9 minute read
Here's a number that should make you uncomfortable: only 4.1% of home care providers use social media for recruitment. Meanwhile, nearly half of Gen Z workers have landed jobs through TikTok alone. Your next great caregiver is scrolling past job posts on Indeed and watching 30-second videos about what it's actually like to work somewhere. And you're probably not there.
Agencies pour money into Indeed sponsorships while wondering why their turnover stays stubbornly high. The platforms where young caregivers actually spend their time remain essentially untouched by most home care recruiters. That gap between where you're recruiting and where candidates live online is costing you applications, hires, and retention.
The Platform Mismatch Nobody Talks About
Home health and personal care aides now represent the largest single occupation in America at 4 million workers. The demand is there. The workers exist. But most agencies keep fishing in the same crowded pond.
Consider what Zety found when they surveyed nearly 900 Gen Z employees earlier this year. A striking 76% rely on Instagram for career content, more than double the 34% who use LinkedIn. Let that sink in. The platform most agencies ignore for recruitment is the one Gen Z uses most for career decisions.
The disconnect gets worse. Indeed remains the most popular recruitment source for home care agencies. But it also produces the highest turnover rate at 88%. That's not a typo. You're paying to recruit people who are statistically likely to leave within months.
Meanwhile, employee referrals account for just 14.6% of recruitment but generate significantly better retention. What do referrals and Instagram Reels have in common? They both show real people vouching for what it's like to work at your agency.
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Why Short-Form Video Actually Works for Hiring
The numbers on video engagement are hard to argue with. Career sites that feature employee videos see dramatically higher application rates. Instagram Reels reach 125% more users than static photo posts. And only about 21% of Instagram creators even post Reels monthly, which means less competition for attention.
But this isn't just about algorithms. It's about what candidates actually want to see before they apply.
Think about a 22-year-old scrolling through their feed at 11 PM. They're not in "job search mode." They're unwinding. If your Reel pops up showing a caregiver laughing with a client, helping someone take a walk outside, or talking honestly about what their day looks like, you've just done something a job listing never can. You've made the work feel real.
That quote comes from a recruiter interviewed by I Advance Senior Care about Gen Z hiring strategies. The key word is honest. Gen Z grew up with advertising. They can smell corporate polish from three platforms away. What they can't resist is authenticity.
What Day-in-the-Life Content Actually Looks Like
Forget production value for a moment. The Reels that work for caregiver recruitment don't need fancy editing or professional cameras. They need genuine moments.
A typical approach: hand your caregiver a phone. Ask them to capture a few moments from their shift. The drive to a client's home. Helping prepare breakfast. A quiet moment of conversation. The goodbye at the end of the visit. String those clips together with some text overlay and background music. You've got a Reel that took 20 minutes to make and shows more about the job than any description ever could.
Agencies tend to overthink this. They want scripts. They want approval chains. They want to control the message. But the moment you over-polish a day-in-the-life video, it stops feeling like a day in the life. It becomes an ad. And the algorithm knows the difference. More importantly, so do candidates.
The best content includes:
- Real caregivers, not actors or office staff
- Unscripted moments that show the relationship aspect of the work
- Honest acknowledgment of challenges alongside the rewards
- Your actual workplace culture, not an aspirational version
Some agencies have started training caregivers on how to create this content themselves. Turning social media training into an in-service opportunity helps caregivers understand the business while generating authentic content. It's a rare situation where training benefits both recruitment and retention.
The Gen Z Trust Problem You Need to Understand
Here's where things get complicated. While 46% of Gen Z has secured jobs through TikTok, that same Zety report found that 55% admit to following misleading career advice on social media. They use these platforms extensively but approach them with skepticism.
Only 42% of Gen Z says they trust brands and businesses. That's not just low. That's a fundamental obstacle for any company trying to attract young workers.
What cuts through that skepticism? Other employees. Posts shared by employees generate 8x more engagement than the same content shared by official brand accounts. Employee voices are considered three times more credible than a CEO's when discussing working conditions.
This is why your caregiver's shaky iPhone video outperforms your professionally produced recruitment ad. It's not the quality of the footage. It's who's holding the camera.
Case Study: What Works on Short-Form Video
Case Study: CVS Health on TikTok
CVS Health partnered with recruitment marketing agency Recruitics to run lead generation campaigns on TikTok targeting hard-to-fill healthcare positions. The approach focused on reaching passive job seekers in key geographic areas where hiring was most difficult.
Results:
- 2.4 million impressions
- $20.60 cost per lead
- Successfully captured interest for roles that had struggled on traditional job boards
The campaign worked because it targeted locations with specific hiring needs and reached candidates who weren't actively job searching but might be open to new opportunities. For home care agencies, this suggests a strategy: don't just post and pray. Target the zip codes where you need coverage.
Now, CVS is obviously operating at a different scale than most home care agencies. But the principle translates. A typical monthly ad spend for a small to average-sized home care agency runs between $350 and $500 per month. That's not prohibitive. The question is whether you're spending it on platforms where your candidates actually are.
Why Instagram May Be the Better Play
While TikTok gets the headlines, Instagram may actually be the better choice for caregiver recruitment. Here's why.
About 76% of adults aged 18-29 use Instagram. That age range aligns almost perfectly with the demographics home care agencies need to reach for entry-level positions. The platform is also perceived as more professional than TikTok without being as formal as LinkedIn.
Instagram Reels specifically have an engagement advantage. Recent benchmarks show Reels generate a 1.23% engagement rate compared to 0.70% for photos and 0.99% for carousels. For healthcare and pharma specifically, Instagram Reels engagement averages 2.7%.
There's another factor that matters for home care. Instagram is "the lifestyle platform." Your business account should portray the lifestyle and personality of your agency's brand. That framing works particularly well for caregiving, which is fundamentally about relationships and quality of life rather than clinical tasks.
The Reality Check: Competition and Limitations
Remember that 88% turnover rate from Indeed? Part of why it's so high is what happens before someone even applies.
Think about how a job seeker experiences Indeed. They see a text description. Maybe a few bullet points about requirements. A salary range if you're transparent. But nothing about the people, the culture, or what the day actually feels like. They apply because the pay looks okay and the commute works. That's not exactly a recipe for commitment.
Now imagine they see your Instagram Reel first. They watch a caregiver talk about why they love the work. They see real interactions with clients. They get a sense of whether this is somewhere they could see themselves. When they apply, they're not just responding to a salary. They're responding to a culture they've already previewed.
Research on day-in-the-life videos for recruitment suggests this preview effect directly impacts retention. When candidates have realistic expectations before their first day, they're less likely to quit in shock during the first weeks. The video did the screening job that interviews often fail to do.
The Honest Limitations
Instagram Reels won't solve your hiring problems overnight. There are real constraints to acknowledge.
The platform mismatch issue cuts both ways. Someone on TikTok or Instagram might find it jarring to encounter job content while scrolling for entertainment. As one analysis put it, the same audience you're hoping to convert is there for fun content and may find recruitment messaging out of place. Not everyone will be receptive.
There's also the demographic ceiling. Over 78% of TikTok users are 39 and under. Great for entry-level caregiver roles, less useful for clinical coordinators.
And authenticity has a dark side. If your current caregivers aren't happy, that will show up in your content whether you want it to or not. Employees will hesitate to participate. The videos will feel forced. Candidates will notice.
Social media recruitment works best when it amplifies a genuinely good workplace. It can't create one.
Getting Started: Your First Reel
If you're convinced but paralyzed about where to begin, here's a simple starting point.
Identify one caregiver who seems naturally comfortable on camera and generally positive about their work. Ask them to spend one shift capturing short clips of what they do. Give them minimal direction beyond "show us what your day looks like." Let them text you the clips.
Take those clips into any free editing app. CapCut works fine. Add some text that says who you are and that you're hiring. Add background music. Keep it under 60 seconds. Post it as a Reel.
That's it. That's the whole process for your first piece of content.
You can get sophisticated later with content calendars and paid promotions. But the first step is proving to yourself this doesn't have to be complicated. One real caregiver. One real day. One short video. See what happens.
The 80-20 rule applies here: 80% of your content should provide value, things like health tips and behind-the-scenes glimpses. The other 20% can be direct recruitment. Following this ratio keeps your account from feeling like a constant advertisement.
The direct care workforce is projected to need about 765,800 job openings annually through 2034. That's existing workers leaving plus new positions created by demand. The agencies that figure out how to reach younger workers now will have a structural advantage for the next decade.
Meanwhile, only 4.1% of home care providers are using social media for recruitment. That gap between demand and adoption is opportunity. Not for someday. For now.
The Ultimate Marketing Checklist for Home Care
15-point GBP audit, review generation templates, recruitment ad examples, website conversion checklist, and social media calendar.
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Your competitors are posting job listings. Your future caregivers are watching Reels. The question isn't whether short-form video works for recruitment. The question is how long you'll let that gap cost you applications.
