With today's stylist shortage, recruiting, training and retaining talent is a critical role for salon leadership. In SALON TODAY's recent technology issue, our industry's top innovators talked about how salons and spas are leveraging technology to rebuild their businesses. These five discussed innovation in the recruitment and training space:

“CanvasME templates cater to the future of the industry and provide the ability to humanize your brand with imagery/video to attract the right talent to apply to your opportunity.”—Jen Martinelli, Co-founder, Canvas ME

“Recruiting staff today is harder than ever. The old methods of ‘post and pray’ do not work anymore. Matchable makes it easy for you to know whether a student or stylist is a good fit for your business—and easy for them to know, too. In today’s competitive workplace environment, we need both parties to be certain that it is a good match. Matchable's algorithm helps you find team members who will perform better, be happier at work, and stick around longer!”—Stefanie Fox, founder, Talent Match

“Booksy empowers salons to adapt to the demands of their business—and the market. Changes can be stimulated by growth, a shift in strategy, or something external like a pandemic. A salon may need to add staff members, implement safety rules, offer virtual services, or take their business on the road. With Booksy, they can. Our platform’s agile strategy is designed to help salon owners manage what they’re tasked with today while ensuring their future, no matter what it brings. We act quickly so that our service providers can, too.”—Konrad Howard, CPO, Booksy

“A key to recovery is motivated, focused, and empowered staff. Phorest’s new Staff Performance tool makes it easy for salons in two ways. First, it enables staff to view and compare key performance metrics in real-time, encouraging them to improve their results. Second, it gives managers and staff the power to set unlimited goals for key metrics. Updates and progress reports are available in real-time, and personal reminders let staff know when they reach milestones.”—Evelyn Balf, Head of Product, Phorest Salon Software

“With Online Testing Group software, ongoing education can be provided in a flexible format, allowing testing and scoring to be done from any place, at any time, without worry of cheating. It’s an excellent way to stay on top of something as simple as product knowledge or to run the testing for an entire school system.”—Zane Hagy, Co-Owner, Online Testing Group