No matter what business you’re in, finding and hiring the best employees is likely one of the most difficult parts of running it. Finding the right people for the job can feel a little bit like finding a needle in a haystack. And hiring the wrong employees is costly, time-consuming, stressful, and damaging to your company culture. This is particularly true in the fitness industry.
12 Tips To Hire The Best Employees
Fortunately, you can bypass some of those difficulties and streamline your hiring process with these eleven tips:
1. Write A Detailed Job Description
The first step to hiring the best employees is to write an excellent job description. A good job description should provide detailed information about the duties, responsibilities, outcomes, and work environments of the job you’re offering, as well as outlining things like necessary skills, experience, and education.
While writing a good job description might not seem that important, it serves the incredibly important purpose of pre-qualifying employees and making sure that only qualified applicants are applying for your job.
2. Involve Your Team
If the new hire will be overseen (or hired) by other members of your team, get them involved in the hiring process as early as possible. Set up a recruiting meeting with those key employees to involve them in the process, give them access to the recruiting platform (if applicable), and ask about any input they may have for the process.
3. Systematize The Process
What gets measured gets managed, and this is as true for hiring an employee as it is anything else. The more systematic you can make the process, the more efficient it will be. With this in mind, create a checklist for your hiring process.
In addition to allowing you to keep track of your recruiting duties and efforts, a checklist keeps everyone involved in the hiring process on track, and makes sure you don’t miss important to-dos like background checks or issuing of employee handbooks.
4. Consider Hiring From Within
Part of the reason it’s so difficult to find great employees is that you don’t really know an applicant you’re interviewing for the first time. To get around this hurdle, and tip the scales in favor of your hiring process, consider hiring from within.
In addition to allowing you to hire candidates with whom you already have a relationship, this is an excellent way to boost morale within your company and reward your best employees with opportunities for advancement.
5. Review Each Application Carefully
When presented with a stack of applications or resumes, it can be tempting to breeze through them, skimming each page in favor of expedience. After all, you’re busy! Doing that will only make hiring more difficult, though.
Instead, screen all your applicants against the job description (and its requirements) that you created in the first step, and the hiring checklist you developed in the third steps. Only the most qualified applicants should make it through for an interview.
6. Prescreen All Candidates
Once you’ve developed a list of your most qualified candidates, it’s time to prescreen those candidates. While some candidates look good on paper, the pre-screening process can uncover mismatches in expectations, personalities, or something else.
Before you invite a candidate in for an interview, conduct a brief phone call to prescreen the candidate on things like salary expectations, how they’ll fit into your company’s culture, and more.
7. Ace The Interview
The interview is an important moment for both candidates and employers. After all, this is likely the first time you’ll meet your new candidate, and it’s a critical “getting to know you” moment for everyone.
If you’re not already a strong interviewer, now is a good time to improve your interview skills. When the big day rolls around, focus on asking questions that will help you identify the most desirable candidates for your position. You can ask about previous positions they’ve held, for example, or how they’d handle a unique aspect of your company culture.
8. Check Certifications And Education
Especially in the fitness and personal training industry, it is important to verify certifications and education since the candidate will be working directly with clients. Your job description should outline the level of education and/or certification required.
Personal Training Certificates are science-based educational programs uniquely designed to prepare graduates for entry-level personal trainer careers. Certificates expose students to the fundamentals of exercise science, nutrition, and human anatomy and physiology. Through this curriculum, students learn about fitness assessment, develop skills in exercise program design, and gain hands-on experience working with clients in an off-campus internship. At the end of their training, students are prepared to sit for and take national certification examinations. Some of the more popular personal trainer credentials to check for before hiring include ACE, NASM, AFPA.
In addition, education levels can vary greatly in the fitness industry. Undergraduate and advanced degrees can include kinesiology or exercise science, along with national certification from the American College of Sports Medicine. Master’s degrees and board certification from the American Society of Exercise Physiologists for clinical positions.
9. Check References
You prequalified your candidates, held the interview, and found an applicant you think is the perfect fit. Checking references is just a technicality at this point, right?
Wrong!
Checking an applicant’s references is one of the most important steps in the hiring process, and you can’t afford to skip it. If you asked for a list of references, this is the time to call them and inquire about their experience with the applicant. If you intend to background check your employee, make sure you include things like work references and criminal history.
While most reference checks don’t yield anything shocking, information you do uncover could be make-or-break for the hiring process.
10. Extend An Offer Of Employment
You’ve found the perfect candidate. Now it’s time to officially onboard them. Most employers choose to do this via an official written offer of employment. By this point, you’ve probably verbally discussed things like salary and benefits.
The employment offer letter, however, should put those things in writing and give the candidate a deadline by which to reply. This is an important piece of due diligence for both you and your new employee.
11. Provide An Employee Handbook
Make sure you have a employee guide to provide the new hire with an outline of the expectations for the particular position, as well as outline the policies and procedures for your business. An employee handbook is important as it provides standardization of personnel and benefit policies and prevents misunderstandings, complaints and job dissatisfaction from misinterpretation.
12. Build Your Relationship For Employee Retention
Now that you’ve landed the perfect employee, it’s time to think about how to keep them for years to come. Employee retention is a critical consideration for any company. In addition to making good financial sense, keeping employees helps boost your team morale and make your company culture more desirable.
Better Recruitment Starts Here
Hiring an employee is a big milestone for any company. Still, finding the right employee (or employees) to hire can feel like a large hurdle. By following the steps laid out in this post, you can streamline and systematize your hiring process for better employment outcomes and less employee turnover in your company.
If you want more support in the hiring process, look no further than an Alloy Franchise. We provide all manner of start-up support, from hiring and onboarding guidance to marketing support and more. Learn more about available opportunities here.
Article by: Suzanne Robb
– – -> Learn more at – – > Alloy
Be sure to follow us on YouTube Alloy Personal Training
Download: Apple Podcasts | Google Podcasts | Spotify