With around 80 locations across the US, Canada and Europe, Equinox has become the benchmark for high quality gym and fitness clubs around the globe. Central to the companies philosophy is creating bespoke experiences with their customers, providing ample face-to-face time with highly trained expert professionals.
Hiring success for this kind of human-centric business is therefore of critical importance. The employees and their knowledge are the very product Equinox is selling and to achieve this they need to find and hire the best people and best experts possible.
Equinox uses a decentralized system which local branch managers conduct their own hiring based on their requirements. This approach utilizes around 20 full-time recruiters supported by over 300 local hiring managers who may often carry out many other activities on a daily basis.
How To Ensure Consistent Excellence?
Although this approach provides the flexibility local managers need to keep their branches staffed, it also comes packaged with some inherent challenges. Most importantly is the concern a highly decentralized approach will suffer from a lack of consistency in the long-run.
The high quality standards customers have come to expect are central to Equinox’s brand and business. Several, or perhaps even a single, poor hire in one branch could potentially cause ongoing brand problems, especially considering they primarily court luxury customers with high demands.
Another issue concerns the tools Equinox needs to fulfil this hiring goal. The core strength and value of the company comes from the knowledge of its trainers and professionals in relation to their chosen speciality. It’s unlikely this professional knowledge will be possessed by full-time recruiters and hiring managers. Therefore, it makes sense for Equinox to allow its trainers, nutritionists and instructors to be involved in the hiring process. For this to be effective, they need to have access to an easy to use platform that economises their time. After all, the last thing an Equinox trainer wants to do is spend hours trying to work with clunky software in a backroom.
Turning Your Experts Into Hiring Managers
To solve this problem, Equinox joined SmartRecruiters in 2013. Here’s why they haven’t looked back:
- SmartRecruiters has collaboration as a keystone of the platform, allowing hiring managers from across the country to conveniently discuss candidates. This was particularly useful for Equinox, since knowledge from other branches could be brought into the hiring process if it was not available locally.
- The platform is also incredibly flexible and mobile, allowing trainers-cum-hiring managers to recruit on the move, saving them vast amounts of time and allowing them to concentrate on other daily responsibilities.
- The use of SmartRecruiters’ customizable scorecards allows for a consistent assessment process to be used across the company. This ensures local managers, while having the freedom to work on their own, also adhere to the high quality standards demanded.
- All of these factors, combined with SmartRecruiters’ support for social media and one-click-applications, results in a great candidate experience which supports the brand Equinox wishes to project.
After teaming up with SmartRecruiters, Equinox quickly saw an increase in applications — to the tune of 45 percent. Additionally, they saw an increase of 9 percent in terms of new hires, while 80 percent of individuals who saw a job posting applied to it.
To find out more about how Equinox found hiring success with SmartRecruiters, check out the full case study, Equinox: Hiring The Best Personal Trainers For Every Fitness Club.
