"I've tried everything. Indeed, ZipRecruiter, Facebook, even Craigslist. Nothing works."
We hear some version of this every week. And every time, we ask the same question: How fast did you respond?
Usually there's a pause. Then something like, "We try to call them back within a day or two."
There's the problem. Not the platform. The response time.
We run caregiver recruitment marketing for home care agencies. We've seen which platforms actually produce caregivers who stay versus which ones burn money. The answer isn't "use Indeed" or "avoid Craigslist." It's more complicated than that, and honestly, more interesting.
This guide breaks down every major recruitment channel, platform by platform. What each one actually costs, what kind of applicants you'll get, and what makes the difference between wasting $2,000 a month and building a recruitment engine that works.
• Referrals beat everything for quality. Build a real program before spending on ads.
• Indeed brings volume but has the highest turnover. Respond within hours, not days.
• myCNAjobs outperforms Indeed on retention in many markets.
• Free channels (Facebook groups, nursing schools) often outperform paid ones.
The One Thing That Matters More Than Platform Choice
Before we get into specific platforms, let's address the elephant in the room.
Speed kills everything else.
Research from CareAcademy found that the number one reason caregivers accepted a job in 2020 was that it was the first job they were offered. Not the best job. Not the highest paying job. The first one that moved fast.
If you're responding to applicants "within a day or two," you're already behind. Good caregivers are off the market within 10 days. Many are gone within 48 hours. Top agencies aim to respond within hours, not days.
The math is simple: A $500/month Indeed budget with 48-hour response times will underperform a $200/month budget with 2-hour response times. Every time.
So whatever platform you choose, fix your response process first. Automate acknowledgment texts. Assign someone to check applications multiple times per day. Make "speed to first contact" a metric you track.
Now, let's look at where to actually find these applicants.
Tier 1: Start Here First
1. Employee Referral Programs
Your current caregivers know other caregivers. This isn't a revelation, but most agencies treat referral programs as an afterthought. A laminated sign in the break room. A mention during orientation.
That's not a program. That's a suggestion.
The agencies that get 40% of their hires from referrals do things differently. They promote the program constantly. They pay meaningful bonuses. They make it ridiculously easy to refer.
A common approach is tiered bonuses. $50 if the person interviews and completes their application, another $100 after they work 100 hours. The staged payment ensures caregivers don't just refer anyone who can fog a mirror.
Tribute Home Care pays $700 when a referral is hired. Some agencies add charitable donations for every referral, whether they're hired or not.
The research backs this up. Word-of-mouth hires have a 59% turnover rate compared to much higher rates from job boards. That's a massive difference in cost and stability.
The insider tip: Don't just reward cash. Recognition matters. Highlight successful referrers in team meetings. Create a "Recruiter of the Month" award. Some caregivers are motivated more by status than by a check.
2. Facebook Groups (Organic)
This is the most underused channel we see. Industry veterans consistently call Facebook "the most underused social media recruiting method available today." They're not wrong.
We're not talking about Facebook Ads yet. We're talking about joining local caregiver groups and actually participating.
Search for groups like "Caregiver Jobs in [Your City]" or "Home Health Aides Network." Many of these groups have thousands of members who are actively looking for work or willing to consider a change.
The catch: You can't just spam job postings. Most groups will ban you immediately. You need to add value first. Answer questions. Share helpful information. Become a known presence. Then, when you mention you're hiring, people actually pay attention.
If an agency in a suburban Texas market asked me to help fill three positions through community job boards, I'd point them to Facebook groups first. Zero ad spend needed. Most owners have never tried it because it "seems unprofessional."
What works: Posting in groups works better in suburban and rural areas. Urban markets are more saturated, and caregivers there tend to use job boards. Know your market.
3. Nursing Schools and CNA Programs
Students need clinical hours. They need job experience. They need to pay rent while they're in school.
Partnering with local nursing schools and CNA training programs gives you access to motivated, trainable candidates before they ever hit a job board.
Step 1: Identify community colleges and vocational schools with CNA or nursing assistant programs within 30 miles.
Step 2: Contact their career services office. Offer to speak to classes, sponsor job fairs, or provide clinical placement sites.
Step 3: Create a "student caregiver" track with flexible scheduling around class times.
California's CNAP program works with community colleges statewide. Oregon's Home Care Commission partners with 17 community colleges to create pathways into caregiving. These aren't just nice ideas. They're proven pipelines.
Some agencies sponsor students' CNA training in exchange for a work commitment. It's a bigger investment upfront, but it solves the "can't find anyone" problem at the source.
Struggling to build a consistent caregiver pipeline?
We help home care agencies with recruitment marketing that actually fills shifts. Book a free strategy call to see if we can help.
Tier 2: The Job Boards
Now we get to the platforms most agencies think of first. They all work. They all have tradeoffs.
4. Indeed
Indeed is the 800-pound gorilla. It's the top recruitment source for home care providers, with over 250 million unique visitors per month. If you're only going to use one job board, it's probably this one.
But there's a problem.
Industry data shows that Indeed-sourced hires have an 85% turnover rate, roughly 20 points higher than the industry average. More volume, worse retention.
That doesn't mean avoid Indeed. It means understand what you're getting.
What we've learned:
- Indeed's algorithm buries slow responders. If you're not responding quickly, your posts get less visibility. It's a vicious cycle.
- Sponsored posts work better than organic, but only if your response process is tight.
- Don't copy-paste the same description to multiple boards. Indeed can detect duplicate content and may penalize visibility.
- Complete your company profile. Add photos. Encourage employee reviews. Listings from companies with strong profiles get more applications.
Cost: Free to post, but sponsored posts ($150-500/month depending on market) are often necessary to compete.
5. myCNAjobs
This is the specialized platform most agencies overlook. myCNAjobs focuses specifically on caregivers, CNAs, and home health aides.
The retention numbers are notable. According to Mission Care, hires from myCNAjobs are 20% more likely to be retained at 60 days and 24% more likely at 90 days compared to Indeed.
Do the math: if replacing a caregiver costs around $4,000 (accounting for recruiting, training, and lost productivity), an agency hiring 100 people a year from Indeed instead of myCNAjobs could spend $60,000 more just on churn.
The tradeoff: Lower volume. myCNAjobs won't flood you with applications the way Indeed might. But the applications you do get tend to be from people who specifically want caregiving work, not people mass-applying to every job on the internet.
For smaller agencies or those in competitive markets, myCNAjobs is often a better value than fighting for visibility on Indeed.
6. ZipRecruiter
ZipRecruiter positions itself as a "smart" job board that uses AI to match candidates to jobs. It syndicates your posting to over 100 other sites, which sounds great in theory.
In practice, it's somewhere between Indeed and the niche boards. Broader reach than myCNAjobs, less dominant than Indeed. Pricing tends to be higher than Indeed for comparable visibility.
When it works: ZipRecruiter's "one-click apply" feature means lower friction for candidates. That can help in markets where caregivers are less tech-savvy or time-pressed. But it also means more unqualified applications to sort through.
7. Care.com
Care.com started as a platform for families to find caregivers directly. They've expanded to agency recruiting, but the fit is awkward.
With 17 million caregivers on the platform, there's certainly volume. But many of those caregivers are looking for private clients, not agency employment. The mindset is different.
Best for: Agencies that offer flexible, part-time arrangements that feel more like gig work than traditional employment. Less useful for agencies with structured schedules and full-time expectations.
8. CareListings
CareListings focuses on senior care specifically. They're smaller than the big job boards, but the audience is pre-qualified for your industry.
Volume is lower. Quality is often higher. Worth testing if you're in a market where Indeed is oversaturated.
9. Snagajob
Snagajob specializes in hourly work. They have strong penetration in retail and food service, and increasingly in healthcare.
Wages listed on Snagajob for caregivers range from $12-22/hour depending on location. The platform attracts people looking for shift-based work with flexibility.
Best for: Agencies with variable scheduling needs and a younger workforce. Less effective for live-in or specialized positions.
10. Craigslist
Yes, really.
Craigslist has a reputation problem. It feels unprofessional. It attracts some sketchy applicants. But it still works, especially for smaller agencies.
The posting is free. The audience is local. And in some markets, particularly smaller cities and towns, it's still where working-class job seekers look first.
The warning: Screen carefully. Craigslist attracts a wider range of applicants, which means more time separating the good from the questionable. But if you're scrappy and willing to filter, the cost-per-quality-hire can be surprisingly good.
Tier 3: Social and Digital Advertising
11. Facebook Ads
Facebook advertising for caregiver recruitment works. It's also easy to waste money on.
The advantage: precise targeting. You can reach people within a specific radius, with specific interests, who match your ideal caregiver profile. And 86% of job seekers use social media in their search.
The challenge: Facebook users aren't in "job search mode" the way Indeed users are. You're interrupting them. That means your ad creative matters a lot more. Stock photos of smiling seniors won't cut it.
What we've seen work:
- Video ads featuring real caregivers talking about why they like the job
- Testimonials from current staff about the culture
- Ads that lead to a simple, mobile-friendly application (not a 20-field form)
Cost varies wildly by market. Expect $5-15 per lead in most areas, with conversion rates heavily dependent on your landing page and response speed.
12. Instagram and TikTok
If you're trying to reach younger caregivers, particularly Gen Z, these platforms matter. Research shows that 46% of Gen Z secured jobs through TikTok, and 76% rely on Instagram for career content.
We wrote about using Instagram Reels for caregiver recruitment previously. The short version: short-form video showing day-in-the-life content, caregiver testimonials, and behind-the-scenes glimpses of your agency culture outperforms polished corporate content.
This isn't for every agency. If your workforce is mostly 40+, stick to Facebook. But if you're struggling to attract younger candidates, the platforms where they actually spend time might be worth exploring.
13. Google Jobs
Google Jobs isn't a separate platform. It's Google's aggregation of job postings from across the web, displayed directly in search results.
If someone searches "caregiver jobs near me," Google shows job listings before the actual search results. Getting your jobs to appear there is free, but requires proper structured data on your website or posting through a platform that feeds into Google Jobs.
Most major job boards (Indeed, ZipRecruiter, etc.) already feed into Google Jobs. If you're only posting on your own website, make sure your tech person has added the proper schema markup.
What Most Agencies Get Wrong
Help enough agencies with recruitment and the same patterns show up over and over.
Mistake 1: "Spray and Pray"
Posting the same job description to 10 platforms and waiting for magic to happen. This actually hurts you. Platforms can detect duplicate content. And if you're not actively managing applications across all those channels, you're just creating places where applicants fall through the cracks.
Better: Pick 2-3 platforms. Do them well. Track which ones produce quality hires, not just applications.
Mistake 2: Writing Job Descriptions Like Legal Documents
Your job post is not a contract. It's marketing. It should sound like a human wrote it.
"Seeking qualified candidates with experience in personal care assistance, including but not limited to bathing, dressing, and meal preparation..." is how robots write job posts.
"Want to make a real difference for families in Phoenix? We're looking for caregivers who genuinely care about helping seniors stay independent at home." That's how you attract people who actually want the job.
Mistake 3: Not Tracking Source Quality
Many agencies can tell you their cost per applicant. Few can tell you their cost per quality hire by source. Fewer still track 90-day retention by source.
If you're not measuring which channels produce caregivers who stay, you're just guessing.
According to myCNAjobs, 80% of agencies don't know their cost per hire. That's flying blind.
Mistake 4: Ignoring Response Time
We mentioned this at the start, but it bears repeating. Industry experts consistently identify response speed as the single most important factor in successful hiring. Not the platform. Not the pay rate. Speed.
If you remember nothing else from this guide: respond faster.
Building a Recruitment System (Not Just Using Platforms)
Platforms are tools. They don't solve problems by themselves.
An actual recruitment system looks like this:
- Source layer: 2-3 active channels you're managing well (referrals + one job board + one organic channel)
- Speed layer: Automated acknowledgment within minutes, human follow-up within hours
- Conversion layer: Simple application, fast interview scheduling, quick decision-making
- Measurement layer: Tracking cost per hire and 90-day retention by source
Most agencies have pieces of this but not all of it. The agencies that struggle least with hiring usually have the most complete system, not the biggest budget.
Ask yourself these questions:
1. Do you know your average response time to applications? (Hours, not days?)
2. Can you identify which sources produced your best caregivers last year?
3. Do you have an active referral program with bonuses people actually claim?
4. Is someone specifically responsible for recruitment, or is it "everyone's job"?
If you answered "no" to more than one of these, the platform isn't your problem. The system is.
Where to Start if You're Starting Over
If we were building a recruitment strategy from scratch for a typical 50-caregiver home care agency, here's the order we'd do it:
Month 1: Fix response time. Set up automated text acknowledgments. Assign application review to a specific person, multiple times per day.
Month 2: Launch a real referral program. Not a sign on the wall. A promoted, incentivized program with tiered bonuses and regular reminders.
Month 3: Pick one job board (probably Indeed or myCNAjobs depending on your market) and optimize it. Complete company profile, employee reviews, professional photos.
Month 4: Add one organic channel. Facebook groups if you're suburban/rural. Nursing school partnerships if you have capacity for training.
Month 5+: Start tracking and optimizing. Which sources produce quality hires? Double down on what works. Cut what doesn't.
Notice that paid advertising comes later, not first. Most agencies aren't ready to spend money on ads until their foundation is solid. Ads just accelerate whatever system you already have. If that system is broken, you're accelerating failure.
Want Help Building a Recruitment System That Works?
We help home care agencies attract caregivers through better positioning, faster funnels, and marketing that actually converts.
If doing this yourself feels overwhelming, let's talk.
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The platform matters less than most agencies think. What matters is speed, systems, and actually treating recruitment like the marketing problem it is.
The best caregivers go to whoever moves first.