At WorkBright, we’ve worked with many home care companies to improve their employee onboarding process. One recruiting issue our clients run into is finding the right number of candidates. Companies must fill open positions before the home care onboarding process can begin. We wanted to help with some tips for home care recruiting.
Challenges With Home Care Recruiting
Home care recruiting is struggling right now. There is a myriad of job opportunities and not enough qualified candidates. How do you keep up with recruiting needs right now?
You’ve got roles that you need to fill, so you have to become a bit more strategic. The goal should be to concentrate on a few short-term wins while putting some long-term strategies into place.
Short-term wins get you more candidates in the pipeline right now. Some long-term strategies might require more initial effort, but they’ll begin returning dividends for recruiting purposes with some time.
5 Short-Term Strategies For Home Care Recruiting
Let’s take a look at the short-term strategies. What can your home care company do right now to improve the number of candidates you have?
1. Focus On Creating A Stellar Job Ad
First, you’ll want to take a look at your current job description. What are you posting to job sites? Is there a way to provide more detailed information and streamline this description?
Take a look at your job title.
Are you using keywords that home healthcare professionals would be most interested in? Take a look at other jobs in your field to ensure that you are cracking into what employees are searching for.
Draft helpful job descriptions.
Your job description shouldn’t be a sentence long. This is how potential employees will get to know your company and the role you are offering. Add in details like benefits, job duties, pay scales, license requirements, experience, etc.
The more details you add to your job description, the better. As you create your job description, though, make sure you are streamlining it. Reading your description shouldn’t feel like a chore. You’ll want to break up long paragraphs and use bullet points and bolding to break things up.
Get specific about locations.
Are you hiring across several locations? It can be easy to make one listing that targets several locations, but is that the best way to set up your job descriptions or listings? Some employees might be wary about job descriptions that mention a bunch of locations, and you’ll probably want to be better able to determine who is applying to which location. Make sure you are taking the time to separate opportunities when possible.
Don’t overload your job ad with a ton of requirements.
Requirements can help you get the best candidates. Many jobs suffer from too many applicants, so adding a few requirements helps them reduce the flow and create a manageable job listing for recruiters. Caregiving companies aren’t facing this right now. With so many open opportunities, some listings aren’t getting the applicants needed to fill the talent pipeline. Consider going through any requirements you list to make sure candidates need them before applying. Can you provide any of the requirements with some on-the-job training? Instead of tons of job requirements, try looking for these home care employee traits.
2. Spend A Bit Of Money To Boost Job Listings
Many job boards like Indeed allow you to boost job listings by spending a bit of money. With so many job listings (depending on your city), boosting your listings is something you should consider.
Boosting job listings allow your opportunities to show up at or near the top of job search queries. Most job boards like Indeed give you the option to put some money behind the posts you create. According to Indeed, sponsored listings receive up to 5x more clicks. Getting job ad views and clicks up is the best way to bring in more qualified candidates.
Campaigns shouldn’t run on autopilot. Make sure you take a look at your campaigns to ensure that you are spending money wisely. If a campaign isn’t working, don’t be afraid to turn it off. Reinvest those dollars into a campaign that is getting more candidates.
3. Retarget Candidates Who View Your Job Listings
Retargeting is crucial. Many psychologists discuss the power of spaced repetition to improve memory. Retargeting allows you to be top of mind for candidates who saw your position in the past.
If you have a list of emails you’d like to go after, you can quickly get started with retargeting. If you’d like to use the email method, start by checking out your ATS for candidates who have applied in the past or just people you’d like to connect with. You can serve those groups targeted ads that sell your company and convince them to apply. If you can, create the most targeted campaigns based on the type of role they’ll be doing or use imagery you’ve collected while running your business. Make the content personable and endearing to the candidates you are trying to attract.
If you are looking for a bit of a higher lift, try retargeting via the Facebook Pixel. If you have a careers page on your website, you can target people who have viewed that page by installing the Facebook Pixel on your website. It’s a bit complicated, and it will require some cross-departmental work with whoever runs your website. Many home care professionals use Facebook, so being able to target candidates there is crucial. Other social media websites provide pixel or conversion tracking as well, so look into those opportunities to retarget people who view your website.
4. Use Automation To Follow-Up With Job Applicants
Hiring managers often get caught in the weeds when it comes to gathering high-quality candidates. You can automate some of this work to convert potential candidates and schedule interviews. Here are some tips:
- Create some standard responses that you can quickly copy/paste to respond to frequently asked questions.
- Automate follow-ups with candidates to get them to schedule interviews.
- Use a calendar scheduling link to automate the interview scheduling process.
- Create scorecards to predictably and accurately compare potential candidates.
- Add in some additional questions so you can learn more about the candidates without going back and forth.
5. Hire Staffing Agencies To Fill Critical Positions
If you are having trouble tapping into the market to fill critical positions, consider hiring a staffing agency. Staffing agencies work with tons of potential employees. These agencies can help you fill positions on a temp-to-hire basis, part-timers, full-time, and many other work arrangements.
Depending on your needs, you might even go through a specialized home care staffing agency to get even better candidates for your open positions. Staffing agencies have an ample number of candidates, and they know how to recruit others. Staffing agencies might not be your first choice, but they can help with short-term wins if you aren’t getting many candidates.
5 Long-Term Strategies For Home Care Recruiting
Now that you understand how to bring candidates in quickly let’s discuss some long-term plays. As a company, you should be building your home care employer brand to attract higher-quality candidates. Here are some of those ways you can build that brand and reach out to smaller groups of candidates who are excited about your company.
1. Use Niche Job Boards To Find Great Candidates
Indeed, LinkedIn, Monster, and other job boards are amazing for connecting with a plethora of candidates. Sometimes, you get better quality with a select network of talent. Niche job boards are great investments if you are looking for a particular type of candidate. These niche boards might not deliver the sheer volume, but they will deliver quality results if you use them properly.
Job seekers use niche job boards because they don’t have to wade through all the potential opportunities on larger sites. These jobs might have tons of candidates, which can cause their application to get lost in the shuffle.
Niche job boards give employers better insight into the type of candidates they’ll attract. You can tailor the messaging of your job posting to who uses the website. These niche boards typically host better candidates: the potential employees willing to go above and beyond to find jobs that meet their unique skill sets.
Overall, niche job boards are a great asset to sites like Indeed and LinkedIn. These sites might not bring in most of your candidates, but you know you will see high-quality candidates when you invest in these sites.
2. Work On Creating A Powerful Employee Referral Program
Next, let’s cover employee referral programs. Your employees are well-connected. They know other home care staffers from past employers and any education they went through. You can utilize their network and create a win/win situation for you and your employees. You spend less on hires, and if their candidates work out, you can give them a bonus.
According to SHRM, the average cost per hire is $4,129. If you can set up a home care recruiting referral program, you can spend far less. You can easily run your referral program with just the cost of the bonus. If you need something a bit more streamlined, consider creating a Google Form where employees can submit names they refer to your company.
As a home care company, reducing employee turnover is critical. You may want to include a caveat about what counts as an employee referral. Do you need them to stay for a certain period of time before you payout? Employee referral programs only work if you are getting high-quality candidates.
3. Lean On Your Company’s Reputation To Find The Best Candidates
Building a fantastic consumer experience helps your candidate experience. When we talked with Toole’s Garage (a small two-location auto repair shop that is one of our clients), we talked about the importance of reputation. The team wanted to create a hiring and onboarding experience that matched the stellar reputation they built in their community.
If you are a home care company, you’ll do most of your recruiting in your local area. If you get a negative reputation, your candidate stream could dry up quickly. Employees (especially younger employees) want to work for companies that make a difference in the community.
Build your company’s reputation by focusing on getting stellar reviews from customers and employees. If you have a satisfied family, ask them to leave a positive review on your social media pages or Google My Business profile. These small tweaks will make all the difference when you are connecting with employees.
4. Build A Compelling Careers Page
Creating a compelling careers page for home care recruiting is important. At first, many of your candidates will likely come from referrals and external sources like Indeed. If you’ve been working on your consumer and employer brand, you must start leveraging your website to boost candidates.
If you don’t have one already, work with your team to produce a careers page on your website. Let potential employees know about your open positions while educating them about working with your company.
Here are some things to add to your career site:
- Day in the life of a caregiver video to show candidates what they’ll be doing every day.
- Testimonials and pictures from families and the people being cared for, especially if they mention your staff.
- Your home care recruiting hiring process. What should they expect after they hit send on their application? Do they need to do anything right away?
- Company values. If you have any values, make sure those are front and center on your careers page.
- Benefits, diversity statements, and other items you want candidates to keep in mind. Fill out your careers page with all the information potential employees need to know before deciding to work with you.
5. Set Up Booths/Speak To Different Schools/Classes About Home Care
Last we have to talk about filling your talent pipeline with potential candidates. Your talent pipeline should be made up of various employee stages. Some candidates in your pipeline will move quickly, while others take more time to nurture.
One way to build your pipeline of candidates to nurture is by speaking to different groups of students and adults who will enjoy home care work. If you see any high schools, community colleges, or local organizations hosting job fairs, sign up for a booth. You can have real conversations with potential candidates and chat about what your home care organization has to offer.
Make sure you come prepared with some way to keep in touch with these potential employees. If possible, use an iPad or a digital means of collecting information. Trying to read someone’s handwriting isn’t easy/ Creating a quick form with their name, email address, and a couple of quick questions will give you better candidate information.
Creating A Stellar Home Care Onboarding Process Improves Retention
Having a robust recruiting process can fill your talent pipeline, but many organizations struggle with recruiting for the same positions repeatedly. You can’t expect to grow your company when you take one step forward and two steps back with every new hire.
Did you know that building a great onboarding process can improve retention by 82%?
WorkBright helps home care companies streamline their onboarding experience. We can easily collect paperwork and credentials in a mobile-friendly fashion, which is perfect for many home care employees. We also have an integrated background check provider to ensure you are hiring the best candidates.
Recruiting and onboarding are critical parts of the hiring process, so don’t forget to improve how employees are added to your company.
Conclusion: Home Care Recruiting Doesn’t Have To Be Challenging
Home care recruiting is not in the best shape right now. There are many job opportunities that can create a huge talent shortage for even the most well-prepared companies. We hope our article on home care recruiting gave you some food for thought as you build out your recruiting process. Think about your next step. Which of these tips will you start implementing today?