
The Ultimate Guide: 80 Housekeeper Interview Questions
Inviting a new housekeeper into your personal space is a big deal. Finding a cleaner who you can trust and who meets all your needs, can be overwhelming. So, how do you avoid this stress? The folks at Housekeeper.com have put together the ultimate interview guide for you. These 36 questions will help you find the perfect house cleaner for your family!
Starting your housekeeper interview:
Before you start asking the big, complex questions, there are some important steps we recommend taking. Doing the following will help you and your potential housekeeper get comfortable and allow you to get to know one another before asking the tougher questions.
Set the stage: begin by introducing yourself. Let your new possible maid know a bit about you and your space. Let them know that they can take time to pause and think about an answer or ask you to repeat a question if they didn’t hear you the first time.
Help your cleaner feel comfortable: interviews are stressful and can be uncomfortable. Make every effort to be welcoming and positive as your potential housekeeper walks in. Give them a short tour of the space, offer them a glass of water, and ask them if they need to use the restroom.
Make sure your cleaner understands the role you’re hiring for: depending on the situation or the qualifications you are looking for in a cleaner, the person you’re interviewing may respond differently. Open the interview with a brief overview of the job description and your expectations.
Introductory Questions for Maids:
Every professional relationship is built on trust, and to trust someone, you have to know them. Spend some time at the start of your interview getting to know your candidate. Select a few of these interview questions to get to know your housekeeper candidate.
Goal: to gain an understanding of your housekeeping applicant.
Potential Red Flags: watch for evasiveness or overt negativity.
Questions:
General Housekeeping and Cleaning Skills:
The next section is dedicated to evaluating house cleaning skills and assessing housekeeping potential. Make sure to choose the questions you feel are most relevant to your own house!
Goal: ensure your home will be a good fit for the housekeeper
Potential Red Flags: watch for uncertainty - but make sure you’re flexible in what you’re asking!
Questions:
Specific House Cleaning Skills:
Make sure you follow up by asking about the specific skills you’re looking for your new cleaner to have. Having prior experience with these skill is very valuable! Also, make sure to find out if their schedule will align with yours.
Goal: you want to make sure that every task you’re looking to get done will get done! The broader the range of skills your housekeeper has, the easier your life will be, because they will be able to do more.
Potential Red Flags: in general, you should know what you need! If your housekeeper is actively learning new skills, that is likely a good sign. It means that if you need them to do something they’ve never worked on before, they could teach themselves.
Questions:
Homemaking Talents:
Consider asking some of these housekeeping questions to assess your cleaning candidate’s additional talents.
Goal: are there things you didn’t realize, but that your housekeeper can do?
Questions:
Employment History and Professional Goals:
Past work, and future plans, tell a lot about an individual. Ask your housekeeper candidate to share details from previous cleaning jobs, and what their goals are for their future.
Goal: you’re trying to understand if the applicant has a successful history and if they’ve learned from their mistakes.
Potential Red Flags: the applicant places a lot of blame on others and is not taking responsibility
Questions:
Housekeeping Expectations:
It’s crucial that you and your potential hire have aligned expectations. At this point, if all the boxes have been checked, consider talking about salary and availability.
Goal: these questions help ensure you and your potential hire start on the right foot.
Potential Red Flags: ridiculous salary expectations, or a lack of references, might be cause for concern. However, some other countries place less emphasis on references than most North Americans do.
Questions:
Situational Caregiver Questions:
One of the most valuable ways you can assess a house cleaning candidate is to understand what they would do in a specific situation. Ask these questions to see how they would respond under pressure.
Goal: is this someone you can trust at home with your kids?
Potential Red Flags: panicked, or incoherent responses may be cause for concern.
Questions:
Concluding Remarks: wrapping up the interview:
Goal: give your house cleaner a chance to learn more about you
Questions:
You made it! We hope you’ve found a good candidate. If not, search for others on Housekeeper.com
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Editors note: this post was originally published on April 11, 2017, and has been revamped and updated for accuracy and comprehensiveness
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