I need help hiring the right person. I am horrified though.

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I need some help. I am horified at the thought of hiring a complete stranger, but I need help really bad. My help right now is part time and they aren't worth a damn. They are just convenient and kinda know how I like things done. I am thinking about placing an ad online on some job sites and would like your opinion. Also I would pay the right person a great salary (commission), but I need them to work for a kinda cheap hourly wage to start so I can see if they are going to be a good fit for my business. I was think 8 dollars an hour and work them 40 hours a week to start. If they prove their worth to me, I would raise their hourly pay when working with me and pay a percentage of other jobs they do. Really I need somone to prep my truck, pass out fliers, and help me on jobs, but still be able to run a truck when the time came for that.

Well here you go.

I need a great employee to work along my side. I specialize in cleaning carpet, upholstery, tile and grout, and primarily clean residential homes in the East Memphis and Germantown area. We use professional truck mounted systems and provide only the best service for our clients. We are not like Stanley Steemer or any other franchise carpet cleaning company. No heavy up-selling or bait and switch tactics used here, just honest professional service. Also we don't clean apartment complexes or filthy homes. We focus on cleaning nice homes and have high minimum charges to weed out price shoppers. To put it simply we are the best and you need to be the best as well. I am looking for a hard working individual that doesn't mind getting a little dirty and sweaty. This is hard work, but the reward is well worth it. You don't need any experience. You just have to be smart and educated enough to learn my systems. I am not training the competition so to speak. It takes a lot of my time, money, and energy to train someone. So you will be required to sign two no compete agreements. You can't leave after being trained to start your own company or go work for another one as well. Your job duties will be to do some marketing for me, clean the trucks and make sure they are stocked and ready to go, and help me perform cleaning for homes and businesses. Your pay will be hourly and will increase after a probation period. If you are a good fit for my business, then I will raise your pay and you will make very good money. Just note that it will take about 6 months for you to learn everything. Some people may learn a lot faster though.
Job qualifications:

- No experience is necessary as I prefer to train someone myself either male or female.

- You will be required to do some walking going door to door a few days a week

- You must be very motivated and not lazy.

- You must have a valid drivers license and clean driving record.

- You must be able to work nights and weekends and be on call for emergencies.

- You must be able to perform physical labor for several hours at a time. So you must be fit and in shape. This type of work requires strong hands and arm strength. You will develop this strength over time and the job will become much easier.

-You must have good communication skills and be personable and look presentable. This means you must be well groomed and professional. Please no slang. Wear your pants up where they belong, no face piercings etc. Dress for success as some people say.
Please include the following in your response.

- Name
- Age
- Sex
- Where you live
- Education level
- Past job experience
- Why you think you would be good at this job.
- Picture. Please include a recent picture of yourself
 
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After thinking about it I have decided to hire a cute professional girl to work for me. I will have her do marketing primarily but if I need help pulling hoses on jobs or vacuuming she can do that as well. I will pay her a weekly salary for the marketing, and hourly for working along side me. Plus I think my customers will like this arrangement. Now I need to go and socialize with some beautiful women to find the right person. I will hire a cleaning only person later.
 

Brian R

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When you interview the person let them sell you on them. If they don't try hard to get the job, they won't try hard ON the job.

"How you do anything is how you do everything".
 

Ken Snow

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Thise first three things you ask them to include will get you in a lot of trouble with the DOL & EEOC. Yoiu can;t legally ask age, gender or sex, and ask them where they live could be construed as racist as I can't imagine you have a valid busioiness reason for asking the question. Just ask for a complete resume and you willl get a sense of most of the questions if you care about them, but do not put them in writing or you could be looking at serious trouble.
 

Steve Toburen

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Ken Snow said:
These first three things you ask them to include will get you in a lot of trouble with the DOL & EEOC. You can't legally ask age, gender or sex ...

Ummm, Daniel, I don't think you can ask for a photo either. Listen to Ken. Frankly, the less said in writing the better re: job requirements. Instead, just profile the job non-emotionally (I think you may have been tired and frustrated when you wrote the above job description and it shows!) and weed out people through their responses both in their resume and your pre-interview phone screening. It is a lot harder to get yourself in trouble with a verbal question than a written statement even though you still should be extremely cautious.

Steve
www.StrategiesForSuccess.com

PS Daniel, if it makes you feel any better you are not the only one out there going through this process. Probably half of all the "cries for help" I receive in my "Steve's Bleeding Hearts Club" page on our SFS site directly relate to employee woes. For example, just read what this Houston area carpet cleaner had to say: (And no, it wasn't Howard P writing in!)

http://www.strategiesforsuccess.com/207 ... y-hair-out
 

Steve Toburen

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Lee Stockwell said:
Awesome site.

Thanks, Lee. The SFS site is a free, no spam and "no-snake-oil-selling-allowed" zone. (Ya, sure, Jon-Don probably hopes to get some gentle PR out of the site but you don't HAVE TO buy anything if you don't want to.)

Steve
www.StrategiesForSuccess.com

PS Daniel, they say misery loves company! :) If so, check out this poor fellow from Iowa. (It took me two BHC posts just to reply to his issues.)

http://www.strategiesforsuccess.com/169 ... what-to-do

http://www.strategiesforsuccess.com/169 ... do-part-ii
 

XTREME1

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Steve t wrote on the site
I was a successful lone wolf

Please cease the use of the intellectual property of Myself, Dave Rampage. I am the lone wolf and my Mother Inlaws lawyers will get you.

Dave Rampage on Joe Bristors computer on Greg Crowleys account as Matt Murdock
 

ACE

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danielc said:
After thinking about it I have decided to hire a cute professional girl to work for me. I will have her do marketing primarily but if I need help pulling hoses on jobs or vacuuming she can do that as well. I will pay her a weekly salary for the marketing, and hourly for working along side me. Plus I think my customers will like this arrangement. Now I need to go and socialize with some beautiful women to find the right person. I will hire a cleaning only person later.


Yikes! I have heard that before. Hiring decisions made because you are thinking with the wrong organ don’t work out. I do understand to the concerns you have about hiring a lead employee. I will have to add a full time employee by spring. As small as my company is this person could make or break my business. Hard working, ideal employees likely already have jobs. Your best bet might be to find someone you are impressed with and try to recruit them. If you don’t have luck with that run a blind box ad in the paper and ask them to submit a resume. This will allow you to screen applicants without having to talk to a bunch of idiots. Put as much effort as you can into checking someone out (references, criminal background, drug screen) before making a job offer.
 

juniorc82

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you better start them for at least 10- 11 dollars per hour. minumum wage is up to 7 so 8 dollars aint gonna attract anyone but the bottom feeders
 

Jack May

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Daniel, definitely listen to people like Ken that no doubt have hired (and fired) more than most of us ever will.

I've only done a little of it myself but a few tips I've picked up off those senior to me have been.

Hire the smile and teach the skill. Sometimes easier to train from new than REtrain to your way of doing things.

Secondly, ask for something a little out of the ordinary. In this day, everything is electronic. So ask them to write a HAND written covering letter selling themselves and POST/DROP OFF their CV with letter attached.

This will really give you a quick result of those that WANT the job (A bit of extra effort requred) and also if they can follow a simple order (hand written/mail or drop off verses 2 clicks of a mouse and they can't remember which job it was when you call them to invite them in for an appointment.)

The number of people that will fail this simple test will weed out the vast majority of your potential list. If they can't follow a simple instruction like that, will they be any more responsible once working for you.

John
 

Ken Snow

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Couldn't agree more with John~ hire the smile. Carpet cleaning is rerally fairly straight forward and easy to train. Being a nice person and presentable to customers is not easily trainable, people either have it or they don't.

Ken
 

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