Home Care U - How to Write and Manage High-Performing Indeed Job Ads (Brittany Kase Pt. 1)

Episode Date: November 11, 2024

Indeed remains the top recruiting channel for home care, but the landscape of job ads is changing. Brittany Kase, an Account Manager at Carework and an expert in Indeed recruiting, spends her days immersed in Indeed. She helps home care agencies nationwide craft, manage, and optimize their job ads for better performance. Brittany is here to share her insider knowledge on navigating Indeed’s evolving features and maximizing results—tune in to learn specific tips for attracting top talent on Indeed.Enjoying the show? Send me a text and let me know!Learn more about Careswitch at: careswitch.comConnect with the host on LinkedIn: Miriam Allred This episode was produced by parkerkane.co

Welcome to Home Care U, everybody. Hello and welcome. For those of you returning or joining us for the first time, it's great to be back with you. I love these live sessions. I know we can't see you or hear you, but it's still great to be with you. And I hope everyone's having a great week so far. I know we took a week off last week.

It was actually so fun to meet many of you at the Home Care Association of America Conference in Seattle. And so, you know, just an apology. We took a week off. It was really busy, but we're excited to be back again this week. I am really excited for today's guest. We've got Brittany Case, an account manager at CareWork with us. I think many of you know Rachel Gartner, who's the CEO of CareWork,

who has been on the show. She is all over LinkedIn and many of you have met or seen her at conferences and events or webinars or summits. But this time I wanted to bring someone that's really on the ground floor at CareWork that is still in the day-to-day recruiting efforts that they do on behalf of agencies around the country. So Brittany was the one that they recommended. I'm really excited to pick her brain today. We are going to be diving into how to write and manage high-performing indeed job ads. And this is a topic that I think should be top of mind for all of you, whether you're doing it or not doing it or not doing it well or looking for ways to improve. That's really what we're going to dive into today.

And Brittany knows all things indeed, significantly more than myself and probably quite a bit more than most of you. So we're going to get into the weeds today. And as always, there's a chat and the Q&A box here inside of Zoom. So if you're joining us live, feel free to jump in and ask follow-up questions if you would like. So Brittany, let's start out with your introduction. Tell us a little bit about yourself, about your family, and about your role at CareWork. Yeah. So of course, my name is Brittany Case, and I go by Britt. Me and Miriam were just talking. I have flashbacks from my mom yelling at me. So Britt in my adult life is what it is, but Brittany's fine too. I've been with CareWork for about 2.5

years, so almost three. Obviously soon to be coming up. A little bit about my background. Before CareWork, I'm actually a teacher by trade. I went to Virginia Tech. That's where I met my husband and I have three beautiful children. He is active duty in the military, so we have been everywhere, but we are currently in upstate New York, so it is a little cold and dreary up here right now, but that's okay. Starting in the winter time. I'm sure some of you can relate if you're on that same spectrum of the US. So back to care work, I hold three roles. I'm busy.

I'm a busy lady with the kids and the three roles. They are account manager, team lead. And then of course I do sales for care work as well. A little bit. is it okay if I go into what each of those do? Okay. So the account manager, I think is arguably the most important to our clients. I oversee six offices currently, again, across the US. And we really focus on three main areas. So that's going to be the building of the relationship with the client, strategic planning and advising.

And then, of course, also leading recruiting efforts throughout the screening team. I'm kind of your liaison into care work, if I would be your account manager is the best way to put it. And then my team lead role. I love that. I help our wonderful recruiting supervisors. I'm sure some of you have met them, the Haley's. It's all three of the Haley's.

So I help them just on a smaller scale, as our company breaks down into smaller groups to get things done and managed. I love working alongside them. They're both brilliant and become mentors of mine for sure. And then my favorite part of my job is sales. So I feel like I can really shine through in sales. I always tell people I love meeting.

I'm very face front. I love communication and I like building that relationship and strategy calls. And it's really rewarding to get a owner or a client on there that is struggling with something and then they believe after that call that we can make tangible results and we can. So I think seeing that and then it being flipped and you kind of follow along when you sign somebody, even if you're not their account manager, to see the success that they've had. And that's extremely rewarding. And it gives them, when they come off

of that call and they have a little bit of hope about signing with us and that this could possibly help them and that this will help them, it's unmatched as far as the feeling. Because I truly love care work and have a passion for it. So I think that they can feel that being conveyed with me. But yeah, that's about a summary of who I am and what I do. And I'm excited to be here. Thank you so much. I'm a little nervous.

I've never done a podcast before, so I am excited. This is a first. Well, you're already a natural. This is going so well. Thank you for explaining all of that. Before you and I jumped on this call, we were talking about how what care work does is no secret. And so this episode and next week, we're going to bring you back and I'm really going to like dive into basically what you

all do on behalf of these home care businesses when it comes to managing their recruitment. And so today we're going to talk really specifically about Indeed. That's the platform that you all are using, living and breathing day in and day out. And so I want to really just dive into it and people get a taste of what it would be like to work with you. And next week, we'll talk about the strategy calls and the questions that you ask these owners and how they need to be thinking differently about recruitment. So make sure everyone comes back again next week as we get into that. So let's start by talking about job descriptions. That's

really like not the starting point, but one of like the key elements when it comes to recruiting is that actual job posting. And I think you and I both have seen a lot of bad job postings or job descriptions. And so I want to hear you break down really the core elements of a job description and what it is that makes a good or successful or the best job posting versus a lot of the mediocre stuff we see today. So I'll kind of open that up to you and you can kind of take it where you want when it comes to like how you want to break it down. Yeah, definitely.

So and I would echo what you're saying too, right? I think at least from my position, I think that that is the most important thing that we're digging into other than I would say maybe the hiring funnel and what's going through there. Because if you, I have a coworker and she says it best, appreciation starts at application. So if you don't have that caregiver first mindset

and you're not writing an excellent ad, it's already from the jump a little bit behind. So it's so important to have a good quality substance ad that's going to pull people in. And I'll speak more. I'm sure I will sound like a broken record this entire hour. I will mention things over and over and over again, because it's not a lot of knowledge that it takes to build. I think it's just the awareness of when you're building a job ad. You have to keep these things in mind that I'm going to talk about and then have those at the forefront of your

thought process while writing that ad constantly. Anytime you put up an ad, whether it's just one that you need to throw up real quick or whether you want to really craft this because this is a client that you really need to fill and it needs to be quick and mean something to you. So I'll start with kind of how I format and I'll go down through the title all the way down and then kind of do some key points and other important little tips, I guess, of writing the job ads. So the title, it needs to be relevant and concise. It cannot be lengthy and drawn out, especially for free ads. And we'll touch on this, but there is such a difference in free ads and what you can do, especially on Indeed versus sponsored. And you have to keep that in mind because you can kind of get into thick water when you're treating them the same. So with the title, it has to be consistent and relevant. So common

words, right? CNA, caregiver, HHA, in-home caregiver, CNA slash days, weekend caregivers. You want to keep it short and sweet and not lengthy and drawn out. Now, I do want to caveat before I go into any of this. This is something I just thought of. I will say, I tell owners all the time, if it's not broken, I do not want to, I don't want to jump in and make the wheel not turn, right? So just like people, Indeed almost kind of has a mind of its own where it draws, it is going to depend on if that's working in your area and if what you're doing is working, I would not bust it up and do something else. You could try something else that I'm mentioning while also keeping your ad. Because I have seen personally where ads that do not follow what I think is best practice

or my knowledge on Indeed, and they do extremely well. So I think just like people, right? I think that there's those one offers that they are going to work. And if that works for you, don't take that and say, well, this is what she said, so I need to fix it. If it's working and you're getting 50 applicants a day, I would keep that. I would just challenge you to try something else on top of it to see if it works better. Can I ask one question in here? And you might be getting to this. People are often tempted to put the hours or the pay in the title. Should they do that or shouldn't they do that? Like I said, if it's working for

you, I wouldn't fix it. But what I have seen in my experience most of the time, no, it is not working. You want that up at the top of your ad. And I can talk about that in the formatting and the description, but that is going to be right at the front when you're grabbing their attention as to what, right? They want to know the info the front when you're grabbing their attention as to what, right, they want to know the info first and then what we can do for them. So I'll let that question translate into the format. So you need to have information that's clear and structured and readable. You need to use bullet points. And like I said, not these dense paragraphs that are hard to read, especially on mobile devices. We'll touch on that. And again,

I would challenge you to take somebody that you are close to in your office that you know, spouses, some of the spouses give you the best feedback and have them read that ad. And if they don't know, and again, it also goes to who you're targeting. If you're a seniors helping seniors and you want somebody to have a lot of experience or you are an agency that needs a lot of experience and that's your requirement, you may not have to layman down the words. But in some sense, if you're willing to take those people that just have a caregiver heart and train them, they may not know what some of this stuff is. So take somebody a spot, do a couple people and have them read and see what they think of your job posting. You don't want it to be dense. Like I said, with our generation, especially with technology

and, you know, Instagram, TikTok, all we're instant gratification. So even the older generation sometimes. So we need to grab people's attention fast and it needs to be in bullet points. Keywords, keywords is a huge thing. Indeed is an algorithm based on keywords. So anytime you can put any relevant keyword searches in there, CNA, caregiver, you need to put those in there as much as possible, replacing any other kind of filler word that you would use for that. the clear and concise information, clear and concise title. How I would label my ads is putting, I give a little blurb about what's happening and then pay. That's what they care about first, right? Shifts, if it's going to fit them and then possibly location if it's not already on there. But again, people reading, right? There's some things we do it. We go through in a doctor's office and don't see things off to the side. And we need to read people. People lose track of things and mistake things.

So you need to put it in that body. And then the next thing is what I'm going to touch on is benefits and perks. Right. That Rachel and other ladies at care work have said this time and time again. It is our job to get them right. A good caregiver is going to get hired. It's who they're going to get hired with. So saying this is what we can do for you first, it already sets a tone of we care about you.

This is what we're going to do for you. But you do, of course, it's a job. You do need these qualifications, nice things to have, requirements of the position. And you need to clearly outline responsibility so people can self-monitor and kind of self self screen and say, hey, again, right, somebody who doesn't have experience, she may read that or he may read that and say, this isn't going to be for me. I thought it was, but it's not. And she can kind of self screen out. And then same with the qualifications. If you need a CNA or CPR, then people can quickly filter themselves out. Not always, but, you know, that's the goal, right? Is to get quality and the quantity of applicants that you need. And I think the biggest thing too is transparency, right? You do not want to slide on if there's a difficult part of this job or if there is a requirement, because it's just going to lengthen your funnel of talking to people who are not qualified.

So putting as much, but as clear and concise information in there, I know it's kind of like kind of like an oxymoron with the, you know, the pools in a different way, but you have to be, have to be transparent and clear, but also concise and direct and readable. Can I ask about, ask about like an about section, you know, like you said, these caregivers are going to get hired. They're probably applying to 10 agencies or 20 agencies in a very short period of time. And something that they're considering is the business, the agency, what differentiates you. So do you include that? And where do you include that? Yeah, I always include at the top. That's where I guess I should have been more clear about that is the blurb is, you know, we put, hey, this is kind of who we are

a little bit at the top. And then it goes, but it, you know, two to three sentences, that's it. It does not need to be this long drawn out paragraph. So figure out a couple sentences that convey your, your brand and your attitude and your environment as a company and put that in a couple sentences and then go immediately into what we can do for you and then what we need from you to complete that transaction of a hire basically. Okay. Yeah, that's great. And yeah, I appreciate you clarifying the blurb at the top. I was wondering if that's what it was. The other thing, two things that you mentioned that stand out to me, one is that these job ads aren't universal. Likely you are attracting a pretty wide audience. You and I talked about this, like the demographic of care professionals that

you're looking to hire is extremely vast. It could be, you know, people in college, people in school to maybe 65 year olds, and they're all on Indeed. And so knowing that not one job ad written in this format is going to catch all of them, you really need to tailor to the specific audiences. And so one question to you, I know you all are writing, creating, and managing a lot of ads. Is it common for a business to have like several ads running that are tailored to different audiences or is that a mistake? They have kind of one catch-all ad that they're trying to catch everyone in or what does just that range of different job ads look like? Is it normal to have several? Yeah, I would say I've seen more of where it's one. So normally you have, you know, that ideal caregiver, that

caregiver profile that I asked my owners, if you had the most perfect caregiver come in, who is that? What do they look like? From the qualities down to the qualification, all of that. And then that's what we try to convey to our screening team. So I would say most people have that ideal caregiver. But on the other hand, like I said, it's kind of a catch-22. You are correct. We're one of the only industries that are hiring 18-year-olds and 65-year-olds and from everybody in between, moms, dads, anybody, people with experience, without experience. So a lot of people grow within this job as well. And I would say, like I said, it's kind of a non-answer. I hate to say that, but I would

make it general enough. If you are one of those people that is hiring an 18 to 75 or 65-year-old, and that is your range of an ideal caregiver, you know, that it doesn't matter about the experience, then I would say make it more broad. But like a seniors helping seniors, I have a seniors helping seniors office. We are targeting more mature caregivers. So they do not care about same day pay. They do. And I shouldn't say they don't care. It's not up on the top of their priority, right? They do care about not having weekends. They do care about not having night shift because I don't know. I mean, I'm 30 and I don't know. I don't want to stay up all night. So I can't imagine a 60-year-old. They don't want to do

night shift most of the time. So I think if you have that more niche applicant that you're trying to find, yes, tailor it. If not, try to make it as readable as possible. And we're going to touch on this too. Look at your demographic and see who you're hiring. Do that data and that research to see who you're hiring. And if you're hiring 80%, 20 to 40 year olds, it's good to have evergreen ads in there. But I think also keeping that in mind while you write your ad is extremely beneficial. Did that answer the question? That's kind of a no. Yeah, really? No, that was great. Really good points. I think thinking about it through the lens of your ideal caregiver is a great place to start. But then the other thing that I wanted to touch on, you're referencing

these qualifications. And I think that's like an underutilized, probably room for improvement for most businesses is that qualifications, getting as specific and granular as you can while keeping it short and keeping it realistic. But like you said, like weeding out the bad applicants, starting from the job description and starting from those qualifications. If you're very clear about what you want or what you're looking for, they will weed themselves out. And in a sense, that's a win-win for both of you. Correct. Yeah. And I think, you know, dropping it down to right when I say when I'll talk about this later, there's a difference in

qualifications and would love to have versus nice to have or slash nice to have. I think, you know, if I have an office and they would love to have all of these things, but what they really bare bones need is a driver's license, auto insurance, and they need to be above the age of 18 and have CPR. That's what you put in the qualifications. You make a separate, we would love if you had this or nice to have this, and indeed has that feature of the bullet points after you go through that first page of posting an ad. I'm sure a lot of people here have seen, you have to utilize that because people, you know, like me on this pot, you know, I had a little bit of imposter syndrome and people do that. Even the most outward competent person can get a little bit turned in when they see this huge

list of qualifications. So I think also, you know, again, revisiting what you're wanting to change in your company and being caregiver first mindset and saying, hey, this is what we absolutely need to have. These are the qualifications. Everything else we'll talk about it in the interview. Those are great to have. We would love you to have them, but you only absolutely need this. So not kind of push people away too. Yeah, I actually really like that is like the must-haves versus the like-to-haves and making that really transparent to them. Hey, this is what you really need to have and likely the person reading it has that, but then here's the above and beyond, or here's what we're going to train you to become. And that is also really attractive. So I like breaking that down

really transparently in the job description so they can see, here's what I'm going to learn. Here's what I'm going to aspire to. Did we get all the way through it? I just wanted to kind of like recap title, very short, concise about pay, benefits, qualifications. We were just talking about breaking that down and then roles and responsibilities. Does that cover us all the way down? Yes. Yeah. And then of course, you know, I, again, I'll talk about this later. You can always put it, I was doing more of the bare bones for that question of what you absolutely need to have and how it needs to be formatted. But I think always I love to put a call to action at the end of it. I think it works really well, especially again, if you can convey, right? People want to

feel, this goes back to psychology. I'm going back to, you know, my undergrad with stuff in classes, but people want to feel needed and a belonging. So when they say, hey, let's get started, apply here. I'm so excited to meet you. Once apply. Something like that, a call to action, I think is a great way to wrap up an ad. Let's talk about that a little bit more specifically. We know how important speed is here because we wanna get these people in, applying, moving forward as fast as possible.

Do you encourage people to be applying on Indeed directly or is it okay to drive them to a website or a form off of Indeed or what are best practices there? Yeah, I would say again, right, you, we're an instant gratification generation coming up. I would probably say our generation and lower, maybe our parents started to get that too, you know, like the 40 to 50 age range because they didn't grow up with cell phones and social media, but they have been engulfed by it really because of their children or, you know, whoever they're around. So I would say it needs to be direct. You know, point blank, it needs to be

as fast as possible. Sometimes speed is not always best. You know, we hear the kid's story with the turtle, the hare and the turtle, but speed is best than this, right? You know, obviously you have to have that quality coming through from you, but it's a hiring funnel. And if you don't get through that hiring funnel in a certain amount of time, we're, our industry already has such high turnover. So you don't want to lose people unnecessarily. People want to click on it and upload a, you know, a resume, maybe click a couple of things and they want to be out. They want their, you know, their resume and their application pushed through to the office and whoever's going to contact them. They do not want to be jumping around to different sites and doing personality tests and, you know, competency tests right at the beginning of application.

In orientation, obviously, it's a different story. But yeah, fast, quick and easy is definitely the name of the game when applying for sure. Yeah, that's great. I want to ask, this is exposing myself a little bit. Is there the ability to add like photos or videos to the job description in Indeed? Is that a possibility? And what's your recommendation on like any sort of visual to accompany the job ad? Yeah, I have never personally, I don't have hands-on experience adding any type of technology, you know, like images or anything like that to Indeed.

I did hear from an owner, we were having a great conversation and she said that now with your company page on Indeed, that that's where you can add it. I don't believe you can add it on the ads. I'll check and get you that information if I'm incorrect in saying that. But I do know on the main page of Indeed for your company, I believe is what she said, you can have that video and audio.

One of the questions too we're going to go over and talk about is different platforms and applying. And I think that applies to one of them I will speak about because there are platforms that you can do that and that it's beneficial. And I think just the warmer and the more involved that audio and visual is, the better it's going to be, right? People want to feel like they belong. So. Yeah. Yeah. That's a great response. I didn't know if it was possible or not. That's why I asked. But also, again, when you get on Indeed and you search for CNA, HHA, caregiver, you look at these job posts, you look at 20 in a row, they all look and feel very similar. So it is hard to stand out on there. And so whatever you can do and the title, the description, like we're talking about, whatever you can do to convey

your brand and your reputation and your differentiators, that's really what you're trying to accomplish. The next question I want to ask you is about, is the job ad universal? We're talking about platforms and channels and places that you put these ads. Is what we just outlined for Indeed relatively universal or is what you put on your website or what you put on a different platform customized or tailored to that? Or would you say they are relatively universal? Yeah, I think that it needs to be tailored to the platform that it's being posted on. But I think overall, it needs to stay pretty consistent is what my answer would be. So I'll give three

examples. I had three examples is Indeed and job boards, right? You want to follow what I was talking about. Keywords, clear and concise formatting, benefits and perks at higher at the top, fast and easy. But then if you do it on a company website, what I touched on a second ago, you can get that more of that detailed integration, I guess, and like, you know, that audio and media and be able to convey your brand voice,

I think a little bit better on, because if you think about how they got there, and this is what I think when people are applying. Indeed, like you said, people are on there because they need a job and they need to find it quickly, most likely. So it is fast. It needs to be fast and efficient.

But a company website, how you got there was probably because you heard somebody talk about it or because somebody said, hey, my mom was a caregiver here. You should really try that to see if they're hiring. And then they look up, you know, seniors helping seniors, you know, whatever, West Virginia. So, you know, I think you have to figure out how people are coming to you and that will help you tailor. Because like I said, company websites, you can be a little bit more in depth and add those things, add testimonies about your caregiver, because those people are wanting

to learn about you and if you're a good place to work, as opposed to their main goal being searching and getting it quick. And then, of course, social media, we all know it needs to be engaging and quick or else you're not going to grab somebody's attention. And I've seen some success in social media advertising, not nearly as much as Indeed, though. Yeah, I think that makes a lot of sense. Something that's crossing my mind too is just back to like qualifications and who you're looking for. If you're maybe a newer business or you need a lot of volume and you're posting on Indeed, that's kind of one type of applicant. But there's some businesses out here that are saying,

I'm only hiring people with two to three years of experience. Those applicants are very different. You know, you likely want to drive them to your website to show the testimonials, to show your training, to highlight your accolades. Like those people are likely looking for a better agency in their market. And so they want to know more about the business. And so I do think there is kind of a time and place to drive applicants to your website, especially if you're looking for more experienced people, because they are looking for better businesses and you want to highlight yourself, your culture, your accolades, the testimonials

on your website. So being able to showcase all of that on the website and drive applicants there is also really powerful. I agree. Yeah, I agree 100%. I think that was well said. I want to talk a little bit more about the nuances of Indeed. You informed me of some changes that were made on the platform. I think the rollout was maybe a month ago, October. This might be news to a lot of people. Maybe people that are using the

platform have realized this, but explain to us what happened and what kind of the repercussions have been. Yeah. So there was a lot to unpack for sure. I think what happened on October 1st is, and they let us know a little bit before, but I think the language was so confusing and so tedious. I know me and my fellow AMs, when we got that message, I mean, we were like, wait, what does this mean? I am so confused. We were worried and trying to figure out.s, when we got that message, I mean, we were like, wait, what does this mean? I am so confused. We were worried and trying to figure out. Now, once we graphed the situation, it became a little less worrisome because there are things you can do to mitigate that or come around it. But basically on October 1, it went into place. And if you had new or existing jobs posted directly on Indeed, they were flagged and

then only received traffic if they were sponsored. And this is a big, so this is who this happened to. If you had the, if you as the account holder or the employer had jobs that were being collected externally and coming through Indeed. So like an ATS system. So the example I will use, and a lot of owners were really, really confused about this and nervous as well. So I was blessed that I didn't have to deal with it a ton for my six offices, but I saw, unfortunately, some of the stuff come out

and unfold with other offices that was just, I mean, we were all trying to explain it to each other and help in whatever way we can. Because as an owner, you know, and as a hiring manager, if you're missing a day, if that's flagged, that can be detrimental to your applicant flow. And that's at the top of the hiring funnel. So when you take a ding to that, not good at all. So when stuff gets flagged, it takes a couple of days to come off. It's not instantaneous. What I will say, excuse me, is some of the Indeed reps have been wonderful and working. So I don't want to totally say, you know, it was a horrible move or it caused a lot of stress on us.

There was a lot of Indeed reps that we work with that were absolutely wonderful in assisting us. So I want to give praise to that. But to put it in an example, this is how I hear things and learn best is I had an office and we had been using CareerPlug very, very, very slow on applicant flow. We were actually thinking about taking it off. And then we had Indeed. And because we're posting on Indeed and because we had free and sponsored ads on Indeed excuse me, free and sponsored ads on Indeed and then posting for free on Career Plug.

Career Plug, ATS systems, all of those push out to multiple different platforms. So Indeed got ahold of that and then they shut down our free ads. And like I said, it took a couple of days to get them reinstated and we had to unintegrate basically Career Plug with Indeed so it doesn't push out.

And we know that even through ATS systems, right, I'll touch on this in the future at some point, I'm sure in this podcast is Indeed is going to be the gold standard. So it's going to be where you pull people in. So inevitably, career plug is going to take a hit if we have to unintegrate or, you know, close it down. And where some of the confusion lied is the one, the timeline, the lag. So they said, hey, October 1st, this is going to happen. And we were watching. We were so diligent because, like I said, right, you know, we know that even an hour being flagged can be detrimental. So we were watching and it got October 10, October 12. And I was like, oh, I am in the clear. None of

my offices got flagged. We're good to go. And then all of a sudden, one morning, boom, October 18th, one of my offices got flagged. So I think the lag caused some confusion with people because we thought we were okay. And then it turned out we weren't. There was also some confusion where they had the ATS system and indeed kind of remembered that, but they were not actively using it anymore. It was discontinued. So then those got flagged.

You know, I would venture to say wrongfully. I know that's a harsh word, but they weren't using it anymore. So it those got flagged. I would venture to say wrongfully. I know that's a harsh word, but they weren't using it anymore. So it wasn't being pushed through. And then there were other situations where a corporate account was integrated with a specific offices in Deedka and those got flagged. I'm not super knowledgeable on the third one. I know it happened to one of our AMs and she had to get it settled out. But I mean, again, the Indeed reps were wonderful. That helped us. Our AMs were on top of it. But I think it was confusing for a lot of owners. And the one caveat that I noticed that is that applicant flow overall dropped. Now, I think

it's notable the timing. I don't want to say it's because of that, but we noticed in an extremely busy month normally, we weren't getting as many applicants across the board. And I don't know if anybody else in the audience or anything that has experienced that the last month. It was very strange, not following the trend. So like I said, I don't want to say that that's why, but I think the timing is notable, is what I will say.

But right now, I think we have everything figured out. It got all ironed out. I know for sure with my offices it did. Like I said, quick to act I think was the best reaction in this, right? Be watching for it and when it happened, figure it out and get it fixed quickly. Yeah. So one of the ways that I would just kind of summarize what you said and what was happening was Indeed was essentially like penalizing the ATS systems that were posting and then flagging everything. And again, there was a little bit of forewarning, but not very much. And it wasn't very clear. And so like you said, a lot of us were just like figuring that out in real time. There might be owners or operators listening to this that might be having the aha moment because they didn't understand what was going on. So I'm glad that you just broke that down. I want to take it a step further. You're referencing posting directly on Indeed

versus posting through an ATS system and the difference between free versus sponsored. So can you explain what your options are directly on Indeed, and then what options look like through an ATS system as well. Yeah. So, you know, I think every ATS system is going to run similar to Indeed, right? You're going to be able to sponsor and free. I have some offices, and I'll touch on this too, I have some offices that they can run solely off of an ATS, like Jazz HR, and be completely free, and they're fine. And then I have some offices like this one I was speaking about. We get some applicants through Career Plug and those push out for free because they're not as effective as Indeed. So that's where we put

our money. And then we go into Indeed directly and post the sponsorship and or free. And again, I know we'll kind of get into all of that, but I think you have to balance, right, data talks. And I think that you need to do your numbers and figure out for your region, your location, your competitiveness and your environment as to what platform is going to be best. Because we've seen platforms, some infrequently, I will say, but some work better than Indeed and they are pulling higher quality applicants, maybe not as much, but higher quality applicants. And a one-state employ was great. And we were using, you know, I had a ton of AMs using that. But, you know, I think you said it best in our, in when we spoke, Indeed is going to be king.

And there's so many options into each platform. It would be hard to go through and go through all of them. But I think just getting your numbers and figuring out what's going to benefit you and kind of play around with it. If you don't have somebody like CareWork who can do that or has knowledge of it, I think that would be the most beneficial is look at numbers. Okay. So if I understood right, this is one of the distinctions I want to make. There can be free and sponsored on Indeed and on these platforms. I wasn't sure if I was misunderstanding that on ATS systems, there's only the free option, but am I understanding that ATS also has free and sponsored through the platform? Yes. Yes. Correct. Actually, one of my options is just getting a new ATS system that involves payroll. And I've learned a lot about that through this. And they have options that we can sponsor directly onto there and push

out. They have kind of almost like partnerships with different people. So I think it's becoming a lot more complex. I think we're going to see it turn after this Indeed situation, October 1st. I think we're going to see a lot of things start turning and partnerships forming and if things push out to different areas. So I would say keep your glasses on for that and watch for it. Yeah. One of the things too that you're referencing is like geography is a factor here. Like it was interesting to hear you say like a ploy was successful in this area. Yeah. Think of all these owners listening to this. They're like, okay, I'm in Florida,

which ATS system should I work with that might have better results? That's complicated. What would you say to that? You know, I think if you have somebody that can be an information source to you, something like care work and have that team of experience behind, you know, obviously we would tell you and you would be more than welcome to ask if you work with us as to what, but I think just again, right, I'll go back to numbers. I think just knowing numbers and being open-minded to try different things and, you know, a lot of obviously owners network and have that inside conversation with each other as to what is working for them.

So I think being open, if somebody's saying, hey, yeah, Jazzy Char is working really great for me. CareerPlug is working really great. Dig in and see what they're doing. And then if you're open and if you have the financial stability to try that, to try it, because you don't know if something's going to turn and going to work better. But like I said, I will always tell an office, Indeed is something I don't think you can let go. Very infrequently have I ever seen somebody let go of Indeed. Yeah. Well, plug for a strategy call. Everyone listening to talk to Britt or someone on their team because exactly that.

You've explained to me it's very geographical and regional. What success you see in the South versus the Northeast versus the Northwest, it is regional and there are different factors at play. And you all work with so many people that you can identify the trends whereas someone that's siloed in their market may not know what's working well in their geography so really really good points i want to ask a little bit more about like free versus sponsored what does free get you and at what point do you need to sponsor? Yeah. So I think free and sponsored are going to be two totally different bears. I think that there's different levels of sponsorships, which is what

I'm trying to find the right words for to how to describe. So you have to be careful. Like I said, they're different bears, right? I think free is going to be more general. You're not going to get more data on it. Indeed, it is a business as well. So you're not going to be able to pull those numbers. And then sponsorship, of course, because you're paying a company, right? It's going to push that ad and that visibility. Do you want me to go into different types of sponsorships and maybe what we're seeing with those? Yeah, that would be great. Because it sounds like with free, maybe one of the limitations is like analytics, like just transparency into those free ads. And that's one of the benefits of sponsored is like more analytics insights data

into it. So yeah, let's break down the sponsored ads and what that looks like. Yeah, definitely. So there's going to be three main ones. There is monthly sponsorships, daily, and then paid per applicant. So I'll go through all of those. So the monthly, that is going to be the best choice. It allows controlled spending. You have caps on monthlies. It's less risky, really. It helps kind of manage that resource. And within monthly, there's a new to me, I guess. I've been digging into it a lot more. And it's called campaigns. And it takes away the guessing game. It runs for 30 days. And you can put 200 on it, for example, and then tag four ads that you want to run on that campaign. And it control kind of spurs throughout to make sure those ads are getting visibility. on it, for example, and then tag four ads that you want to run on that campaign and

it control kind of spurs throughout to make sure those ads are getting visibility. It's worked really, really well for what I've tried. So I would challenge you to look into that if you're having trouble with any kind of monthly sponsorships. It's just, like I said, it takes the guessing game. It takes the brain work out of it for you as to, you know, do I need to do 100 here and 50 here? If you just put it on that campaign, it'll kind of work its way around the technology.

Technology can be hard sometimes, but in an instant like this, it's the best because they, you know, there's just so much more formula and thought into it than what you really have in your daily life. So I would always recommend monthly, whether it be campaigns or just individually sponsored monthly. And then, of course, the daily budget, I would use caution while using this. And I say that not everybody, but the West coast, the West coast, if you're on the West coast, it is daily ads or nothing. That's what I have failed. Anybody else can run off of monthly that

you refresh weekly or biweekly daily is going to be what is best, but you still need to use caution. So there's some things that you can mitigate because daily is going to run and you may have it for $5, but it may use $12 that day. So it can get expensive fast. And there's things you can do to mitigate that, right? You can put a back-end budget on Indeed. You can contact your Indeed rep and do that. I believe you can do it on your own in your account. So it will stop it, but you can't control. It's not as controlled, right? So that's where I would use caution with

daily. But on the West Coast, I have seen monthly does not chop it there. It's daily. That's going to run you the best results. And then the last one that I will never recommend unless I eat crow one day is paid per applicant. It just, you have to pay per applicant, whether they are a good applicant or not. And when they apply and if people aren't self-screening, which sometimes they do not, then it's going to run your cost up a ton. And again, right. It's a lot less controlled. Okay. Let's talk about budgeting because a lot of people don't know where to start. And bear in mind, the audience listening to this is very wide. We're talking startups all the way to $20 million agencies. So how does someone set a proper budget for their organization?

Yeah. So I think it depends on several factors. And again, I'll say that throughout and I hate saying that, but it is true, right? There are so many factors that go into stuff like this. I don't think I could ever come on and say, oh, we can get you to this budget. I think you need to look at your location, your competitiveness, and your environment, and your hiring goals. And then from there, you can break down what your monthly budget is. So anybody that has, and I get these on strategy calls all the time where people will come in and bless their heart. They're spending three, four, five grand sometimes.

I mean, it is a lot because Indeed is a money-making business. They want you to sponsor ads for as much as you can. When you have somebody look that has the knowledge, we always joke you need a PhD in Indeed because you sure do. It is a lot. So I don't fault anybody if they're spending that. My heart really goes out to you. So I would say in a low competitive environment, you can start between 50 and 150.

And really, I mean, a lot of my offices, they don't spend above 200 a month, I would say. And some of them are in extremely competitive areas. Now, again, West Coast, that's going to be a little bit different, just a whole different market out there, I think. So daily with a little bit more. But when you have somebody like myself or care worker, anybody in office that can do this, when they can sit down and perfect how they write an ad and get people in,

you're gonna get more bang for your buck. And also too, on the recruiting side, if you have a full-time recruiter, whether that's care worker in office, you're gonna have, you know, 50 applicants can turn into a lot better quality hires, or I should say at a higher rate than if you're flipping through very quick as an owner or half owner, half HR, you know, and you're trying to hire. You can't do that. You don't have the time.

Nobody does in the day. So, you know, I see these owners come onto my call and they're spending thousands of dollars on Indeed and then they will come into CareWork and get an account manager and they're hesitant, right? They're like, wait, 200 a month? Like that is scary because I'm not going to get the people that I need, the applicants. But when you have somebody crafting an ad and paying as close attention to it as somebody like us does, and you can go through them with that detail, it's not as scary. And then when we do bump your budget down, then you can take that and turn that into things that can help with retention, right?

So like, you know, if you're not spending two grand, you can buy lunch for everybody in your orientation. You know, even just something small, you can get coffee for everybody in your orientation. Even just something small, you can get coffee for, if you have a low call no-show rate, order some coffee, door dash some coffee during the interview for them from Duncan or something. So I think it's scary to hear that we can lower your budget because a lot of people don't have the belief system in it, I think, because they're spending all this money and that's where they're getting their applicants and that's what everybody that they've known is doing. So I would say in a low competitive, sorry, I get off on a tangent to answer your

question. I'd say 50 to 150 and then high competitive, probably 200, sometimes more. I think throwing money is the last thing that you need to do at a problem. There's a time and place for that for sure. And then I also think data-driven responses to that, right? So that's the back end. That's why I say care work, we're numbers ladies over here. So when you do your monthly overhaul of your ads, which I would highly suggest that you do if you're a business owner or in HR, I would do an overhaul of all the data you can get of your ads and then adjust accordingly. If you're not getting people in, bump it up $25 to $50. Don't jump the gun and go all the way up. Increase it by lower amounts to see what you need. And a lot of time too, when people are spending

thousands of dollars, if it is not because of a high cost per applicant, it is because their funnel is broken. It is because something in the funnel is being broken. And I have, you know, we're taught a calculation for that. I don't know if I can maybe share it with you afterwards, but to give a rundown to get your costs per hire, you're going to take the number. So let's say for October, you're going to take the number of applicants and then divide it by the number of hires that you had and then times that by your desired hires. And then that will give you the applicants that you need at the top of your funnel. So with that, then you take the number of applicants you need times it by your current

cost per applicant. That is your forecasted budget. If that is extremely high, something is wrong. If it's not obtainable in a budget, something is wrong. So tracking back to that and finding where that hiring funnel is broken and helping mitigate what is going on there. Amazing. I know everyone listening to that is like, wait, give me that formula. This is recorded. It will be a podcast. You will be able to go back and listen to that. I'm glad you cited that because I think that that's where my mind goes.

Like it really is an equation that you can work backwards to know what your budget is. Do you have data on like average cost per applicant? Again, I know that this is a huge country and the demographics, the data is all over the place. But like what is maybe maybe a healthy or average cost per applicant that people should be aiming for? Yeah. I have seen $3 all the way up to $17. I would say if you can get it anywhere, and this is a little bit wider of a range, but tighter than the $3 to $16, I would say $6 to $10, $6 six to 12, something like that. That's, I think, where it

would sit. Obviously, the lower you're shooting for, I mean, nothing. You're shooting for as little as you can. That would be my guess for the average. I don't have data with that. From what my experience, I've seen the three to 17 is such a wide range. Again, it depends on where you're at. Is the market extremely competitive and are you dumping a lot into your ad budget? So all of that can change. But I think focusing on that, that's one of the things, right? Conversion rates, cost per applicant, cost per hire, time to hire, which is the hiring funnel, the timeline of when you post ads, all of that you can get

from hiring platforms. And I'll speak directly for Indeed. You can get that on Indeed. And like I said, numbers talk. So if you can get all of that information and kind of figure out where is it being broken, that's your first problem set, right? Is where it's being broken. And then somebody like CareWorker, if you have an advisor of any kind, then that's when we'll come in and say, hey, you're correct. This is where it's broken. This is everything that we can try to fix it. You know, what's really interesting to me is recruiting isn't a problem you could just throw money at. That's what I'm hearing from you. My knee jerk reaction to the numbers that you just shared is actually a lot lower than what I was expecting. I think, you know, when I hear, you know,

sponsored ads on Indeed, when you say agencies are spending thousands of dollars, of course, they might be larger agencies. But I actually think that sounds kind of realistic, you know, to be hiring as many people as you may need. So the numbers that you're throwing out are a lot lower than I was expecting. But I also think a really important thing that you're saying is like, you can't just throw more money at Indeed, at recruitment ads. It's actually these optimizations that we're talking about. It's optimizing your job descriptions, when you post, how you post, where you post. It's actually all of these like knobs or optimizations that you need to make. It's not money. It's not just like a numbers game. Correct. Yeah. And I will, if you have any

anglers in the, in the, in the listening audience, any fishers, it's, it's literally like fishing. I was explaining this to my husband when I was kind of, you know, reviewing what, what I do and what to talk about. And you can have the world's worst fisher in the world and you could give them the most expensive rod and the most expensive bait and they're not going to catch a fish. But if you could take an average, you know, a good average to good fisher and give him angler and give him, you know, the cheapest pole from Walmart and he's going to catch something because he has that skill. And that's hopefully a good way to describe it to people. I think everybody has some memory of fishing and what that's like. So I think

optimizing what is going on inside of that job ad and then who is building that. And not only that, but also to taking it into also what we do, right? Recruiting and like how you're recruiting, how fast are you getting those people in? I think that is worth way more than the thousands of dollars you could spend on an ad. And like I said, I empathize, right? I do, I truly do because people just don't have the time sometimes to go in there.

So you have to throw money at it because you don't have that time to go through all those people and to optimize that. But when you do have somebody that can to go through all those people and to optimize that. But when you do have somebody that can dig in and get that system correct, the cost is going to drop an exponential amount. Yeah. I hope this is hopeful for everyone. Again, you don't have to spend endless amounts of money. It really is just like you said, it's a time thing. Put the time and effort into the ads. Go through your process. Go and apply

for your jobs. Experience what these applicants experience and make the adjustments necessary for them to have a good experience. And that goes so much further than the money that you could be throwing at these problems. One of the other questions I want to ask you, Indeed is relatively robust. There's analytics. You were talking about building campaigns and things. It is a pretty complex platform. And I know we can't go through everything, but there might be like some underutilized levers or features that you don't see people taking advantage of. Do any come to mind of like buttons or tools or features that people aren't using that they should be using? Yes, definitely. Yeah. So of course, always the

sponsor, right? Like I said, free, free is great. There are other areas that can run off of free sponsored and like the campaign, you know, digging in, I even had to do some learning. I've been at this for, you know, a couple of years and even I, with the encouragement and help of my other AMs were taught in a vast amount about campaigns. And I just saw, so utilizing that and making yourself knowledgeable on things like that and sponsorships and how they work, because it goes back to the money, right? If you know how your money is being managed, kind of like stocks or anything, you have a better understanding of it and where your money's going and be able to optimize that. My second is, I touched on this earlier, job post insight. So of course, like I said,

Indeed is a money-making business, so they're not going to give it to you if it's a free ad. So if you do all free, that is wonderful. You're not spending on an ad budget, but you don't get this data. If you are sponsoring, you do get this data. So it can show you the performance of your job ads, the views, applications, clicks, sources of the applicant. It can really dig into what is going on within that ad when it's posted and what days of the week it was best performing. I'll give a little secret with that. I don't know if it's a secret, but I'll call it a secret. We used to think Friday, Thursday, and Friday and Saturday were big job application days. And they're not.

It's changed. Most of my offices, it's Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays. And I think it's because people want to get it done before the weekend. Some things with our culture and stuff has changed, especially after COVID and just all of that. I think we're seeing a shift in a lot of our culture and people possibly wanting to spend more time with their families on the weekend. So then they get that stuff done during. you know, that's where my mind goes. That's my mind, my reasoning for it. So you can see things like that on a job post insight. And then I'm so excited to share this one. I had an owner and she's wonderful and she didn't know about this. And I was so excited to share it with her because she was

like, that is so helpful. The analytics and the hiring insights on Indeed, that is not a job specific. So you can click on hiring insights. It's over there on the left hand column and you go to analytics and then at the bottom, it's called hiring insights. I would suggest that for anybody who has to hire anybody, not just caregivers, right? So if you're hiring a scheduler, a personal assistant, because again, you're needing help running HR, an RN, cleaning lady for your office, anything like that. And if you click on that, you can put your location, the job title that you're wanting to do.

And then I think maybe one more specific thing, I'm blanking on it now. Of course I would forget it. I use it so often, but there's three. I think it's U.S. That's what it is. It's the USA. So you click your country, your specific location.

So like, you know, Ripley, West Virginia, and then caregiver or, you know, tech assistant or whatever. And then it will give you that report is abundant. If you do nothing else on Indeed, go to that and look. Because I have been able to use that PDF so many times to tell owners, we're not getting people because the average pay, if you see on Indeed, is $15 an hour. And we're doing $12. This is a huge gap.

So those will give you, I mean, things that they, a list to run down. So average salary, job seekers, keywords that are most used in those ads, cost per click that you should average, how many jobs there are that are caregivers in that area, how many people applying for caregiving positions in that area, top businesses and companies that are ranking, location. So if you put, like I said, Ripley, West Virginia, it will give you a top 10 with the percentage of what best location to put your ads under. Because again, I think a common misconception is if we're serving in Omaha, Nebraska, we need to advertise in Omaha, Nebraska. That's not always the case. Sometimes your caregivers are not in Omaha, Nebraska. That's not always the case. Sometimes your caregivers are not in Omaha, Nebraska.

Sometimes they're in a different area. And of course that goes into demographics, but Indeed will give you that. Now, again, it's flawed. It's a computer system. So not always 100% on everything, but extremely valuable to see where you sit as far as your ads, where they're at, the cost.

So if nothing else, take away, go to hiring insights on the analytics on Indeed. Amazing. I'm so glad you touched on that. It's like a market research tool. You still hear in home care people, competitive cold calling behind the scenes, but there's a lot of information online. And trust Indeed to have all of this hiring data that's very localized. And if anything, that's a great place to start, you know, find the averages, find the data relevant to your market and be able to kind of work around that based off that information. So I'm glad you touched on that. I know we're almost at time. This has gone by so fast. The last thing, one of the things that we haven't touched on that I think is really important is just like managing and refreshing ads. You talked about the monthly campaigns and thinking about things in

terms of months. Is a month cycle to refresh ads a good cadence or should people be monitoring them and maybe updating them in shorter windows of time? Yeah. So again, I would say it's all about your market. So if it is highly competitive, I would suggest weekly or biweekly. Again, you have to make sure you know what's going on with Indeed and how that is going to affect your account. Because sometimes free ads, if you're reposting too often and they are too alike, it will flag. And like I said, it takes a while to get those flags off.

But just be knowledgeable about what Indeed's rules are. And I would suggest if you are in a high market, weekly or bi-weekly. If you are in a lower market where your applicant flow is good, 30 days should be sufficient. There's a lot of ads I run that are 30 days that are wonderful. There's one office I have, we have to refresh every single ad weekly or we will not get people. So again, look at your market, do the research and the analysis and the data and the numbers with that, and then make a decision based off of what Indeed or another job platform is going to allow you to do.

And I mean, the more people, the better, right? The pick of the litter that you have. So even if you're great, I would, again, challenge you, try an ad where you refresh, keep up your ads that are running wonderful that are 30 days, and then try one ad that you're refreshing weekly or bi-weekly to see how that performs. Because you may figure out, right? A lot of what I do too is it is strategy, but it's also, hey, I'm confident that I think this is going to work. Let's do this. We'll show data in a week or two, three weeks, and then we'll change what we need to. Because it is so nuanced and a guessing game. Sometimes it's a guessing game,

especially if it's in a newer area or you are just starting up and you don't have the swing of things. So I would say be brave and try things that you think are gonna work, even if you have a system that's not broken. So to wrap it up, high competitive, weekly and bi-weekly, low competitive,

monthly is most of the time pretty sufficient. Okay. One more question. One more question. You were talking about data and analytics and insights in Indeed. And I know there's a lot, and we talk a lot about data and home care. And I think people maybe get overwhelmed, like what data is the most important. Say you were sitting down with one of your clients today and you're pulling up Indeed Analytics. What would you say are the top three numbers that they need to be looking at daily or weekly? Like if you had to narrow it down to like the three most important, what would you say they'd be? Yeah, that's a really great question.

I would say first, right, business is also about money. So I think we need to look at the cost per applicant and cost per hire. I think that that needs to be because again, if it is high, there is something wrong. That is a glaring red flag that something is going on that we need to fix. So I would say that. My second would be, I would do, this isn't, well, I guess it is data a little bit. I would do those hiring insights and get where you sit. I would get where you sit among everybody else with everything that that provides in that analysis. And then second, I would look at what days people are applying because you would be shocked

that even a lower budget, if you do it on the right day and you get that information, it can maximize what you're putting out. I would say those are the three off the top of my head I would look at. Great. Yeah, not what I was expecting, but I love that. Sometimes the off the cuff is the best. Somebody asked in the Q&A,

where is that the hiring insights? Can you explain one more time? The panel, the button, and then the dropdown? Yeah, so if you're looking like, if you go to your jobs tab or you go to your account on that jobs page where you can see all of your jobs posted on the left hand side all the way down, I believe it is called analytics. And if you click it, you put your mouse over it, it's going to create another dropdown. Hiring insight should be all

the way at the bottom and it's going to take you to a complete different page. It won't refresh on that same page. Awesome. Awesome. Awesome. Britt, this has been so good. I don't know about for you, but this has gone by so fast and I feel like we can keep going, but I do think we hit on the big areas that I wanted to hit on. So I feel really good about what we delivered. So I hope this was useful to everyone that's listening. Again, next week, I'm going to let Britt talk a little bit more about CareWork. They work with recruiters, but they also do the recruiting. And so there's a lot of different ways to work with CareWork.

But like you can see, they know what they're talking about. They know a lot about Indeed. And that platform is changing every single day. So it's tough to stay on top of amidst the business that you're running as well. So Britt, we'll go ahead and cap here. I'm really excited for next week. We're going to come back and just get right back into it and talk about

the recruitment life cycle. So early on, you mentioned like funnel and like what a recruitment funnel looks like. I know that's also your bread and butter. So we're going to talk through recruiting more holistically and less so, you know, the nuances of Indeed. So come back some days, same time next week. Britt, thanks for being here and we'll look forward to next week. Yes, thank you for having me. I'm so excited.

That's a wrap. This podcast was made by the team at CareSwitch, the first AI-powered management software for home care agencies. If you want to automate away the menial of your day-to-day with AI so that you and your team can focus on giving great care, check us out at careswitch.com.