How to find, vet and keep great cleaners

This guide covers the cleaner side of a cleaning business: where to find professionals, how to vet them before their first job, and what keeps the good ones around. I’m Bryan Griffin. I founded Patriot Maids in 2017, I run it from home, and it now operates in 26 states and 40 major cities, all with independent cleaning professionals doing the cleaning.

If you only take one thing from this page, take this: in a referral model, recruiting is your quality system. Almost everything you get from a cleaner is decided before they take their first job.

Recruit before you advertise

I recruit 5 to 8 cleaners, registered and available, before I spend anything on customer ads.

The reason is simple. If you have fewer than that, you’ll sell jobs you can’t fill. Then you’re cancelling on customers, and your reviews take the damage. Reviews are the hardest thing in this business to rebuild. A cancelled first cleaning doesn’t just lose one job. It costs you the review that would have brought in the next customer.

“Registered and available” means more than names on a list. It means professionals who have been vetted, have agreed to how you work, and actually have open time in their week. Independent professionals control their own schedules, so you need enough of them that someone is free when a booking comes in. I go deeper on this in how many cleaners you need before advertising.

The same rule applies when I open a new city. Demand without cleaners just means cancelled jobs and bad reviews.

Where good cleaners come from

My first cleaning partner came from a Facebook group. She was already looking for work. My pitch was simple: I know how to market, I have this new company. Then I explained the revenue share, and she said yes.

That’s still the heart of it. You bring the customers, they do the cleaning.

Start where cleaners already are:

Facebook groups and local community groups. This is where a lot of independent cleaners organize and look for work.
Job boards and classifieds, like Indeed and Craigslist. These give you volume.
Referrals from cleaners already working with you. Over time this becomes the best source, because a working professional won’t refer someone who embarrasses them.

Job boards give you volume. Community groups and referrals give you quality. Post continuously at a low level instead of in a panic when someone leaves, so you always have a candidate or two in the pipeline. The full process is in how to find and screen house cleaners.

A job post that filters, not just attracts

Most cleaning job posts are written to get as many applications as possible. That’s the wrong goal, because every unqualified applicant costs you a screening call.

A good post says plainly:

What the opportunity is, and that they’re an independent professional who keeps their own clients
The hard requirements: paid residential experience, references, own transportation, own supplies, a smartphone
What you handle for them: advertising, phone calls, quotes, scheduling, billing and customer service
How the money works, in plain terms, so working cleaners can do the math before they apply
That they set their own schedule

Add one honest line that turns away the wrong people: this isn’t for someone who needs a full week of guaranteed work right away, because volume builds over time. You’ll lose some applicants. The ones you lose are the ones who would have left frustrated a month later.

There’s a full structure, plus where to post it, in how to write a cleaning job post that attracts professionals.

My vetting baseline

You don’t know a new cleaner, so you can’t trust them yet. That’s normal. If trust is your only barrier, you’ll never bring anyone on. So instead of trust, I use baseline indicators. Information is power.

Here’s what I check before anyone gets a job:

A phone call where I explain how the referral model works, so there are no surprises later
An application covering supplies, reliable transportation, service radius, years cleaning, team size, and anything they won’t do
At least 2 years of residential cleaning experience. Cleaning a hospital or a hotel isn’t the same as cleaning someone’s home.
3 professional references from past cleaning customers who can speak to their work
3 personal references who can speak to their character
Some presence of their own: a website, a social profile, reviews, or listings on lead sites
Their own general liability insurance
A background check
A contract with a non-solicitation addendum

The best partners already treat cleaning as a business. They have their own clients, maybe a website, maybe they spend on advertising. What I avoid is someone who worked some other job and decided overnight they want to clean. Cleaning is hard on the body, and it’s a hard skill to learn. You can usually tell the difference during the interview.

References and the interview

Reference checks carry more weight than anything else, especially when you’re recruiting in a city you don’t live in. I do my interviews over the phone or Zoom. You don’t need to meet cleaning professionals in person.

Skip “would you recommend them?” Ask the questions that reveal something: how often they rescheduled, how much notice they gave, and what happened the one time something went wrong. The reschedule question tells you the most, because a cleaner who cancels on their clients without notice will do it to yours. Move quickly, too. Good independent cleaners are weighing several options at once, and a slow process loses them.

In the interview itself, use situations, not resume questions. What do you do when you break something? When a customer is upset after you’ve left? When you’re running late? You want someone who solves problems the way they would with their own private clients.

I also ask what they make right now. Your arrangement has to hold up against that, or they’ll treat your jobs as filler.

One caution. In a contractor model, how you treat people matters as much as the paperwork. Orientation should cover how jobs are offered and accepted, how payment works and how issues get resolved. It shouldn’t turn into teaching them how to clean, because they’re the experts. Read more in independent contractor or employee. This is general education, not legal advice. Check your state’s rules.

The first job is the real test

Once the baseline checks out, I send a new partner to a test clean on an easy real job, like a 1-bed, 1-bath. Keep it easy first.

The customer’s feedback is the ultimate test. I’m not standing in the house watching them work. The customer tells me how it went.

If it’s not a good fit, be honest with them. Don’t string them along. That’s better for you, better for them, and better for your customers.

Solo cleaners or teams

Either works. I’m happy with solo cleaners and with teams.

A solo cleaner can usually handle about a 2-bed, 2-bath in a reasonable time. Once you get to bigger homes, around 4 beds, 3 baths and 2,500 square feet, one person usually isn’t enough. A very experienced solo cleaner might manage it. Someone with a couple of years of experience will take longer than the job needs, and that starts to annoy the customer.

So it helps to have some teams on your roster for the larger homes. I don’t promise customers a set number of people for a job, though. That keeps you from making a promise your cleaners can’t always keep.

What keeps good cleaners, and why they leave

What keeps cleaners is getting paid for the work, plus flexibility. A lot of cleaners have their own families, their own clients, and just life. Booking software lets them set their own schedule. And as independent contractors they have to have that control anyway. You can’t tell them to work a set schedule, so it isn’t really a perk. It’s how the model works.

Be upfront about the money from the first conversation. When I explain it, I walk them through how a booking comes in and how their pay for each job shows up front in the provider app. Tips go to them. They can choose which jobs to take, and I tell them to only take what they’re comfortable with.

When good cleaners do leave, it’s usually one of three things:

Not enough jobs, either because the market didn’t work out or because marketing in that area slowed down
The revenue share doesn’t suit how they run their business, which they knew going in
Their own schedule fills up, and they don’t need your jobs anymore

The first one is the one you control. Steady job flow is how you keep people. That’s also why I lean on fair pay and good treatment more than contracts. A non-solicitation addendum helps, but it’s hard to stop someone determined to take clients. If you offer good pay, jobs keep coming in and you treat people well, the reason to do it is low. Trust goes both ways.

Where to go next

Work out how many cleaners you need before advertising in your area.
Write your ad with how to write a cleaning job post that attracts professionals.
Run the full process in how to find and screen house cleaners.
When your cleaners are ready, move on to getting customers.