Dear Workforce Wonders:

We are struggling to get CNAs to show up for interviews, even after a good phone introduction. Or we hire them, and they may show up for one shift, then we are ghosted.

I know this is not a new story, but what are you hearing about best practices to combat this?

-Ghosted

Dear Ghosted,

You are 100% correct that this is not a new problem, and today’s tight labor market is only making it more import to look for new ways to compete and win in the race for talent.

One recent example of “mother necessity” in action is how UPS drastically changed its hiring process to contend with these sorts of struggles. While not 100% transferable to the LTC setting, I do think there are some lessons to take away from their success:

• • Make the hiring process QUICK and EASY.
    1. Do you really need a phone interview anymore? Perhaps this step is slowing the process down too much and as a result your candidates are being snatched up by other employers. OR, if the phone interview is good, why not offer them a conditional offer of employment there and then, get them scheduled for their first day on the spot.
    2. Analyze your time to hire rate.  This is the amount of time it takes from the moment the candidate first contacts you to the day they accept an offer of employment. Before the current environment, a rate of 30 days or less was considered OK.  Nowadays, shoot for 2 weeks or less (UPS is doing it in 30 minutes).
    3. Cut the fat in your hiring process.  UPS decided not to collect job history past the applicant’s most recent employer because they didn’t really use this information in their hiring decisions.  Zero in on what information you really, truly need to make a hiring decision and focus like a laser beam on those items. Eliminate everything else.
  • As for the ghosting:
    1. Follow up with every single one to try to find out what went wrong.  Without this info, you are grasping in the dark.  It could be that these folks simply are not cut out to work in the LTC environment (something you have little control over, but that you could screen for better in the application process), OR it could be something more nefarious like workplace bullying, a negative working environment, troubling behavior from residents, etc.
    2. Ask your current staff what happened and why they think this is happening. Then take it from there.