By Stephen Tweed
The evidence is becoming very clear! The biggest barrier to growing your home care business in 2015 and beyond is your ability to recruit and retain high quality caregivers.
To find the people you need, you will need to master certain methods and messages. To learn more about what works and what doesn’t in home care recruiting, we conducted the 2015 National Private Duty Recruiting Survey. The results are powerful!
The Number 1 Lesson
The major lesson from looking at the top ten techniques is, “The most frequently used techniques are not the most effective, and the most effective techniques are not used by many home care companies.”
So if you really want to compete in your local marketplace and find the caregivers you need to grow your business, you need to think differently than you have in the past.
Digital Recruiting
The growth of the internet, web sites, and social media have changed the home care recruiting landscape. The biggest shift has been the growth of digital recruiting. It is easy, cheap, and somewhat effective to use these techniques to find the applicants you want. However as we will see, these techniques yield high numbers of lower quality applicants, the conversion ratio of applicants to new hires is relatively low, and unfortunately these methods have created a large number of lazy recruiters.
These methods have generated so many applicants that recruiters get buried in the screening process, so they stop using other techniques. The result is that schedulers are struggling to fill shifts and the recruiters are overwhelmed sifting through stacks of digital applications.
We have also seen that the huge growth in digital recruiting has made for “lazy recruiters”. It’s so easy to just run an ad on Craig’s List or Indeed.com and get a pile of applications. Then they spend their day drinking coffee while sifting through the stacks and fussing about how busy they are.
Face to Face Recruiting
By far the techniques that are most effective are the various methods of meeting people face to face to ask for referrals to high potential caregivers. This is a mix of techniques and the common denominator is you need to get out of your chair, get out of the office, and build relationships with caregiver centers of influence.
| Face to Face Recruiting Method | Effectiveness Score | Percent of Companies Using |
| 1. Four Year Nursing Schools | 3.74 | 41.89% |
| 2. Faith Based Recruiting | 3.58 | 31.51% |
| 3. CNA and HHA Schools | 3.56 | 29.73% |
| 4. Clients and Families | 3.38 | 16.87% |
| 5. Community Colleges | 3.30 | 33.78% |
| 6. Employee Referral Program | 3.27 | 74.43% |
| 7. Networking in Community | 3.11 | 55.96% |
| 8. Public Speaking | 3.00 | 19.96% |
| 8. (tie) 4 Year Colleges | 3.00 | 14.86% |
| 9. Continuing Education | 2.95 | 24.32% |
| 9. (tie) Technical Schools | 2.95 | 28.38% |
Employee Referrals – the Lost Strategy
While most home care companies say they have an employee referral program to find new caregivers, we learned that most companies do not actively promote their program, and they don’t pay incentives that are significant to their employees. The result is that this method has fallen down the list in this year’s survey. But the secret is, this method is more effective that most of the others if you implement it wisely.
Get All of the Details
You can get all of the details of this powerful study, and you will get a clear three-point recruiting plan in a brand new Sponsored Research Report from HomeTrak. We have written and published a detailed report of the results of this industry-leading survey and it it available to you FREE of Charge compliments of HomeTrak.
Recruiting & Retention Workshop in Scottsdale, AZ
To get even more insights into how you can apply these principles to find the caregivers you need, join us in Scottsdale, AZ on Friday, September 18, 2015. Stephen Tweed will present this high-impact, interactive workshop to help you apply strategies to effectively recruit and retain high quality caregivers.
“Finding and Keeping Caregivers”
Friday, September 18, 2015
Courtyard Marriott Scottsdale Old Town
3311 N. Scottsdale Rd,
Scottsdale AZ 85251
9:00 am – 12:00 noon
Registration Fee: $199.00
Premium Members of The Academy for Private Duty Home Care or Caregiver Quality Assurance: $149.99
Sponsored by HomeTrak and Caregiver Quality Assurance
