Questions to Ask Before Hiring a Maid
What to ask and what to verify before an arrangement is agreed.
Knowledge · Maid Services
How to Choose a Maid for Your Home
Most households choose on availability and price, then spend the next year replacing people. The arrangements that last are chosen on fit with the actual work. This covers how to work out what you need, what to weigh when choosing, and what makes an arrangement workable for the household and for the person doing the job.
When this is useful
Before You Start Looking
General guidance for the household doing the arranging. It covers how to decide, not what to pay — we do not publish rates and this page will not suggest any.
- You are arranging household help for the first time
- Previous arrangements have not lasted and you are not sure why
- Your household has changed and the existing arrangement no longer fits
- You are comparing options and cannot tell them apart
What households should know
Start From the Work, Not From the Hours
Four things decide whether an arrangement lasts. None of them is the one most households lead with.
1 · Write down the work before anything else
Sweeping, mopping, dusting, utensils, kitchen cleanup, laundry — which of these, in how many rooms, how often. A household that has written this down can describe the job accurately, and a person who knows exactly what the job is can tell you honestly whether they want it. Almost every arrangement that collapses in month two was agreed without this list existing.
2 · Match the person to the work
General household help, kitchen-heavy work and thorough cleaning are different jobs that suit different people. Someone excellent at one may have no interest in another. Being specific about which you actually need — rather than hiring generally and hoping — is the single biggest improvement most households can make.
3 · Verification is a threshold, not a character reference
Identity, address and background checks should be complete before anyone starts. But it is worth being clear about what that does and does not tell you: it establishes who someone is and that nothing adverse is on record. It is not a guarantee of how they will work or of anything about their character, and anybody presenting it as one is overstating it. Nobody can guarantee that. What verification does is remove a category of risk that is otherwise entirely unchecked.
4 · Continuity is worth more than it looks
By month three, someone who has been in your home a while knows where things go, which surfaces need attention, and how your household actually runs. That accumulated knowledge is most of the value, and it resets completely when a person changes. Choosing for an arrangement you can sustain — rather than the one that is easiest to start — is usually the better decision.
Practical considerations
What to Weigh When Choosing
Practical factors only. Nothing here concerns pay, contracts or employment obligations.
Part-time or full-time
Decide from the task list rather than from habit. Many households discover the work is concentrated in a couple of hours and does not need someone present all day.
Timings that suit both sides
A time that works for your household and is realistic for someone to keep every day. An arrangement built on timings that only just work will not survive a changed bus route.
Language and communication
Enough shared language to agree a task list, raise a problem and be understood about something that matters. This is practical, not a preference — most friction traces back to it.
Distance from where they live
Someone travelling a long way daily will be tired, occasionally late, and more likely to leave. Reasonable proximity is a boring criterion that predicts durability well.
Willingness to work to a list
Ask directly whether they are comfortable with an agreed task list and being told when something is not right. Some people are, some would rather work their own way.
Whether it is treated as skilled work
Households that treat this as a professional arrangement — clear scope, notice, courtesy, agreed time off — keep people far longer. That is an observation about outcomes, not a moral instruction.
General guidance vs our service
Where This Guidance Ends and Our Service Begins
Everything above applies however you arrange help. This is the part our maid services placement is actually responsible for.
What Quality Care can help with
- Talking through the work and telling you honestly what hours it realistically needs
- Identity, address and background verification, completed before anyone enters your home
- Matching on the kind of work rather than on availability alone
- Agreeing the task list with both sides before the first day
- Staying reachable locally, and adjusting the arrangement when it needs to change
What we do NOT advise on
- Pay. We do not publish rates, suggest a figure, or advise what anyone should be paid. What a placement costs is agreed case by case
- Employment law, contracts, notice periods or statutory obligations — ask a qualified professional
- What background checking you should carry out yourself, or what any check legally establishes
- Guarantees about any person's honesty or character. We verify identity, address and background. Nobody can guarantee the rest, and we will not pretend to
- Promising that a particular placement will suit your household
We place people into homes and brief both sides before a placement starts. Where a question is legal, contractual or financial rather than practical, we will say so and point you to someone qualified rather than guess in print.
Common questions
Questions Households Ask Us
How do we work out how many hours we actually need?
List the work rather than guessing at hours. Write down what genuinely needs doing and how often — daily, alternate days, weekly — and the hours follow from that. Households that start from a number rather than from the work usually find it wrong within a fortnight.
Is experience essential for household work?
Preferred rather than essential for most general household help. Someone who has run a home well and can work to an agreed task list often does the job better than someone with longer experience and less interest in it. Where a household has particular requirements, say so and treat them as requirements.
Should we choose the cheapest option available?
We do not publish rates and will not advise you on what to pay, so this is not us steering you. What we will say is that arrangements chosen on price alone tend to end early, and replacing someone costs a household more disruption than the difference usually saved.
How long before we know whether it is working?
Give it a few weeks before judging, and agree in advance that you will review at that point. Early friction is usually about an unclear task list or unspoken expectations rather than about the person, and both are fixable in a conversation.