Our time is limited, running a business is hard work it needs full concentration and attention.
Setting up unattended processes is vital to operate efficiently.
Pipehire has been developing a hiring method to help business owners step up the game.
We welcome you to The Best possible score and A, B, C players method.
Best possible score form
Let’s start in the Funnel which received a full overhaul to make our hiring process more effective. At the top of the funnel you can see a number which is the “Best Possible Score” for this job opening.
The purpose of the score and the colors are to help you identify the most qualified applicants.
Now you can have a clear apples to apples comparison of all your applicants in one single screen and from any source.
We build this feature so you can save time and identify the A players quickly and move on to the interview process.
Within the new funnel you will also find applicants highlighted in green and with a ārecommended badgeā these are the most qualified applicants using our recommendation engine technology that we started building during winter.
These candidates will be your best return on investment. We recommend you start with them before someone else hires them.
A, B, C players
Next to the “Best Possible Score Form”, you will see three colored boxes with the letters A, B, and C, those are the three possible categories that the applicants can be classified based on the score obtained in their application.
This traffic light color can help us to visualize the score obtained by each applicant.
The green color means the applicant has obtained 80% to 100% of the possible points in the application form.
We refer to them as ‘A-Players’. You should focus on proceeding quickly to interview and ideally hire these applicants before somebody else hires them.
The yellow color means these applicants have obtained between 50% to 79% of the possible points of the job application.
We refer to them as ‘B-Players’. Proceed with caution since these applicants don’t meet all the requirements of the position. If you like someone in particular call and ask more questions to see if they turn to a green color.
The red color means the applicant has obtained less than 50% of the possible points of the job application.
We refer to them as ‘C-Players’ you should definitely not proceed since they are incomplete applications and/or don’t have the bare minimum requirements of the position. You can archive these applicants if you like.
š¤ Questions on managing cleaning employees?
Email us at support@pipehirehrm.com or visit us at Pipehire to learn how to better manage all your cleaning employees with our hiring software.
We had the honor to learn directly from Liz Trotter how she uses DISC Assessments for cleaning techs to improve the quality of her new hires. As hiring cleaning techs becomes more challenging we want to make sure we are adding the right team members to the company to avoid employee turnover and preserve our company culture.
Liz shared her more important findings and revelations in the many years doing DISC assessments in video above she shares it, but here’s the cheat sheet:
What are the best DISC profiles for cleaning techs?
High S and C: The best mix!
C and S: Awesome.
S and high I: Good
I and C : Rare to find
High D: Not big fan
D and C: Won’t hire.
What Are theĀ Four DISC Types?
Dominant,
Inspiring,
Supportive
Cautious.
What does DiSC score mean?
DISCĀ measuresĀ dimensions of your personality. itĀ doesĀ notĀ measureĀ intelligence, aptitude, mental health, or values.Ā
DISCĀ profiles describe human behavior in various situations for example, how you respond to challenges, how you influence others, and how you respond to rules and procedures.
More about each style:
Dominant
General Characteristics
Direct. Decisive. High Ego Strength. Problem Solver. Risk Taker. Self Starter.
Value to Team
Bottom-line organizer. Places value on time. Challenges the status quo. Innovative.
Possible Weaknesses:
Oversteps authority. Argumentative attitude. Dislikes routine. Attempts too much at once.
Greatest Fear:
Being taken advantage of.
Motivated By
New challenges. Power and authority to take risks and make decisions. Freedom from routine and mundane tasks. Changing environments in which to work and play.
Creative problem solver. Great encourager. Motivates others to achieve. Positive sense of humor. Negotiates conflicts; peace maker.
Possible Weaknesses:
More concerned with popularity than tangible results. Inattentive to detail. Overuses gestures and facial expressions. Tends to listen only when it’s convenient.
Greatest Fear:
Rejection.
Motivated By
Flattery, praise, popularity, and acceptance. A friendly environment. Freedom from many rules and regulations. Other people available to handle details.
Steadiness
General Characteristics
Good listener. Team player. Possessive. Steady. Predictable. Understanding. Friendly.
Value to Team
Reliable and dependable. Loyal team worker. Compliant towards authority. Good listener, patient and empathetic. Good at reconciling conflicts.
Possible Weaknesses:
Resists change. Takes a long time to adjust to change. Holds a grudge. Sensitive to criticism. Difficulty establishing priorities.
Greatest Fear:
Loss of security.
Motivated By
Recognition for loyalty and dependability. Safety and security. No sudden changes in procedure or lifestyle. Activities that can be started and finished.
Compliant
General Characteristics
Accurate; analytical. Conscientious; careful. Fact-finder; precise. High standards; systematic.
Value to Team
Perspective: “the anchor of reality.” Conscientious and even-tempered. Thorough to all activities. Defines situation; gathers, criticizes and tests information.
Possible Weaknesses:
Needs clear-cut boundaries for actions/relationships. Bound by procedures and methods. Gets bogged down in details. Prefers not to verbalize feelings. Will give in rather that argue.
Greatest Fear:
Criticism.
Motivated By
Standards of high quality. Limited social interaction. Detailed tasks. Logical organization of information.
š¤ Questions on managing cleaning employees?
Email us at support@pipehirehrm.com or visit us at Pipehire to learn how to better manage all your cleaning employees with our hiring software.
Join us on this webinar to learn from Liz Trotter how to finally build company culture in our cleaning businesses.
What will you learn in this webinar?
ā¢ The basics and how to start building company culture once and for all. ā¢ What tangible benefits a good company culture produces. ā¢ How to keep very low your employee turnover. ā¢ How to maintain the culture alive and thriving. ā¢ How struggling businesses can repair and thrive. ā¢ How to use DISC assessments to hire cleaning technicians.
Juan Chaparro CEO ofĀ PipehireĀ the all-in-one HR and Management software, interviews Angela Brown . Learn from her the most important tips on how to hire and manage cleaning techs. She also shared her personal story and how he start her business.
Debbie Sardone interviews Juan Chaparro CEO of Pipehire the all-in-one HR and Management software. In this video they discuss how to automate your hiring and manage everything HR related in the house cleaning business.
Hiring house-cleaning techs has become more and more complicated, especially when we’re all in the same place spending thousands on Indeed without much to show for it. Thankfully, as our industry evolves, creative entrepreneurs have been solving this problem in different ways.
I want to share a side-by-side comparison of hiring solutions for cleaning employees in 2021. I often see people get confused, asking if they should use Pipehire, Wootrecruit or Blueskies to solve their hiring problems.
All these services above are very different and I want with this article help you understand the differences so you can decide what works best for you and your business. I know the founders of these companies and they are all great people; we’re just trying to solve the hiring and recruiting pains for cleaning-service owners from a different angle. Make sure you listen to the webinar Hiring Trends and Strategies with Amar Ghose so you can thrive in 2021.
So let’s get started.
Hiring Solutions Compared Side by Side
Pipehire
What is it? It’s an all-in-one hiring, HR and management software as a service (Saas) tool for cleaning businesses.
What it does: Pipehire provides an all-in-one online hiring platform that offers everything you need to find, hire, onboard and manage cleaning techs.
Who is this perfect for? The perfect client of Pipehire is the professional cleaning-business owner that wants to track and measure their whole HR and management operations/processes, onboarding, complaints, attendance, and everything employee-related from end-to-end.
What is it? It’s a full-service recruiting agency for cleaning businesses.
What it does: Blueskies provides a recruiting-service agency that helps cleaning businesses from end-to-end. This includes posting ads, talking to candidates, sorting through resumes and much more. They will send them your way, pre-screened, for a 1-1 interview.
Who is this perfect for? The perfect client for Blueskies is someone that doesn’t want to get involved in finding and screening the employee, or anything related to the search or evaluation process of candidates. They want a team to do this for them.
Setup fee: Prices might vary. Please check with Blueskies.
Monthly plans: Several packages. Please check with Blueskies.
Wootrecruit
What is it? It’s a lead-generation service that posts ads on Indeed to generate cleaning-technician leads.
What it does: Wootrecruit will create a landing page for your business and will post cleaning ads for you, then allows cleaning applicants to book themselves using a Calendly and Google calendar integration via Zapier. You’ll get notified of interviews via email.
Who is this perfect for? Cleaning-business owners that need help posting and managing Indeed ads and getting applicants booked in their schedule with minimal effort on their part.
Setup fee: $399- $999
Monthly plans: From $59.00 up to $99.00
Pipehire vs Blueskies main differences:
1.Pipehire is an HR and management software with great customer support and groundbreaking technology for the residential cleaning industry. It was built in-house in 2018 to solve many of the HR problems in our own cleaning business, with three goals in mind:
1. Reduce the time to hire great cleaning employees. 2. Increase the quality of new the hires. 3. Reduce the cost of the hiring process and management.
In 2020, we released it to the public so other cleaning business owners could manage their cleaning techs in one integrated solution.
2. Blueskies is a recruiting agency, NOT a software company, operated and managed by Dan Platta, agreat entrepreneur and accounting nerd. Blueskies uses CareerPlug, a third-party hiring software to give you access to your applicants. CareerPlug is designed to publish jobs on search engines. Evaluation and sorting through candidates is handled by the Blueskies team. CareerPlug is not an HR software –it will not allow you track HR data, such as complaints, attendance, expired documents, disciplinary actions, birthdays/anniversaries, etc. Blueskies might use other applicant-tracking systems for their clients, but the important part here is that you understand that Blueskies provides a recruiting-service agency that helps cleaning businesses from end-to-end.
š¤ Can I use Pipehire and Blueskies together?
Yes, you can use Blueskies recruiting expertise to help you find the employees and send them to your Pipehire account for you to do the onboarding, run background checks and track all management and HR-related tasks that begin when you hire a new cleaner. There are some companies using this powerful combination, and you get the best of both worlds.
šÆ Conclusion Pipehire or Blueskies?
If you want a hiring agency to do all the work for you, then Blueskies is the best fit for you. If you want a software tool that’ll help you run and operate your HR department in one integrated solution, then Pipehire is for you.
Pipehire vs Wootrecruit main differences:
Pipehire HR software is focused on these five areas of the business:
Finding/scoring great candidates
Hiring and running background checks
Onboarding the right people with step-by-step checklists (e-signature coming 2021)
Managing employee data like attendance, complaints, benefits, birthdays/anniversaries, time-off requests.
Educating/training cleaning employees and business owners with one goal in mind: Making the process easier, faster and better for the residential business owner.
We believe these 5 areas make up the Employee Lifecycle that must be running under control in order to succeed as cleaning business owner.
What’s the difference in the filtering and screening process between Pipehire and Wootrectuit?
Wootrecruit’s filtering process, explained.
Wootrecruit offers a basic filtering process on the following questions:
Are you authorized to work in the US?
Are you willing to undergo a background check in accordance with local laws and regulations?
Do you have a valid driver’s license?
Do you have a reliable vehicle for driving to jobs?
Are you available to work Monday through Friday from 8am to 5pm?
Are you afraid of or allergic to either cats or dogs?
Are you currently employed?
Applicant Flow:
Indeed applicant lands on company landing page
Answers initial screening questions (above)
An applicant that passes the screening questions is then prompted to fill out another set of questions with their personal information.
Then, the applicant books an interview via Calendly.
Scheduled meeting with applicant shows in business owner’s email and calendar.
At this point, Wootrecruit’s job is over and you should start the onboarding process somewhere else.
Pipehire filtering process explained.
Applicant Flow:
From any source, the applicant visits a custom URL to answer a 4-part application. This job form can be embedded into the company website to increase conversions. Pipehire forms have built in metrics to show you total visitors and a conversion rate.
Once the form is completed the applicant’s information arrives in your Funnel with a “Recruiting Score” on the top right (see image below)
Applicant is then moved to “Qualified Stage” where a quick call to verify the applicant’s questions are true and complete. In this step, you’re dealing with less than 10% of applicants. During the call, offer two dates for in-person or Zoom interview.
View of Hiring Funnel within Pipehire Pipehire forms have built in metrics to show you total of visitors and conversion rate.
Pipehire handles appointment-setting differently.
4. The applicants who agree to come for the interview are moved into the “To be Interviewed” funnel, and at this point (image below), the system will display the menu below. The applicant is then filtered again with confirmation that he/she must accept via SMS or email.
Moving applicant to “To be Interviewed Stage”This screen contains a unique url so the candidate can confirm or reschedule.Text message received by the applicant.
5. If the person does confirm the appointment, they’ll be shown in green and any unconfirmed applicants will most likely be disqualified (In this stage we’re at 2-3 % of applicants).
6. You will continue moving the applicants to further funnel stages once you’ve decided to hire. Pipehire will assist you in the HR process that comes afterward:
Onboarding tracking
Background checks
Keeping track of attendance, birthdays, anniversaries and much more.
What do the colors in the funnel mean?
Red: Disqualified; their score is too low and they don’t meet basic requirements.
Yellow: Fair/OK; candidates meet the basic requirements but they’re not the most qualified.
Green: Best and most qualified; these are the A-players that meet all the basic requirements and, based on their answers to a 4-part application and internal analytics developed by Pipehire, will be shown in green.
Self-booking applicants to your calendar? Shotgun style is not as effective as it seems.
We believe having someone pass the initial screening-question filter is “OK” but is not a great way to find the most capable and qualified employees – definitely not those A-players. Why? Because you could get someone with all the initial questions answered show up to your office and when you meet this person, find out that they’re not a problem solver and they live to too far away from your service area. Time is wasted meeting with people who just pass the basic filter (initial screening) and book themselves on your calendar. Pipehire’s advanced job-application form allows you to filter and give a score to each applicant.
Every job position open will have this color coded scoring.
šÆ Conclusion Pipehire or Wootrecruit?
If you want a lead-generation service with an Indeed account manager, then Wootrecruit is the best fit for you. If you want an applicant-tracking software that helps you find top talent with an advanced filtering process, then Pipehire is for you. Also, if HR is a critical component for keeping your business organized, then Pipehire offers this as well.
Hiring is the easy part! The hardest job starts once employees are on your payroll.
Indeed is great… but the problem is, it’s getting more expensive by the day. Is it somewhat our fault? Well, I think so; we cleaning-business owners contribute to this by putting more money in the same basket, same category, same ads. Indeed’s pricing algorithm does and will continue to increase pricing in whatever direction they want (up), and now that they own Glassdoor, they own 80%+ of the job search in the US.
Indeed is clearly the biggest player for cleaning-job candidates. But throwing more money at the problem doesn’t give you better results. Yes, you can tweak the ads, the cost per click and the budget, but this is where effectiveness vs efficiency comes in play.
Self-booking applicants to your calendar? Shotgun style is not as effective as it seems.
I believe having someone pass the initial screening questions is “OK” but isn’t a great way to find the best possible employees – not those A-players for sure. Why? Because someone who passed the initial screening questions could show up at my office and, in the middle of the interview, I could find out they’re not a qualified applicant and they live too far away from my service area. Time is wasted meeting with people who just pass the initial screening and book themselves on your calendar. Pipehire’s advanced job-application form allows you to filter and give a score to each applicant.
šÆ Should hiring cleaners be Effective or Efficient?
Efficient hiring is doing it with the least amount of wasted time, money and resources, (e.g., letting cleaners book themselves an interview) but hiring should be done with effectiveness in mind first. Why? Because we need to produce the desired result – a long-lasting, awesome cleaner and a loyal employee. If we can save time and resources as well while being effective, then that’s the cherry on top.
Juan Chaparro
The key to the best ROI is scoring your candidates and meeting the RIGHT people (the A-players) by not letting just anyone book an appointment simply because they have a car, a driver’s license and can work 8am-5pm.
A problem no one had solved.
At year 13 when my cleaning company was growing the fastest, I came to realize that the biggest bottleneck was finding the RIGHT employees. I created a team called Gmaids Digital in which we had one goal in mind: to build a web tool quickly identify cleaning applicants using a scoring system. When you get hundreds or even thousands of applicants, it’s difficult to determine who to call for an interview.
How do you become more effective at hiring cleaning techs?
First you have to think with a “sniper” mindset, not “shotgun” style. I hear a lot of people saying that hiring is a numbers game…well, yes and no. You have to get a great volume of candidates in the funnel so the chances of getting A-players increase. But once you have identify them (green color), then you only focus on the A-players, not on meeting every possible applicant.
What’s next? Once you have those A-players….
Next step is to call and verify (this could be you or the office manager) and then verify all the data in the application. Then you give them two options for an interview and send them an email and text confirmation. They will have to confirm by clicking the link on their cell phone or email. This step might seem inefficient, but it’s critical to get the few ones worth interviewing. Again, I want to be effective here on this step…it doesn’t do any good to sit and wait to talk to 15 people who self-booked an interview, when we just needed to talk to two or three in the first place. You want to be effective first. šÆ
Pipehire’s 2 way confirmation. An applicant not confirmed is a no show 9 out 10.
š¦ How Pipehire scores cleaning applicants
The score is given to the answers completed by the applicant during the job-application form. Each question could have one or several points assigned, and some others could have negative points. So the more questions with the right answers, the more points = better applicants.
Within Pipehire you can create custom questions that will give you another way to filter and score. Below, you see this custom question that takes away5 points from the applicant, automatically disqualifying them.
You can build open or close ended questions.
Pipehire also shows the Best Possible ScoreForm, depending on how you set up your questions score.
Best Possible Score can vary depending on the score assigned to each question.
How do you quickly identify the good, the bad and the ugly?
Each applicant comes with a score and it’s color-coded to see the best candidates quickly (see image below).
When you see applicants in your funnel, you’ll see three colors:
Green: “A-player” Best and most qualified. They comply with all the requirements and much more. These are the A-players where you should focus your time and effort.
Yellow: “B-player” Fair/OK = It’s an average candidate who complies with the basics such as: owns a car, driver’s license and can work 8am-5pm, but still not a great applicant.
Red: “C-player” Disqualified = Abandoned the application (never submitted) and/or simply has none of the basic requirements. No need to waste your time talking to red candidates.
On this image above: Out of 37 applicants, 6 are A-Players, 1 is already working, 1 is in training, 1 more coming to an interview and 3 more waiting to confirm the appointment.
So what to do with Indeed’s raising pricing?
Whatever your budget is, don’t just meet every applicant. Send those applicants to apply to your company using Pipehire’s scoring forms and connect to those marked in green. You can embed the form in your website or get a quickly sharable link like this one in under 5 minutes – just upload your logo and pass it along, post it to Indeed, FB jobs and share it with your employees. They’re the ones most likely to bring you new A-players, and this should be happening if you’re building the right company culture anyway.
š„ Conclusion: Try to experiment with other channels to find great cleaning techs!
Youtube
Videos targeted to zip codes where your workers live.
137K views
Link to job form
Track source within your job form and assign points
Evergreen content
Spend $3K-4K one time
Hotels
I like employees with hotel experience because they have:
SpeedĀ
Consistency
Rigorous schedule
Must be polite to clients
Can recruit others for you
Stores/Retails/Washaterias
Hit-or-miss situation, but still another source on your day-to-day:
Have your employees distribute business cards/flyers inside these locations
Incentivize with $250 after 3 months of work
Track it on the webform
š Your Own Workforce is the BEST ROI!
This is by far the best way to grow your workforce. People who come recommended will last longer and be loyal.
Must have incentives $250 after 3 months
Benefits
Solid company culture that will bring more an more people
š¤ Questions on managing cleaning employees?
Email us at support@pipehirehrm.com or visit us at Pipehire to learn how to better manage all your cleaning employees with our hiring software.
As you can see, 2020 was a busy year for Pipehire. And just in case youāre wondering, weāre not slowing down. Below is a sneak peek of what’s to come:
1.Ā New JOB POST cover page and careers page. 2.Ā Training video module. 3.Ā Applicants digital onboarding(e-sign). 4.Ā Pipehire integration with Indeed, Facebook and other job posting services. 5.Ā Plus updates and improvement to the current modules.
This is something we rarely think about when we’re small and only have a handful of clients and cleaners.
When I started my cleaning business 16 years ago, we didn’t care much about hurting an employee with customer feedback, which can be very offensive at times. I wanted to still provide my employee some feedback without disclosing everything, to keep them from getting their feelings hurt. House cleaning is a hard job and the last thing we want is to discourage employees from going into customers’ houses.
I tried speaking to my dispatching software, and asked if there was a way to send filtered feedback to my employees, but they didn’t care about this (they received too many features requests.) This is one of the main problems I’ve noticed with scheduling software – that they only care about scheduling/dispatching, and not employee management.
I put my head to work and told my team to build a solution that would:
Allow me to send feedback easily to my cleaning techs via text message.
Allow me to upload photos of the home, otherwise the employee might not remember which house we were talking about.
Be easy for my office staff to keep updated and be aware of the customer complaints. When there’s too much automation, office staff and sales teams forget to pay attention to problems for the management team to solve.
Pipehire’s Complaint Tracker is easy to use and implement. Here’s how to do it.
Step 1: Quick select of the employee and customer: A preloaded list of employees and customers to eliminate data entry.
Step 2: Pick a category of the complaint and zip code: This will allow you to see a future-complaints analysis report (coming in 2021) to spot problems in your company and be able to do retraining. Entering zip codes will show you problematic zip codes in your city so you can avoid marketing there.
Step 3: Enter the complaint: Enter here the actual feedback provided by the client.
Step 4: Check a box if the field manager checked the job: This is important so you can tell if your field manager is doing his/her job.
Step 5: Did this complaint generate a negative review?: You want to track whether these complaints are generating negative reviews on Yelp or Google, so you can measure the impact on your business.
Step 6 and 7: Status of employee and customer resolution. This is a way to have a status of resolution with the customer as well as the cleaner. If you don’t close a complaint properly, it could bite you in the backside, as it happened to me with a flooded house. So, make sure you track and close all complaints. A good cleaning service will make sure their clients are truly satisfied, not only when things are going well but when there are issues to solve.
Step 8: Only save or be able to send a text message to the employee quickly.
Only Save: Will only save the entry for the owner or manager of the company. The employee will never be notified about this.
Save and Send SMS to Employee: The entry will be saved in the employee record and the employee also will receive a text message with the following info:
Date of compliment
Name of the client
Reason
Description of the compliment
Step 9: Enter a Complaints Score (1 to 5)
The complaints have a score too, 1 being a Light Complaint, such as, “they forgot to clean a mirror” and 5 being a Hard Complaint,like, “they almost killed my dog,” or “they flooded my house,” or something extreme.Ā
We use these scores to feed the leaderboard that rates your employees from 1 to 5, 5 being the best.Ā
How to Avoid Hurting Employee Morale
The little checkbox (see image below): If you uncheck the box, the employee will not see the description or full text of the complaint. We built this because we needed to let the employee know about the compliment/complaint without hurting their feelings. Being able to block the copy from the client if we want to protect the cleaner’s feelings is the key to avoiding discouraged employees.
However, if the employee needs to be let go due to constant performance issues, they’ll be able to read all their feedback if they wish.
1. Interviewing IS a sales process: Sure we need to qualify them to be sure the candidate has the basics (clean background, car, etc) but then it turns into a sales process where we need to show them why they want to work for us / the company so they can stick around longer reducing employee turnover.
2. Pick the right Candidates: Learn what types of people, personalities make good cleaners. Is it the experienced ones? Those that never cleaned homes? Learn once and for all who to hire.
3. Rewarding employees for referrals: We will cover how to offer properly sign up bonuses for them after training and a sign up bonus for anyone they refer.
4. Advertising channels: Learn how to generate leads from other unusual channels like Youtube, Hotels, local events and even handing out business cards at the grocery story for clerks and other helpful people that you meet that may be looking for a different industry.
5. Trust is everything: Make a candidate feel safe from the moment they go into your website and fill the job form. The more information you could give them about how their first day will go, the better. Trust increases conversions and reduces your hiring costs..
6. Personal relationships: After the candidate’s first day, the person who did the interviewing should call them to see how it went on their first day.
7. Building company culture: Avoid having a revolving door of new applicants, work on company culture. This will set you apart from the competition and will help with trust and personal relationship building.
8. How to properly do exit interviews: Find out why they are leaving and fix what needs fixing in the organization. A $25 Amazon card for their time helps to get honest answers from cleaners leaving the organization. Learn to track the offboarding process of each employee.
