+44 (0) 1634 202 101
Recruiting tips for smaller care providers

Essential Recruiting Tips for Small Care Providers

Small care providers must compete with larger care providers when advertising their care vacancies. Bigger care providers have marketing muscle, HR departments, recruiting systems and advertising budgets. Some even have dedicated internal recruiters.

With fewer resources, less time and smaller budgets, how can a small care provider compete and recruit successfully?  

This article offers a few important recruiting tips to help small care providers succeed on a budget.

Care Jobs

Care jobs are varied, rewarding and important, but salaries are low by national standards and care jobs can be misunderstood.

When advertising care vacancies, the basics really matter. Our recruiting tips for small care providers will help you to recruit more successfully and hire great people. We cover:

  • How to advertise
  • Where to advertise
  • How to respond to job applications

Recruiting Tips 1: How to Advertise

It’s time to make job advertising your personal battleground, because advertising is where you can win.

Jobseekers don’t read your job advert

Is your mailbox is full of irrelevant job applications? If so, it may be the case that:

  • jobseekers are applying without reading your advert,
  • your advert describes your company rather than the job, or
  • you’re making it too easy to apply for your vacancy.

Before reading you job advert in full, people want:

  • A short summary that confirms the job is the right type of job for them
  • An indication of where the job is located
  • The working hours and salary.

Make it easy to find this information. It is good practice to summarise what you are looking for in your first paragraph and confirm the job title in the first sentence.

Example first paragraph of a Care Worker job advert
“We are looking for a Care Worker to support our elderly customers in their own homes within the Crawley area. Our customers have very individual care requirements and we like our Care Workers to get to know our customers well . You’ll be helping them to lead full and independent lives by assisting with meal preparation, taking medication and getting ready for bed, among many other duties. Shift patterns are flexible and we’ll give you all the training you need.”

Bring your job to life

Your next challenge is to describe the role in full and make it come to life for jobseekers. Help them to visualise their new role. Try to pack your job description with lost of detail:

  • Who will they be caring for?
  • What sort of activities will they be performing?
  • What will their own team be like and what are the unique challenges of the role?
  • Who will they report to and what is their manager’s ambition for the company and its services?
Make it easy to find the details they want

Use headings and bullet points to help jobseekers scan and qualify your vacancy in just a few seconds. Easy qualification increases the prospects of your advert being read in full by the right candidates. For a Support Worker job, your headings could include:

  • The Role of Support Worker
  • Education and Experience required to be our Support Worker
  • Support Worker Remuneration
  • Location and our Care Company
  • Our Recruitment Process
Use the singular

Try to use advert titles that are singular and not plural, like “Care Worker” rather than “Care Workers”. Advert titles like “Care Workers wanted” are less trusted than a plain job title. If that advert is on a long advertising cycle people might start to question whether you ever hire anyone.

Job boards also prefer the singular job title. Some job boards, like Indeed, might also ignore your advert in search results. That’s because forever open vacancies titled in the pleural appear to be fishing and less likely to be genuine.

Location with benefits

Care sector workers prefer jobs in their locale, but your specific site location might have benefits. Perhaps shops are nearby, you work in air-conditioned offices or you have on-site parking that makes it easy to drop in and out. If you can find a benefit, it’s a good idea to mention it.

Optimise, optimise

Optimise your job adverts to increase the number of people who can find them.

Let’s make sure that people can find your advert on any job board. Try repeating the job title a few times throughout your advert. For every 350 words, consider typing the job title 3 or 4 times. By doing this, job boards might push your advert further up their search results.

If you want to know more about job advertising, read optimise your adverts to get more job applications.

Recruiting Tips 2: Where to advertise

Did you know that you can advertise Care Jobs for free? Your key resources are:

  • Indeed
  • GOV Find a Job
  • Google for Jobs
  • Adzuna
  • Your website and Social Media
Your free job boards

According to our research, Indeed is the biggest provider of care job applications. The great news for you is that Indeed allows all UK employers to advertise their vacancies for free. They call their free job postings, organic job listings. Indeed also allows you to sponsor your adverts. By paying to sponsor your Indeed job adverts, they will stay higher in search results for longer.

GOV Find a Job was Universal JobMatch. You can post jobs for free and it’s very active for Care vacancies.  If you want to see the numbers just follow the link.

Google for Jobs is free, but it’s not a job board in the conventional sense. If you follow the link you’ll see Google for Jobs at the top of the search results. Posting jobs manually is not possible. Instead google fetches your jobs from your website and presents them to jobseekers. You will need an Applicant Tracking System to do that for you or you can develop two key additions to your careers page:

  • The structured job data that Google requires and
  • An application form for your job.

Adzuna is a useful job board too. It might not be a go-to jobsite for care workers, but jobseekers could be attracted by Adzuna’s occasional re-posts on LinkedIn.

Advertise jobs on your website and social media

Your own website is a valuable advertising option, so keeping it updated with current vacancies is essential. Some people don’t trust job boards with their details because they know that their current employer or other recruiters might have access to it. Instead, some prefer to apply directly on your website, so try to offer an electronic application form. A good Applicant Tracking System for care providers can make posting jobs and receiving applicants really easy for you.

Social Media is free and easy to use. Place your job on twitter and other locations. You just never know who might see it. Again, jobseekers may benefit from a application form on your website. We all want to avoid losing people just as quickly as we find them.

Recruiting Tips 3: How to respond

Good people don’t hang around for long, so speeeeeed is name of the game. Our advice is to organise some standard messages so you can communicate quickly with your best applicants. If you do everything by email, Microsoft can help you with that. Create some templates on Outlook by following these steps:

  1. Create a new email by completing the subject and body
  2. Select File > Save As
  3. For ‘Save as Type’, choose Outlook Template
  4. Give it a filename and save.

Try telling good applicants that you like their details just as quickly as you can. Politely declining all the applicants who you won’t interview will be appreciated (honest) and your brand is at stake if you don’t. You might also want some people to return in future when they have more experience or qualifications.

We do understand that when it gets busy, managing communication with lots of applicants can be overwhelming. So, when your recruitment admin grows, you might want to consider an online Applicant Tracking System (ATS) for Care. That will help you to post jobs everywhere, speed through shortlisting and communicate with everyone quickly. Imagine recruiting with 90% less effort.

Recruiting tips summary

Our essential recruiting tips for small care providers are all about the basics. That’s because getting the basics right will help you attract higher quality job applications and stay ahead of your competitors.

If time is short and you feel that you’re missing out on key candidates, try an Applicant Tracking System for Care. CVMinder ATS is low cost, manages the whole recruitment process and saves lots and lots of time.

You experiences, comments and suggestions

If you’re recruiting for a smaller care provider, why not tell us about your own experiences? We’d also love to hear from you if you have any other recruiting tips for smaller care providers.

Like our advice? Why not give it a thumbs up and share? Many thanks in advance for taking the time.

Is carehome.co.ok the best job board for care homes?

Is carehome.co.uk the best job board for Care?

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 EnginePosition on Page 1
GoogleMidway
BingNear Bottom
YahooMidway
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.

carehome.co.uk listing on page 1 search results using Google
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 BoardNumber of Care Vacancies
Indeed60,000 +
TotalJobs27,000 +
GOV Find a Job26,000 +
CVLibrary20,000 +
carehome.co.uk1,969
KentJobs500 +

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.