How to Find and Fix the Problems in Your Hiring Process

Are you having problems hiring and retaining employees for your maid service? 

With so many steps in a hiring process, it can seem impossible to pinpoint the exact causes. Trying to fix the problems through guesses and trial and error can be a waste of time and money. That’s why it’s important to be strategic. 

Hiring expert Krystal Bella helps her clients avoid the biggest hiring mistakes by asking critical questions about their problems.

Read on to learn Krystal’s methods so you can improve your hiring process and attract, onboard, and retain the best employees for your cleaning service. 

Step 1: Clarify Your Current Hiring Process

To begin, write down every step of your hiring process – from job posting to onboarding and training. Be specific. Include details such as:

• Where do you post the job?
• How can people apply? Online, on paper, or both?
• How do you invite them to an interview
• Where do you host interviews? 
• How do you make a job offer?
• How do you onboard new employees?

Step 2: Identify the Common Stopping Points for Applicants

Once you’ve mapped out your whole hiring process, ask yourself where do most people stop in the application process:

• Do they fill out your whole application? Or do most people quit at a certain point?
• Do most people respond to the job post, but don’t apply?
• Do most people apply, but then don’t do an interview? 
• Do they make it to the interview, but then don’t do complete digital paperwork? 
• Do most people fail to show up to their first cleaning job?

Your answers to this question will help you spot where your process is working and where it’s broken. 

Step 3: Consider Specific Hiring Problems and How they Affect Your Business

Rate and ask yourself the following two questions about each of the common hiring problems that will be listed in the next section.

Rate yourself on a scale of 1 to 5:

1. Every time
2. Over 50% 
3. 50%
4. Less than half
5. Rarely

“What are the commonalities?”  

For example, if you’re examining the quality of applicants:

• Do all the bad applicants have less than one year of experience? 
• Are they all coming from a specific platform?

“What is this mistake costing me?”

What is the dollar amount this mistake costs your business? For example, if you spend $300 on ads, attracting bad applicants is costing you at least $300. If you are turning down a significant number of clients and jobs because you don’t have enough applicants, that’s potentially costing you even more.

Common Problems in the Hiring Process

Attracting bad applicants. Common causes include:

• Posting the job ad on the wrong platform
• Running the wrong job ad copy
• Poorly worded or formatted applications

Not getting enough applicants. Common causes include:

• Low budget
• Posting on the wrong platform
• Targeting the wrong cities

Overpaying for hiring. Common causes include:

• Manually responding to applicants
• Not monitoring how much your online ads are costing 
• Having unorganized systems 

No shows for the interview. Common causes include:

• Lack of reminders (emails and texts)
• Not having a cancellation or rescheduling option available
• Not filtering or not having enough filters to eliminate more candidates

Applicants aren’t interested after the interview. Common causes include:

• Bad interview questions
• Unprofessionalism at the interview
• Unprofessional job offer emails
• Asking for Social Security numbers or identification cards over texts

No shows on the first day. Common cause include:

• Lack of alignment with your company and its culture
• Lack of understanding about the job
• Lack of training and processes

High turnover. Common causes include:

• Improper onboarding
• Lack of structure
• Bad communication
• Rude or unprofessional management
• Lack of breaks
• Expecting new hires to know everything right away

Step 4: Summarize Your Scores and Find Your Focus

Now you’ll begin analyzing your answers to find the areas to improve first:

• Write down your rating for each section. Pick the one with the lowest rating (Reminder: the lowest rating on the scale is 1) and choose one possible cause to improve. 

• Then pick the category that’s costing you the most money and choose one possible cause to improve.

For example, if you’ve identified “Overpaying for hiring” as an area to focus on and “manually screening for applicants” as a possible cause, you might do the following to try to improve this area:

• Automate applicant screening
• Include more candidate filters in hiring
• Monitor performance

Work through the different roadblocks to continue to identify and improve your hiring process. By being strategic in your troubleshooting, you’ll identify the problem areas faster and find better solutions.

About the presenter

Krystal Bella is the owner of KB Recruiting,  a company that helps cleaning service entrepreneurs start, grow, and automate their businesses. She is a hiring expert, tech automation guru, YouTuber, veteran, and former cleaning service owner.

This talk first aired at the 2021 Maid Service Success Summit.

The Maid Summit is an annual online event that brings together the most successful leaders in the cleaning industry, like Debbie Sardone, Angela Brown, Courtney Wisely, Amy Caris, Chris Schwab and more. Get free access to masterclasses and workshops that will help you to grow, scale and automate your cleaning business so you can get more leads and create more profit. Make sure you’re on our email list to find out how to get free tickets to the next event.

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