Treat nails by shaping, decorating, or augmenting
Little of this can be handed to software today.
This happens in the physical world, so software agents do not touch it. Automation here means robotics and machinery, which is a different market from the one mapped on this site, on a much slower clock.
| How automatable | Barely automatable |
|---|---|
| Kind of work | Physical, manual and inspection work |
| Jobs that do it | 3 occupations |
| Tool categories that apply | None |
| O*NET activity | Handling and Moving Objects (4.A.3.a.2) |
What this looks like on the job
Not our paraphrase. These are real task statements recorded against this activity, spread across the 3 occupations that perform it.
- Provide skin care and nail treatments.
- Clean, shape, and polish fingernails and toenails, using files and nail polish.
- Prepare nail cuticles with water and oil, using cuticle knives to push back cuticles and scissors or nippers to trim cuticles.
- Prepare customers' nails in soapy water, using swabs, files, and orange sticks.
- Use rotary abrasive wheels to shape and smooth nails or artificial extensions.
- Treat nails to repair or improve strength and resilience by wrapping.
- Extend nails using powder, solvent, and paper forms attached to tips of customers' fingers to support and shape artificial nails.
- Remove previously applied nail polish, using liquid remover and swabs.
- Shape and smooth ends of nails, using scissors, files, or emery boards.
- Apply undercoat and clear or colored polish onto nails with brush.
- Roughen surfaces of fingernails, using abrasive wheel.
- Polish nails, using powdered polish and buffer.
- Whiten underside of nails with white paste or pencils.
- Decorate clients' nails by piercing or attaching ornaments or designs.
What we would actually use
Nothing in our landscape addresses this work. That is the honest answer rather than a padded list: this activity needs a person present, or a machine rather than a software agent.
Nothing on this site applies. Automation here is robotics and machinery, a different market on a much slower clock, and no software subscription moves it.
Chosen for the cheapest thing that does the job, not the best funded. Nothing on this site is sponsored, and the full landscape is there when you want to disagree with us.
How people actually do it
No workflow names this activity yet, but these automate the same kind of work, with the prompts to paste and what to keep for yourself.
Who does this work
3 occupations in the O*NET database perform this activity. Each one has a full breakdown of its other tasks.
Work that goes with it
O*NET groups these under “Apply hygienic or cosmetic agents to skin or hair”. In practice they tend to be done by the same person, in the same sitting.
Method. The activity, its taxonomy placement and the occupations that perform it come straight from the public-domain O*NET 30.3 database. The automatability band is ours: we map each of O*NET’s 41 generalized work activities to how much of its output current software can produce, assuming a person still reviews and owns the result. It is a coarse three-way judgment on purpose. A precise-looking percentage here would be invented.