Gaining experience for a future career is the primary goal of a number of young Saudi women who are university students. At the beginning of the summer vacation, many of them apply to beauty centers to take training courses in makeup and hair styling, paying a fee and often working in the salons during the summer for free in order to get work experience. For their part, beauty centers are happy to have the trainees as they provide free labor during the summer high season when many weddings take place. “We receive a number of Saudi girls who want to learn how to apply makeup and do hair styling during their summer vacations, just in order to use their free time wisely and learn something new,” said Fatma Yahiya, owner of a beauty center. “We offer five-month professional training courses to ensure that the trainees become qualified to work in this field,” she added Another beauty center owner stressed that talent was a prerequisite for working in the beauty field, especially as far as applying makeup is concerned. Many young Saudi women are interested in working with makeup, but not all of them have the talent to be successful in the field. “Most of the girls who apply to us for training want to work with makeup, but many of them do not have the talent to be good makeup artists. One or two training courses are not enough if you do not have the ability to mix and match colors,” said Amal Younes, owner of the Beauty Hair Style Center. Younes pointed out that those young women who wished to be trained at her beauty center had to pay for the training course and after completion of the course they could work in the center for the summer without salary to gain more experience. Saudi Gazette met a young Saudi woman who is working in a beauty center on her summer vacation from the university. “I joined the center here to learn a new career that can help me in the future,” said Wafa'a Fou'ad, a 22-year-old Saudi university student. “I am planning to continue my study in the university, but I also want to make sure that I gain experience in makeup and hair styling as I would like to do this kind of work after graduation,” Fou'ad added Five of her university colleagues have already applied to beauty centers to take a training course during the summer vacation. “My colleagues submitted their CVs for training courses, which will cost them SR3,000,” she said. In the past year, many public and private sector organizations have launched training programs for women in makeup and hair styling, with the General Organization for Technical Education and Vocational Training being one of the leaders in this field. “There are many GOTEVOT training programs on offer. After completing the training program, the trainees are sent to beauty centers in Jeddah,” said Nora Siddique, the owner of Al-Anamel Al-Thahabiya beauty center. Nora pointed out that there could be a negative aspect to so many young Saudi women working for free in beauty centers in order to gain experience. “After the Ministry of Labor called for the Saudization of beauty centers, many centers began engaging Saudi trainees, in order to show the authorities that they had Saudi employees at their centers,” she said. “Jeddah municipality should increase the number of inspection tours that it makes to beauty centers, especially these days when many beauty centers use a large number of unqualified staff to cope with the rush of customers in the summer season,” added Siddique.
