[NorthLock Cleaning]

hiya guys

im just about to do my first ever interview to employ people and ive wrote down a list of questions but was wondering if you guys can mention any questions i should be asking?

kind regards

charmaine 

[trevor perry]

ask if they have any previous medical complaints or injury claims also if they have been involved in any work related tribunals.
 

[Pristine Clean]

Did you advertise it with the following wording:

CRB and Credit Checks will be carried out.

I find that this stops alot of time wasters. Tell them also that you will offer them a job on receipt of a clear check.

Will they be working with you or as a key holding position.

I have found that most key holding jobs, they like as they want to rush in and rush out even quicker.

Dave

[martin19842]

hi there

you need to establish some of their work history, is it related to the role that you are advetsing, if so will a previous employer give you a reference.

if they havent worked in cleaning before, why do they want to

they could be looking at this role as a stopgap whlst they find something else, so chck that isnt the case.

find out if they any holidays booked, we are coming into the holiday season, what you dont want is them staritng in day one to be told, they have a weeks holiday booked in a month.

regards

martin

[NorthLock Cleaning]

Hi

Thanks guys for some ideas, this site is so helpful again thank you for taking the time to answer

Charmaine

[murky]

Tell them you will need their bank account and nat ins no's when they start, this will stop them saying 'can you pay me cash'.

Oh and references from previous employers, this will tell you if they have worked in this industry before and the previous firm will tell you that you are welcome to them of if they regret them leaving.

Good luck.

Murky

[pristineclean]

A couple of points, with due respect, in regard to some of the proposed questions.

While I'm not sure that asking prospective employees for their permission to conduct a credit check is a bad idea, I'm not convinced that it's a particularly good idea either. It's fairly settled that financial institutions will conduct this search as a matter of course, since prospective employees are either cash handlers or in a position where an abuse of trust could be catastrophic. 

I struggle to find the relevance in the cleaning industry. My personal view, and it's entirely my opinion, is that this would be an unnecessary and invasive procedure which would have the high potential to embarrass a new team member who's struggled to pay debts in the past. CRB and address checks are an unfortunate necessity but I think that's as far as I'm prepared to go.

When asking medical questions, you should also be aware that if a condition is disclosed which is capable of protection under the Disability Discrimination Act and you decide not to employ that person, you should be prepared to offer robust reasons why you have made that decision and none of them should be related to the disability if that disability can not be viewed as being capable of reasonable adjustment to carry out the work required.

[Pristine Clean]

Hi Pristine,

I understand you may think it is invasive for a credit check to be performed, however you must understand that this leads to other things. If its a general office cleaning then there probably is no need to perform a credit check on the individual.

However we have some of the most prestigeous contracts, where there are extremely valuable items. Not just data, computers these are real valuable items that are almost priceless so a credit check is vital.

Why you may ask? Well it tells us about the candidate. If they are behind in payments and are struggleing it tells us if we can trust the candidate on their own. Or if they are more likely to commit an offence and steal.

If a certain member is credit checked, and has CCJ it does not mean we dont employ. We certainly do not make it know to the rest of the team. Its strictly private and confidential between them and 2 other members of staff.

They have keys and access codes. And we as an employer have a duty to show we have carried out to our full powers that the employee is "trustworthy" in everyway and is suitable to be on site

References are ok, but unless its on headed paper how do you not know that is not just a friend.

Dave

[pristineclean]

Hi Dave

I intend absolutely no offence in my post and accept that we all choose how to captain our ships; there are areas of absolute right and wrong but I don't think this is one of them.

As a loony left liberal  , I can't reconcile a poor credit check with an automatic or even implied assumption of dishonest character and believe that the people I employ, who will generally be within the low income bracket which is particularly vulnerable to irresponsible credit marketing and the consequences thereof, are fully deserving of the principle of mutual trust and confidence which is an implied part of virtually all employment contracts.

My experience in the cleaning industry (which is less than ten years, it has to be admitted) has been peppered with accusations of items going missing from offices and the cleaner always seems to be the first suspect. That used to anger me; now it just saddens me.

I have a responsibility to my clients to ensure that a suitably skilled and honest person is placed in their premises and I have an equal duty, in my opinion, to ensure that person is afforded the same dignity and respect of anyone working therein.

Callum

[Pristine Clean]

Callum,

No offence taken. As you say we all captain our own ships in our own way.

I am in some agreement with you, and you are right that the cleaner on site always gets the blame even if it was not them.

We get this from time to time especially on new contracts. We had certain allagations of our staff on one premises, stealling.

As I had known the employee for many years personally I knew that was not the case. So I set about proving this. With some difficulty and a bit of time. In the end I proved it was one of their own employees.

We did eventually get a letter of written letter saying sorry. There have been several occassions where we had similar. I hate it myself, and understand fully where you are comming from.

Dave