puts together a polished resume with your photo and training front and center. It takes about 15 minutes, and once it's done it lives on your profile and gets attached to every application you send here.