How to Get the Best Applicants Interested in Your Job

Are you searching for the right caregiver for your family, but you just don’t seem to be getting any or enough promising applicants? There are several ways you can improve your chances of getting great responses to your Care.com job posting. With a few changes to the job ad and a proactive mindset, you will find yourself one step closer to finding the best applicants and a potential hire.
Note: This article is to help families looking to hire someone.

1. Revise your job ad

When something doesn’t work, start back at square one. Is everything in your original Care.com job posting well thought out and easy to understand? Have you made the job sound appealing? Make sure you clarify what you need from a caregiver and make the job sound exciting.

2. Have realistic expectations

If you need a caregiver who will do the school-run, look after your youngest, sort the laundry and make sure homework is done on time – you will need to pay them a fair wage. If you are hiring a caregiver and expect them to perform additional duties, make sure you pay for them. Put yourself in the person’s shoes: you wouldn’t apply to a job ad if there’s a lot of responsibilities, with not a lot of pay.

3. Know your minimum requirements

Avoid clogging up your job posting with your wish list of qualities in a caregiver. Instead focus on the essentials. For example, make it clear that providers must have completed CPR training. It’s okay to have a specific area for reasonable “minimum requirements” at the bottom of your application. If a caregiver doesn’t have these requirements, they won’t be tempted to apply.

4. Be friendly

Don’t just talk about the job and requirements in your ad, but also mention your family and who they would be working with. Talk about your 5 year-old wannabe ballerina or your dinosaur-loving son. It might be nice to hire someone who studied ballet or who knows the best dinosaur books. Those little things, like interests, can make a sitter want to apply to a job or not.

5. Be in the know

Educate yourself on the process of hiring a sitter. If you don’t know what the going rate for caregivers is in your neighbourhood, then check the Care.com babysitting rates calculator. The calculator can give you a guideline for how much you should be paying. If you’re hiring a nanny, make sure you know the ins-and-outs of a nanny contract.

6. Get advertising

While your ad is up on Care.com, message local caregivers to see if they’re available — and send them the job ad too. Be proactive in your search for a caregiver. Don’t just wait for them to contact you but message them yourself and send them the job ad for them to take a look at. Search for local caregivers by entering your postal code.
If you get candidates who aren’t a perfect fit, make sure you close the loop with them. There can be a lot of candidates to look over, but taking the extra time to let them know where they stand is a courtesy and a time-saver. The caregiver can now move on to other job applications (without wondering about the status of yours) and you don’t have to respond to follow up messages from them asking if you are going to hire them.