How to find employees for a janitorial business

Fueling excellent cleaning services that customers rave about requires finding top talent to deliver the quality work your business seeks to provide. Fielding the right team is crucial to building your business. You need people with the right skills, experience, and accountability to be the face of your company. 

Understanding what makes a good employee in the cleaning industry

Finding the right people for your roles isn’t just finding someone who can use a mop.

You need people with diverse skills and experience who can:

• Pay attention to details

• Manage your books

• Analyze your data

• Work logistics

• Manage customer relationships

All these skills combine to enable employees to provide the highest-quality work on site. The janitorial industry is busy, so between contractors, competitions, and other startups, it can be hard to find the right talent, let alone secure it in time. 

But first, let’s start with the where.

How to find janitorial employees for a cleaning business

1. Write a captivating job advertisement

2. Share job openings on LinkedIn

3. Use job posting sites

4. Attend job fairs

5. Leverage your local newspaper

6. Work with a recruiter

7. Ask current employees

Deciding what potential employees your business needs now and in the future

Consider if you want to devote resources to recruiting future hires or bring them to you. Ultimately, you should have dual strategies to find the industry’s best talent for your available commercial cleaning job roles.

→ Understand your immediate needs before beginning your search.

While a customer service team will help you maintain your customer base, one may not be necessary if you don’t have enough crew to field incoming projects.

On the other hand, if you don’t have someone in charge of payroll, building out your crew will burden your operations excessively.  

For this reason, you should have a comprehensive idea of how to hunt down and attract hires for specific roles. There are many options for finding hardworking janitorial employees that provide exceptional cleaning services, but choosing the right one will come down to timing and urgency.

Let’s review the available options and their role in your recruiting process. 

Write a captivating job advertisement

Before you can invest in recruitment, you need to be ready to advertise the open position properly.

To do this, you must complete a detailed overview of the role and what you’re seeking regarding skills, employment type (full-time or part-time), and previous cleaning experience. It’s not as easy as putting the job title and salary in the advertisement.

Your advertisement is your first touchpoint with potential candidates. Create an advertisement that shows you care about who you hire to draw the attention of someone who cares about the role. 

The right job ad covers the following:

• Responsibilities of the open role

• Required skills plus additional optional skills that may enhance the role

• Experience level

• Compensation range and insight into benefits

• Description of the company

• Overview of company values 

• What role the open position plays in the company

You want new candidates to visualize themselves in the advertised role to bring in top talent with high motivation. Consider the elements of a job that would help you to connect with the ideal candidate and the character traits that would make someone a good fit, such as a strong work ethic.

If this role is integral to a team or department in your business, add that to the description. If the position is fast-paced and requires someone self-motivated who can handle always being on the move, be sure to clarify that.

→ You don’t want to surprise a candidate during an interview about some aspect of the job that wasn’t clear in the job post. 

Share job openings on LinkedIn

Once you can clearly describe and advertise the job, it’s time to start placing your ads.

Social media is an excellent resource for small business owners for a variety of purposes, including:

• Marketing

• Brand awareness and loyalty

• Customer marketing

However, when your focus is staffing, consider which platform will best serve your intent.

LinkedIn is a social networking platform built to help working professionals connect and further their careers. It’s the ideal platform for finding great employees because users actively seek new job opportunities. 

Even better, the platform makes connecting the right candidates to the right roles easy. The open roles section provides filters to ensure people can find your ad based on the following:

• Keywords

• Industry

• Compensation range

• Experience level

• Location

• And more

This means the more information you provide, the greater your chances of finding the right fit. 

When should you use LinkedIn for hiring employees?

The platform delivers better results depending on the roles for which you’re hiring.

Great for:

Office roles

LinkedIn is great for finding hires with specific skills and experience that can translate between industries. When looking for candidates for roles that require keen attention to detail, organization skills, and technical savvy, LinkedIn may become your go-to option.

Snatching talent from the competition

LinkedIn is a social platform. Meaning users are casually browsing throughout their daily lives and looking out for anything of interest.

It’s accessible, and engagement is easy. When a competitor's workforce gets tired of their current roles, they browse and see what’s out there.

Don’t miss out on a major opportunity to attract the industry’s top talent. You can sway candidates away from competition to your business.  

Challenging for:

Entry-level roles

People without much experience often get discouraged by job hunting on LinkedIn because their profiles are sparse.

Advertising doesn’t hurt, but this may not be the best way to begin your hunt for lower-level roles where experience isn’t a significant factor.

Utilize job posting sites

LinkedIn isn’t the only platform built for recruiting. The modern era has brought many new players to the world of job searching, and it’s in your best interest to adapt to these changes. Consider every site available for your talent search needs:

• Monster

• ZipRecruiter

• Glassdoor

• And many others  

Some companies run with the philosophy that more is better and use as many sites as possible for advertising roles, but this isn’t always the best idea.

Some sites require subscription fees or additional costs to promote your post.

Not to mention these sites have to cater to both employers and new employees, so they each come with different criteria and elements that can affect your ability to secure interest. 

When should you use multiple job board sites to find cleaning employees?

Glassdoor, for instance, is huge on company reviews and tries to provide potential candidates insight into companies before they apply. You should research what makes each site unique and decide if you're prepared for how that might affect your chances of success.

Both bad reviews and no reviews can harm your chances of attracting the best employees in the job market. Keep your brand reputation in mind when deciding where to post your ads when hiring cleaners. 

Great for: 

Reach

Not every potential hire will be savvy enough for a dedicated site like LinkedIn. However, well-known sites like Monster are reliable for their traffic.

If you want the best chance at extending the reach of your ads, you need to use multiple sites to reach as many potential hires as possible. 

Challenging for:

Precision

Some sites offer employers advantages when it comes to narrowing the selection of candidates, but not every site makes this simple.

When you post on multiple job sites, the result can be a large number of applications. Without skilled filtering, sifting through all the noise can be hard.

Attend job fairs

Remember what it was like winning over new customers in the formative years of your business? Going door to door or making cold calls? That important first impression you had to make to win clients?

That sales-like style, relying on building human connections, was crucial to the success of starting your janitorial business. 

When should cleaning-business owners use job fairs to find job candidates?

Job fairs bring you back to the human connection aspect of running a business. In-person networking events are great because you get to meet potential hires face-to-face.

If you still have that sales ability, these events may work in your favor. Job fairs allow you to leave a human impression on potential candidates, making it much easier to represent the values and community of your business. 

The best advantage to job fairs is that you can get a sense of a candidate as a person and see whether they fit your culture.

You get to have a conversation with new talent and glimpse what customers would experience if they were the face of your company. This can help you decide which candidates are a good fit for the business you’re building.

Great for: 

Connecting with new talent

Job fairs usually draw in young crowds at the forefront of their careers. The in-person advantage means you can share the truth of the janitorial business with young minds open to new industries and ready to learn.

If you’re looking more for motivated people rather than trained and experienced veterans, then job fairs may be your best option. 

Challenging for:

Standing out

Job fairs are crowded with other companies, industries, and recruiters. You have to draw someone in and make a quick pitch. The competition is fighting for the same attention of new hires, so you have to be quick, efficient, and convincing. 

Leverage your local newspaper

Local print media is one of the oldest tricks in the book for hiring and with good reason. This age-old strategy reliably finds talent that’s ready to join your crew.

The most challenging task in finding talent can often be proximity. There’s nothing worse than finding willing and motivated workers only for them to realize they’re too far from the areas you serve to be able to join your team. 

Draw from a smaller talent pool but find better candidates

Local publications may not pull in an online job site's traffic, but they spread around the community quickly.

Even if the job seekers themselves don’t see your local listing, family members and friends will recommend your posting if they come across it. Plus, the chances of finding talent with local ties to the community are much higher, meaning they’ll care about how they carry themselves in front of your customers.

Local newspapers can be an excellent way to find a cultural fit related to your company's values.

Great for: 

Local talent

If your company values include a family-like environment and a focus on community, local publications can help you find the right people from down the block.

Using local publications to find job candidates eliminates filtering out hundreds of applications from all over the state.

Just be sure to post your locational needs in the listing, so word doesn’t spread beyond the region you’re looking for. 

Challenging for:

Efficiency

Job listings in local publications don’t spread quite as fast as their digital counterparts. Some print publications still post their listings on their online sites, but these won’t rank very high in a potential job seeker’s Google search.

It can take time for word to spread to the right people, so if urgency is your priority, you may not want to rely on local newspapers.  

Work with a recruiter 

No matter what you’re doing, relying on experts improves the likelihood of success. If you don’t have a trained HR department heading your recruitment processes, you should consider working with a recruiter.

→ Recruiters can pinpoint your needs and bring the talent to you.

They can even handle the initial touchpoint to feel out prospects based on your criteria to ensure you get the best pick of the litter. 

Recruiters use their technical savvy to their advantage by searching online job boards and portfolios to find applicants quickly. They even handle the time-consuming processes of screening candidates by conducting the following:

• Intro call

• Cold opens

• Interview scheduling

• First interviews

Recruiters can function as one-person teams, maximizing resources and helping you recruit with precision.

Great for: 

Efficiency

Recruiters know how to find and filter worthy applicants. They can eliminate the need to process hundreds of resumes and even speed up the hiring process by fast-tracking the initial stages of recruitment.

Remember that recruiters come at a price, but it’s for a good reason. Recruitment is critical if you need to hire with urgency and can’t settle for low-quality prospects.

Challenging for:

Investment

Working with recruiters means partnering with a third-party business for your hiring needs.

You have to be willing to invest in the partnership with both time and money.

Also, your team doesn’t gain much experience from allowing a third party to lead your recruiting.  

Ask current employees

Finally, never neglect your own resources. Your trusted workforce has plenty of career connections and friends seeking job opportunities with growth potential.

Offering a referral program can encourage your employees to promote new roles to their friends and family. This can result in quickly finding trustworthy talent that will already be invested in thriving at your company. 

Great for: 

Community fits

While your employees may not know the most well-trained people, they won’t stick their necks out for someone they don’t think can fit well within the business.

→ If you trust your employees, you should also feel comfortable hiring someone they recommend for a role.

The new hire will already have a support network during onboarding, so they can ramp up and quickly feel comfortable in your community.

Challenging for:

Set up

A referral program must have clear guidelines to ensure your employees are adequately motivated to utilize it.

Consider offering a bonus to employees who make a successful referral, but set clear criteria for what determines success.

Ensure the new hire will last in the company before rewarding the referral, and utilize your HR department to get the program up and running.

How to hire janitorial employees

With all your recruitment strategies in place, it’s time to begin the hiring process. Hiring is just as integral as the recruitment process itself.

A lot can be gleaned from the hiring process. It either enables you to start the relationship on sound footing or damage it to the point that the recruit pulls out entirely. 

To finalize your hiring process, ensure you cover these steps.

1. Review all applicationsBefore you finalize investing in your new hire, you want to ensure you’ve left no stone unturned.→ There’s nothing worse than settling for a recruit who meets most of your criteria only to realize you neglected an applicant with all the requirements.Whether you’re using your HR team or a recruiter, ensure applicants are thoroughly reviewed throughout the process.

2. Coordinate and conduct interviewsThe interview is the most pivotal stage and one you want to get right. First, make sure you have the right people in the room.Whether you engage in several interview rounds or one long meeting, you want to give candidates enough time to feel out the role and be able to visualize themselves succeeding in it.Consider who collaborates most with this new position, ensure they’re at the meeting, and help develop interview questions. But also make sure you’re not overwhelming the prospect by having them meet everyone from your CEO to your interns.

3. Run a background checkYou don’t want to regret making an offer to someone with some glaring red flags. Your HR department should be trained to perform thorough background checks following local and state laws.Rely on an empowered HR team to see prior legal issues from an applicant, any problems with past employers, and more.

4. Ask for referencesChecking with references can be a hassle, but sometimes it’s necessary. Sometimes it’s more important just to see if they have any willing contacts.A recruit without any reference should raise immediate concerns about accountability and how they handle professional relationships.You also want to see that they have references from previous supervisor positions to leadership rather than just a co-worker they spent their time with the most.

5. Follow up with candidatesHaving multiple rounds in your interview process helps you to get a well-rounded feel of your candidates.Each follow-up call, whether to set up another interview or make a job offer, is a great way to see a candidate’s enthusiasm for the role.If they follow up with you promptly and professionally, that means you’re about to make the right decision.

6. Onboard new employeesFinally, you have to onboard your new hires properly.A candidate can accept an offer and still pull out at the last hour if they sense some issues in your onboarding.Ensure your HR team has optimized onboarding to make new talent feel welcomed, informed, and prepared to succeed.

Additional janitorial hiring tips

The larger the talent pool, the higher quality your hires will be. Consider other hiring tactics, such as:

• Partnering with contractors may better serve your immediate needs rather than building an entire internal team, especially if you can’t keep them on payroll year-round.

• Acquiring other janitorial businesses may also better speed up your workforce needs if you can make the investment.

• If your needs are seasonal, you may also consider partnering with another commercial cleaning company to assist each other during busy seasons.

When you’re managing human resources, ensure you’re following the law:

• Legal troubles can set you back much worse than any failed investment. Get someone on your payroll who can manage the legal technicalities of hiring.

• Also, ensure you understand the legality of letting employees go, as there’s a chance you may make the wrong hire and need to know how to let them go with minimal consequences.

Be efficient in finding new cleaning staff with these tips:

• You’re hiring for a reason. Stay on top of those goals, and don’t let the process drag on too long.

• If specific recruiting strategies aren’t panning out, take them off the table to limit resource usage.

• Keep every aspect of your recruitment tight and time efficient, from job postings to interviews and onboarding.

You must navigate and find that sweet spot of fair but strategic hires. You don't have to make a flat offer when you find a great candidate that fits your company culture.

Get creative with:

• Incentives

• Bonuses

• Other perks

• A probationary payment with the promise of raise negotiations later

Acquiring and retaining great employees doesn’t come down to paying the highest salary. Providing security, great benefits, and a supportive work environment all go a long way to building a team that will put you at the forefront of your market.

Manage crews with an all-in-one software platform

Aspire’s cloud-based janitorial business software keeps your workforce and team management in top shape.

We’ve partnered with industry-leading companies to help them accelerate growth and keep their business at the top of their market. Utilize features that make it easy to keep your teams organized, connected, and ready to onboard the best talent so they can hit the ground running.

Want to experience software designed to help commercial cleaners achieve growth at twice the industry rate? Schedule a commercial cleaning software demonstration with Aspire and see how to take your scheduling efficiencies to the next level.