6 Creative Ways to Recruit Caregivers for Your Senior Care Business
As a business owner in the senior care industry, you know that finding and recruiting quality caregivers is essential to your success. The last couple years have made it tough to find the right caregivers to join your team, but it's important to think outside the box and come up with creative ways to attract more caregivers to your business.
Consider it this way: most senior care businesses are recruiting for the same talent, through the same channels. It stands to reason then, that senior care business owners now need to try new ways of recruiting. In this blog post, we will discuss six innovative strategies that you can use to recruit more caregivers for your home care agency or assisted living community. Thanks for reading!
1. Host events or training sessions specifically for those interested in becoming caregivers.
This is a chance for you to showcase your business and the benefits of working for your organization, as well as answer any questions potential recruits may have about the job and industry.
Here’s an example of our customer’s recruitment events:
2. Offer referral bonuses for current caregivers and employees.
Word of mouth is one of the best sources of recruiting caregivers. It’s a powerful tool, so incentivizing your staff to refer qualified individuals can lead to great new hires.
3. Partner with local colleges or vocational schools.
Tap into their pool of potential caregivers who are studying in the field. You could offer internships or part-time positions that could turn into full-time employment once they graduate.
4. Utilize social media platforms like Facebook, TikTok and Instagram.
On these platforms you can post job openings and share information about your company culture. This is a great way to reach a larger, new pool of potential applicants. It used to be that you could advertise in the PennySaver by zipcode… now it’s social media and it’s in your applicant’s pocket! Book a demo of Augusta today! ;-)
5. Offer opportunities for career growth and development.
Attracting quality caregivers means showing them that they will be valued and supported in their role with your organization. In fact, in this recent survey from CareAcademy, 69% of caregivers surveyed said they want to get more education and 89% say it’s an important factor in accepting a job.
6. Systematize your meaningful time with your caregivers to create an attractive, transparent company culture.
You're a busy business owner and so you can't meet with every caregiver, every day. However, as a part of your company culture –a marketable asset– you should connect with caregivers consistently to ask them how they're doing, how their work is going, what could be improved on. This should be on your calendar to ‘make the rounds’ with your team. This personal connection with your employees makes them feel valued and is something that your current employees will share with their friends who could become a part of your team.
Operational Planning for your Recruitment Tests:
When testing any new approach to recruiting caregivers (or really any new strategy), it’s important to consider ensuring that you’re running a solid test with specific goals. Consider the following questions while you decide what strategy to try:
Do I have the resources on my team to make this test happen myself? Or, would I need to outsource it?
How much budget can I devote to this test?
How long will I test this for? (hint: probably longer than you think - pretty much all digital marketing channels take 3 months to ramp up and build an online audience)
What level of success with the test (and related budget and resources) would make it worth it for you to continue?
These types of questions will help you come up with recruiting strategies to test that are specific, measurable and time-bound.
