Competitive Hiring in a Regulated Industry
At KinCare, having the right people to care for elderly Australians is crucial to its success. Before getting hired, the company’s in-home care workers must pass a pre-hire assessment, a police background check, and a reference check. They also must show a valid CPR certification, driver’s license, and proof of insurance. Many of their workers do not have personal computers at home, and KinCare competes with employers in hospitality and retail that do not have such extensive hiring requirements.
The company’s previous ATS slowed down hiring, resulting in a high candidate drop-off rate. Recruiters had too much administrative work from disconnected systems for the assessment and background checks. They could only communicate with candidates via phone or email, while most prefer SMS.
If KinCare could hire more efficiently, the business could grow faster because its services are in high demand. Ben Rynja, Head of Talent Acquisition at KinCare, took on the challenge when he joined the company. He proposed a switch to SmartRecruiters because of its strengths in factors like job board visibility, automated scheduling, digital signatures, built-in SMS communications, and ease of integration.
SmartRecruiters offered significant savings in the total cost of ownership due to the existing system’s high integration and hosting fees. “When the leadership team saw the business case and the advantages of SmartRecruiters,” he said, “the decision was a no-brainer.”
About KinCare
- Industry: Health Services
- Region: Australia
- Employees: 1,500
- Offices: 70+
- Headquarters: Bella Vista, NSW
- Hiring Model: Centralized
KinCare offers personal in-home aged care services to ensure the safety, independence and wellbeing of older Australians. The company has dedicated, highly trained care workers available around the clock at locations throughout Australia.
Head of Talent Acquisition
Ease of Use and Transparency Build Trust
After implementing SmartRecruiters and training the KinCare team on how to use it, the benefits quickly emerged for candidates, hiring teams, and the business.
Meet Candidates Where They Are
The implementation of SmartMessage immediately made it easier to communicate with candidates. “Text message is by far the most effective communication channel for our talent demographic,” Ben said. From their phones, candidates can now schedule interviews, communicate with recruiters, receive notifications about background and reference checks, and submit proof of documentation. Finally, candidates can receive offer letters and sign them digitally. “Being able to initiate probity checks immediately after an interview makes sure that we don’t lose out to businesses with much shorter hiring processes,” Ben said.
Build Organizational Trust
Before SmartRecruiters, “recruitment was a black box where hiring managers had no visibility into the hiring process.” Once hiring managers could see how many candidates were in the pipeline and the status of communications with each one with SmartRecruiters, relationships started to strengthen. “It’s become more of a collaborative environment,” Ben said. “When you’ve got transparency, you’ve got trust. Trust was no longer an issue.” With a baseline of trust established, Ben continued, “it raised the bar for hiring teams to become more innovative in how they think about what they can do as a cohesive unit to get people into the business.”
Improve Job Board ROI
Australian job board advertising is primarily devoted to one platform. KinCare did not know if it was missing out on potential hires by ignoring niche and regional job boards, nor could it measure sourcing effectiveness due to a lack of channel attribution data. By setting up custom sources and tracking IDs with SmartRecruiters open APIs, KinCare can see which job boards net the most hires. “Our hiring teams love being able to drill down and see where our hires are coming from,” Ben said, noting that almost 10% of hires now come from niche job boards. The insights on what channels work best and where allow KinCare to optimize sourcing channels, reallocate budget in real time, and spend more efficiently. “SmartRecruiters source attribution analytics helped build the business case to increase our overall spend,” he said.
Head of Talent Acquisition
Improved Candidate Experience Elevates TA Function
Using SmartRecruiters had a significant impact on the experience for KinCare’s candidates: the time to complete an application dropped from 17 minutes to less than five. Time-to-fill decreased from 40 days to 18, and the overall candidate drop-off rate fell by 60%. “It gives candidates a completely different interpretation of our business,” Ben said. “If the application process is this easy, they might think it’s a reflection of other things in the business,” he said, mentioning other trusted systems that ensure the safety and security of KinCare employees.
In KinCare’s employee stay survey, the recruitment and onboarding process received a satisfaction rate of more than 90%. The high level of satisfaction has extended to teams across the business: recruiters, hiring managers, compliance, and leadership. “The technology is an enabler across many layers and silos,” Ben said. “SmartRecruiters elevates the TA function in an organization because it organically educates, enables, and brings people together in a collaborative way to make informed hiring decisions.”
On a personal level, implementing SmartRecruiters gave Ben an opportunity for a career win. “The platform allowed me to improve the user experience and get the level of insight to prove that it works.” Now that’s a win-win: for candidates, for KinCare, and most importantly, for the customers it serves.
Key Outcomes
- Time-to-fill reduced to 18 days from 40
- Time to complete application reduced to 3-5 minutes from 17 minutes
- 60% decrease in candidate drop-off rate
- >90% approval rating of the recruitment process in employee survey
- Increased ROI on advertising spend by measuring sourcing effectiveness
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