Overview

If you’re like most home care agencies in the US today, you’re struggling to find caregivers. From our own research and data from home care agencies, we’re finding that 50% of agencies report turning away clients because they didn’t have the right caregiver to staff the case.

To make matters worse, the world has changed in regards to the job market and caregivers. We’re seeing record high rates of US workers quit their jobs and many are looking to switch industries or careers entirely. McKinsey and Company demonstrate in this report that there are 5 new personas of US workers and that they must be reached in new ways.

How do senior care businesses reach these new types of talent pools? In this guide, you’ll learn:

What the new talent pool is and suggested language for reaching this group
How to set up and optimize your Facebook business page to attract caregivers
How to share job postings on your Facebook business page
How to optimize your job postings so that they reach the right people on Facebook
How to organize your Facebook business page to attract caregivers

Tapping into a new pool of talent

In addition to moving away from traditional job boards, McKinsey’s article states the important fact that we must explain and educate new entrants about work in a new way. Posting to a traditional job board: “Seeking caregiver for PM shift $14/hr,” is no longer going to make the grade if you want to attract these new entrants.

To access the millions of people switching careers and those who are looking for meaningful work, we will need to reach them in a new way. What if your job posting title looked more like this: “Compassionate, reliable employer seeking like-minded people that want to learn.” Professional caregivers have been burned by applying to jobs that never materialize. Family caregivers need to know they’re included in the applicants that you want to see.

Several industry publications have found consistently that word of mouth is the leading source of new recruits with solid retention rates. And in our research we’ve found that, Facebook is one of the ways that caregivers refer their friends to caregiving positions. In fact, Augusta’s customer’s job postings receive over 5,000 shares and tags (engagements) in just 4 weeks' time. Many of these engagements were professional or family caregivers referring friends to a job.

Quality content is everything on Facebook

There are 2.9 Billion people on Facebook in 2022. It’s roughly a third of the entire world’s population. Marketers consistently cite Facebook as the highest social media advertising ROI for learning about new products and services. And, 61% of Facebook’s users are between the age 18-44 (prime caregiver demographic age).

Facebook wants their users to have a good experience. One of the things that means is that they show users the content that other people enjoy and engage with. For your job posts to actually be seen by a lot of people (with or without ad spend), you need to have a trusted and enjoyable Facebook business page. This means high quality content, among other things.

It’s also important to know that Facebook rewards consistency on your business page. Typically speaking, the more often you post quality content, the more that Facebook will show your page to others and learn the type of users you want to see your page.

Here are several recommendations of the types of quality content to share on Facebook (all pictures and videos should be with permission of the people in them):

Pictures of your caregivers, office team, clients (group pictures tend to do very well)
Pictures of you (operators or owner), your family, kids, with or without family pets!
Pictures of events that you or your team attends (that weekly gift to referral partners)
Pictures of your office setting, your training room
Pictures of you and people you know participating in the community, whatever that may mean for you (did you do an Alzheimer’s walk last year? Put on lunch for your caregivers? Go through your old camera roll and pick out some good ones!)
Brand story video of the agency owner about why they started the company and what makes their agency different
Job benefits video with your team, recruiter or marketer about what you’re looking for in candidates, the career opportunities and benefits of being a caregiver with your agency

Job posting titles and descriptions that win

In home care, the most prevalent source of recruits is indeed.com, though, home care operators also report that these hires are more likely to turnover than those hired through word of mouth or referral. There are several reasons why this is happening, but one that your agency can easily change is the job ad title.

Here’s an example of what comes up when you search “caregiver” on craigslist in Los Angeles, CA. While craigslist is no longer a top source of caregiver recruits, I’m using it in this example because their interface is set up so that you can easily see a list of job titles.

If you have not been a caregiver before, but want to break into healthcare, which one of these job ad titles would appeal to you? A family caregiver with the right attitude and heart for this work would have no idea of the value of a “12 hour shift” or may assume that they’re going to get “consistent hours.”

Here are some examples of job ad titles which are more appealing to the wider audience of job seekers who are switching industries in 2022:

We make a difference in the lives of vulnerable people in our community. Come work with us today!
Compassionate, reliable employer seeking like-minded people that want to learn and grow.
Ready to make a life-changing difference in someone’s life? Apply with us today!
Have you cared for a loved-one or grandparent? We can help you turn that experience into a new career.
Healthcare is the fastest growing job field. Start a new career with us today!
We provide compassionate, reliable care to older adults. Bring your big heart and join our team today!

These are just a few examples of how to change your job ad title to reach a new pool of caregiver applicants. At Augusta, we find application titles and descriptions such as these are effective in recruiting both current professionals and family caregivers and other new entrants to the field. We typically receive about 50% of applications from both of those talent pools.