Image above: Drew, former awesome employee.

Many years ago, when I had my real estate license, I hired three different people (employees) at three different times to help me. All three didn’t work out. Why? Because I didn’t know how to hire good people.

I’ve learned how to hire great people and now I will pass the knowledge along to you.

_______________________________________

First let me start off by giving a caveat. I have found that for every two people I hire, usually one quits fairly quickly. Quickly means anywhere from 1 day to 2 weeks. Usually it’s because they got a better job offer. See: The Rule Of Two

So, as I enter the hiring process, I assume I will need to hire two people. However, I only hire one at a time.

How I get job applications from prospective employees

For now, I use Indeed.com as my hiring platform and post organically at no cost. I place the ad and see what happens. For our small town, this works well.

My criteria for weeding through the applications to find the “best of the best”

Below is my checklist for job applicants. A successful candidate will have all seven traits. Less than seven? Take a hard pass.

If you use this list and make all seven of the criteria non-negotiable, you should have wonderful luck in locating and hiring an exceptional employee.

Important: Don’t allow any fudging on the following criteria. Use all seven to get a truly outstanding employee. I can’t stress this strongly enough. 

1.  They must have one-on-one customer experience.

2.  They can’t have large gaps in past employment unless they were in college.

3.  They can’t be a job-hopper, so f they have had more than two or three jobs in the last year, they get eliminated.

4.  They are a high school graduate. They have to have graduated from high school (not a GED).

5.  They need post high school education of any type: Hair dresser school, university, real estate license, etc. This shows self-motivation and a desire to succeed.

6.  They desire part time work. I can’t offer a new person full-time work.

7.  Setting up the interview – After I tell them I’m super flexible, I ask the prospective employee what day they would like to meet. If they want the interview greater than three days later, don’t bother setting the appointment. If they don’t care enough to fit the job interview into their lives will they be reliable? Just my thought process.

If they ask to interview in less than three days, especially one day: outstanding!

Real life applicants that I didn’t hire based on my hiring checklist:

To put this into action, I’ll give you the results of three real applications I have received. I replaced the first name with the first letter of the name. Below the no hires is information about an employee I hired.

1.  “D”. D is a mix up. He was a delivery driver who had extensive customer experience. Looking more closely, I see two things which eliminate him. He has a two-year gap since he last worked before applying for my job. Also, he received a GED rather than graduating from high school. Taking these last two together tells me a lot about his personality. Is judging someone with this system fair? I don’t really care. I only care about hiring the best of the best. This person wasn’t one of those, so I rejected him.

2.  “S”. S had little customer experience. I had to reject this person.

3.  “K”. K was almost approved. She has very extensive one-on-one customer jobs – server, bartender, hotel front desk. She is also certified as a medical transcriptionist (post high school education of any sort is a plus). Unfortunately, her application stated that she needed full-time work. I can’t provide full-time work so I had to reject her application.

Real life applicant that I did hire:

Criteria #1, Customer experience:

She had one-on-one customer experience: Lagoon amusement park worker and worked for Kohl’s

Criteria #2, No large gaps in work history:

She had no gaps in her work history. She often worked two jobs at the same time.

Criteria #3, Can’t be a job-hopper:

She had three jobs in the past year, but worked two of the jobs at the same time.

Criteria #4, Graduated from high school:

Yes

Criteria #5, Post high school education:

University student.

Criteria #6, Wanted part time work.

Yes

Criteria #7, Set up the interview to be sooner, rather than later.

She set up the interview for about 48 hours after giving her that choice. During the interview, she came across as friendly and intelligent.

Boda Bing, boda boom. I hired her. New, probably awesome employee.

Important: Don’t hire from desperation.

Hiring from desperation is an almost sure way to hire a terrible employee, so take your time. It usually takes me about a week to find a high-quality employee.

This goes hand-in-hand with don’t hire because you will lose a new customer. Either try to schedule the new customer in the future, or add them to a waiting list, or allow them to find a different cleaning service. There are always more customers to be found.

Conclusion:

From June 18^th to June 26^th, 2023 I had 22 people apply for my house cleaner’s job on Indeed.com. Half of the applicants did not meet the seven criteria, so I rejected them. A few received follow up messages from me. I set up three interviews. One didn’t show up, and the other got in too late because of being out of town (I hired someone before this person was in town). One truly special employee was hired (university student, police officer intern, wants to work for the FBI).

I’ve had amazing results in hiring good employees. If you use this information (to the letter) you will too.