Automate Your Hiring in Your Cleaning Business ZenMaid Magazine |

What is automation and why should I use it for my Maid Service hiring process?
First up we will discuss automating the hiring process for new cleaners.

What you will learn from this article:

Simple ways to automate the recruiting process
How to automate your onboarding and training processes
How to create several ‘screening’ phases to weed out bad candidates
How systems can help create a turnkey cleaning business

What is automation and why should I use it for my Maid Service hiring process?

Automation is the technology and systems used to fulfill manual or repetitive tasks for your home cleaning business.

There are several areas of predictable processes within your Maid Service that can be automated to free up your time as the owner, but the main areas are hiring, onboarding, and training.

These areas of your business are easily automated and by creating automations for these different processes you will create consistency within your cleaning business.

Hiring, onboarding, and training generate the biggest return on investment (ROI) in a cleaning company so let’s break down how to automate this part of your business.

First up we will discuss automating the hiring process for new cleaners.

Automating this process is an efficient way to not only remove you the business owner from the process, but will also save your admin team time.

Step 1: The application

Set up a hosted landing page for the position. Link to this wherever you are posting the role, Facebook, Craigslist etc.

You can create different landing pages for different roles, then when you create a job posting on several different platforms, you can simply link back to the appropriate job posting landing page which has all the details applicants need to know.

Create an automated two-part application process that all applicants will be put through.

This part of the process should qualify the potential employees. Create a form that asks some key questions, find out more about the person and how serious or interested they are in working for your cleaning company.

This stage should act as an initial screening process. Filter applicants into segments, for example:

A = high quality candidate, potentially good fit, available immediately, previous experience

B = good quality candidate, good fit, some experience

C = ok candidate, not available immediately, will require extensive training

Step 2: The interview

Once the applicants have been screened through stage 1, they are then invited to interview.

You may only want to interview the applicants from the “A” and “B” categories. Ask your admin staff to contact only those applicants to set up the initial interviews.

If they are still interested, have an automated text message sent to them to confirm the day and time they are to come in for the interview.

It might also be at this time you request that candidates prepare any necessary documents or paperwork, ie. driver abstract from the DMV.

This will act as another filter. Any applicant not able to follow the instructions or come to the interview with the requested documents can be put in the ‘no’ pile.

Step 3: Conducting the interview

Create a standardized interview process that you follow with every applicant.

Have a list of five or six standardized questions to ask each and every applicant. This creates a standard, non-biased way of interviewing.

Ask every applicant these standardized questions with some additional qualifying questions.

Have the interviewer rank the applicant into an A, B, C or D category and record this in your CRM or other system that will easily allow you to later filter out applicants by category or ranking.

In order to create a hiring pool, you can conduct interviews regularly, say once or twice a week (as busy seasons approach) or once a month in slower seasons, so that you are constantly screening applicants and have a strong pool of applicants to draw on when you are ready to hire.

Step 4: Onboarding the new cleaner

If you want to keep your new employees around longer, then it’s imperative that part of your induction process involve introducing your company culture. This includes the company mission, vision and values.

This will help you attract employees who will be in this for more than just a paycheck. Having a bigger vision and ‘why’ for your cleaning company gives them something to buy into and become part of.

Additionally, automating your tax document collection can act as another screening layer.

Not only will automating this process allow your staff to easily send and collect forms from employees, but it will also alert you to an employee who cannot follow simple instructions and deadlines.

If a cleaner can’t get her tax documents in to get paid, it’s probably a fair assumption that she will be unable to follow the process and procedure for weekly or biweekly cleans.

Step 5: Training cleaners

In order to automate the training of new cleaning employees, create videos outlining and explaining all of the processes and systems that the cleaner will need to learn to work in the field.

These do not need to be fancy or high-budget! A simple tripod (or make-shift platform to prop a phone on) used with your smartphone is good enough to record someone talking through what the new cleaning employee needs to know.

Break these into modules and have new employees watch every one of these videos and complete a basic quiz at the end of each to assess if they got the key takeaways.

You will still need to have your crew leaders or coaches train them in the field, but this will help cut out hours, if not days, from your training time.

Cleaners can watch these videos outside of work time (be sure to pay them for this training time) and then the content can be reinforced during the on-the-job training.

Establishing an automated and systematized process for your hiring and training will help you to build a staff that is fully trained, aligned with your company culture and it doesn’t have to involve you, the cleaning business owner.

Your process starts with the online application, moves to an online application form which feeds into your pre and post interview ranking.

You will create a qualified labour pool of applicants so you will not find yourself in a desperate situation during a busy season and hiring the first person through the door.

All of your new cleaning staff should be indoctrinated to your company culture, mission, vision, values, automated tax document collection.

New cleaning hires will be trained through an automated video training series, meaning less time spent by your crew leader training and more time reinforcing the processes and systems on-the-job.

Creating systems and processes in your Maid Service is the first step to creating a turnkey cleaning business that will allow you to become an absentee business owner.

When the daily tasks and processes do not need to involve you, the owner, you create true freedom and autonomy in your days.

This article is based on a live talk from Mike Callahan from the 2019 Maid Summit, hosted and organized by ZenMaid.

About the presenter

Mike Callahan is the president of Simple Growth Systems, a business growth based company designed to give Maid Service owners like you a life outside of work.

He is a Certified Infusionsoft Partner and a Certified Customer Acquisition Specialist in Digital Marketing and his speciality is created automated systems that help businesses scale and grow.

Mike has an enthusiastic attitude and with it, has automated over 300 businesses into much smoother operations.

You too can utilize Mike’s methods to automate and grow your home cleaning business to the million-dollar mark and beyond.

This talk first aired at the 2019 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.

Replays of these talks from Mike and over 40 other cleaning industry experts at the Maid Summit can be seen here.

For more helpful articles for maid service owners, check these ones out:

Automate Your Hiring in Your Cleaning Business

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