Top 10 Ways Leading Home Care Providers Are Recruiting New Caregivers

While there’s no silver bullet to single-handedly ensure an endless pipeline of qualified new caregivers, there’s plenty you can do to increase your pool of potential caregivers.

Struggling to recruit new caregivers? You’re not alone. If your home care agency is like most, one of your biggest growing pains is recruiting new caregivers.

And while there’s no silver bullet to single-handedly ensure an endless pipeline of qualified new caregivers, there’s plenty you can do to increase your pool of potential caregivers.

Often, finding new solutions is as simple as looking at what other companies are doing. As part of our annual Home Care Benchmarking Study, we’ve asked industry-leading home care providers* to share their top methods for recruiting.

Here are the top ten ways leading providers are finding new caregivers:

10. CareerBuilder.com. CareerBuilder.com is a top job search site that provides listings for you to reach the right candidates. It’s a little more expensive than some other third-party websites (typically $375 for a monthly posting), but many employers value it for its resume database and extensive support resources.

9. Social Media. Social media is an exceptionally cheap avenue to find caregivers. If you already run social media as part of your marketing, it’s easy to insert occasional posts about looking for new caregivers with links for them to apply. You can even ask current caregivers to share the post, which significantly increases the number of potential new caregivers you can reach.

8. Job Fairs. Job fairs are an effective way to quickly meet many candidates in person. This can result in a quicker hiring process and faster decision-making. While many cities regularly organize career fairs, you can also organize your own career fair on a smaller scale.

7. Newspaper Classified Ads. Newspapers may be declining in readership overall, but their classified ads are still an effective way to reach out to new potential candidates.

6. Your Own Website. Keeping your website up to date is critical. A strong website with good search engine optimization will help prospective caregivers find you easily through Internet searches and gives you an advantage over competing postings.

5. Word of Mouth/Reputation. It’s interesting that even in the digital age, your mere reputation can be a better source of new caregivers than your website or social media. Establishing your agency as a trusted employer is a simple and foundational way to facilitate a future pipeline of caregivers.

4. myCNAjobs.com. Not only does offer its own listings for you to reach new caregivers, but because it is focused on senior care it is able to offer specific resources for home care agencies such as helping set up recruiting events.

3. Craigslist.com. Craigslist is cheaper than many other third-party websites. Its popularity also brings greater reach and a higher number of responses than many other sources.

2. Indeed.com. The fact that four of the top ten sources are third-party websites shows the need to throw your online net as wide as possible so that potential caregivers using various resources and different websites can find you.

1. Current Employee Referrals: Current employee referrals overwhelmingly take first place as the top source of recruitment for leading providers. While nearly all agencies rely on this method to some degree, those that see the most success from it are those that make it an organized, deliberate, and continual effort. What does this mean? One way is to implement an employee referral program. This keeps your staff informed of needs, tracks referrals, and gives incentives to the referring employees. Beginning your referral program could be the single biggest step you take toward recruiting more caregivers.

More Information Brings More Results

If you found this information useful, don’t forget to order your copy of the 2018 Home Care Benchmarking Study. This study contains a wealth of tools and data to help you measure yourself against other home care agencies and identify better ways to grow your business. You should also join our webinar on April 11^th as our CEO, Aaron Marcum, highlights key findings from the study and explains what they could mean for your business.

And finally, remember that at the core of successful recruiting is being able to deliver on the promise of a positive experience for your caregivers. The more you work to understand your caregivers’ needs, the more that other caregivers will want to work for you. To learn how you can better understand what your caregivers need and improve the experience you provide for them, contact us to set up a free demo with one of our specialists.

Have you had success using other methods? Let us know in the comments below!

*For the purposes of the study, leading home care providers are those making $2.8 million or more in annual revenue.