One of your most important contractors that you may hire is the person or company that performs your property cleanings between changeovers. Unlike some other contractors, the work that your cleaners do directly affects the experience of your guests. We spend quite a lot of time screening and interviewing cleaning personnel using a pre-defined process. We will talk about this process in this article as well as other tips such as payments, payroll requirements and where to find quality cleaners.
Define Your Requirements
When looking for cleaning services, first define your requirements. It is possible that your requirements will change over time, especially if you expand your property portfolio. When you expand your portfolio, your time may be more limited. In this case, you may want to offload the responsibility to a third party to handle the work for you. If you are starting out with a single property you will likely more able to take on more of the responsibility.
When you go out into the marketplace you will three different kinds of cleaning offerings. Each one of these has its own benefits and drawbacks. The table below summarizes the basic trade offs for each type of service.
Cleaning Service Offerings
| Feature | Cleaning Company | Professional Freelancer | Weekender |
|---|---|---|---|
| Clean more than one property at a time | Yes | No | No |
| Always available, backup provided. | Yes | No | No |
| Standardized Offering | Yes | No | No |
| Experience Level | High | High | Low |
| Custom Cleaning Options | No | Yes | Yes |
| Payroll Management | None | 1099 or Own Payroll | 1099 |
| Cost | High | Medium | Medium |
| Ideal for Owner | 2-4 Properties | 1-2 Properties | 1 property |
In the table above, there are three types of cleaners. The cleaning company, professional freelancers who are full time cleaners and weekenders. The weekenders are people who do cleaning on the side outside of their other jobs.
Be careful with hiring weekenders. They may not have the discipline or experience that you will need to manage your guest changeovers that are on a tight schedule. We we talk shortly about how to interview and what questions to ask. It should be evident by your screening and interviewing which candidates do in fact meet your needs.
If you own more than one property, you may want to hire a cleaning company. If your vacation property rentals changeover at the same time you will need more than one cleaner at the same time. It is possible you can manage this yourself by hiring more than one professional freelancer. Carefully consider the trade offs of both offerings.
When To Hire A Company
In our experience, hiring cleaning companies is convenient and efficient. There are a few trade offs. Cleaning companies will typically charge more than the fair market rate of these services. This may be worth it because they provide additional benefits such as having backups. More importantly, though, cleaning companies will typically have a standard service offering that is clear and defined. In some cases, this may not meet your needs if you need something more custom.
As an example, cleaning service companies we contacted wouldn’t make beds. We therefore could not use these companies in some guest bookings.
Another huge benefit that a company can provide is managing the payroll and candidate selection. If you manage many properties, these benefits can be very helpful.
Create A Guest Service Sheet
Before you seek out cleaning candidates, document exactly what you want them to do. OK, it may sound like this is unneeded (“they are just cleaning right, what’s to know?).
There are a few reason why this is important.
- You want to be clear about what tasks are needed to satisfy the needs of your guest. No confusion.
- You want to be clear that all the tasks need to be completed to a suitable level in the allotted time (don’t take time on excessive work not required).
- You want some tasks to be performed to stage the property for guests. These tasks might not be obvious for typical cleaning services.
To help you in this task, attached below is the Guest Service Sheet we use for our properties.
Where To Find Candidates
Each market where you own a vacation property will have people who service the local market and understand it. These are the channels that we have used in the past.
- Talk to local real estate agents.
- Find candidates in the local newspaper or vacation publication.
- Care.com
We almost exclusively use Care.com now. It is likely that in your local market, there will be many candidates (from each type) that you can potentially hire to clean your property. We suggest that you select your candidates close by to minimize travel time.
Interviewing
Preparing For The Interview
Before you start interviewing candidates, prepare some information about all the tasks that you want the cleaner to perform. For cleaning companies, they will usually have this information already listed out for your inspection. If you are hiring a professional or weekender, you will want to make this list of services concise and clear.
This is important because you don’t want to find out that a task wasn’t performed when you guest points it out. By that time it is too late. Don’t assume anything. The experience level of your cleaner may play into this as they may not yet have learned yet about rental businesses.
As an example, you will likely want some tasks that specify how various consumable supplies (soap, detergent, etc) are managed for each guest. This task is not usually one that would come into play for cleaners that work on your personal residence. Make it clear up front what your expectations are.
The Phone Interview
When you have culled your list of candidates to a manageable number, you can schedule a phone interview with each one. Before you do that send them your Guest Service Sheet. Verify with them on a chat that they are OK with what your requirements are. This is the first step to weed your candidates.
The phone interview for the remaining candidates should be concise and focused. Here is a suggested talk list:
- Talk about their previous work experience that is relevant.
- Talk about the job requirements, review the Guest Service Sheet.
- Talk about your turnover process.
- Review with them the expected work schedule.
- Verify communication channels.
Many candidates will fall out quickly. The most common reasons are that your schedule may not fit into their schedule. For many candidates, this work is a side job and they may have limited bandwidth. Or perhaps, they are already booked too much to offer you what you need. This will become clear in the phone interview.
Another typical screening point is when you explain your guest turnover process. Unlike personal cleaning services, your cleaners need to mange the work into a set service window and keep their focus to complete all the required tasks. This work requirement may not be for every candidate.
Lastly, confirm that they can communicate with you using the methods you want. This is really important. Believe it or not, there are still some people who are not yet comfortable using texting or mobile apps to communicate. Find this out during the phone interview.
The In-Person Interview
When you have a candidate list, schedule an in-person interview. Not everything today is about technology, it is still important to interview and talk with your candidates to confirm that you are comfortable with them and vice versa.
The assumption is that each candidate you interview in person can be hired. It is better for both parties that you extend this invitation for only candidates that you are ready to hire.
Interview each candidate at the property (-ies) that they will work on to help give them a clear picture of the work.
The in-person interview for the candidates should be concise and focused. Here is a suggested talk list:
- Show the property.
- Review schedules again.
- Confirm billing rate.
- Confirm payment method.
Paying Your Cleaners
In every situation we always pay for each cleaning service when the service has been rendered. Before digital payment services became available we would send out physical checks, followed by automated Bill Payment checks drawn from a bank checking account.
We highly suggest that you use digital payment services to make payments. We use PayPal. It is convenient and no cost when you send payments from your account with funds on hand. If you use any online rental services, such as Airbnb, they will also offer an option to receive rent payments using PayPal. This makes is very convenient to pay your cleaners using money directly from your collected rents.
Our cleaners love digital payments because they can get paid immediately without any paperwork or fuss.
Managing Payroll
For cleaning services, someone needs to handle the payroll for the workers. Generally, this will fall into two situations:
- The cleaning company employees the cleaners and they handle the payroll.
- The cleaning person works for many clients (independent contractor) and you issue a 1099 for each cleaner.
If you hire your own cleaner, at what threshold is tax documentation required? For 2018, that threshold was $2,100. This means that if you paid your cleaner this amount or more, you should create a 1099 for them each year that summarizes their payments.
