If you work in senior living, you already know the staffing challenges that communities face. Recruiting top talent is difficult. It’s even harder with a reduced workforce and thousands of new candidates. If you’re struggling with recruitment, here are some tips to help.
Consolidate your hiring process
The biggest roadblock to attracting top talent is often the hiring process. If it takes 2 hours to fill out the initial application and book an interview, you’re most likely weeding out solid talent. The first application should only take a few minutes to fill out. Focus on gathering the essential information in the beginning.
Your interview process should be just as efficient. If you’re stringing them around for 6+ interviews, there’s a problem. Cut down on your interviews when you can. If you have multiple one-on-one interviews, you can combine them into a panel. If you have multiple interviews booked out for several weeks, you can also combine them on the same day.
Assessment tests are also common in the hiring process. These should be incorporated in the latter half of your process and not the beginning. You don’t need 5 different tests to get a good grasp if they’ll fit in.
Communicate your expectations early on
Whether the posting on job boards or working with a recruiter, you need to set clear expectations to get the right applicants. This means you need to know the position’s salary range, how much you’re willing to negotiate, and the desired start date. Don’t make any claims you can’t keep. If they need to have specific certifications or meet certain requirements, they need to be aware of them before submitting the application.
You certainly don’t want to exaggerate claims to attract more talent. There is pressure on applicants to be transparent in their resumes. Companies should also be diligent in maintaining expectations.
Adjust expectations
As with all industries, the expectation that someone is going to be onboarded and stay with a company for a decade is unrealistic. This is especially true for part-time employees.
This is the perfect time to considering hiring outside talent. With the hospitality industry adjusting to a new normal, professionals are starting to look for new avenues to transfer to. We’ve mentioned the benefits of onboarding hotel talent in some of our previous articles.
Start an internship program
For many people enrolled in college, they’re not going to consider the senior living industry as a career path. If you’re a company that promotes leaders from in, you’re guaranteed to get more outside talent. If you can move college students through an internship program that provides, you can lead then into a position after graduation.
Use a recruitment firm to fill in the gaps
To identify employees who are most likely to stay, it’s helpful to turn to the organization’s current staff. Usually, they will have connections that will work well with your establishment. If you don’t have many connections and you’re searching purely off sites like Indeed or LinkedIn, a recruiter can help.
Recruitment firms will have a database filled with the best industry talent. The right recruitment firm will specialize in talent in your industry and know how to access passive candidates. Statistically speaking, you are way more likely to find the best talent in the market. This will ultimately reduce the time and in-house resources dedicated to recruitment efforts.
If you need help with recruiting talent, JDI specializes in senior living talent. You can reach out to one of our recruiters on LinkedIn or email us at info@jdisearch.com.