Any business owner will tell you that hiring people is one of the job’s most stressful responsibilities. It’s a given that every studio owner wants to make sure that instructors working at his/her business knows what they’re doing and has the proper training and experience. But we also want to make sure instructors will reflect the personality, values, ethics, and quality of work that makes our studio special. Reputation is a studio’s most valuable asset, and, unfortunately, all the hard work owners have done to build a good one can be instantly unraveled by one client having one bad experience.
All this is to say that bringing new instructors into our studio is something that studio owners take extremely seriously. We want our instructors to stay with us for their entire careers, not for a few months. We want a drama-free workplace. And we want our clients to rave about each and every one of our instructors. We want people with different skills and different backgrounds so that everyone can learn from those differences. This is what gives a studio that hard to pin down feeling of community and spirit. This doesn’t just make the studio a great place to be. It is a vital and powerful tool in attracting and keeping clients.
Yes — we want to see your resume. We want references. We want to know where you’ve trained and who your instructors were. And we’ll get to all of that in an upcoming post. But in my opinion the best thing you can do is to visit the studio in person. Let them know you’re an instructor looking for work and that you’d like to apply. Bring a resume. But visiting as a client to take sessions or classes is good both for you and for the studio owner: You can get an inside look at how the studio operates. You can see what the vibe is, see how busy it is, get a feel for what the other instructors are like, what the owner is like, etc. — and all of this can inform your decision on whether it is the right environment and opportunity for you.
Paying for a few classes is not going to get you the job. (And if you’re a new instructor out looking for work, you probably don’t have much extra cash to throw around anyway.) But what it will do is give the studio owner a face and a personality to go with the resume. And as important as experience and training are, getting a feeling for how someone interacts with people is just as important. We want to have the whole package- an instructor who has amazing Pilates skills, but equally amazing people skills. Giving the studio a chance to see your personality is a great introduction.
So show your face and make some friends.
Look for the next posts in this category where we’ll talk about résumés, offering a free session, and some other tips that may give you the edge over your competition.
~ Angelo
Have any questions about the business of Pilates? Want a studio owner’s point of view on something? Let us know in the Forum!
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