Questions to ask during the interview

Interviews can be stressful, even when you are not the one getting interviewed. If you have performed 50 interviews or you're about to hold your first one, we have a list of questions to help you have a better chance of getting to know the personality and fit of your potential hire.

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Do you have any restrictions on the hours and days you can coach?

As the owner, you must know if there will be a scheduling problem before the job is offered.

Do you have experience with member management systems? Which ones? Which is your favorite to use, and why?

This will help you to know what kind of training they need. Assuming you are a PushPress gym, and this coach is certified through the PushPress training system, you can save time training them because they are already certified in your preferred system.

Why do you want to be a career coach?

The world has limitless options for someone to choose a vocation from; this will help you understand why they chose to be a career coach.

What specifically about our facility made you want to apply with us?

When applying for a job, it is important to know if the candidate has done their research on what you offer and how well-suited that might be. Asking these questions will show whether or not the coach has taken time to learn what makes your gum different or if they are applying without really learning about your gym.

Where do you see yourself in your career in 5 years?

This question helps to know if they are planning on being with your business for the long term, or temporarily. However, if you are a franchise owner, or you are going to open more facilities, this can help you identify a future leader in another facility.

How much money do you need to make to have a happy life?

You can see the long-term potential of a coach and understand if they are worth what you're paying them. If an employee is expecting much more than their position pays, consider looking elsewhere or risk having unhappy employees soon down the road!

What is your experience with personal training?

Managers can take a look at how well the trainer works in one-on-one sessions and what kind of impact they have on their bottom line. If a coach refuses to do personal training, your facility can miss out on substantial revenue.

What specialty classes could you add to the gym? How would you run them?

This will help you understand their expertise and if they can potentially increase membership and revenue if you run a facility that offers more than one program or training opportunity. If you do not offer more than one program, a coach with different experiences could create a program that would add value for your members.

Describe your process for teaching a new member how to back squat.

This question seems simple but allows you to hear from them about their training philosophy. If your facility doesn’t use free weights, you can substitute any common movement in this question.

As a coach, what is your greatest accomplishment?

Tell them that you're very impressed with their accomplishments and ask if there was anything they would do differently to make it even greater.

What is the one aspect of coaching you know so much about people would want to pay you for a seminar to learn about it from you?

This will help to show you what aspect they find the most interesting, and potentially show you another revenue source for your gym. If they do not have an answer, ask them what aspect they would like to know so much about they could do seminars on.

What would be more fulfilling for you? Are you working with 80-year-old members trying to increase their quality of life or elite athletes who compete on a World Level Competition?

This helps to identify how they could fit into your community based on your population.

If membership prices were removed from our business model, how would you suggest we monetize the gym without losing revenue?

Of course, this will never happen, but you can see how their creative process works in increasing revenue for your facility.

What is your opinion on whether or not new members should be mandated to participate in a Beginner Class?

There is no wrong answer to this, but it helps you see how they would process working with a group of first-time beginners.

How was it done at your last gym, what would you have changed?

You could even up with a great idea here to increase revenue as well as changes you could make to better your process.

If there was one movement you could remove from fitness for the general population, what would it be? Why?

Here we see their experience. They could answer that they would remove the snatch because they feel like there are more straightforward ways to get the same fitness results, they could say muscle-ups because they don’t like the effects it has on the shoulders. There isn’t a wrong answer; it just gives you a more detailed look at their thought process.

What’s the scariest situation you’ve had in a gym? How did you respond? How did the other coaches respond? What would you have done differently knowing what you know now?

It could be as simple as someone hitting the box in a box jump or having to use a defibrillator.

A new member on day one comes to you, she is 59 years old, 60lbs overweight and has had no activity level before joining the gym. She states her first goal is to do a pull-up. How does that conversation go?

As owners, we know how we would answer. Here we have an opportunity to see the maturity and thought process of how this coach will handle these situations, which will come up.

It’s 5 am; you’re not supposed to be coaching. A member calls you and says the gym isn’t open, and they are waiting. What do you do?

This will let you see if they are a person who takes immediate action or tries to find the coach who is supposed to be there.

Name three things about group classes that make you nervous.

This is going to show you their priorities of what they look out for most on the floor during class.

If a member told you he was thinking about leaving for another gym that was closer to his home, how would that conversation go?

Here we see the retention abilities of the potential coach.

If a 20-year-old male comes into the gym and says they are looking for a gym that can make them a CrossFit Games winner in 2 years, how would that conversation go?

This question is about their ability to sell your class and increase your revenue.

What is one of the biggest problems in the fitness industry today? How would you fix it?

No wrong answer, but it shows you where they have concerns and how they would fix them.

As the owner, what would your reaction be if I programmed heavy snatches and handstand push-ups every day for a week, and you had seen the programming the week before?

With this question, we can see how they would approach us, or if they would contact us if they had seen something that didn’t look right. We will know if they are a person who will speak up, tell us we made a mistake, or ask us about our process so they can better understand it and communicate it to our members.

How would you make the people in our community feel more engaged?

Community involvement is one of the most significant aspects of what we do. Here we can see how they can be an asset in helping our community bond.

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