Applied online. If you are applying to more than one job, you have to fill out an entirely new form for each job which is very time consuming. I had one, very informal, in-person, interview that took about 10-15 minutes then was asked to come back again for an aerobic demonstration with the same person that gave the interview. It would be nice for the 2 interviews to be combined because each one only took a few minutes and seemed like a waste of time.
I was offered a job to teach 2 classes per week for a total of approx 2 hours of work per week and then told that I needed to go through a few YMCA training classes. Had I known how many unpaid hours of training they were going to have me do before I started all of the training, I would not have taken the job. I am currently personal trainer certified, have a license in a medical field and have Healthcare provider AED and CPR and 10+ years experience teaching aerobics, but the Y made me repeat them all in addition to numerous other courses. I had to take a First Aid and CPR, a "Healthy Living" class, an aerobics principles course that that covers very basic principles of teaching aerobics, a week long YMCA administrative course (2-4 hours for 4 days) and about 10-15 hours of on-line first aid courses to take on my own time. These training courses took place either on the weekend, in the evening (after my full time job) and on 2 weekdays that I had to take off from my full time job to complete without compensation. In all, the training took me 30+ hours and I was paid for about 5 hours. On the plus side, everyone at the Y is very friendly and I will enjoy working there. They just need to fine tune their hiring and training process to be more efficient and pay new employees for the time they spend on the 30+ hours of required training.