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Metrics are the backbone to homecare agency success and yet too many agencies are missing out on this incredible powerhouse of information about their business. Many recruiters and owners are overwhelmed by the numbers and feel frustrated when looking at a glance. Today, we want to help you zero in on 4 primary metrics that you should be tracking and how they help guide you through the path to success.
Metric #1- We recommend tracking your COST PER APPLICANT monthly. It’s typically unnecessary to track it more.
You find this number by figuring out how much you spent on advertising and dividing that number by how many applicants you received. You can do this as a whole, or you can break it down by platform because different platforms will likely yield different results. Tracking your CPA on each platform will show you the performance of where you are allocating your advertising budget.
There are both factors inside and outside your control that can impact this number.
An example of a factor outside your control would be if a new facility opens up in your area and has the budget for high advertising, bonuses, and pay. You would likely see your competition increase dramatically and your CPA will follow that trajectory.
However, there are also essential factors that you are in control of when it comes to your CPA. Testing different advertising locations can be very beneficial in figuring out which location gives you the best results. Many times, moving your ad to a new location even a few miles away can give you a significantly lower cost. This is why we recommend testing ads in multiple locations and running multiple ads at once. This way, you are able to track which location is best and bring you the most success.
Keywords and titling are another highly important factor inside of your control that you can use to your advantage. An example might be using the word “Caregiver” versus “HHA/CNA” might give you better results and this is something you can track. Is listing your exact pay bringing in more applicants? Or, is it more cost-effective to leave the pay ambiguous? Your market and tracking this CPA metric will tell you which things are in your control and where you can improve.
Metric #2 - Tracking the number of applicants your ads are generating is another very important metric. This is a simple metric that needs to be followed weekly. This will tell you how well your job ads are performing as well as which platforms are bringing in the best results. Tracking this data is one of the first ways that you can easily improve your recruiting process.
We believe that data fosters collaboration.
This means that when your results are lower than your normal average applicants for the week, you know that there might be a factor outside your or your recruiter’s control and that you can start problem-solving on how still to reach your goals for the week/month.
The reason that tracking this metric weekly is so important is that if you wait until 2 or 3 weeks after applicants have been down, it is harder to remedy the situation and you will forfeit bringing in your desired results. In weekly tracking, you can spot the problem and tackle it head-on the following week. This might mean increasing the budget, changing the location of your ad, re-evaluating your platforms, or changing your ad titles.
Metric #3 - We recommend regularly tracking the number of your applicants who are booking interviews. If you are now tracking your number of applicants weekly, this should be a simple number to grab. We recommend tracking this number as a percentage. You take your applicants and divide it by the number of interviews you or your recruiter scheduled and track this percentage.
Not every agency is facing the same struggle and this percentage can vary based on your current staff, market, and recruiting process. Knowing your data is vital to your success and to the health of your agency and recruiting process.
In looking at this percentage, you will be able to see if it is possible that your bookings are low due to poor applicant quality. If you have high applicant numbers but not many are booking interviews, you will want to check in on your ads.
At Carework, we rarely recommend adding dealbreaker questions to your ads. This can disqualify applicants in grey areas that might be qualified and yet answer “no” on a question they misunderstood or that you may have been able to overlook. A good example of this is having a dealbreaker question like “Do you have one year of experience?” This could disqualify someone with 11 months of experience who answers no and you would have been able to hire them after talking with the applicant. However, if you have something along the lines of a strict vaccine requirement or the need for a CNA license, adding a dealbreaker question might help you get only qualified applicants and help your percentage of booked interviews increase.
Tracking your applicants booked will also allow you to see how your recruiter is performing without micromanaging. Although there are often factors outside your control, if you were to hire a new recruiting team or test out a new process, this is the metric you would track to see their success.
Metric #4 - Knowing your agency's unique successful interview rate is a very important asset for many aspects of your recruiting process. This is a positive view of looking at your No Call/No Show rate. Your successful interview rate will fluctuate significantly and can be discouraging to look at. Many agency owners and recruiters come to us with this metric being their most difficult one to remedy as well as the one that frustrates them the most.
Even though it’s frustrating at times, tracking your NC/NS rate will allow you to plan backward, to meet your hiring goals. Metrics become levers that you can pull when needed to increase your results. Data allows you to plan successfully.
An example of backward planning would be that in your tracking, you find that 25% of your booked interviews are showing up, qualified, and able to be hired. This tells you that you need to book 4 interviews for every 1 hire that you need. Your applicants booked metric tells you that you are booking 50% of your applicants for interviews and knowing this, you know that you need to have 8 applicants for every 1 hire you need. You know that your CPA is $10/applicant and your goal for the month is 5 hires. This tells you that you need your ad budget set at $400 for the month,
Backward planning allows you to turn a crippling problem in this industry into a business strategy.
This also helps you plan logistically to manage your time most effectively. If you know the percentage of applicants who show up for their interviews, it allows you to plan accordingly and double book interviews or book them closely together to maximize your time since you know that they will not all attend the interview. This metric takes emotion out of the equation and allows you to look at your numbers with confidence.
Tracking your NC/NS rate helps you troubleshoot areas like pay, lack of connection from your recruiter, or scheduling them sooner for the interview.
At Carework, we provide national benchmarking data to all of our full-service recruiting customers. This allows them to see how they are measuring up to the national trends and see where improvements can be made.
Breaking down your metrics is vital to your business's success. The unfortunate reality is that when agencies in retrospect go back through their 3-6-month-old data, it is then not fixable and not accurate. Tracking weekly and monthly is important so that you can face problems in the moment and remedy them as they come.
Better recruiting, better care.