Home Care Hiring: 3 Ways to Prepare for Increased Demand

According to recent data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, home care hiring is predicted to be among the fastest-growing industries in terms of job growth over the next decade. In fact, the data projects home health aides and personal care aides will be the third- and fourth-fastest-growing job categories between 2016 and 2026. 
In addition to expected job growth, there are many challenges in home care hiring. These include: historically-low unemployment, limited interest in home care careers and current home care employees’ interest in roles outside the industry. Data from myCNAjobs.com found that 65 percent of caregivers are always looking for a better job, while 97 percent would be open to a new job opportunity at any given time. 
Given these challenges, how can you set your home care hiring up for success both now and as the demand for home care roles continues to grow? Below, we’ve outlined several tips to attract and hire your best home care team. 

Maintain a Strong Employer Brand 

Today’s prospective applicants have access to many job opportunities at the tips of their fingers. They can find and apply to open roles on social media and job boards, to name a few. But the most engaged job applicants apply for roles on company career sites, as they’re interested in learning more about potential employers, rather than simply clicking “apply on a job board.” 
To improve your home care hiring efforts, it’s important for your home care agency to build a strong employer brand and career site, which will ultimately get top talent excited to join your team.

The goal of your employer brand should be to answer the “What’s in it for me?” question for job seekers. Today’s job seekers are motivated by far more than pay and want to learn about your benefits, career paths, training opportunities, and more.

Make sure to highlight such criteria and in your job descriptions and on your career sites. Doing so will help you stand out from competing employers and attract top talent.

Follow an Efficient Hiring Process for Home Care 

Not only is there stiff competition for job seekers to apply to your open roles, but quality applicants who are interested in joining your team are likely to be off the job market sooner rather than later. Recent data found that most top job seekers are off the market within 10 days. This means you need an efficient hiring process for your home care agency – or you’ll risk losing top talent to competing offers. 
You can jump start your efficient home care hiring strategy by streamlining the initial screening process. Many employers today spend a significant amount of time manually reviewing job applicants – including those who aren’t a fit for open roles – which can slow down the hiring process and frustrate job applicants. 
To avoid spending time manually reviewing job applicants, your home care agency can tap into prescreen surveys. These surveys are automatically sent to applicants, helping your team save time instead of reviewing each applicant individually. Once prescreen surveys are automatically scored, only qualified candidates will move on to the candidate stage of the hiring process, helping you significantly decrease candidate review time. 
Other steps that can help you speed up the hiring process for your home care agency include objective interview guides, integrated skills assessments, and automated reference and background checks.

Offer Ongoing Training at Your Home Care Agency

A common misconception about home care agency roles is that there’s limited room for continuous learning and career growth. But to attract top talent at your home care agency, it’s important to have defined career paths and training in place to help employees reach their career goals. 
If you’re hiring a home care aide, for example, this doesn’t mean it’s the only role he or she will hold on your team. An employee on the home care aide career path might start out as a homemaker, then get promoted to personal homemaker and home health aide. On the administrative side, the career path might range from administrative assistant to office manager.
Once you have defined career paths in place at your home care agency, the next step is to make training resources available to help your employees reach the next level in their careers.

Your home care agency can make a variety of training resources available to your employees – including completing regular skills assessments, watching structured training videos, and completing certification courses, to name a few. And if your home care employees approach you with an idea for a training opportunity, encourage them to pursue additional training if your budget allows. 
Competition for home care talent shows no signs of slowing down. By following these tips, you can get top talent excited about joining your team and set your agency up for success as the demand for home care workers continues to grow. 
For additional tips on improving your home care hiring efforts by supporting an engaging candidate experience, read our resource, “The Hireology Candidate Engagement Playbook.”

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