According to the Home Care Pulse (now called Activated Insights) survey, the turnover in caregiving jobs is over 60% every year and over 50% of those caregivers leave in their first 90 days. This makes caregiver recruiting an essential skill for success (and even survival) in home care. The same is true in disability services for people with Intellectual and Developmental disabilities (although they’re generally called Direct Service Workers (DSWs) or Direct Service Providers (DSPs)). It also applied to Adult Day Care Center workers (usually called staff). The bottom line is that “caregiving” services of every type don’t stay in their jobs for a very long time.
Why is Caregiver Attrition so High?
Before jumping into this, let me say that there are wonderful caregivers who have the skills and a heart for caring and who stay in their jobs for a long time. But…
A lot of would be caregivers (and statistically the majority) are not there because the have a heart for caring or for servicing folks with disabilities. They need a job to make money and there are a lot of caregiver jobs out there. They literally are likely to be comparing a caregiving job with a role at the Amazon warehouse or McDonalds and might aspire more for a bartending job. But then they see the caregiver job and they figure that it will be easy, so they give it a try. Then they go through some training that all seems fine in the classroom environment and they they get assigned to a client. Sounds perfect so far, but then the reality sets in… the client might be mean or ornery, they house might not be on the cover of Better Homes and Gardens, and hours are a challenge. Specifically, home care recipients and their families have a budget (or if they’re Medicaid or Veterans Administration (VA) clients there’s an authorized amount of care, and that might be fewer hours than the caregiver “wants” to work.
Let’s delve into “wants to work.” For a lot of caregivers it’s more of an equation like I need to make $550 a week after taxes, then they talk to the home care recruiter who says “we have so much demand that hours won’t be a problem.” But hours are a problem… If the home care agency has to pay overtime, they’re almost definitely losing money on those hours, and if you sign up and go through your training and you get assigned to a 30 hour a week client then your take home pay is falling well short of the $550 you need and other options start looking better.
Sorry for the harsh reality, but this is the battle.
Key Features of Home Care Recruiting Software
The most important things you need in caregiver recruiting software are as follows:
- Automated Job Posting: With good caregiver recruiting software you can type up a job description and post it in a lot of places, such as on Indeed, ZipRecruiter, your own website, LinkedIn and more. In fact Ankota’s caregiver recruiting software posts on all of those locations plus another 14 for no additional fee. But then you may find that a site like MyCNAJobs.com is doing a better job attracting caregivers. Our caregiver recruiting software can’t get your posting onto MyCNAJobs for free, but instead they can get your resumes there (and to more than 1,000 additional sites) for an additional fee.
- Applicant Tracking System (ATS): An ATS gives you a single “inbox” for all your resumes coming in, and a way for all of the team to review resumes, decide who to interview, record phone screen notes, track and make offers, and process the candidates that accept your offer.
- Integrate with your home care software: The last thing that you want to do when you hire a new caregivers is to reenter their information into your home care software. With the Ankota system, the caregivers flow seamlessly into your home care software without retying required.
- Compliance Documents: In order to deploy a caregiver or DSP to a home care site, you need to get documentation of training like First Aid, and CPR. Then on the DSP side you might also need training on anti-discrimination and about mandated reporting of suspected abuse. These matters, as well as background checks can be done in your caregiver recruiting software.
Recruitment Strategies Supported by the Software
Here are some key strategies that work in home care recruiting:
- Build your website on the theme that you are an awesome place to work: Most home care websites focus on getting clients. They use the same stock photos of pretty old people getting care. Although it may seem counter-intuitive at first, the most successful home care agency websites focus on how great a culture they have for caregivers. Your “product” is your caregivers and Recruiting is Sales
- The Right Messaging: Don’t start with “help wanted.” Instead appeal to what the caregiver wants, like “a step to becoming a nurse” or “the hours that fit with my schedule” or “a meaningful job where you get to help people.” These will appeal to people who want to be caregivers. Instead of putting up barriers like “minimum of 3 years of caregiving experience,” use aspirational job responsibilities like “a desire to help people every day,” or “ample time to help one person instead of feeling like you never have enough time to help any of your clients.” That last point can be seen as a great benefit to someone working in an assisted living center or nursing home. After relating to problems that the prospective employee is experiencing, your next message is that “You are the solution.”
- Post on the Popular Job Boards: The top places where people seek jobs include Indeed, ZipRecruiter, Google, LinkedIn. The Ankota Caregiver Recruiting Software posts your jobs on all these boards and 12 others for no additional cost. There are some small restrictions to follow, but following these rules saves you a ton of cost.
- Pay your caregivers handsomely for referring caregivers to your agency: Let your caregivers know that you value then and respect their referrals greatly and that they’ll be rewarded for sharing them. Make it clear how they can refer caregivers and that they will get credit. In the end, referrals from your own employees are the greatest candidates that you’ll get. Pro tips are 1) Make the reward meaningful (at least $250) but 2) Qualify that the reward is paid after the referred employee stays for 3 months.
- Mobile-Friendly and Easy: If caregivers see that your job is hard to apply for and that they can’t apply on their phone, they won’t apply.
- Social Media: Advertise on social media but make sure to use the “messaging” techniques described above, and drive candidates to your website.
Best Practices for Implementing Home Care Recruiting Software
Implementing home care recruiting software should be easy! Here are the best practices:
- Start with the “out-of-the-box” settings: You shouldn’t have a long and complex implementation process for your caregiver recruiting software, and we recommend using the “out-of-the-box” settings. Specifically, post to all of the “free sites,” being mindful of the restrictions of some of the most popular sites Indeed has the biggest set of rules.
- Look at the “workflow settings:” The “workflow” is just a fancy term for how to make sure that you have a process in place for dealing with applications. In the best case scenario, you’ll screen, decide to interview, then decide to hire and they’ll accept your offer.
- Don’t make the initial implementation more “complicated” than your current recruiting process: When you’re putting a system in place where there wasn’t one before, it’s easy to get overwhelmed with all of the possible features, but if you’ve never done those processes before, the implementation can seem
complicated or even overwhelming. Instead, keep it simple. - Refine the process regularly and improve incrementally: Having started simple, set a meeting on the calendar once every two weeks to review the recruiting process and find one thing that can be improved. Then add that one change to your process and set it up in the software
- Put your energy into your job description: Now that you’re going to have a system that will help post your jobs on the jobsites and you’ll have an easy flow for applicant tracking, put your effort into transforming your job description. Start by reading your job description and asking whether each point addresses a problem that the caregiver might be facing.
Recommended Job Requirements:
We would love to welcome you to the growing and vibrant team at Happy Home Care. Successful caregivers will be looking for the following benefits:
- A desire to help people
- A job where you are making a positive difference every day
- The ability to set hours that work with your schedule
- A first step towards becoming a nurse, social worker or therapist
- If you’re working in a care facility, a chance to provide ample time to help one person
- A chance to grow in salary or to advanced jobs in care coordination or agency management
Conclusions
Recruiting is the lifeblood of caregiving agencies who employe home caregivers, Direct Service Providers for disability services, or day program staff. Caregiver Recruiting Software that includes an Applicant Tracking System (ATS) has the potential to save you a lot of money and effort as compared to working with multiple job posting boards and provides a consistent flow starting with a single inbox for candidates.
Combining a strong process with the right culture and the right messaging can transform your homecare agency to a growth engine.
To learn more about Ankota’s Caregiver Recruiting Software, contact Ankota.
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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