36 - A Hiring Strategy First Step

Welcome to another edition of “Strategy Monday”!  In today’s episode I’m going to be talking about a hiring strategy.

​After almost two years of researching a lot of my content for this project, and after having conducted polls, it has come to my attention that a pressing issue for many house cleaning business owners - and any other small business owner, in general - is hiring staff.

Now, I know how difficult this process can be because as many of you know - I was fully immersed in managing my family’s cleaning business for many years.  And, yes!  Hiring is a very difficult process to manage.  But, let me give you a strategy that I hope can get you started on the right foot when it comes to your next hire.

You see, I believe that the hiring process is composed of 5 phases.  They are: 

1. Clear Expectations
2. Training Guide 
3. Mutual Understanding 
4. Background Checks 
5. Training Period

Today, I’m going to talk to you about Clear Expectations.  But, let me start out by asking you this: What do you expect from your future employee?

You see, many times we, as business owners, just expect our future hire, our future employee to somehow, magically, know what we expect from them.  This is the point where I believe we can do a better job.  We need to have Clear Expectations regarding what we expect from our staff.

Do you expect them to be on time everyday?  What does on time mean and when you say “everyday” do you mean Monday through Sunday?  Or, just Monday through Friday?  If you’re hiring someone on a part time basis, does that mean they start work at a different time on just specific days?  

You see, it’s here that many of us need to take a time out from our busy schedule - now I know that might be hard because we as business owners, we as entrepreneurs, wear many hats and we’re constantly having to put out fires. 

But, this...is...necessary!

Schedule an appointment with yourself for a 10, 20, 30 minute or an hour in the next couple of days and start working on your hiring process.

Title your document - or you can even do it handwritten on a sheet of paper - but do it.  Make it concrete, make it physical.  So you can start developing your hiring process.  Title your document: “YOUR CLEANING BUSINESS NAME HIRING PROCESS”.  And start off with the basics.  Make a headline and title it: Expectations.  And, start off from there.  You can even answer the questions I posed earlier.  And, ask yourself the same question: What do I expect from my employee?

Another way to do this is by having the perspective that I learned a long time ago.  That perspective is to see your employees as a multiplication of you.  If you put yourself in a copy machine you want your employees to be a copy of you.  Why?  Well, because you love your business and you make sure that everything you do in your cleaning business is done  efficiently and effectively.  So, when writing out your Clear Expectations, you can ask yourself: What would I expect from myself if I were my own employee - and, write down your expectations.

Finally, I want to point out that this is not your training guide.  In other words, don’t worry about writing anything having to do with your actual training here.  You can do that in the next phase of your Training Process.  All you want to write down here is your expectations.  You should end your Clear Expectations by clearly stating Consequences for not meeting your Expectations.  What happens if your future employee arrives late three times in a row?  What happens if he or she accidentally breaks something in one of your client’s homes?
This is also very important because when you start to actually interview or post job openings for your house cleaning business, you want to have this guideline - your Clear Expectations- so you can either show them or tell them what you expect from them.

I hope this "Hiring Process First Step" is useful for you or will at least give you some ideas regarding your next hire.  But, please, please remember to start working on your Hiring Process documentation.  I know that if you’re listening to my podcast, you’re serious about reaching certain business goals, certain life goals and that is why I’m asking you to also be serious about this very crucial and pressing issue.

Make an appointment with yourself, if you’re a solo business owner.  Or, if you have other partners as owners of your business, make an appointment with them and start getting this down on paper.  The moment you start documenting processes and systems you’ll start seeing things - even hiring - in a different light.

To end this episode I want to let you know that I have created a template on my website to get you started with your Clear Expectations document.  It’s no big deal it’s simply a text that you can copy and paste, but it can give you a start if you’re having trouble coming up with ideas.  You can find it here!

And, also, before I leave I want to let you know that I plan on launching a course that will take you step-by-step through the Hiring Process development.  It will be a premium course.  And, like I said, it will teach you step by step how to go through each of the phases I mentioned:

1. CLEAR EXPECTATIONS 
2. TRAINING GUIDE 
3. MUTUAL UNDERSTANDING 
4. BACKGROUND CHECKS
5. And, TRAINING PERIOD

If you’re interested in this, I’ve created a landing page so you can leave your info I can will keep you updated of the launch date and relevant info.  You can sign up - and, again, you’re not signing up for the actual course yet, you’re signing up for updates on the course - you can sign up here!

Well, that’s it for today.  I wish you all the best!  And, I wish you an excellent start to your week!  Remember dream big, take action, and reach your freedom.  I’ll catch you on the next episode!

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