With the Home Care Industry Facing High Turnover, How Can Agencies Improve Recruitment?
With the home care industry facing a caregiver turnover rate of 65% for the past three years, agencies constantly grapple with challenges during recruitment. However, there are ways to improve staffing outcomes without increasing expenses—by effectively tracking essential measurements.
Understaffed agencies often have no choice but to decline client cases, leading to decreased revenue and tighter budgets for advertising and recruitment. This cycle exacerbates inadequate hiring. The solution lies not in more financial resources but in better data utilization.
Below is our 5-item scorecard for improving caregiver recruitment:
Measurement 1: Applicants to Interviews Ratio
Agencies who interview a smaller percentage of their applicants generally have a higher acceptance rate and better retention.
| Importance: This measurement helps determine the quality of applicants entering your hiring process. Calculate this ratio by dividing the total number of applicants by the total number of those you choose to interview. |
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| Improvement Strategy: Make your application process more attractive. Respond to applications or applicant concerns outside regular hours (20% of applicants apply on weekends). Use a mix of paid and organic job listings across platforms to maximize visibility. |
Measurement 2: Total Time to Hire
When caregivers apply for a job, they're generally ready to start, so agencies that move quickly win out.
| Importance: A lengthy hiring process often leads to losing potential hires. |
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| Improvement Strategy: Reduce the hiring timeline to a maximum of 9 days (from the average 16). Cross-train staff in interview techniques for flexibility. Simplify applications to keep candidates engaged and interested. |
Measurement 3: Time Between Job Offer and First Day
Just making the offer isn't enough. If you make the offer but there's a long time until the start date, you can lose the candidate.
| Importance: Delays in onboarding tasks or communication can cause new hires to drop out. Effective communication post-offer is crucial for maintaining engagement. |
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| Improvement Strategy: Establish clear communication with new hires. Provide a post-offer outline detailing next steps and what to expect during their first few weeks. |
Measurement 4: Number of New Hires
This measures your "marketing" for recruiting caregivers. Which events or job postings work the best.
| Importance: Tracking new hires helps evaluate recruitment efficiency. With a predicted annual need for 81 hires, given the average turnover rate, this data is critical. |
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| Improvement Strategy: Regularly assess the number of applicants vs. hires from each job ad to identify the most effective strategies for attracting long-term employees. |
Measurement 5: Cost Per Applicant and Per Hire
Since you will need to recruit constantly, you need to be efficient.
| Importance: Evaluating cost per applicant and hire reveals recruitment efficiency. High costs in this area may indicate a need to review your processes. |
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| Improvement Strategy: Use A/B testing for job ads to discern which advertisements perform best. Analyze costs vs. outcomes monthly to identify effective recruitment strategies. |
Make Your Agency Irresistible to Caregivers
To succeed in the job market, agencies must improve their hiring processes and focus on their online reputation. Around 75% of job seekers research a company’s reputation before applying. Positive feedback, word-of-mouth referrals, and reviews are powerful recruitment tools.
Expert Insights from Nick Bonitatibus
We recently hosted Nick Bonitatibus on the Home Care Heroes and Day Service Stars Podcast to discuss this topic. Learn more here or click the player below to hear our conversation with Nick.
Caregiver Recruiting Software
One way to streamline your hiring process and track measurements more effectively is by using caregiver recruiting software (also called Caregiver Applicant Tracking Software). This organizes your job descriptions, postings on job boards, resumes received, interviewing and hiring process. Also, it more than pays for itself by posting your jobs on Indeed, LinkedIn and 14 other popular job sites for free. Learn more here.
Ankota's mission is to enable the Heroes who keep older and disabled people living at home to focus on care because we take care of the tech. If you need software for home care, EVV, I/DD Services, Adult Day Care centers, or Caregiver Recruiting, please Contact Ankota.
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