A job interview tells you how someone presents themselves. A working interview tells you how they do the job. For a fitness VA role - where the daily work involves live client communication, CRM accuracy, and real-time judgment calls - the gap between those two things is enormous.
Two hours of paid real work reveals more than five rounds of interviews. This template gives you the structure, the tasks, and the scoring rubric.
For context on what the overall hiring process looks like before you run the working interview, see how to hire a Fitness VA.
Why a paid working interview
Asking candidates to work for free creates legal exposure in some jurisdictions and filters out strong candidates who have other options. Pay at the rate you posted. Budget $20 to $40 for the session. That is not a real cost - it is cheap information.
The working interview also sets a professional tone. Candidates who see you run a structured, paid trial understand they are interviewing with an operator, not an owner who will manage by instinct.
Run the working interview with your top two or three finalists only. Screen by resume and the Loom video first. Do not put every applicant through this.
Setup before the session
Do these before the candidate joins.
Create a sandbox environment. If you use MindBody, Trainerize, GoHighLevel, or TrueCoach, create a test account or a demo environment. Do not give candidates access to live client data.
Prepare two to three fake client records. Name them something obviously fictional (Test Client A, Demo Member B). Add realistic data: membership type, check-in history, one outstanding payment issue.
Write three tasks in a shared Google Doc. Send it to the candidate five minutes before the session starts, not in advance. You want to see how they handle real-time assignment, not prepared answers.
Block two hours on your calendar. You will spend 15 minutes at the start, let them work independently for 90 minutes, then spend 15 minutes on debrief.
The session structure
Opening (15 minutes)
- Join a video call. Confirm they can access the sandbox tools.
- Walk through the shared Google Doc briefly. Answer logistics questions (where to find what, how to submit outputs) but do not explain the tasks in detail. You want to see how they handle ambiguous instructions - because ambiguity is a constant in real VA work.
- Start the clock.
Independent work block (90 minutes)
The candidate works alone. You are not on the call. You are available via Slack or chat if they have questions - pay attention to what they ask and how they ask it.
Task 1: CRM entry and lead triage (30 minutes)
Give them a raw email from a fictional prospect inquiring about personal training. Ask them to:
- Log the lead in the CRM (GoHighLevel, HubSpot, or whatever you use)
- Draft a response email using the attached script template
- Set a follow-up task for two days later
What you are watching: did they follow the script without improvising? Did they tag the lead correctly? Is the response email free of errors and on brand?
Task 2: Scheduling and confirmation (20 minutes)
Give them a fictional scenario: a new client wants to book a discovery call. You use Calendly or OnceHub. Ask them to:
- Find an available slot in the sandbox calendar during the next five business days
- Send the booking confirmation using the template provided
- Add the appointment to a shared tracking sheet
What you are watching: speed, accuracy, whether they chose an appropriate time slot, and whether the confirmation email followed the template exactly.
Task 3: Problem scenario - written judgment (30 minutes)
Present a written scenario with no clear answer. Example:
"A client emails saying their payment failed this month and they want to cancel because they are going through a hard time financially. They have been a member for 18 months. What do you do?"
Ask them to write a response: both the internal note they would leave in the CRM and the actual email reply they would send to the client.
What you are watching: do they handle this unilaterally or do they flag it to you? The right answer is to send an empathetic holding reply to the client and escalate to you with context before making any decision. A candidate who drafts a cancellation email and sends it without checking has just shown you they will make consequential calls without asking.
Task 4: Report pull (10 minutes)
Ask them to pull a specific metric from the sandbox tool - active memberships, check-ins this week, outstanding balances - and paste it into a pre-formatted summary template.
What you are watching: accuracy and whether they can navigate the platform without a tutorial.
Debrief (15 minutes)
Rejoin the video call. Do not start with feedback. Ask three questions first:
- "Walk me through the problem scenario - what was your thinking?"
- "Was there anything in any of the tasks where you were not sure what to do? How did you handle it?"
- "If you were going to do this work every day, what would you want clarified before you started?"
These questions surface how they communicate under uncertainty and how they think about systems. The answers matter as much as the task outputs.
Scoring rubric
Score each task on three dimensions: accuracy (did they get it right?), speed (did they finish in time?), and judgment (did they make appropriate escalation decisions?).
Green flags:
- Followed every template exactly, even when it felt like over-engineering
- Asked one or two good clarifying questions during independent work, not ten questions
- Escalated the payment problem scenario instead of resolving it unilaterally
- CRM entry was complete and tagged correctly on first pass
- Report numbers matched the sandbox data exactly
Yellow flags (investigate but do not disqualify):
- Took slightly longer than the time window on one task
- Asked about something covered in the brief - may signal they read too fast under pressure
- Minor formatting deviation in the confirmation email
Red flags (disqualify):
- Resolved the payment problem scenario without flagging it to you
- CRM entry was incomplete or incorrectly tagged
- Confirmation email had significant errors or did not match the template
- No questions at all during 90 minutes of independent work on first exposure to your tools (signals overconfidence or disengagement)
- Took significantly longer than 90 minutes without communicating
What to do after the interview
Score before you debrief your own impressions. Write down the rubric scores first. Then read the outputs again. It is easy to let a likable candidate's performance in the video debrief override what the actual work showed.
If two finalists are close, assign a second small paid task - one hour, different scenario, paid at the same rate. The gap usually becomes obvious on the second round.
Once you have your candidate, move to a structured 14-day onboarding. See the Fitness VA onboarding checklist for the day-by-day plan. Before this point, the interview questions guide covers the conversational vetting; after the offer, the contract guide covers the legal terms.
Frequently asked questions
What if the candidate does not have access to my specific platform?
That is fine. You are testing their ability to navigate an unfamiliar tool and follow instructions - not whether they have MindBody memorized. A candidate who has never touched GoHighLevel but completes the task accurately using only the sandbox and the brief is showing you a high-signal skill.
How many candidates should I run through the working interview?
Two to three finalists maximum. If you have done a good job filtering by resume and Loom video, you should not need more than three sessions to find your hire.
Should I give candidates the task list in advance?
No. Part of what you are testing is how they handle real-time assignment with limited context. That is exactly what the job is. If you pre-brief every task, you are not testing the skill - you are testing preparation.
What if they finish all four tasks early?
Good sign. Ask them to review their own CRM entry and email draft and identify anything they would change with more time. How someone self-edits tells you a lot.
Can I use this same structure for a re-hire?
Yes, with one modification. For someone you have worked with before, make the problem scenario harder and the CRM task more complex. You are not testing whether they can do entry-level work - you are confirming they retained what they learned and can handle more.