Webinar Replay: Why Caregiver Applicants Don’t Remember Applying to your Jobs
You spend tons of time and money on job ads, filtering and contacting applicants to find the “right” caregivers.
You get applicants on the phone just to find out that they don’t remember who you are or why they applied to your agency.
It’s incredibly frustrating. It’s a massive waste of money and energy spent on candidates who just don’t seem serious.
So, why don’t they remember your agency?
Check out this on-demand webinar with Augusta Home Care Recruiting to get some answers.
We’ll cover:
What is happening in the job market to create these conditions
What happens in a typical home care agency hiring funnel to enable spam applicants
A data set of over 30K applicants and what you can do to get the “right” candidates through your funnel fast
Watch the replay now! And, check out the summary below! Enjoy!
WHY DON'T CAREGIVER APPLICANTS REMEMBER APPLYING TO YOUR JOBS?
Well, it’s complicated. My challenge to you is to keep an open mind as we explain. Reason being, the underlying causes of this issue usually viewed as either unnoticed or unsolvable. Hang in there with us and we’ll offer up some recommendations and solutions you may not have considered!
Think about two things while you read on:
The applicant's experience as they apply for your jobs.
How you decide an applicant is qualified.
WHERE ARE THE CAREGIVER APPLICANTS?
The majority of caregiver applicants start their search on a general job board such as indeed, ziprecruiter, snagajob, craigslist, etc. And, most caregivers get hired through one of those platforms as well. So, that means you just need to post on all the job boards to hire more, right? Well, kind of… let us explain.
THE APPLICANT EXPERIENCE TODAY: IT ALL LOOKS LIKE SPAM!
The job boards charge per click or per applicant. They only care about sending you more applicants so you pay more. They aren’t invested in the quality of your applicants.
The example above is a real screen shot of an email inbox. One of our co-founders, Sam, signed up on indeed.com as if he were a caregiver. 20 invitations to apply all at once! The caregivers will never read all these job descriptions — and neither would I! To the caregiver, every job offer looks like spam and they’re no longer confident they could get hired at any of these positions.
Applicants are being spammed via text, too! There’s little to no way for a caregiver to apply to the right jobs because they get messages that look spammy, all the same and — too many! These are real texts that were sent to our co-founder Sam. His phone/phone carrier actually labels them as spam and they go to his spam folder. I wouldn’t click on these links to apply, would you?
TLDR;
THE JOB BOARDS ARE ONLY INCENTIVIZED TO GIVE YOU MORE APPLICANTS, NOT HELP YOU FIND THE GOOD ONES.
THEY ENABLE CAREGIVERS APPLYING TO THE WRONG JOBS.
SO, HOW DO YOU KNOW WHO IS ACTUALLY A QUALIFIED APPLICANT?
WHO IS A QUALIFIED APPLICANT?
The "Who" book studied hiring from over 1300 hours of interviews with over 300 CEOs:
About half of the companies they studied made the wrong hiring decisions. It happens because most hiring managers rely on their gut instincts.
Developing a systematic strategy for what to ask, when, and why is crucial. A key strategy of the authors is asking the same questions multiple times in different ways.
MORE DATA ON WHO IS QUALIFIED
"On average, employers look at resumes for six to seven seconds. (indeed.com)"
"Most hiring professionals say they make hiring decisions within the first five minutes of each interview. (indeed.com)"
"There's little evidence that hiring decisions based on first impressions and gut feelings are effective. About one-third of new hires quit within the first six months." (Studied across many industries, meaning it’s not just home care that has a retention problem that can be traced back to hiring decisions). (SHRM.org)
AUGUSTA DATA SOURCES
At Augusta, we developed software motivates candidates to show up for interviews based on how they complete 16 home care specific screening criteria. It geo-locates candidates to the zip codes where your clients live and where your office is.
We've processed about 30K+ applicants this year. 95% of applicants complete all 16 of the screening criteria. The data here is statistically significant.
Our customers connect our app to paper marketing via QR code, job boards like indeed.com and craigslist, social media recruiting ads, their own websites … anywhere at all they advertise for caregiver jobs. It’s a cross-section of where applicants are applying and being hired from.
HOW MANY CAREGIVERS LIVE IN THE RIGHT LOCATION FOR YOUR AGENCY?
Unfortunately, because of the spam cycle between job boards and caregivers being enabled to apply to the wrong jobs, 52% of your applicants applied for a job they were too far away from. This is why your home care agency recruiter spends about half their day chasing down applicants who don’t seem serious… either they’re actually too far away or the applicant thinks they’re too far away based on seeing your agency’s office address.
On the other hand, caregivers who were actually hired very likely (78% of them) live within 15 miles of the job they applied for. Recommendation: you’re better off not contacting caregivers that live too far away from your service area. It’s just adding to the noise and spam. And, it’s a waste of your recruiter’s time and energy to keep contact applicants that were never going to be a good fit.
HOW MANY APPLICANTS ARE ALREADY REGISTERED OR CERTIFIED?
Many agencies today are looking to hire caregivers with experience and/or who already have completed some type of registration or certification requirements in their state. Unfortunately, on 32% of applicants already have some type of relevant registration or certification for caregiving. Recommendation: be prepared to help applicants, ideally in the phone interview, understand how you can support them in learning the job and getting registered if needed. If you’re in California, feel free to use our help videos which guide caregivers through the HCA registration and Livescan process.
SUMMARY AND RECOMMENDATIONS
Re-market to applicants strategically. They're already getting spammed — only re-market to the right applicants at the right time. Check out a demo of Augusta to see how we fix that problem for you.
Get rid of any friction in the process of applying to your jobs. It needs to be simple and differentiated for applicants to start to remember your agency. Check out a demo of Augusta to see how we fix that problem for you.
Qualify or disqualify applicants in a data-driven way. Usually you don't have enough information from the application to make a data-driven decision about whether or not the applicant is 'worth' chasing. Check out a demo of Augusta to see how we fix that problem for you.
Help caregivers understand your clients are near them and it will be an easy commute. Applicants see your agency location and think you don't have clients close to where they actually live, but don't know they will only come to the office a few times. They’re not going to read all those spam job descriptions. Check out a demo of Augusta to see how we fix that problem for you.
Support brand new caregivers. Make sure you address how you support brand new caregivers as early in the application and hiring process as possible.
Host
Jen Waldron,
Co-Founder,
Augusta Home Care Recruiting
I’m deeply passionate about improving the care that older adults receive and improving the quality of life for caregivers doing the work. I started my career in senior care as a professional caregiver in a memory care community.
I joined IPCed, a leader in online training that was acquired by OnCourse Learning, helping the post-acute division scale to $10M+ ARR. I then joined CareAcademy and drove the company from hundreds of thousands in ARR to multi-millions. (Linkedin)
