Prefer to listen? Listen to this article instead → This post is based on my YouTube video of the same name.
Hiring the wrong cleaner can cost you way more than a bad day. It can wreck your reputation, drive away great clients, and make you question why you started a cleaning business in the first place. But when you hire the right person, everything changes. You get your time back, you finally have room to grow, and you stop being stuck in the field every single day.
If you’ve already made a bad hire, I want you to hear this: it doesn’t mean you’re bad at hiring. It just means you haven’t had the right system yet.
So here is the exact hiring strategy I used to build my multi six-figure cleaning business — including two extremely popular hiring practices I want you to stop using immediately.
The Myth That’s Costing You Great Employees
Let’s crush a myth in this industry first: “nobody wants to work anymore.” That’s complete garbage. People want and need to work. They just don’t want to work for bad businesses — and can you really blame them?
Think about why you started or grew your own cleaning business. You wanted to feel good about your work, make more money, and get more personal and financial freedom. At a psychological level, every human wants the same things — a balanced life, work they enjoy, and support for their own goals.
So how do you attract and retain the best cleaners? You create an environment they’re excited to work in, one they can actually thrive in. Plenty of entrepreneurs are great at marketing and sales but still struggle with hiring. The good news is that hiring is a skill like any other. It can be learned, and it’s simpler than most owners think once you get a few key things right.
Two Hiring Practices You Need to Stop Today
Before I get into what works, let’s talk about two common practices that actively hurt you.
Group interviews. This practice traces back to World War II, when the US military needed a fast way to identify officer candidates, so it built assessment centers with group exercises to see who stood out. Big corporations later adopted the idea, and now HR leaders and online gurus call it a hiring “hack.” But we’re not going to war — we’re cleaning toilets. Group interviews were built to surface leaders, dominant personalities, and persuasive talkers. They were never designed for a role that requires real humility, like being a cleaning professional. Using them eliminates your best prospects. None of the incredible people on my team — some who’ve worked with me for over seven years — would have stood out in a group interview. Yet they’re my hardest workers, and 100% trustworthy.
Secret test cleans. I’ll keep this short: this isn’t leadership, it’s avoidance. The usual justification is labor-law compliance, since you can’t “train” a subcontractor. But if you’re not confident in someone’s skill level, you shouldn’t be hiring them as a subcontractor in the first place — hire them as a legal employee instead. It’s not nearly as expensive or complicated as owners assume, and plenty of cleaning businesses run legal employees successfully (I currently use a mix of both contractors and employees, and always recommend checking your local labor laws). Beyond the legal issue, trust is the foundation of any employer relationship, and secretly testing someone without their knowledge starts that relationship off wrong. It damages your reputation with applicants and clients alike. If you genuinely feel you need to evaluate someone hands-on, do a paid working interview instead. I don’t even do that anymore — I’ve gotten good enough at spotting what I need during the interview itself.
Build the Foundation Before You Hire
The strength of your business determines the strength of your hires. If you’re familiar with my channel, you know I talk constantly about value-based pricing and finding recurring clients with high lifetime value — and hiring is a big part of why. To pay your team well, you have to charge your clients appropriately. You can’t charge $25 an hour, pay your staff $12.50, and expect that to scale.
Once your pricing and recurring-client base are solid, you have the power to find incredible people and pay them well — which leads to retention most cleaning business owners can only dream of. This is also where having your operations documented and systemized matters: a platform like CleanRev can help you build out the checklists and recurring schedules that make training a new hire — and holding them to a consistent standard — far easier than doing it from memory.
What You’re Actually Hiring For
I do like some prior cleaning experience, but that’s not primarily what I’m hiring for. I’m hiring for humility and culture fit. Cleaning skills can be taught quickly. Attitude, mindset, and behavior cannot. If you’re not familiar with the term, think of culture as the internal version of your brand — your brand is customer-facing, your culture is staff-facing, and both shape your reputation. One bad hire can damage your culture fast, so protect it.
Where to Find Great Candidates
I source candidates from two main places:
- My own network — friends, family, my existing client base, and even my current staff. Put the word out everywhere that you’re hiring.
- Indeed, which has worked well for me for years.
Not every lead will pan out, and that’s fine. The goal is a repeatable system that consistently attracts new candidates and filters out the wrong ones quickly. Write your job postings to attract reliable, responsible people looking for stable, long-term work — a professional tone that signals “we’re serious about doing good work here” will weed out the flaky applicants before you ever get on the phone.
The Qualification Process That Filters for Culture Fit
You don’t need to talk to everyone who applies — that’s a waste of time. Instead:
- Phone screen the strongest applicants first. You’re really just testing responsiveness and communication, and getting a sense of what they want from a job.
- In-person interview for the best of those — I always do mine at a local coffee shop.
Skip the typical interview questions like “where do you see yourself in five years.” Ask questions that reveal who someone really is. One of my favorites: “What do you like about cleaning?” It surfaces character, not rehearsed answers.
Watch for red flags — showing up late, being vague about past jobs, blaming old managers, not providing references, or giving off “I just need any job” energy. One red flag alone might mean nothing. Two or three is a no for me.
When I feel good about someone, I explain what I can offer, let them know there are documents to sign, and tell them I always run background checks. Once that clears, congratulations — you’ve hired someone for your team.
The Basics Never Die
That’s the whole strategy: what not to do, and what to do instead. If it sounds simple, that’s because it is. Owners tend to overcomplicate hiring when, at its core, it’s just about being human. Build the environment we talked about — fair pay, real trust, and a culture worth staying for — and you’ll attract great people and keep them for years, not weeks.
Written by Bethany Jean Montlary — CEO of CleanRev Inc. Bethany has built multiple 6- and 7-figure cleaning businesses over 25+ years and coaches cleaning business owners on her YouTube channel, The Professional Cleaner. Want her job posting template, interview questions, and full onboarding workflow? Work with Bethany →