Assessing Cleaner Skills and Qualities

The role of a commercial cleaning technician

A commercial cleaning technician plays a vital role in helping companies maintain healthy, safe, and productive work environments.

While the role involves the typical dusting, vacuuming, and mopping work, it also includes tasks specific to commercial spaces. This includes floor maintenance, such as waxing, buffing, and regular deep cleaning. Certain public facilities also need food-safe cleaning treatments that comply with local regulations.

Restroom care involves cleaning fixtures, checking to make sure they're in good working order, restocking bathroom supplies, deep cleaning of tile and grout, and applying drain treatments. Some providers also include window cleaning and exterior pressure washing in their service packages.

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Key cleaning skills and abilities

Success in this business requires hiring people with the right skills and character for a commercial cleaning job. You need staff whose cleaning technician traits make them a valued member of the team.

Consider these qualities of a skilled cleaning technician:

Attention to detail
Consistency in effort and punctuality
Honesty and discretion, especially when accessing a client's workplace
Personal pride in work well done
Versatility and problem-solving skills to deal with a variety of challenges on the job
The maturity to work autonomously
Endurance and persistence in getting the job done right
Friendliness and a good attitude when communicating with clients

How to hire employees for a cleaning business

Finding good candidates is the first task when it comes to hiring the best employees for a cleaning business. Ads can be placed on job sites and social media, or an agency who supplies pre-vetted job seekers can be used.

The next task is to review applications and set up interviews. A pre-interview screening may save time, which can then be invested in the candidates that are most likely to be a good fit for the job.

After an interview, background check, and reference check, narrow the candidates down to a short list of the best options. From there, it's a matter of selecting the best technician for the job.

How to hire employees for a cleaning business.

Can tests assess cleaning skills and traits?

Successfully hiring cleaning staff is a matter of finding people with good cleaning technician skills and the right personality traits. These can be difficult to assess from looking at job applications and conducting interviews. Comparing one candidate to another based on application and interview alone is highly subjective and may result in the wrong choice.

For these reasons, giving a set of standardized tests to all applicants will help to fairly and accurately identify the strongest candidates for your team. Many companies administer these tests before interviews, to avoid spending time on people who aren't a good fit for the job.

Personality test

Personality matters when it comes to finding cleaning technicians who will best fit into your company culture and team. You want people with the right mindset, work ethic, and reliability to represent your commercial cleaning business.

Basic academic combination assessment

The fact that job candidates can show a high school diploma no longer ensures that they can read, write, or handle basic math. For a commercial cleaning job, you need to know whether candidates have the basic skills to read directions, track their hours, and interact with customers.

Logic assessment test

Good decision-making skills and the ability to solve problems on the job elevate the best candidates. It can be enormously helpful to use a logic assessment test to uncover how applicants perceive challenges and handle obstacles.

Custom hiring test

Every industry and company is different—you have to focus on cleaning technician skills best suited to your specific work needs and clientele. To identify specialized cleaner traits and abilities, create a custom hiring test.

How to conduct a cleaner skills assessment

After selecting the tests that make sense for your professional cleaning company, you'll want to start a testing protocol. Hire Success^® offers hands-on support and guidance through the whole process, to ensure you hire the best candidates for the job.

Using pre-employment tests to screen candidates for specific commercial cleaning job skills prior to scheduling an interview saves you valuable time. It's important to assess every candidate with the same tests, under the same circumstances, for both fairness and accuracy.