Two Beauty Therapy students at Wiltshire College & University Centre have secured their first full-time industry roles even before completing their course – while another is celebrating winning a place at university.
Brodie Willcox has been offered a permanent position at JLA Beauty – luxury beauty salons with locations in Gillingham and Shaftesbury in Dorset – on the back of a successful work placement, while Georgia Dunford is set to start at Shergold Spa in Romsey, Hampshire. Both will take up their roles once they complete their studies at WCUC this summer.
Meanwhile, Donna Welch-Curtis has been offered a place to study Adult Nursing at the University of Winchester and hopes to pursue a career as an aesthetic nurse.
All three currently study the Level 3 Beauty Therapy course at WCUC’s Salisbury campus and are in the final few weeks of their programme.
Brodie, aged 17, said: “For the Level 2 course last year I had to do 30 hours of work placement, so that is how I got started at JLA Beauty. They then offered me a Saturday job and it has gone on from there and I am doing more and more hours in the salon. I’m really pleased to have been offered a full-time job once my course ends and I can’t wait to get started.
“This was a great way of getting that first experience of being in the workplace and working with clients, and it made me sure that this is the career I want.”
Georgia, 19, added: “I did A-Levels at school but I wasn’t really sure if they were right for me. When I finished my A-Levels, I started looking for courses and this one really appealed to me, so I applied and it’s been the best decision I could have made. I did my first work placement and now it has led onto a full-time job.
“The staff at WCUC have been amazing and are so supportive. They all have experience of working in salons themselves so they know what is required and can really help us to work on certain things to improve.”
For Donna, 36, her experience at WCUC has helped her to pursue her dream of working as a nurse having chosen to return to education at a later point in life.
Donna explained: “I worked in the care industry for about 15 years before I started this course, so doing beauty therapy is totally different. I always wanted to be a nurse but having children meant pursuing that was a bit of a challenge.
“I am now hoping to be an aesthetic nurse, working on cosmetic procedures and things like that. I’ve been offered a place at Winchester University to study adult nursing and I wouldn’t have been able to do that without this course. I want to keep up the beauty side of things too, so I have set up a little treatment table at home and I am building up my client base.
“It was definitely a bit daunting coming back to education again because I knew I would be a bit older than everyone else but all the group are so lovely. I’ve never felt out of place and we all help each other as much as we can.”
Beauty Therapy courses are offered at WCUC’s Chippenham, Salisbury and Trowbridge campuses and run at the Aspire Academy of Hair and Beauty – a professional training salon. Find out more here: www.wiltshire.ac.uk/our-departments/hair-and-beauty.
