Want Your Business to Grow? Become a Human Resource Pro!

Ask the owner of a home cleaning business what criteria they use to select workers and you’re as likely as not to get a blank stare from the respondent. Aside from favoring candidates who have prior house cleaning experience, the decisions are often made based on “gut” feeling or some very subjective criteria (like, she made me laugh . . . or she says she’ll work really hard). It would not be an exaggeration to say that when an owner or manager is in a pinch to fill out a team, any candidate who walks through the door and looks like they could fog up a mirror may be hired on the spot.

Hiring mistakes are expensive.

Adding an incompetent person to the payroll may seem like a better choice then not hiring anyone when you need to fill out your staff roster to meet a pressing cleaning schedule. Owners will sometimes say, “Well, I didn’t want to disappoint my clients or lose out on the income which would be generated from those clients.” Really? This attitude may be swapping a few hundred dollars in immediate revenue for $10,000 or more in longer-term profits.

Keeping in mind that the average client today represents about $3,000/year in business, what happens if a person with the wrong profile is sent out into 25 homes for a week and (a) does not work well with her teammates and (b) does not perform well on the job for those 25 clients?

If one of those clients fires your company, this represents the loss of $3,000 in annual revenues. Since many clients will patronize your service for years, this could add up to $15,000 of lost revenues over five years. If three of those clients fire you, you’re talking mucho grandes dólares!

The other consideration is what can happen by putting a potentially disruptive employee on a team. A well-trained team that works in harmony is like a well-oiled machine. The team members have to work in harmony to make the machine work. Throw someone into the mix who turns out to be the wrong fit for the job and it can be like throwing a monkey wrench into the gears of that machine. Even if your business model uses individual cleaners rather than teams, hiring the wrong person is a mistake every owner needs to avoid; not everyone is suited to this type of work (and I might go so far as to say most people are not a good long-term fit).

Use objective hiring techniques to make better hiring decisions

In our House Cleaning Biz 101 course, we spend a great deal of time and effort teaching a totally objective 5-step hiring process designed to weed out poor job candidates. These steps include:

1. The telephone interview and evaluation 
2. The employment application 
3. The interview process
4. Employment history and personal references
5. Criminal and driving background checks

While the purpose of each step is to discover potentially good candidates, it is equally important to eliminate poor candidates as you proceed through the five steps. In other words, you don’t even get to Step 2 unless the person’s responses during the telephone interview have a passing grade. Each of the 5 steps has a matching, objective grading system to take the guesswork out of your hiring decisions. This is exactly how professional human resource managers earn their keep. Like Johnny Cochran said during the O.J. Simpson trial, “If it doesn’t fit, you must acquit.”

For example, here are the qualifying steps to use during the telephone interview when an employment candidate responds to your help wanted ad:

1. You OPEN the conversation by your greeting, introduced yourself, ask the caller's name, and ask how they heard about the position. You ask if they have a few minutes now to discuss the job or when would be a good time to talk.

2. FACT FINDING about the candidate is achieved through specific, closed-end questions. At this time you are looking for "blow-out" answers that tell you to end the call as soon as possible. You are actively trying to screen out, at this point, those who simply would not be successful.

3. EXPLAINING your business and the position available. During this section you want to accurately "tell" about the job. You want the candidate to honestly decide if they would be interested in this type of work. You are actively trying to get the caller to screen themselves out of the job

4. BACKGROUND of the candidate is gathered through three general "open-ended" questions. These questions should help you decide if you want to make an offer to schedule an interview and fill out an application.

5. INVITATION to fill out an application. As part of this offer, you now begin to "sell" the caller on the job, the fit, and your interest in them.

These are the steps we follow during Step 1 of the 5-Step selection process. If the candidate’s responses don’t cumulatively add up to a predetermined numerical rating score, you never proceed to Step 2 with them. The same procedure holds true throughout all 5 steps.

 Asking the right questions in the right way can help you make an objective hiring decision.

It’s one thing to ask the right questions; it’s another thing to get the candidate’s real answer. For example, if you ask a candidate if they get along working in a team environment and they think the answer you’re looking for is “yes” – that’s the answer you’re going to get. On the other hand, a question you should ask to arrive at their real answer might be, "Do you prefer to work alone, or do you like working with others in a team effort?"

The same applies when asking employment history questions. Asking "What are some of the things you like about your present (or last) job? What are some of the things you don't like?“ in a friendly, conversational tone can reveal exactly the kind of information you’re looking for. Likewise, "What's the best job you ever had? Why did you leave?"

Rely on a quantifiable recruiting system for quantifiable results

I invested $25,000 back in 1995 with Dr. David L. Stum PhD, a human resource consultant to Fortune 500 companies, to help us develop our 5-step selection process that is custom designed for the residential cleaning industry. Of course, if you own our House Cleaning Biz 101 program you spent substantially less than that figure to get the exact same know-how. Of course, having the knowledge at one’s fingertips isn’t worth $25 (or 25cents for that matter) if it is not put into practice.

Whether you use our selection process during your recruiting efforts or some other formal, quantifiable method, you definitely need to adopt a method which makes the process one based on a series of objective criteria rather than relying on gut feeling. Top human resource managers earn substantial six-figure incomes. Using the same quantifiable methods they do can earn you the same kind of money from your business.