We are looking for experienced and energetic Housekeepers to help create a clean, warm, and comfortable environment for our Residents. The Housekeeper will clean Resident apartments, restrooms, common areas, as well as the office and surrounding areas according to housekeeping standards and procedures.
Qualifications: A pleasant and courteous demeanor when dealing with peers, supervisors, guests, residents, and management. Must be very thorough with cleaning practices. Experience providing cleaning services in the restaurant, healthcare, hospital, hotel, hospitality, or similar industry is required. Experience working with a senior population is preferred. Ability to work in a fast-paced environment while dealing with a demanding customer. Must be able to communicate in English, including keeping inventory and filling out supply order forms.
Location: El Barrio, New York
Department: Housekeeping
Starting salary: $10.00 an hour
Position type: Full-time shift: 8:00 a.m.–4:00 p.m. (M–F)
PREPARING FOR THE INTERVIEW:
HOUSEKEEPING
Your future employer will be interested in knowing about your work experience. It is best to be specific and give concrete examples about why you enjoy working as a housekeeper. Remember to smile and show your enthusiasm for housekeeping. When answering the interview questions, think about what tasks you would be happiest doing the most. Arrive to the interview prepared with answers.
Examples of interview questions and answers
Interviews require practice. Find a volunteer who will ask you the practice interview questions so you are prepared to answer them. Below is an example of how to answer. Use it as inspiration.
Common interview questions
What housekeeping tasks do you enjoy the most?
What housekeeping tasks do you enjoy the least?
What is the most rewarding part of housekeeping?
What skills do you have that make you right for this job?
What housekeeping skills could you improve on?
What do you enjoy most about housekeeping?
Example answer: I enjoy many aspects of housekeeping. I feel immense satisfaction when I have the opportunity to organize a messy room. This includes making the bed and folding the sheets. It is very relaxing to fold sheets. I find it to be quite therapeutic. I want people to return to their rooms and see the difference I have made in their lives!
SESSION FIVE
Before you say something, you have to try my arepitas de yuca. I fried them for you this morning. Guayé la yuca and then I mixed it with one egg and some salt and anís. So simple. But not many people make it like me. See how it’s crispy outside and the inside is juicy? You like them?
No, I didn’t go to the interview last week. Did they call you to tell you that? Interesting.
It was in El Barrio! First, El Barrio is too far. I saw the map. To get to 100th Street and First Avenue, it’s two trains, one bus, and many, many blocks to walk. I know we agreed that I will interview for jobs less than five miles away. But it’s not the miles, it’s the time. From here to there it’s more than one hour! It’s no good for me. Too many people depend on me.
Who? The children of ángela and Hernán that I take to their activities after they get out of the school.
Yes, I know this is only temporary until they leave. But now they depend on me.
And there is La Vieja Caridad, that leaves me messages in my machine, exactly at 4:45 p.m. every day.
Cara, you home?
I’ll translate for you: Cara, did you cook for me today?
Nobody eats at five! But it’s no big thing to prepare dinner for her.
Yes, yes, come down, I tell her. I never say no to La Vieja Caridad. If I make it to ninety years, maybe a vecina will do the same for me.
Anyways, she eats like una pajarita. I make the grilled fish, very plain, only a little salt and limon, the arroz jasmine only, because if not the cheap arroz make everybody inflate like a whale. I cook the vegetables so they melt in the mouth. She can’t chew. And every night she has to drink a cold beer. One entire bottle. She says it’s her secret to a long life.
When La Vieja Caridad eats she likes to talk, so we talk. Yesterday was the anniversary of her friend’s death that had lived with her for many decades. She said to me, I should’ve not lost so much time being afraid of her dying.
But that’s normal, I told her. It’s difficult to lose your friend. Everybody gets afraid.
We should be more like the animals, she said. The animals don’t think of the future or the past; they pay attention to what is happening in the present. It is enough to sit with a person. To brush the hair. To massage the feet. To bring them what they need. We can’t fight what we can’t control. She said she missed her friend’s last breath because she was busy with the hope. She should have been breathing with her.
I worry about La Vieja Caridad because I can smell the cancer on her, just like with Glendaliz, but she won’t check the blood. But she is right; I can’t make her check. Learn this from me: If you try to fix something that somebody do not want to fix they will hate you for it. To offer help is OK. To push, no.
So you see, if I go to work in El Barrio, I can’t make dinner for her. And that’s no good for the present. Ha!
Why you can’t help me find a job close to my apartment, like in the hospital? That way I can walk to work. Hernán told me there was an opportunity to work in the hospital. Not in his kitchen; in another kitchen in another building. You heard about that job? No? He doesn’t even know if they advertise because, I told you, for everything around here you need a key. Can you find out for me? Because I need your help for this.
Maybe you know Hernán. No? Everybody knows Hernán. He’s bald like an egg, with hair that grows out his ears. Not ugly. Just not the kind of man that you would be wow, right away.
In the hospital, Hernán is loved. I don’t recommend hospital food to nobody. I don’t know how people feel better drinking that hot and dirty water they call soup. Everybody knows for the sopa to be good you have to boil the bones. The nutrients are in the bones. You need the salt to activate it. A lot of garlic and onion. Some carrots or auyama and celery for sure. And when it’s hot-hot and it has been boiling for an hour, you strain it. And if you want to go crazy put a little vinegar to make it alive, but also vinegar cures everything. It makes a difference when you cut the vegetables and think, This sopa is going to make you feel better. Sometimes I ask myself, with all the schools people go to, all the money in this country, why people don’t know how to make a good sopa. It’s sad to heat a soup from a can or mix powder into hot water.
Learn this from me: Eating food from the streets will kill you. It’s dead food.
And this is why Hernán is especial—in the good way. Hernán’s cooking is better than any restaurant. Even when the hospital says no to all his ideas, because dique the budget, he knows how to resolver. He saves the scraps from the vegetables and puts them in the caldo. Nothing is wasted in his kitchen. He makes the hospital food good because he cares.
And you know why Hernán is such a good cook? Because I invent in the kitchen and I teach him everything I know. That’s right!
Write that down: Cara Romero likes to invent.
I am not surprised that that test said I am an Innovator. I’ve been thinking about that test. How it says I’m good at helping and I’m good to organize. And I think that’s true about me.
An example? Hmm. I have many examples of when I organized in the factory. I will tell you this one. Every day, we had to make a certain number of lamparita pieces. Then one day, they increased our numbers. El jefe had pressure to meet the orders. He didn’t want us to talk, because if we talked, or listened to the radio, we were more slow. I was always good with my numbers but Lulú, no.