For an updated, extended list of caregiver hiring sources, visit 101 Ways to Recruit New Caregivers.
The home care industry is facing a recruiting crisis. Though need for home care is booming, there simply aren’t enough caregivers available to fill the growing demand. Providers in the past have adopted methods to hire quickly, out of desperation to meet an urgent shift. However, if providers want to set their companies up for growth, they’ll need to dedicate more time and resources to recruiting strategically. As part of the 2016 Home Care Benchmarking Study, providers told Home Care Pulse which sources they most frequently use for recruitment. These are their responses:
- Internet—Craigslist.org Job Ads
- Internet—Indeed.com
- Employees—Current Employees (Employee Referral Program)
- Internet—myCNAjobs.com
- Referral Sources—Word of Mouth (Reputation)
As you look at these responses, you may notice that providers are utilizing mainly internet resources as they look for new recruits. However, while internet recruitment sources are perhaps the easiest places to turn for large quantities of recruits in a short period of time, they’re not necessarily the best sources for your company in the long run. While you may save money on these recruitment methods in the short term, some popular recruitment sources may be contributing your high caregiver turnover or excessive acquisition costs in the long term.
Ease and speed are certainly factors to consider as you select recruitment methods, but they shouldn’t necessarily be your primary factors. You must also evaluate your methods in relation to your short-term and long-term needs. In the short term, internet job ads may save you time, but do they actually save you money? Take a look at the actual costs for each hire, and determine if you’re using the most cost-effective method in the short-term. According to the 2016 Study, these were the median acquisition costs for each top recruitment method.
After evaluating your short-term acquisition costs, you should evaluate the long-term impacts of your methods on caregiver turnover. Internet job ads may get you a quick hire, but if those caregivers leave your company after only a couple of months, you ultimately waste time and money. Look at your own company’s top methods and compare them with your turnover for each method. The ease of certain recruitment methods may not match their cost to your company in turnover. According to the 2016 Study, here is the median caregiver turnover for each of the top methods.
Steve Wynn once said, “Great vision without great people is irrelevant.” If you have a vision for the future of your company, you need to hire caregivers who can make that vision possible in the long-term and the short-term. Don’t let yourself be caught in the cycle of using the easiest or fastest method or hiring simply out of convenience. Choose your methods strategically and invest the time and energy necessary to fine-tune methods that will reduce turnover (e.g., referral sources) and lower costs (e.g., myCNAjobs.com).
For an updated, extended list of caregiver hiring sources, visit 101 Ways to Recruit New Caregivers.
