I met Harry Whelchel in Atlanta last November. We both attended the home care boot camp of Hurricane Marketing. His exhibitor table intrigued me. We struck a lively conversation about Virginia (Harry went to school at University of Virginia) and caregiver recruitment. Harry founded a software company focused on improving the recruitment process. He works with home care agencies to reduce the time it takes to get candidates in for interviews and improving their hiring success. Today Harry shares insights on how home care agencies can consistently and predictably hire caregivers, with or without new software!

What do these agencies know that you don’t? The differentiator between great and not so great recruitment boils down to having a GREAT recruiting process. Let’s peek behind the curtain and learn three key components of a great recruiting process and how you can implement these improvements in your business immediately.

  1. Deal or no deal: Do you know your deal-breaker questions?
    These are questions you must have answers to before moving forward with a candidate. Your head of recruiting should determine these questions and ensure relevant team members in your organization know the questions and integrate them consistently into your recruiting. What’s amazing, with today’s technology, the best agencies automate asking deal-breaker questions so their staff only have to contact qualified candidates. Wouldn’t that be nice?
  1. Timing is key
    Sometimes qualified candidate’s schedule doesn’t match up with clients’ needs. But caregivers not hired today might be a good fit for a future position. The best agencies create standard messages they use to regularly check-in with their “bench” of qualified caregivers. Tools exist that can make it dead simple to keep track of quality candidates, make notes on their profiles, and get in touch with them fast when a new need arises.
    1. It’s not what you say, it’s how you say it
      Did you know what communication method you choose greatly affects your ability to get in touch with candidates? Business text messaging has an open rate of 99% and a click-through rate of 36%. And the opens happen within the 3 minutes of receiving the message. The best agencies communicate with caregivers the way they prefer to be communicated with using text messaging. No need to use emojis if you’d prefer not to, but you can use texting to cut through the noise and get in touch with caregivers fast. Tools exist that allow you to use texting in a business setting without having to use your personal cell phone number

Bonus: It’s a numbers game

Ultimately your goal is to recruit more qualified caregivers who stay with you for a long time. To do so you need to know your hiring numbers. You have to know how many candidates convert to scheduled interviews, to offers extended, to oriented, and ultimately working caregivers. These are your hiring funnel metrics.

You’ll also want to know your costs at each stage of the funnel—the most important being your cost per hire. With visibility into these numbers, you’ll be able to confidently know how many candidates you need to yield a qualified hire and you’ll know how much you can invest in your hiring process to meet your broader business goals.

The best agencies have the best-recruiting processes. That being said, executing a process can be hard without the right tools. These best-in-class agencies reach for specialized recruitment marketing software that makes implementing process improvements a breeze. Career Builder reports that 79% of companies that use recruiting software report a significant reduction in the amount of time it takes to fill an open position. Want to hire caregivers faster while spending less time doing it? Invest in the right process and the right tools and you’ll be well on your way to easier caregiver recruiting.

 

 

Harry WelchelAbout the author – Harry Whelchel is President and founder of ChirpyHire, a software tool that helps home care agencies “go from applicants to scheduled interviews in 60 seconds.” It’s automated and uses text messaging. For more information about the software, visit www.chirpyhire.com. Harry can be reached via email at hello@chirpyhire.com.