Recruiting for Care Homes in the UK comes with challenges. You may be trying to reduce recruitment costs by recruiting for yourself. But, where should you advertise vacancies to get the best results for the lowest cost? One emerging option is CareHome. It is focused on the care industry, but is carehome.co.uk the best job board for Care vacancies?

What is carehome.co.uk?

carehome.co.uk is leading comparison site for care homes. Owned and managed by Tomorrow’s Guides, its sister boards are homecare.co.uk and daynurseries.co.uk.

CareHome lists approximately 18,000 individual care homes throughout the UK. Consumer and investor interest in care homes draws significant traffic with over 16 million hits each year. Now the site includes a jobs board for the sector and more care providers are advertising on it. At the time of writing it listed approximately 5,000 vacancies, including Carers, Nurses and Care Home Managers.

Is it the best job board for care vacancies?

There are a few ways to test whether carehome.co.uk is the best job board for care vacancies.

1. Does a Bing or Google search for “care jobs”, list carehome.co.uk on page 1 search results?
2. How does the number of care jobs on carehome.co.uk compare with other job boards.
3. Do care homes report success after advertising on carehome.co.uk?
4. What is the cost of adverting care vacancies.

Searching for care jobs with Google or Bing

Many jobseekers start their job search by using their favourite internet search engine. We used 3 popular ones to check whether carehome.co.uk appears on page 1 results. This test was conducted on 10th November 2019.

Search Engine	Position on Page 1
Google	Midway
Bing	Near Bottom
Yahoo	Midway
DuckDuckGo	Not on page 1

carehome.co.uk features on page 1 results of the most common search engines. It also appears in the natural search results, not by paid advertising. That’s good news because it is more likely to remain on page 1. Whilst carehome.co.uk didn’t appear at the top in our tests, it did add the jobseeker’s current location. That makes the listing more relevant and perhaps more enticing to jobseekers.

The number of jobs on carehome.co.uk

These results were compiled on 10th November 2019. We looked at the total search results for “Carer”, “Care Assistant” and “Care Support Worker”. Admittedly carehome.co.uk is more focused on jobs in a care home setting. However, jobseekers like choice and listing a wider selection of local jobs is an obvious advantage.

Job Board	Number of Care Vacancies
Indeed	60,000 +
TotalJobs	27,000 +
GOV Find a Job	26,000 +
CVLibrary	20,000 +
carehome.co.uk	1,969
KentJobs	500 +

These results don’t favour carehome.co.uk. We question whether a tight industry focus might limit its audience. But, why not try some of your own research with local and other national job boards? That could help you determine the best job board for Care vacancies in your area.

Do care homes report success with carehome.co.uk?

Some of our care customers have used carehome.co.uk, but feedback is very patchy. Application source can be tracked with a good Applicant Tracking System, but there are issues here.

carehome.co.uk forces jobseekers to create an account before applying for any care job and that can be an application barrier. This barrier triggers some jobseekers to search for the individual Care Home website so that they can apply directly. Skipping to an employer’s website is becoming more commonplace but automated tracking of of the applicant source is disrupted. The source appears to be the employer’s website and not the job board.

Reasons for the leap include a worry that current employers might find jobseeker details after creating an account. This is particularly true of job boards with a CV search option and carehome.co.uk offers that.

What does it cost to advertise care jobs on carehome.co.uk?

Advertising costs are a big concern for Care Homes, so it’s good to find that carehome.co.uk prices reflect this. A single job advert can cost as little as £10.

You can also get up to 10 free job adverts if you buy a sponsored listing for your care home. These would otherwise cost at least £100. The annual cost of a sponsored listing is currently £300 + VAT per annum, so free job adverts make this a very attractive option.

Conclusion

carehome.co.uk is visible to jobseekers and focused on the Care Home sector. It’s also good value and buying a sponsored listing seems like the best option to start with. Use your free adverts to find out whether it works for you.

One key worry is that other job boards list more care vacancies than carehome.co.uk Boards like Indeed and TotalJobs also appear higher in internet search results. We would also like to see carehome.co.uk remove an application barrier by making shorter its up-front information request to new jobseekers.

This said, we think carehome.co.uk should be included in the mix of advertising options for care jobs. It is focused and there are few industry focused alternatives for Care Homes. But, the success of any job advert isn’t solely down to your choice of job board. Check out how to write job adverts that get more job applications.

Other Job Advertising Options for Care

Thankfully, alternatives are freely available for care homes. Indeed offers free advertising options for employers. It also offers the greatest number of care vacancies when compared with the other job boards we tested, so it has jobseeker appeal. You can also sponsor adverts. That keeps them in Indeed’s search results for longer and that’s great for your hard to fill vacancies. If you do sponsor adverts, you can be sure that people will see it them. Using Indeed is a no brainer.

GOV Find a Job is a free job board too. This is managed by the DWP and it advertises almost as many care jobs as TotalJobs. With so many care jobs listed, it’s hard to ignore. GOV Find a Job costs nothing and has jobseeker appeal, so its an obvious choice for Care Homes.

Google for Jobs isn’t technically a job board. But, it can be used without charge to display your latest jobs and more applicants are discovering it all the time. You can’t post your jobs by hand on Google for Jobs, but an ATS get them there for you.

The truth is that we don’t know where viable jobseekers will find your next vacancy. The best approach is to advertise in several places. But, that requires more time to advertise and more time to review the less relevant applications that accompany more relevant ones. Care homes are time strapped and on a budget, so, how can we square that circle?

Advertise care jobs in less time, without big budgets

Ideally, Care Homes should advertise on multiple job sites and receive more appropriate applications without effort. Doing this at low cost sounds like an impossible request, but the option is available.

You’ll need an Applicant Tracking System (ATS) and one that can distribute your jobs to the right job boards automatically. The best ATS will publish your jobs on your own website, on free job boards like Indeed and on your subscription job boards like carehome.co.uk Your applicants should arrive in one place, having provided all the information you need to make safe, fair shortlisting decisions. By making applicants complete details beforehand, you’ll spend less time reviewing job applications from hapless, 1-click appliers.

An ATS for care doesn’t have to be expensive. It should easily pay for itself by helping you avoid recruitment fees, excessive job board charges and all the admin. In fact, an ATS should save you money.

Want to know more?

For more information on what an ATS can do, read what is an Applicant Tracking System?

If you would like to learn more about choosing an ATS, follow the link to our Free ATS Buyer Guide.

Follow the link to find out why CVMinder is the best ATS for Care.

If you want to skip all that, contact us now to find out how you can advertise care vacancies for less and recruit more successfully.