The 7 Best Places to Recruit Caregivers
Including hot spots you may not have considered yet!
Competition for great caregivers is tight right now. There aren’t enough licensed, qualified home care professionals to go around, and to get ahead of the caregiver shortage, home care agencies are ramping up their recruiting efforts.
As you plan your recruitment marketing strategy, make sure you’re looking for new caregivers in these places.
7 of the best places to recruit caregivers
1. From within your employee network
One of the best places to recruit caregivers is through employee referrals. An employee referral program can help you hire caregivers more quickly, lower the cost-to-hire, and retain your new employees longer.
To build an incentivized referral program: Promote the program to your staff, tell your employees what you’re looking for in new caregivers, equip them to talk to their networks about your agency, make it easy for them to refer, and then reward them with incentives.
You can also ask for informal referrals. For example, when caregivers choose to leave your agency on good terms, ask them to refer the agency to their network. Or, ask your clients for referrals and reward them with gift cards, discounts, and service trials.
2. Digital ad campaigns
Targeted digital ad campaigns let you reach app and internet users by interest and location, and they return valuable data about who engages with your ads, which you can use to further refine your future recruiting campaigns across all platforms.
Similarly, you can A/B test ad images and messages to find your ideal mix that adds caregivers to your candidate funnel.
3. Paid social ad campaigns
Paid social media campaigns can supplement your digital ad strategy with similar precision and similar feedback on users and ad success.
Platforms like TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter come to mind, of course, but don’t forget about highly engaging platforms like NextDoor and Reddit for your paid campaigns.
4. Organic social media
Paid social media campaigns can attract new applicants to your home care agency, but your organic social media feed is one of the best places to recruit caregivers. As a matter of fact, 86% of job seekers use social media in their search.
Your social feed is perfect for:
- Building your larger employer brand
- Attracting passive job seekers
- Engaging with potential applicants via comments, messages, and live events
- Giving followers an inside look at what it’s like to work at your agency and with your staff
- Offering advice for starting a career in home care
No need to max out your resources by trying to engage workers across all social media platforms. Funnel your social strategy into just one or two platforms so you can do it well. You might choose TikTok and Instagram, for example, or focus on Facebook and NextDoor.
You can also use social media to recognize great work among your existing staff. These proud workers are likely to share these posts and give your agency wider exposure.
5. Job fairs and community events
Both in-person and virtual job fairs put your leaders and caregivers face-to-face with potential hires. This personal connection can help you form lasting relationships and even vet candidates before they apply by getting a sense of their professionalism and demeanor, how well they relate to others, and their communication style.
Make sure you have a way to contact potential applicants directly, and that they have a way to contact a specific person—not just a generic email address—at your agency.
Check with local community centers, schools, and libraries, and contact your city and state employment commissions to learn about upcoming job fairs.
Sponsoring and attending care-related community events like free health clinics and health education days can also give you exposure to local professionals who may be interested in a new job.
6. Local schools
Local community colleges and universities are ideal places to recruit new caregivers. Here you’ll find highly qualified caregivers who are actively looking for jobs (or are about to be).
Employer-educator relationships are mutually beneficial. They have a vested interest in placing their students in jobs, and you’ll get a chance to tell the schools exactly what you’re looking for in applicants and potentially help guide the curriculum.
If you’re interested in early career hires or recent graduates of any age, make sure you’re on Handshake, which partners with post-secondary institutions to help students find jobs during and after school.
Don’t forget local high schools. The caregiver shortage is also a talent pool problem, so start planting the seed early while young adults are imagining the careers they might pursue.
7. Job boards
Of course, always include the mainstay of recruitment marketing: job boards. Sites like Glassdoor, Indeed, ZipRecruiter, CareerBuilder, and LinkedIn are popular among job seekers.
Don’t just post open positions, take advantage of the employer branding tools these sites offer: Fill out your company profile, add images and videos, provide information about the recruiting and interview process, and encourage your current employees to review your company.
Small and niche job boards to try:
- InHerSight
- Career Contessa
- Fairygodboss
- Handshake
- Snagajob
- Craigslist
- FlexJobs
- The Muse
- CareerVitals
- SimplyHired
- Monster
Ready to start recruiting caregivers?
Finding the best places to recruit caregivers is one thing, but actually taking advantage of them is another. Running a home care agency can be difficult and time-consuming as it is, and trying to find the time to run a digital ad campaign or post on social media can seem impossible.
Home Care Marketing Pros offers a number of services to help take the load off of you while boosting your home care agency's growth! Contact us to get started!
