10 Creative Ways to Recruit Caregivers for Your Home Care Agency
Not every recruitment method is created equal, here are some creative approaches you can try.
The caregiver shortage has been persisting throughout the last decade or so, and it might be time to try some unique approaches to your recruitment efforts.
A new recruitment method might be the spark that refuels your agency for growth. Here are 10 creative ways you can try to recruit caregivers.
1. Reverse career fairs
A reverse career fair is an innovative way to restructure an open interview fair. Instead of asking applicants to come interview for a position with your home care agency, you can give applicants information and reasons to work for your agency as opposed to competitors.
Interviews are a two-sided conversation. You’re not just interviewing the applicant as a good fit for your agency. Caregivers need this as an opportunity to see if your brand has a reputation and culture that is worth working for.
2. Create career-specific company pages
On social media, it can be difficult to balance pushing out caregiver recruitment content and content geared toward attracting clients.
One way to clean up your social media and have targeted communication efforts, make a career-specific company page. This way, you can have a dedicated space for attracting clients on social media, and have a separate area for creating content specifically to recruit caregivers.
There’s a lot of room for creativity when creating your page, and it could look like “John Doe Caring Careers” or “John Doe Healthcare Heroes,” and so many others. Be creative with your approach and promote the content so that it has a greater reach.
3. Have you thought about using Snapchat?
When it comes to trying to recruit caregivers, Snapchat may definitely be one of the most innovative and creative ways you use. More than half of Snapchat’s users fall between the 15 and 25 age group. With custom filters/lenses, ad capabilities, AR functionalities, and location tags there are so many opportunities to promote caregiving careers with your home care agency on there.
Whether you want to promote an upcoming event such as a career fair or blood drive or want to encourage applicants to use your agency’s filter, there are a lot of untapped sources of promotion within Snapchat.
4. Internal social media promotion
Have you thought of launching an internal social media toolkit for recruitment? Ask your current caregivers and office staff to use their own social media accounts to seek out new caregivers.
Create an internal social media toolkit for recruitment with:
- Suggested social post copy
- Relevant hashtags
- Template graphics to share with the posts
- Company communication guidelines for social media
Make sure that they set the post settings to public so that they’ll have the most reach and impact. Have fun with it too, there is ample room for freedom when it comes to social media. Offer employee referral bonuses and other incentives to get your best caregivers involved.
This could turn into an in-service opportunity as well, show your caregivers how to use Instagram reels, TikTok, social media stories, and other tools to help grow your company. Help them understand the nature of the business, and the impact that their work has on the community.
5. Come up with an original and timely recruitment campaign.
Most lines and slogans have been done before, but if there is something unique about your home care agency that you can use in a new campaign, do it!
Some examples could include:
- Like to combine work and play? Work for Playmore Home Care.
- Looking for a career that cares about you? Care for our patients at X Home Care.
Use colorful and vibrant graphics to grab caregivers’ attention and you’ll see the success of using an original recruitment campaign.
6. Hold a fundraiser for a relevant cause.
In home care, there’s a lot of room for advocacy and charity events. If you can think of a local charity or event that you can fundraise for, those that donate may have a connection to senior care and could become a great caregiver.
Here are some charities that you could consider:
These are only a few of many organizations that donate to seniors specifically, but find the one that fits with your agency.
7. Lean on current events and holidays
September is World Alzheimer’s Month, a great time to advertise for dementia and Alzheimer’s caregiver roles. During September and October, more people tend to apply for jobs and you can lean into this growth with recruitment themes based on current events and holidays such as awareness months.
October is quickly approaching, could this fuel your next caregiver recruitment campaign idea?
8. Ask your caregivers for help.
Take some time to sit down with your caregivers and see what works for them. What drew them to apply with you? What platforms did they find you on?
Some of them may have time to sit down and design a recruitment campaign with you, and could see the results of their work when there aren’t a ton of open shift requests for them to pick up.
9. See what terms work best for your area.
There are so many alternative words for caregiver, are you missing out on employees because of how you say it?
Here are some others to think about:
- Direct support professional
- Direct care worker
- Home health aide
- Personal care assistant
- Personal care attendant
- Companion
- Certified nursing assistant
Maybe there are some that could be unique to your home care agency. Whether it’s care angels or healthcare hero, see what terms stick with your caregivers.
10. Lean on memes
In trying to recruit caregivers, you may have tried some pretty creative ways but what about memes? Memes are a trend that helps communicate a lot of information, just from a simple image with or without on-image text.
From the Met Gala, to Tom and Jerry, there are so many different forms of media that you can draw on for your next caregiver recruitment campaign.
Whether you’re going for a motivational feel, or a before and after comparison, there is a meme for that.
What’s your next recruitment move?
There are so many ways to be creative when trying to recruit caregivers, and we are here to help. At Home Care Marketing Pros, we are always looking for innovative and new solutions to help your home care agency grow and evolve. If you are having trouble coming up with your next recruitment campaign, book a 30-minute call with us here. One of our recruitment experts can review your plans and see which strategies are the most effective and come up with long-term solutions to support your growth needs.
