They're all good hair days

At 25 years of age, Emily Hanway is living proof that, for the right person, a career in hairdressing can be exciting and rewarding. Since she left Coolmine Community School, Co Dublin at 17 - after Transition Year but before the Leaving Cert - Emily has climbed from apprentice to assistant manager of Peter Mark's salon in Dublin's O'Connell Street. In the next few months, she hopes to be appointed manager - probably in a smaller Peter Mark's salon in the suburbs. Emily is now doing well enough to have just bought herself a brand new car. "It's a Renault Clio and I love it," she says proudly.

When Emily started her apprenticeship eight years ago, she was paid £35 per week - the rate has since increased. Nowadays, she notes, you can train and become a hairdresser with Peter Mark in two-and-a-half years. When she started out the apprenticeship took four years. Emily, though, completed it in three years.

As a trainee, she worked five days a week, one late night and spent two nights on training programmes. She was shown how to look after customers, gowning-up and shampooing. She learned to blow dry, perm, colour and cut. Before she came out of her apprenticeship she became a junior stylist.

"By this time I was earning around £170 a week including commission, with tips on top," she recalls. Once she became a stylist, her commission increased and she started management training. She now spends one day a month at the Peter Marks Academy

As a senior stylist, Emily reckons she has between two and three hundred regular clients. "As a stylist, you have to work hard and build up a good client base," she says.

"If you love hairdressing the poor pay at the beginning won't bother you. But you do have to love it. You work very hard. The hours can be long, but you're looked after. In my shop we make sure people sit down and get something to eat at lunchtime."

As a child she was always cutting her dolls' hair, she says. "When I got older I worked on Saturdays in a salon near my home in Dunboyne, Co Meath. I knew I had a flair and that it was really what I wanted to do. I love meeting people and seeing good results. You can change someone's life - you can cheer up someone if she's down."

Hairdressing can be a glamorous job. In Peter Mark, she says, you can join the creative team, which works on major fashion shows and, importantly, on the annual Late, Late Show Fashion Awards.

"The days when you walk into a salon and are told to sweep the floors are over, there's plenty of opportunity," she says. Trainees are now given a three-day induction course and salons operate a `buddy' system - newcomers are teamed up with regular staff.

As a stylist, you may also get the chance to rub shoulders with celebs. "I do Brendan O'Carroll's hair," says Emily. "Last summer I worked with him on a film - The Mammie. It was brilliant."

During her apprenticeship, Emily had learned to apply semi-permanent and permanent tints, highlights and Easy Mesh. Later, she followed this up with a four-week, Colour Keys 1,2 and 3 programme. This qualified her to become a colour technician. So, what does Emily enjoy most? "Colour is my favourite," she says, without hesitation. "I love the feeling of changing a boring brown into a blond bombshell."

To be a good hairdresser, Emily advises that you have to be "chatty, outgoing, bubbly and have a sense of humour. As a trainee, I was always taught to smile and be chatty. But you have to know when a customer wants to talk and when she doesn't.

"If people feel comfortable while getting their hair done, they'll come back. A customer could come in after a row with her boyfriend. You have to make her feel a new person.

"Being a hair stylist is like being on the stage. You have to have be wearing your best clothes, your make-up and a smile."

But can styling heads of hair all day become boring? Not at all, Emily says. "There's always something going on. Next Tuesday, for example, I'm running a course for trainees. No two days are alike. The customers are all so different. "Yes, you're on your feet all day, but there's great variety and lots of opportunity to succeed. You can make a good living, but in the end, your earnings depend upon yourself."