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When it comes to service-based industries, and specifically the fitness industry, the staff make the business. Therefore, taking the time and effort to find and hire the best team for your yoga studio will do your business well in the long run.
How do you find and hire staff for your yoga studio? To find potential employees, you can ask for recommendations or post a job listing online. When it comes to hiring, ask interesting questions and follow your intuition to find the best candidates.
Hiring isn’t a complicated process but it can be overwhelming. Coveted and high-paying jobs can land hundreds of applications. When you know the kind of candidate you want to hire, it can be easier to weed through all prospects.
How to Find Staff for Your Yoga Studio
Regardless of how you are looking to find new employees, make sure you tell people that you are looking to hire. You never know who knows the perfect candidate. Plus, a reference from a respected friend or colleague can carry a lot of weight when it comes to deciding who to hire.
Job Posting
The simplest way to find candidates for your yoga studio jobs is to post a listing online. There are several job boards to post on, including indeed.com and ziprecruiter.com.
When you post a job online, you should expect to get plenty of spam or unqualified applicants. Include 3-5 questions that require detailed answers. If someone does not take the time to answer each question thoughtfully, you can exclude them from consideration since they clearly are not serious about the job.
Additionally, many people include a secret question or phrase in their job listings. It is usually something silly or unusual, like “write ‘pineapples taste sour’ in the subject line of your application email” or “tell us your least favorite boy band somewhere in your application”. If someone does not include the secret phrase or answer to the question in their application, you will know that they did not take the time to read the entire job posting.
While a job posting will get your position in front of hundreds to thousands of potential applications, it is not always the best way to find quality yoga staff. Most likely, you’ll be more interested in finding local candidates through word-of-mouth.
Facebook Groups
Surprisingly, Facebook groups have become a very useful tool to connect with the right group of people. Whether it is a yoga-focused group or a local community group, you can get your job posting in front of potential candidates.
Most yoga teachers do not relocate for work, so you will be looking for teachers who are already local to your area. This is why a Facebook group can bring in better candidates than a broad website job posting.
Even if the right candidate is not in the group, members will be able to share with any friends or family who might be right for the job.
Current Students
If you want to hire someone you know already, current students are a group to look to. They may be lifelong yoga enthusiasts interested in working a few classes or students looking to start their yoga teaching career.
Yoga teacher certifications take 200 hours or more of education to complete. If you are looking to hire a new teacher but the candidate is not certified yet, you may be able to work with them to help with the cost of their certification. It is up to you if you want to pay for their certification outright or hire them as a teaching assistant to help pay for the certification.
When hiring yoga studio staff and teachers, knowing that will be a good fit for the culture of your studio is arguably more important than their skills. The energy of a studio immensely impacts the experience for students. Since you already know your current students, it is easy for you to judge if they would be a good fit for your team or not.
Word-of-Mouth
Tell everyone you know that you are hiring for your yoga studio. You never know who is in touch with the perfect candidates. Plus, having a friend that you know and respect give a referral to someone can carry a lot of weight when hiring.
Local Businesses
When hiring for administrative positions at your studio, it can be helpful to connect with local businesses. They may be able to recommend previous employees or freelancers in the area. Some tasks, like bookkeeping and studio cleaning, can be outsourced to independent contractors or freelancers in the area.
Before you decide to hire an independent contractor for your studio, make sure you look into local regulations about employees versus contractors. There are stipulations about how their schedules are set and how they are paid.
Positions to Hire
Depending on how hands-on you are with the studio, there could be several positions that you need to hire for at your studio. Obviously, someone needs to be teaching the classes, but usually, studios have front desk personnel, administrative employees, and studio managers.
Yoga Teachers
It is not necessarily required, but certification is highly recommended for yoga teachers. In fact, you may not qualify for liability insurance for the studio if your instructors are not certified. It is a fairly easy process to become a yoga instructor, but it can be time-consuming.
You’ll have to decide if you are willing to hire someone who is not yet certified or has partially completed their training. Even fully-certified instructors will need to be trained at your yoga studio.
Since your teachers will be the ones leading the class and creating the experience for your students, personality can be just as important as education. Make sure you like the way that they speak and carry themselves.
Front Desk/Admin
Depending on the size of your studio and how many classes you offer, you may want to hire a front desk receptionist. This person will not only greet your students but can also handle check-ins, drop-ins, membership dues, merchandise purchases, and more.
In addition to a receptionist, your studio may benefit from a business administrator or assistant. This person helps manage all the behind-the-scenes portions of operating the business. If you prefer to take a backseat and delegate business tasks, this person could be considered your right-hand person.
You may also want to hire a studio manager to run the entire operation. As the owner, the manager would report to you but they would handle the overall operation of the studio. Many smaller studio owners act as the manager themselves.
The number of people you hire and for what positions will depend entirely on what you need. You can even hire someone to cover part of a role or multiple roles.
Business Support
Support positions can be part-time employees, contract employees, or independent contractors. You may even find that you prefer to just hire an outside company to handle some of these tasks. Business support roles include studio cleaners, payroll, bookkeeper, social media manager, tax preparer, and more.
Since you don’t necessarily need to have a full-time employee for these positions, it is helpful to outsource to hire on a need-to-work basis.
How to Hire Teachers for Your Yoga Studio
The quality of the teachers you hire will directly impact the quality of your yoga classes. Therefore, you want to take extra care to find the right individuals to add to your staff.
It is recommended to hire yoga teachers that are certified through Yoga Alliance. Most instructors complete a 200-hour program before they begin teaching. There are also more extensive courses and courses in specialties.
You don’t necessarily need to find a single full-time teacher to work at your studio. Many instructors enjoy teaching just a handful of classes per week. It can take a little more effort to make the schedule, but having multiple teachers allows you to offer a variety for your students.
When interviewing potential yoga teachers, skip the conventional questions like “what are your strengths and weaknesses”. These questions don’t tell you that much about a person. Asking weird or thought-provoking questions can tell you more about a person. For example, “what postures would you recommend for an octopus doing yoga” will show you knowledge of yoga and creativity.
To make sure that they are a good teacher for your student, ask candidates to complete one or more trial classes. This allows you to see how they lead a class and interact with students. Depending on your comfort level, you could even extend this into a probationary period.
Final Thoughts
Put the time and effort into hiring top-quality staff for your yoga studio. By finding excellent teachers through local groups and word-of-mouth, you can ensure that classes will be taught to your standards. Fill out your staff with support personnel, like a business administrator, bookkeeper, and social media manager. The complete team will help your studio continue to operate and grow.
