Private sector: Hair, beauty and fashion

Female, blond hair, black shirt: Thank you for calling Karine Jackson, this is Sam.

Jill Morris: My name's Jill Morris, I work within the hair, beauty, nails, spa, fashion sector.

People go into hair, they go into beauty cause they like the 'doing'.

They've gone into it because it's a vocation but it is also a business and without those literacy and numeracy skills, which are absolutely key to being successful, they're going to fail.

Female, blond hair, blue top: It's really important to know about angles and lengths, centimetres, inches.

Female, blond hair, blue top: How much would you like me to take off for you today?

Female, long dark hair: A couple of centimetres.

Female, blond hair, blue top: A couple of centimetres, so roughly about that much?

Female, long dark hair: Yeah.

Female, blond hair, blue top: So it all adds up to being quite mathematical without you realising it.

Female, blond hair, blue top: Yeah.

Male, dark hair, beard, glasses: It needs a whole tube of this colour, that's 50 mls of the colour and I need to mix it with the appropriate releaser, which would be 75 mls and the ratio of the mixing of this colour is 1 to 1.5.

It's important I mix exactly 75 mls up just so next time we get the exact same colour again.

Female, blond hair, black shirt: Okay, thank you.

That's all booked for you.

Female, blond hair, black shirt: Okay, the main things I look for when answering the phone is making sure that I get to know what sort of stylist they're looking to see.

What time or date they will be available, either morning or afternoon.

Also, what they're looking to have done.

Jill Morris: It's very much a people business, so you would come to me to have your hair done.

I need to talk to you.

I need to listen to you.

I need to write down what it is that you've told.

Female, blond hair, blue top: You have to keep safe records of clients, of their colours so the client gets a consistent colour every time.

Female, blond hair, black shirt: They'll give the sheet back to me when the client leaves so I will then input it all on to the computer.

Female, blond hair, blue top: Stock is really important and having a good understanding and control of stock.

So we work out the average of how much we sell each month as to how much we would reorder in.

Female, blond hair, black shirt: So we just go around, bit by bit, counting off all the products and tally marking them off so then at the end we would add it all up.

Jill Morris: Those of us in hair, beauty and fashion are looking for quite high levels of literacy and numeracy in our potential employees.

So if there's anybody out there who thinks they might like to get involved in that particular sector, they really do need to make sure they've got the best levels of literacy and numeracy skills that they possibly can.

Female, blond hair, black shirt: Right, we'll see you then.

Thank you.