Recruiting the Best Employees

Throughout my career in senior care, I’ve always heard one thing concerning recruiting the best employees – hire the right person to begin with and you’ll save yourself headaches and a lot of money in the long run. I have found this to be 100% true. Three industries that have the highest turnover in the United States are fast food, retail and senior care. Turnover is very expensive. With this being said, recruitment is a vital ingredient in building a great team of employees who will stick around for a long time.

Get Real

The first step to recovery is acknowledging you have a problem! So, how are you currently recruiting potential employees? Is it working? Who is leading recruitment for your facility? What are your strategies? Have you tried anything new lately? In order to develop good recruiting practices, you have to take a hard and honest look at your current recruiting practices and ask if they are successful.

Target Your Audience

There is no one-size-fits-all approach to recruiting the right people. To be most effective, identify where your current strategies are lacking, what resources you have available and determine what kind of person will be a good fit. It is like fishing for specific fish with the right lure. You can’t offer everything that everyone is looking for, so determine who you are trying to attract and modify your recruitment process so that it draws in the right person and helps make your community stand out in the process. Don’t be afraid to brand your community as innovative, competitive and successful. Stand out against your competitors.

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You Need a Strategy

Your strategy should match your community or facility brand. What do you have to offer that others don’t? What do your employees say about working for you? What does your website say about your facility? Are you successfully using social media to attract millennials and other talented people who are plugged into the web? How do you respond to job-seekers when they walk through the door and ask for an application? All of these are important questions to ask yourself and your team. But, be honest. Is there something lacking?

Here are some strategy tips to use when looking for the right person.

Recruit from within – it is less expensive, builds morale, and training time is less
Go undercover and become a secret shopper at job fairs, colleges, and networking events (my personal favorite)
Word-of-mouth referrals can be very effective and all it takes is asking your employees, their families, friends and others
Be known as a great employer – if you want great people, you must first be great
Involve your employees in the hiring process – they can recommend candidates, help review qualifications, and assist in the interview
Use your leadership team – quality leadership should be able to recruit and attract quality people
Build your reputation – what kind of workplace culture do you currently have? Is it time for a reboot?
Be proactive – stay on top of current recruiting trends and try to keep a pool of talent available when it is time to hire them

Final Words on Recruiting the Best Employees

Employee turnover is terribly high and expensive in senior care. One way to cut down on turnover and related expenses is recruiting the right person for the right position. But, you need to get real and develop a plan. Take a hard and honest look at your current recruiting practices. Are they effective? Are you attracting the right people? If you are lacking current and strategic practices in bringing in great candidates, change things up. Be courageous. Be innovative. And never, ever settle for mediocrity.