Home care recruitment has never been more challenging, time consuming, and expensive. Caregivers are receiving more calls for work, more job offers, more hours, more pay, and more benefits than ever before. Over 50% of home care agencies identify the ability to recruit Caregivers and CNAs as the number one threat to business growth. It’s projected the market will continue to worsen as agencies fight for talent alongside other industries attracting caregivers including fast food, retail, and distribution center giants.
Although Caregiver and CNA recruitment goals may stay the same year over year, the time and effort to hit those goals will likely start to change on a quarterly or even monthly basis. This in-depth article offers a framework to think about how to approach budgeting and scaling recruiting in a systematic fashion.
Step 1: Measure Current Recruitment Operation
In order to create a budget you’ll first need to measure your current Caregiver recruitment operation. Often times this means taking a microscope to parts of recruitment that haven’t been closely examined before. You want a realistic picture of how you operate in several key benchmarking areas. Those include recruitment sourcing metrics, caregiver call back rates, interview show-up rates, the percentage of caregivers who pass a screening, make it through internal processing requirements, show up to orientation, and ultimately accept a case.
Many care providers don’t know where they stand with these metrics today - and that’s okay! Take the time to review your records and start keeping track of these key benchmarks. You may be surprised by how low some of these numbers are. Call back rates average between 10%-30%, while interview show-up rates average below 50% nationwide. Different markets will have different levels of competition, and individual metrics will vary from business to business.
These metrics can be used to calculate your overall cost per hire, which measures both internal time and external cost, to determine the total cost of recruiting one Caregiver. Cost per hire is the single most important metric to understand, measure, and guide your budget. If you need help calculating your recruitment metrics along with internal time and external spend into a cost per hire, you can access a free calculator at www.myCNAjobs.com/CPH.
Your cost per hire will change as the number of hires you make grows. Your first few hires each month will likely be cheaper and easier than hiring the volume you need to grow your business. You want to understand your cost per hire today and measure it against how many hires you’re actually making at that cost.
Step 2: Set Quarterly Hiring Goals
The next step in creating a budget is to set hiring goals. This should be done on a quarterly basis, as both your hiring needs and cost per hire will fluctuate. When setting hiring goals, make sure to take into account your average turnover rate. It would be great if you only needed to hire one or two new Caregivers a month because turnover is low, but that’s often times not the reality we need to be planning for. If you’re unsure what your hiring goals should be, ask yourself “how many new hires do I need to make in order to grow my business?”
Step 3: Set Your Budget
Now you’re able to take these numbers and set your budget. Here’s an example of how to calculate your quarterly recruitment budget:
With your budget in hand, you can allocate time and resources to your various recruitment channels. Don’t fall into the trap of using just one channel to meet all your recruiting needs. Each channel is different for you, offering a unique blend of cost, volume, and candidate quality.
Step 4: Focus on Process Optimization
The key to streamlining your recruitment is lowering your overall cost per hire. There are two important strategies to focus on - shaving off process time and making candidates want to work for you after the interview. These are the areas we see top agencies excelling in, while agencies who don’t address these are having trouble hiring Caregivers.
Processing times matter. More than half of Caregivers can start working within three days of an interview. This means if you’re unable to put Caregivers to work quickly, you’ll miss out on them altogether. Button up those processing steps and reduce your time-to-hire so you have more Caregivers making it to cases and less slipping through the cracks.
Caregivers are in higher demand than ever before and on average receive over 3 calls a week for work. What makes Caregivers choose your agency over another opportunity? We’re seeing agencies who have previously relied on brand reputation and referrals starting to fall behind in the pecking order. Top pay, benefits, and perks are now separating those finding success in home care recruiting. Find out what competitors in your area are offering and make sure your package stacks up. Competitive analysis matrix: employer.mycnajobs.com/competitive-analysis-matrix-download
Step 5: Measure Often
In case you’re unsure of how to measure or scale your recruitment process, we’ve created a free, online calculator that can do most of the work for you. The tool incorporates industry averages and will allow you to quickly determine your agency’s metrics. Access the online resource at www.myCNAjobs.com/CPH.
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