If you’re on the hunt for a new social care worker or care manager, it wouldn’t be surprising if you’ve encountered some difficulties. From compliance complexities to the nuances of candidate vetting, recruiting in this space presents unique challenges that demand precision and efficiency.

For many UK employers, whether you’re a Local Authority, part of the NHS or a private facility, navigating these intricacies is taxing, often detracting from your core mission of providing exemplary care. But there’s an option that can save you precious time and money, while bolstering your recruitment strategy.

This involves forging a partnership with a social care recruitment agency. What follows is a rundown of how these specialists can help you not only simplify, but amplify your recruitment strategy to quickly fill your open social care jobs.

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Harness Best Practice Recruitment Processes

In times like these where social care candidates are in limited supply, you need a recruitment process that is both efficient and speedy. A social care recruitment agency excels in these areas, honing their processes over many years in the industry to achieve a streamlined recruitment experience.

An agency also possesses a deep pool of qualified and vetted candidates, allowing them to quickly identify and shortlist potential talent for your open social care jobs. This significantly reduces the time it takes to fill your vacancy, and means you can maintain your service continuity and quality of care.

Contrary to perception, utilising a social care recruitment agency can work out to be more cost-effective than going it alone. While there's an upfront cost, the long-term benefits often result in savings, especially when you consider you have access to efficient recruitment processes that not only finds you talent faster, but reduces the time it costs you or your staff to advertise, sort through applications, interview, and assess and negotiate job offers.

The added bonus? Many of our clients here at Charles Hunter Associates see a marked decrease in staff turnover rates and an uptick in retention. This is due to our commitment to finding that optimum client-candidate fit (our candidate accuracy rate is currently 95%).

Another important factor is your candidate recruitment experience. It could be the thing that sets you apart from your competition. When you consider an astronomical 70% of jobseekers dropped out or thought about dropping out of their last recruitment experience due to it being too lengthy, complicated or having too many touchpoints, how you nurture candidates throughout your recruitment cycle really matters.

A great candidate experience begins with a clear and easy-to-navigate application process, embedded with realistic expectations and minimum interview hoop-jumping. It also involves avoiding critical mistakes during the interview process, such as ending the interview on vague terms. Errors like this can leave the door open for a top candidate to move forward in their job search, risking them accepting another opportunity before you get back to them.

Here at Charles Hunter Associates, we consistently monitor our candidate experience rating. We’re happy to say it’s currently sitting at 9 out of 10.

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​Deep Experience and Specialisation

A specialised social care recruitment agency has a deep understanding of the industry's nuances, especially when it comes to the specific needs, challenges and intricacies of recruiting healthcare professionals.

A part of this involves being in constant touch with market trends and salary benchmarking in the social care recruitment space. By partnering with an agency, you gain immediate access to these insights, helping you to understand exactly what candidates are looking for, and allowing you to refine your recruitment strategy. Your recruiter can also assist in helping you craft an enticing salary and benefits package that will get that candidate you want to ‘say yes’.

Within social care, here at Charles Hunter Associates, we also provide training to candidates who require it. From ensuring that temporary candidates have the skills to undertake the role they’ve been assigned, to closing knowledge gaps for more experienced candidates, working with a recruitment agency can take the headache of training away from your HR team or Hiring Managers.

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The Big One – Helps You To Reduce Risk

While it’s important you find the right social care worker or social care manager fit, it’s just as important to ensure the candidates you consider are fully compliant with social care regulations, safeguarding the vulnerable children and adults you work with.

We feel it’s important to take our commitment to compliance above and beyond required standards. This is why we employ a dedicated compliance team. They’re not only responsible for ensuring we deliver fully compliant candidates, but also for regular auditing of our practices. These include random audits performed Managed Service Providers at any time, and we’re pleased to say, we’ve passed every audit so far.

We also partner with the Recruitment and Employment Confederation (REC), the largest trade body representing the recruitment industry.

Our senior staff are Safer Recruitment trained, meaning they’ve undergone formal training in processes and procedures designed to help deter, identify, and reject individuals during the recruitment process who might pose a risk to children and vulnerable adults.

We conduct the following safeguarding checks:

• Intensive face-to-face interview

• Proof of identify

• 5 years written professional references

• Enhanced DBS disclosure

• Proof of address using DBS list of acceptable documents

• Proof of National Insurance number

• Entitlement to work in the UK

• Full 10-year employment history with no gaps

• Original qualifications

• Visa requirements (where applicable)

• Overseas police check (where applicable)

Apart from thorough candidate vetting, we’re also committed to correct, lawful and fair handling of all personal data, for clients and candidates. We have a comprehensive range of formal policies available to view.

We’re proud to say that our concentrated compliance efforts resulted in winning the coveted 'Best Compliance Operation' award at the Recruiter Awards.

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Further Social Care Staff Sourcing Support

It’s clear partnering with a social care recruitment agency can fundamentally transform your talent acquisition landscape. From best practice and expedited recruitment processes, to getting the right compliant candidate fit for your company, a specialist agency will save you time, money and stress.

Feel free to connect with one of our social care recruitment consultants if you need help sourcing great talent for your open social care jobs, or if you’d like to know more about how seriously we take compliance. Our trusted team would love to help you craft a recruitment campaign that ensures you stand out as an employer of choice.