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Published 2021-01-30
Every Step For Hiring A Coach
In this blog post, we discuss the entire hiring process from the moment you decide you need a coach to the point where the new coach is working in your facility. Many gym owners are solopreneurs and are not used to the hiring process. Here, we will break down the entire process so that we can take some stress out of the process. We are going to walk you through the whole process of hiring from start to stop. We will cover everything from how to write your job post to making the hire after interviewing multiple coaches.
Now that you have decided to hire a coach, this is how you will be most effective at finding the coach. The first thing you want to do is make a job posting on BarbellJobs, obviously. When you go to BarbellJobs, you will have a few options for making your post. All job posts are 90 days in duration, other options like LinkedIn and ZipRecruiter only let you do 30-day options (for immensely more money). Side note, ZipRecrioter pays BarbellJobs to post jobs on our site, so using a choice like that costs more for your posting to end up on BarbellJobs anyway. When you go to make your post, you can choose between a standard post or a featured post. A featured job stays at the top of the list. Those are the posts with the green outline on the side of them. Featured posts remain on the first page and are the first ones that are seen. A regular nonfeatured job starts below the featured posts. If you are passively looking for a coach, a standard post is fine, and if you are serious about getting applications, you should always choose a featured post.
Next, you need to decide if you want profile access. We have thousands of coaches who are registered on BarbellJobs, who are actively looking for a gym to coach in. Profile access lets you see and contact them directly. The profiles also have a ton of information about the coach that you will not find on a resume such as “Where do you see yourself in 5 years” and ” What coaches online or offline have had the greatest impact for your knowledge.” Questions that will give you as the gym owner an extra insight into the person you may potentially hire.
When you are ready to make your job post, you will need to create your posting, below is a template to help you organize your post. This is written in a way so you can copy and paste and edit.
BEGIN TEMPLATE
BOLD ATTENTION GETTING HEADLINE
This should be just one line stating you are looking for a coach.
INTRODUCTION PARAGRAPH
After your headline, you want a paragraph that says who you are and what the opportunity is. This first paragraph is what will be seen on social media to get coaches’ attention when we start marketing your posts. The stronger this paragraph is, the more likely you will have high engagement from coaches seeing your post and clicking the link to learn more.
JOB DESCRIPTION
Here you will want to use essential bullet points. There is nothing fancy that needs to be in this section, just an outline of what is expected from the coach.
EDUCATION AND EXPERIENCE
Here is another basic section where bullet points are just beautiful. Pro Tip: There are a lot of college-educated coaches coming from a collegiate background on BarbellJobs looking for opportunities in the private sector. Often, these coaches do not yet have their L1, but they will have a bachelor’s degree or higher and experience in a collegiate or professional sports setting. They often do not apply because the requirements will say that a CrossFit L1 or higher is needed, so they pass on by without persuing the opportunity, which means the facility could potentially be missing out on a fantastic coach. If you must have an L1 for your facility, consider stating that having an L1 or experience coaching is a requirement. Remember, you can always send an amazing coach to get their L1, but you may not always be able to get another chance at that same fantastic coach.
COMPENSATION
Here you will want to discuss all the ways that the coach can generate income and the benefits that come with working in your facility. Give examples of base pay, personal training clients, nutrition consults, if they get a commission on supplement sales or if they can create new programs and make a commission on those. Also, if they get any perks such as continuing education or insurance, this is where you want to put it. Being detailed here helps you stand out and get more interest than those posts which do not go into detail here.
ADDITIONAL APPLICATION INSTRUCTIONS
Here you will want to make a statement such as “Send your resume with a cover letter that says what makes you a great fit for this position,” or something similar that helps you identify the qualities you’re looking for in a coach. ALWAYS ask for a cover letter. If you ask for a cover letter and they do not send it or follow the instructions for the cover letter, you already know the coach doesn’t follow directions well and isn’t a good fit for your facility. As a rule, when I perform Talent Acquisition Recruiting for gym owners, if I do not receive a cover letter from the coach, I will NOT consider their resume no matter their background. I suggest NOT putting your email here. There will be a button under your post to click to apply by email. If you have your email in the post and they copy and paste the email instead of using the button, BarbellJobs will have no way to monitor the quality of the applicant applying for your position.
An excellent example of a job posting is one by NCFit. You can find it here.
END TEMPLATE
Now that you have posted your job, you will be receiving applications. Most likely, you will be receiving them in bulk, so you will have a lot of them to go through, especially if your position has competitive pay. You are going to need to decide how many you will want to interview. That is a blog post in itself called “How Many Coaches Should I Interview” that you can read by clicking the link, or here.
THE INTERVIEW
When it is time to hold the interview, this is when things get overwhelming. As you start conducting interviews, your stress level will go through the roof. Not only from the interview process in itself but from the decision process of who to interview, what to ask, who is the best fit, etc. It is an incredibly significant decision that one way or another help to shape the future of your facility.
When you are ready to start interviews, below are the steps you will want to take.
Email the candidate to let them know you have an interest. At this time, ask them for their phone number and Skype address (If they are not local).
Set up a Skype call (if the candidate isn’t local). This will be your first face to face with the coach. During this discussion, you will want to have a formal interview. If you would like to know what questions to ask, read this blog post entitled “Questions To Ask When Hiring A CrossFit Coach.” No matter where you find your coach, if it is BarbellJobs or someone who walked in off the street, there is a powerful possibility that they have been to BarbellJobs to prepare for the interview. I strongly suggest reading the blog post, “Questions To Ask During The Interview.” This post is written for the coach so they can interview you as well, so it would be worth reading this ahead of time to prepare for what they will be asking you.
When you are holding your Skype interview, keep a pad of paper with you so you can take notes during the meeting. You will be conducting multiple interviews with different coaches and will want notes on each one. You do not want to get your information mixed up when interviewing the coaches, or you can make yourself seem unprepared or uninterested. It would also be embarrassing. But again, take good notes, we will be referencing these later.
THE IN-PERSON INTERVIEWS
After the Skype interview, you will need to set up your first of two in-person interviews. The first interview should be a practical demonstration of their skills. I suggest bringing the coach in to hold a seminar based on their specialty. For example, I am a competitive powerlifter for my competitive sport of choice. If I was interviewing to be a coach, I could hold a seminar on accommodating resistance, or how the movements in powerlifting differ from when they are executed in a typical CrossFit facility. Perhaps the coach is a gymnastic specialist, or even a jump rope specialist, what the seminar is about matters less than having the opportunity to see this coach in their part of the fitness world performing how they would if they were coaching at their home gym. It is also helpful to do this because the coach may be a specialist who could create a new revenue growing program for your facility. In addition to you getting to see how they perform, your members and coaches get to see this new coach as well. I suggest that you do NOT tell your members that this is a potential coach, That will allow you to ask about how they enjoyed the seminar and their thoughts on the coach from an unbiased standpoint.
This is very important. The coach is a specialist and a professional. They are traveling to educate your staff and members and should be compensated fairly for their time. You should allow (expect) the coach to sell tickets to the seminar that your members will purchase. They have travel and time from work they need to be compensated for. If you do not want your members to pay for tickets, then you should pay the coach for their time.
If you are interviewing more than one coach, schedule the seminars on weekends that are close together. Another option is to have them come in as a guest coach and coach the classes for a day. Using the guest coach approach, you can cycle through two or three in the same week. Guest coaching is another great option because you can see how they coach your programming.
In the days following the in-person interviews, you will want to call them to give feedback and your thoughts from the seminar or guest coaching. You should not be afraid to provide them with constructive feedback during this call. You will potentially be the boss of this person, knowing how they receive constructive feedback will be valuable feedback for you.
By this point, you should have narrowed your options down to the single coach you want to hire. When you call the coaches, you do not expect to make an offer of employment, let them know that you are ending the interview process but be very thankful for their time. Do not ghost the coach. Ghosting someone after interviewing them is a very disrespectful act, It would not only disrespect the coach but your facility as well. Remember to treat others as you want to be treated, even if it is hard to do.
When you have your phone call with the coach you want to hire, ask them back for face to face non-seminar interview. If this coach isn’t local, let them know that you are going to pay their travel expenses. During this last interview, this is when you will formally offer them the position.
Congratulations, now you have a new coach.
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