Employees: How to find them, screen them, hire them, train them, and keep them?
The ISSA/INTERCLEAN® show just ended in Chicago last week and as always it was a week full of learning, new products, and networking. The biggest news of the convention was that, by a vote of 66-1, ARCSI members attending the annual meeting approved the merger of ARCSI with ISSA. This merger will bring new resources and opportunities to our industry.
In both networking and the formal learning events, the hot topic was employees. How to find them, screen them, hire them, train them, and keep them. In fact, the general consensus of the cleaning companies was that finding clients is easy, finding cleaners is hard. ISSA in particular had a very informative session on trends in the employment marketplace.
The movement for a $15.00 an hour minimum wage continues to gain traction. However this is just the start of the challenges.
Paid maternity leave is also quickly gaining popularity and is expected to become more and more commonplace.
Combined with the well-publicized rapidly increasing cost of medical insurance, this is expected to continue to drive up cost of employees.
Finally, the unemployment rate continues to drop, making each new hire more competitive than the last. For many cleaning companies that opened after 2008, this is the first tight labor market we have ever faced.
A successful cleaning company will need to refocus their marketing efforts on employee recruiting and to build out their culture and employee retention programs. Fortunately, Cleaning Business Builders has tons of resources to help you meet this challenge.
Our class on Recruiting and Hiring, delivered by American Maid founder/owner Liz Trotter, sets you up with the basic elements of the recruiting and hiring system used by successful and still-growing cleaning companies. The key is that this system goes beyond simply giving you a list but also provides guidance on how to evaluate candidates - what are good, mediocre, and bad answers to application and interview questions, for example. Click the button below to learn more.
Highlights summary
If you're hiring your first cleaners, or your current job ads aren't bringing in enough strong applicants, Derek Christian of Cleaning Business Builders suggests starting with the ad itself. His core advice is to write recruiting ads with the same mindset you use to market to customers.
Most cleaning job ads lead with a long list of requirements, and Derek says that makes the job sound like a miserable place to work. A better approach is to sell the job by leading with the benefits to the applicant. For a newer business, that might mean flexible scheduling, a choice of morning or afternoon shifts, or full- and part-time options. Businesses that already have a strong team can highlight a positive work environment and room to move up as the company grows. Any perks are worth mentioning as well, such as provided uniforms or company cars.
Derek also recommends making ads visually interesting, so they catch attention and are more likely to be shared. Including a clickable link that takes applicants straight to your website to apply removes one more step between interest and an application.
The ad template shown in the video is part of the Recruiting and Hiring class in the Foundations of Success Fast Track series from Cleaning Business Builders. Each module in the series includes step-by-step video instruction along with forms and spreadsheets for running different parts of a cleaning business.
