The other day, I posted this question:
After 140 responses, most people were complaining about the same thing: finding good cleaners.
If that’s you, you’ll love this newsletter. At my cleaning company, we’ve received +1,300 job applicants, set up 318 interviews, and onboarded 51 cleaners over the last 3 year running our cleaning business.
I’m going to break down exactly how we do it and how you can turn your cleaning business into a recruiting machine.
First, the job post
We use SameDayTurn.com and Indeed to post our cleaning jobs. And here’s a little hint: make the title of your job attractive! If you make your job sound terrible, no one will apply. Here’s the job title we posted on a job that got over 140 applicants
“Vacation Rental Cleaners (Contractor - choose your own hours)”
Ask yourself honestly: would you apply to your own job post?
Second, The Process
When an applicant applies, and they match our criteria, we send them a note to schedule an interview. Once they do, our system creates their profile in Notion where we track their progress through the hiring process
Cleaner pipeline
We move applicants along through the process from Interview Scheduled, References Requested, Test Clean Needed, Probationary Cleans, Needs Documents, and finally, Fully Onboarded.
By keeping track of each applicant through the pipeline, we ensure each cleaner applicant is being treated just like a sales lead. In fact, we treat our cleaner applicants just like customers.
Third, The Onboarding Call
Assuming everything is checking out with the interview, references, etc. we move our cleaners to an Onboarding Call. For us, this takes place every other week with each contracted cleaner. We have a 30-minute zoom call where myself, or our operations manager, walks each applicant through the expectations of working with our company.
We go over things like:
Core values
Satisfaction guarantee
Supplies & transportation
Etc
Contractors leave that meeting understanding our high expectations and will usually remove themselves from the process if they’re not a good match.
Fourth, The Test Clean
Once the cleaner has jumped through the hoops of applying, interviewing, sending references, and showing up to the Onboarding Call we want to see what they’re really made of. We put each cleaner through a Test Clean to see how they perform.
These test cleans are usually done at the home of a friend or vacant Airbnb. If you have friends who wouldn’t mind having their homes cleaned in exchange for feedback on your applicant, using a friend’s house is the perfect place for a test clean.
Treat this as if it were a real job and take note if:
The cleaner shows up on time
Is professional
Does a good job (i.e., completes the full checklist)
Does not try to poach the client
One reason we have our test cleans at the home of a friend is so we can test to see if the cleaner is honest of if they are trying to build their own book of business. Have your friend ask “How can I book again?” If the cleaner points them to you, you’re in the clear.
At this point, you can be 95% sure whether or not this cleaner is going to be a good fit for your company. Most of the time, cleaners who aren’t serious about their work won’t make it this far and you’re only left with the ones who are legit.
Turn this process into a system and your company will become a recruiting machine.
If you learned something from this, reply and let me know what it was! And if you have other questions about how this works in our business, let me know!
P.S. - looking to hire more cleaners? Post a job for free here
Until next time!
Logan
