caregiver recruiting challenges
require innovative solutions to
get potential staff in the door
By Anya Martin
With so much comPetition from restAurAnts, some of the hArdest Positions to fiLL At CARAVITA COMMU-
NITIES hAve Been Kitchen WorKers And chefs. Seek-
ing a solution, Beth cayce, CEO of the Roswell, Georgia-based
company, embarked on a bold new approach. She headed into
a Waffle House restaurant near one of Caravita’s communi-
ties and asked the manager for the applications that did not
› Explicitly market the company’s
education benefits when
advertising a job opening. This
much-valued incentive will attract
applicants who are motivated to
continue learning.
› Generation Y employees
prefer to communicate via
technology versus face-to-face
meetings or phone conversations.
Podcasts and blogs are among
the technology tools managers
can incorporate into a younger
employee’s work experience.
› To fill part-time and other
flexible caregiver positions,
providers look to nontraditional
sources for prospective
employees—such as church
groups and clubs in the
community.
“Waffle House gets tons of applications, and many of them are
from people who are overqualified,” Cayce explains. “We’d go in
there to eat, so I thought let’s get creative. Let’s go down and ask
them, and they gave us several applications.”
Because of low wages, limited benefits, and an increasingly
tighter battle for talent in the workforce, recruiting and retaining
caregivers continues to be one of assisted living’s greatest challenges. Newspaper ads, job fairs, and staff referrals have been tried
and true methods for finding staff, but with changing workforce
demographics, CaraVita is just one of an increasing number of
providers using creative strategies to tap new recruiting sources.
recruiting in motion
In Portland, Oregon, the image of a smiling woman—dressed
in winter gear and snowboard in hand—is seen about town on
the side of public transportation vans. The advertisement’s tagline
reads: Not all nurses wear scrubs. Find out about My Life. My Schedule. at www.avamere.jobs. The innovative campaign was launched
by Wilsonville, Oregon-based Avamere Living to recruit nurses but
hopefully the campaign will also attract CNAs and other health-care workers, says Linda Nickolisen, Avamere Living’s corporate
director of talent and recruitment.
Avamere strategically chose the van line for its ad because it
provides shared rides for people with disabilities and medical conditions between hospitals, doctor offices, and other medical facilities where prospective employees may currently be working. The
goal is to attract employees interested in making a lateral career
move to do something different and less stressful than hospital
work, Nickolisen says.
