Save Money at Your Fitness Business by Rethinking Your Hiring

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With more than 34,000 fitness centers in the U.S. – and countless fitness apps and at-home workouts available – competition for attracting and retaining both employees and members can be tough. When it comes to ensuring your fitness business stands out from the competition and remains profitable, it’s critical to hire quality employees who can support a differentiated customer experience.
To hire top talent, many fitness businesses – and businesses across industries – make the mistake of spending too much money on costly job boards or wasting time reviewing a high volume of applicants who aren’t a fit.
If you’re looking to save money and increase profitability at your fitness business, it’s time to rethink your people strategy. We’ve pulled together a few key ways to get started.

Save Money While Hiring Quality Candidates

How do you currently track the channels you use to source applicants and the associated costs? Your fitness business is likely tapping into several job boards, social media, outside recruiters, your business website, and more. But the most critical channel when it comes to sourcing quality candidates – while saving money – is your fitness center’s career site.

When comparing job board costs to a career site – which has better SEO value and is a great destination to showcase your employment brand in front of candidates – you get a much higher ROI when you invest in your own careers page.
Personal Trainer

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If you don’t have a dedicated careers page on your fitness business website, you’re missing out on star candidates. Career sites are a top source for attracting qualified candidates because job seekers who are qualified and excited to join your team will take the extra time to learn more about your home fitness business, rather than simply clicking “apply” on a job board.

To encourage top talent to apply, your career site should include detailed information about the opportunity joining your team presents, such as a company overview, list of benefits, outlined career paths and employee testimonials.
Other than building and maintaining a strong career site to attract quality candidates, it’s important to have an understanding of which sourcing channels are driving the most quality candidates – and eventual hires – and which channels aren’t driving results. Once you have a grasp into the performance of different applicant sources, you can reduce sourcing costs without sacrificing overall quality of hires.

Make Hiring More Efficient to Add Profitability Back to Your Business

Hireology research found that many businesses wait up to 10 days to initially review an application once it’s submitted. And during this waiting period, you risk losing prospective job applicants to a competitor with a quicker hiring process.

You wouldn’t let a customer lead go unanswered for 10 days – or longer – would you?  You should take the same approach to hiring, or your fitness business will lose gross profitability due to lost productivity the longer you have an open role.

Given the record-low unemployment rate and competitive job market, waiting to review and respond to applicants will cost you top talent. But if you follow a standardized, proven hiring process you can reduce your total time to hire.
A standardized hiring process should include prescreen surveys, which are automatically sent to applicants, helping your team save time instead of reviewing each applicant individually. Once the prescreen surveys are automatically scored, only qualified candidates will move on to the candidate stage of the hiring process, helping you significantly decrease candidate review time.  Other steps that can help your fitness business speed up the hiring process include interview guides, integrated assessments, and automated background and reference checks.

Competition from full-service gyms, specialty fitness centers dedicated to yoga, spin, crossfit and related activities, fitness apps, and at-home videos will only continue to increase in the fitness industry – and this competition can cause your overall profitability to take a hit. With a more strategic, efficient approach to your hiring and people operations, your fitness business can save money by reducing your candidate sourcing costs and add profitability by reducing your time to hire.
Reach out to learn more about how Hireology can help your home fitness business save money and increase profitability through more efficient hiring – schedule a demo today.