7 Top Benefits of Using Technology for Recruitment and Hiring in Home Care

Smart providers understand that pre-COVID recruiting and hiring strategies aren’t going to work so well in today’s market and are exploring new and innovative ways to achieve better results.

One solution that is having a significant impact is the use of home care-specific technology, including recruitment and hiring marketing software, automation tools, and HR analytics.

As we begin 2022, reports indicate that where recruitment and hiring are concerned, home care leaders embracing technology are way ahead of the curve in KPIs such as:

Using the right technology can equip home care agencies with the framework needed for effective, standardized hiring processes, which not only helps them achieve their recruitment and hiring goals but can benefit their applicants in multiple ways too.

7 Top Benefits of Using Technology for Recruitment and Hiring in Home Care

1. Makes targeting (and reaching) top talent easier

Finding the right caregivers and office staff is crucial to any agency’s success.

There are multiple technology solutions available now to help you target more potential candidates than ever before, including social media platforms, online job posting boards, and recruiting software. Used well, these tools will significantly increase your agency’s audience, expand your reach, and attract top talent more easily.

With over 86% of candidates now searching and applying for jobs via their SMART phones, mobile-friendly apps are also crucial in today’s home care job market. They not only help agencies reach more people and simplify the process for applicants, but they are also highly engaging and motivating, which can noticeably increase your application completion rates.

2. Increases your HR/recruiters’ productivity

Technology that allows HR/recruiters to expand your agency’s reach is great, but you need to factor in how they will manage the potential increase in applications received.

Although having a standardized hiring process in place will help, there will still be a considerable amount of administrative work involved to collect, store, and manage the information sent in by applicants and keep track of where each applicant is in the hiring pipeline. 

Investing in an applicant tracking system, like Smartcare’s ATS, substantially reduces the time spent on manual admin tasks and can increase your HR/recruiters productivity in numerous ways, including:

ATS technology is not meant to replace your HR/recruiter team but rather free them from manual tasks so they can pay more attention to building strategic relationships, engaging with candidates, and bringing quality talent into your agency.

3. Reduces time-to-hire

In the current climate – where caregivers typically have the luxury of choosing between multiple competing offers – if your agency is too slow (or your recruiting process is too complex), they will not hang around. The majority of caregivers chose to work for an agency because their application process was straightforward, and they were the first to offer them a job.

Using technology to automate certain phases of your hiring process, such as candidate pre-screening tools, pre-employment assessments, and background checks, can help your agency greatly reduce time to hire – and simultaneously provide a more positive candidate experience.

Investing in the right applicant tracking system will provide all these benefits and more. It can even help you fast-track selected applicants – for example, those who meet your most essential criteria (e.g., desired hours, years of experience, or specific certifications).

4. Reduces cost-per-hire

There isn’t a home care agency in the US that isn’t concerned about finding ways to reduce costs!

Many factors contribute to cost per hire, including advertising, job postings, time to hire, travel, onboarding and orientation, and more. Technology solutions can help agencies remove (or significantly reduce) many of the expenses associated with hiring – reducing their cost per hire and at the same time making their recruiters’ lives more manageable. For example:

5. Improves the overall talent profile of your agency – higher-quality candidates

With the cost of hiring each new employee as high as $4,000, it is vital that your agency hires the right candidates – and candidates that will stick around for the long haul. Finding and hiring top talent for your team is the difference between having an average business and a great business – and is crucial to your agency’s success.

Technology can prove beneficial in this area, as the right hiring tools will automatically attract and engage higher-quality applicants. In addition, they will identify and extract unsuitable candidates early on in the process, before time and budget are spent on processing them. It ensures only the top talent makes it through, at the same time keeping ‘rejected’ candidates in the pipeline, should a more suitable role become available – making further savings in advertising in the future. 

Another benefit of automation tools in hiring is that all applicants will be evaluated using the same measurable, objective criteria – reducing human bias and promoting diversity. This can be hugely beneficial for your agency in multiple ways, including giving you access to a broader talent pool, raising your agency’s reputation, and attracting more high-quality applicants.

6. Transforms the candidate experience

Guaranteeing a positive candidate experience needs to be a core focus for every agency’s hiring strategy in today’s market, establishing practices that keep all candidates engaged, motivated, and informed at every touch point.

To achieve this, it is important to be proactive in establishing an easily-accessible, fast, and efficient applicant/hiring process, and using home care-specific technology can give you that all-important edge.

Again, an ATS is ideal here, enabling your home care agency to post job ads, manage applicants through the hiring pipeline, and oversee every part of the hiring process effectively, all from one single platform. As a result, it not only optimizes your hiring process in numerous ways that enhance the candidate experience but also increases your HR team’s productivity.

Other technology tools can also be beneficial in maximizing the candidate experience, like Smartcare’s mobile-friendly app, which makes jobs easier to find, information more easily accessible, keeps candidates engaged by providing progress checks and timely prompts, and much more.

7. Provides instant access to data for tracking key hiring metrics

Using technology to automate your recruitment and hiring processes has the added benefit of providing your home care agency with instant access to valuable data. This data is essential to understanding which elements of your hiring process are proving successful and which require some improvement.

With the right technology, you can identify how time- and cost-effective your processes are by accessing a wide range of data in real-time, including:

To optimize your hiring process and achieve that all-important edge in a highly competitive market, sophisticated data collection and reporting software options can deliver big benefits for your agency.

Investing in the right technology to optimize your hiring process, your home care agency can benefit in multiple ways – from saving time and costs, and improving your overall talent profile, to guaranteeing an excellent candidate experience and strengthening your brand reputation.

To learn more about the technology solutions highlighted in this blog and how they can increase your agency’s competitive advantage in hiring, please get in touch with us today or request a free demo.