Recruitment Strategies and Tips in Social Care Recruitment

Recruitment strategies and tips: It’s the turn this week of Dave Beesley, managing accounts within Cohesion’s Social Care recruitment division, to tells us his thoughts on the benefits of a Total Recruitment Philosophy (TRP).

What does TRP mean to you?

TRP brings the entire recruitment and onboarding piece together and is only successful if practiced as a whole. It sets a recruitment process apart from others – it allows a company to reach, engage, and retain quality staff.

My top tips for getting the process right in Social Care Recruitment:

1. Include a proper attraction strategy

If you have recruited to similar roles in the past, then make sure you use data on the sources of those successfully recruited last time. It should form the foundation of your attraction strategy this time round.

Download our e-book on our top tips for social care recruitment

2. Communicate non-stop.

Candidates’ love calls, emails, and text messages to keep them in touch with the process. And remember that candidate engagement has to continue right through the post offer and pre-employment stage.

3. Values based telephone interviewing

Values based telephone interviewing has taken over from competency based interviewing as the primary method for selecting Care & Support Workers. Focus on attitude and values rather than previous experience. Prepare your candidates for face to face interviews. You want them to give a good account of themselves, so putting them at ease and removing surprises will give the best outcomes. Spend time on offer management – I recommend lots of communication with the candidate, understanding how they felt about interview, and whether they would accept, so that you can anticipate any objections before giving the offer itself.

4. Onboarding is so much more than referencing and DBS checks!

OmWe recommend welcome calls, new starter fact sheets, and inviting new starters to social events with new colleagues if possible. New starter and non-starter surveys. We find out so much by asking why applicants start (or don’t) and use this to refine our processes on an ongoing basis. How much influence? Do you ensure your organisational values and beliefs influence every stage of the recruitment process? Does the feedback you obtain from candidates and new starters influence the recruitment, employee onboarding, induction and training process?