Miriam Allred (00:11)
Hey everyone, welcome back to the Home Care Strategy Lab. I'm your host, Miriam Allred. It's great to be back with you. Today in the lab, I am joined by Jen Waldron, the co-founder of Augusta. Jen, welcome to the lab.

Jen Waldron (00:23)
Thanks so much for having me, Miriam.

Miriam Allred (00:25)
It's great to be here with you. We've been chatting over the last month or so. You guys have a lot going on and you are one of the recruiting experts in the space. And so I want to pick your brain on all things recruiting, some of the trends that you're seeing and also just some of your personal takes on what's going right and what's going wrong in recruiting. So before we jump in, why don't you introduce yourself, talk a little bit about your personal and professional background.

Jen Waldron (00:49)
Awesome. Well, first, like I said, thanks so much for having me. I'm super excited to share what we have been learning. my background is that I was a caregiver in 2009. I took the first job that I could during the great recession and it was working in a memory care community. And I did that for a couple of years and that's really kind of what made me passionate about the entire industry.

I personally pulled the double multiple times a week and saw how incredibly painful it is. Not only for me, ⁓ but the family, the older adult receiving care because the caregivers are tired and the business suffered as a result as well. So ⁓ that experience really made me passionate about this work.

and the industry because I did see frankly a lot of room for improvement in the jobs that caregivers were doing, the way the ecosystem functioned. And since then, I've basically only worked in senior care. So ⁓ from being a caregiver, I found a company that was doing online caregiver training. ⁓

and thought, wow, that would be awesome because I've just been a caregiver for the last couple of years. So I ended up kind of working my way up in that company. They ended up getting sold to Relias. And then I got a call from Helen at Care Academy and moved over there. alongside her and my now business partner, Yvan we helped grow Care Academy alongside Helen. And that was an amazing experience.

⁓ And I also got to meet Yvan. So Yvan Castilloux is my co-founder and our CEO. He was the chief technology officer at Care Academy. And he and I worked super well together and he started to branch out on his own and wanted to tackle one of the biggest issues that we saw going on in the industry, which was recruiting. People always say it's recruiting or retention. ⁓

Miriam Allred (02:58)
Mm.

Jen Waldron (02:59)
And I think recruiting is really actually quite aligned, ⁓ directly related to retention. Yvan, I was basically an advisor to Augusta for a few months and then joined pretty quickly alongside our other co-founder, Sam Sanchez, who actually we met through a mutual customer and had his own business doing digital marketing for home care agencies to get caregiver leads. ⁓

So, and he's also still a family caregiver to his 100 year old great grandmother. ⁓ So for all of us, it's quite personal and yeah, it's all kind of come together at this point where we're now building a business, helping so far almost a million caregiver applicants apply to a job, hundreds of home care agencies hire the right caregivers. So.

It's been a journey so far.

Miriam Allred (03:56)
Yeah, great story. How often do you think about your caregiving days? Like how often do you literally replay moments, memories, challenges that you had as a caregiver?

Jen Waldron (04:06)
Yeah, there's a few experiences that I had that like, I think about them often that really shaped my interest in like staying in this industry and working at it even though it's not easy. And there's many, many challenges, but yeah, there's a couple things. Yeah. ⁓

Miriam Allred (04:25)
stick with you for better and for

worse, but it's like so memorable. Like the experiences that you had do stay with you and have shaped who you are and what you're doing and what motivates you to keep going. ⁓ One question about transitioning from like caregiver training to caregiver recruitment. Do you feel like there was a lot of parallels in those two verticals or is there a lot of overlap?

Jen Waldron (04:50)
that's a good question. There's...

They're not, there's not a ton of overlap. You would think that maybe there would be more. I mean, maybe you could say that from like a very practical perspective. Like once a caregiver is recruited, they need to be trained. Like it's a next step in the process, but I wouldn't say that like the way the businesses are structured are like really aligning recruiting and training,

Miriam Allred (05:20)
I'm just curious how much overlap you see. Like sometimes we bucket recruitment and retention together and I think training is a piece of retention primarily, but can be a part of recruitment. So I was just curious in your mind having been on both sides, like how that puzzle fits together and if it's all pretty closely aligned or you see them as different things.

Jen Waldron (05:32)
Bye.

Yeah, I mean it's all about getting the right people with the right clients or cases or roles on the team, I think. And when you do that, training hits really, really well. So I think it's almost like a precursor to getting the right training is making sure that you were kind of lined up with the right opportunity. And then the training is the support to really help you flourish in that.

Hopefully right roll.

Miriam Allred (06:05)
Yeah, good point. I want to ask a high level question before we get into like the nuances of recruiting. I want to hear your honest take on the biggest specific problem in recruiting today. Again, you have upwards of a million applications you've worked with thousands of agencies over the course of your career, like you've seen a lot and been through a lot. I'm curious if you had to kind of like

Put your finger on the biggest recruiting issue in this industry. what would you say that it boils down to?

Jen Waldron (06:35)
The biggest issue is that recruiting is treated basically as its own entity. It's siloed from the rest of the business. Literally recruiters are measured on hires or how many people to show up to orientation while a scheduler or a care coordinator is measured on how many open shifts there are. And that's where they're the

⁓ stresses on their role is to make sure that those open shifts are filled. The marketing and sales team are basically encouraged to get any referral that they can. And they're qualifying based on, acuity of care, but not the types of factors that are going to make a difference in terms of whether or not you can actually staff that shift. So it's basically the biggest problem is that the

organization isn't exactly aligned around hiring the right caregivers for the cases that are actually open right now and the clients that you'll have in the near term. It's like each part of the company has its own individual goal. In theory, they're all logical. It all makes sense, but it doesn't actually meet the end goal of getting the right people.

to staff the cases that you have now and will have in the near term.

Miriam Allred (07:56)
Super interesting. I didn't know how you were going to take that question, but I think it's alignment, the recruiting function and its lack of alignment with really sales and scheduling. People silo sales, recruiting and scheduling as three different functions, but those could and should all be rolled up to one function. The objectives and the metrics for each of those should be more aligned rather than contradicting each other.

Jen Waldron (08:24)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah, totally. I mean, it's a situation where literally you end up with hires that don't match the work that you have for them. There's shifts that you're unable to fill and caregivers churn quickly. We've seen it time and again with agencies. And it's probably one of the biggest overlooked problems that agencies are having. And I think the agencies that have cracked that are doing very, well in terms of hiring.

Miriam Allred (08:51)
And it kind of seems like one of those things that the smaller you are out of necessity, those functions are closer aligned because of just like personnel. And so smaller companies are probably doing this better because it is kind of one person owning all three of those pieces. But this is actually an issue at scale, which is as you get bigger, you start to silo out different departments and different functions. And that's actually a bad thing in this case. And so like you're I think you're saying

You and I both have worked with very large companies. The ones that kind of keep those functions aligned as they scale are the ones that are winning.

Jen Waldron (09:26)
Totally. Yeah, if you just think about it, literally when an agency is brand new and they're starting out, the first person they usually hire is an office manager who's doing scheduling and recruiting. And so the one person has all the information on what needs to be recruited for most urgently to fill cases. So it's literally in one person's brain, essentially, where all of that communication is happening. But once you add

⁓ a couple recruiters and you've got separate schedulers. That's where you like the companies that are very, very intentional about aligning those goals seem to be quite successful.

Miriam Allred (10:05)
I was telling you before we jumped on, was talking to an owner in Arizona yesterday and they are very large, you upwards of thousand caregivers, and they said their recruiting function is inside of their sales department. Those are not two different departments. They are one department and recruiting rolls up to sales. That's how closely aligned those two functions need to be in that. Like you said, it's all about right fit and scheduling. And so as you're bringing in new clients, you're bringing in those new caregivers, those two.

should be essentially synonymous in the business, it's so common to like silo them out, have different leaders overseeing those functions when really they should roll up. we were talking about this before the podcast, companies are like reinventing themselves. know, think a lot of these large companies, they've been doing things a certain way for a lot of years, it's concepts like this that they create process overhaul and change management and change the dynamic and the layout of the company.

The companies that are succeeding are seeing where some of these gaps are and they're kind of like repositioning their teams, which is really powerful for the companies that are doing that.

Jen Waldron (11:09)
Yeah, it is. And I mean, we have other data in addition to the benchmark report, which I know we're going to talk a little bit about today, but like other data that we've collected that basically shows that the median number of hires for anybody who's not a statistics person, the median number of hires is basically getting the gap between the average number of hires and the median number of hires per agency is increasing.

So it literally means that the top agencies who are figuring this stuff out are hiring more and more and more and it's actually getting more difficult for smaller agencies who haven't been able to figure out how to align these functions.

Miriam Allred (11:48)
Which, yeah, is the nature of the market right now is recruiting is extremely difficult, but you're up against some people that are really figuring this out and nailing recruiting, making it difficult for the little guys to catch up and stay afloat. ⁓ Let's jump into this report. So preface what Augusta is doing with all of the data that you're collecting on all these applicants. You are sitting on like a gold mine of applicant and recruiting data.

Jen Waldron (11:52)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Thanks for watching.

Miriam Allred (12:16)
Talk a little bit about the history of the report, the evolution and kind of where it's at today.

Jen Waldron (12:20)
Yeah, so I guess we started this report mostly because we want to give clarity to the questions that a lot of agencies have been asking for a long time. And we want to help ⁓ the whole industry make better and better decisions so that way older adults can get the care that they need.

Basically, because literally if our customers hiring more of the right people for the right positions means that seniors lives are extended. and they're able to support their community the way that they want to and the way that I would love to see happen. So that's really the impetus behind the report. We are collecting a ton of data and it seems like sharing it is just

the right thing to do. So in this quarter's report, we analyzed about 110,000 applicants. So it's on Q4 2025, because we wait a few months to get basically hiring results following the end of the quarter. So this is on Q4 2025, and it was on 110,000 caregiver applicants that applied through our platform.

And we answer questions like, where do the best converting sources? How fast do agencies actually need to hire? What interview formats work best? Because people in our software, use it to actually auto schedule interviews for either in-person, video, or phone interviews. So we're able to, I think, one of the few companies out there able to report on that.

how location factors into retention and the alignment between recruiting and scheduling, the experience level of people in the market right now. So it's like a ton of information that really is like so practical and relevant to like daily decisions that recruiters, HR teams, GMs, owners, everybody has to make.

So yeah, we're hoping we can just provide more clarity and answer some questions for folks.

Miriam Allred (14:29)
Yeah, that's a perfect preview of we're going to like hit on each of those topics because there's a good amount of stats and also insights in the report. So the link to the report will be in the show notes wherever you're listening to this. I love that you've included like little insights because sometimes when we're looking at data, it's like the interpretation and the implementation of the data is tricky. But when I was going through the report, I love all of the little like insights. like, ⁓ that's what this is saying. And here's what I actually need to go do about that. So keep an eye out for those in the report.

But let's, we're going to talk through kind of each of those buckets that you just talked about, like time to hire, location, flexible hours, like self scheduling. Those are all these like micro tweaks that agencies likely need to make in their recruiting function. Before we do that, you guys have what you call, I believe, the Augusta Smart application. So you all have like engineered an application that's unique to you that gathers all this information and it's essentially the application.

for these caregivers to then pass off to the agency. I believe there's about like 20 criteria on it. I would love to have you dial through just quickly what all of those are because you all are the recruiting experts. You've been doing this for a long time. You've refined that process. There might be things in your application that agencies aren't thinking about or aren't doing. can you just kind of like dial through all of it?

Jen Waldron (15:37)
Yeah.

Yeah, totally. just to put it all in context. I would say our platform and our company has really built the caregiver recruiting operating system. So the smart application is just kind of one of the functional pieces of it.

But the whole goal when you add it all up is for basically us to help with attracting, identifying, interviewing, and matching the right caregivers to the right opportunities. So when you think about it from that context, we're like the aim of our smart application is to prioritize the best applicants and help companies move faster and make more human connections with the right people.

So at the end of the day, they can say yes to more clients and make better matches and hire for retention. So all of that is kind of the context around the smart application. So the smart application, as you said, it's a 20 question.

tool. Well, I hesitate to even call it an application because it has a different goal. It's not a traditional job application. What happens in this experience for the applicant is that we developed a way to get them to understand a little bit more about the company because we think, unfortunately today, most applicants never actually read the job description. So rather than trying to get them to

Miriam Allred (16:46)
application. Okay. ⁓

Jen Waldron (17:14)
read along job description as they apply to an agency through this process. They're actually given just like extremely small relevant bits of information that become personalized to them as they apply. And the questions that we have are a result of us starting this company by doing the work ourselves. So that was the very first thing that we did when we started this company is we

we're basically doing full cycle recruiting. We had about a dozen agencies that we working with, just friendlies from like ⁓ our time in the industry. And we were placing ads ourselves on Meta, screening the applicants, doing the interviews, and then trying to get them to show up in person for a final interview slash orientation. And through that, we basically started to uncover what actually matters.

about whether or not somebody's gonna hire this applicant. Because that is, I think, part of the crux of this, which makes it different than a traditional job application. We're trying to solicit different information, the stuff that's really gonna make a difference in terms of whether or not there's a concrete match here. Because I think what can happen, and this is said with all the love in the world, what can happen is that people want too much information up.

that's not actually relevant to whether or not they can place this caregiver right now. And it's in service of them wanting, their goal being that they want to like, find the best people, because they want to provide great care and they want them to stay. like, so that's why they get so much stuff up front. They get a resume, the job profile from Indeed, like the... ⁓

make them fill out long applications and stuff so that way they can get their why. So our goal is different. It's basically to help the caregiver understand why they should talk to you and just get enough information so that way we can identify the caregivers that actually match with the cases that are open today. ⁓

Miriam Allred (19:21)
You got me on the hook. I'm like, okay, so you've got it down to a science. Tell us what the science is. But that was great context.

That was really, really good context because you're right in that there's so much you could be asking these applicants for, but we need to lower the barrier to entry, but be super intentional and targeted. And it sounds to me like that's what you've accomplished is like...

Jen Waldron (19:30)
Okay.

Miriam Allred (19:44)
You've kind of cut out all of the baggage. You've got it down to a science. Here are the most important things for us to place them at. Well, also, I like what you're saying is giving the caregiver enough information about the business to interest them. in most cases, the agencies think they've got the one up on the caregivers. The caregivers are in the driver's seat and we need to empower them to be in the driver's seat. And so giving them enough information to where they're interested in you.

Jen Waldron (20:07)
Yeah, exactly. I think one of the biggest misconceptions that's still out there in the industry today, unfortunately, is that you can hire the same way you did before COVID. Basically, ⁓ in the past, there might have been a world where you could put up an ad on Craigslist for a group interview and 20 people would show up or you could post a flyer on ⁓ a in a laundry mat and like

30 people would call you. Like, that's not the case anymore. It operates really differently. The market is way different. People's expectations are so different for jobs. And so it's very much what we kind of started saying at the beginning where it's really, recruiting is sales and marketing. And so caregivers need to be treated like...

Have you ever heard the phrase, water what's growing? ⁓

Miriam Allred (20:58)
Mm-hmm.

Jen Waldron (21:01)
Designing your recruiting process to favor your top applicants helps you hire more, basically. So I think a lot of the reasons why people throw up these barriers to entry into getting a call from a recruiter is because they want to try and weed out the low quality candidates, but it's actually also weeding out the top candidates, essentially by just throwing up steps in the process.

What is really essential is actually to design your process around how you would want to treat a top applicant and make everybody go through that process and weed people out later, essentially. I think that's what you were kind of hitting on there and I think it's very overlooked.

Miriam Allred (21:48)
Yeah. And just to point this to examples that I've seen, the agencies that are at the top, of this industry and different markets, like I hear them say all the time, you know, we're only, we're only hiring 1 % of all the applications that come through. And so they're targeting their process to that 1%, making sure they're not weeding out and putting barriers up for that top 1%, but they've got it refined enough to where they're identifying that 1 % and then they're hiring those people, but they're waiting a lot of

Jen Waldron (22:16)
Yeah.

Miriam Allred (22:18)
bad fits.

Jen Waldron (22:19)
Yep, yep.

Miriam Allred (22:21)
So give us the 20 questions I want them.

Jen Waldron (22:23)
The 20 questions.

Okay, so it varies by ⁓ state a little bit and by some of the specifics of an agency. So there are variations among the questions, but the standardized ones that you can count on for pretty much ⁓ almost all of our customers to be asking their applicants, our location related to both where their clients are and where the office is if they have one.

Schedule availability, experience level and certifications, English proficiency, driving capabilities, ability to work ⁓ in the US and have proof of identification. to this point about recruiting being sales and marketing, the applicant's preferences around pay, hours and role.

Miriam Allred (23:21)
references around pay hours. Well, yeah, I'm just like processing some of these in real time. So nothing, nothing too out of the ordinary. Where do you think based off those 20 people are missing the mark? Like where are they spending too much time? Where are they wastering applicant time?

Jen Waldron (23:36)
So I feel like I'm going to catch some flack for this, but I would say honestly the number one thing...

In the traditional world of hiring, like you get a resume, you get a long application, you review it, and then you decide whether or not you're going to call them, try and get them on the phone, screen the applicant, and determine with your best recruiter judgment if they seem like they would be a good fit and have the skills and qualifications to move forward in the process. Like that's how it typically goes. What I would say, basically, that the big thing that's

happening is that...

caregivers are such a financially sensitive group of people. When they need a job, they need a job now. We hear it all the time, people talking about retention and how caregivers will leave for 50 cents more, a dollar more to another client. But what is also happening in that process is that behind the scenes, there was probably a mismatch in terms of what the caregiver asked for and what they got scheduled for.

So it's like recruiters, because of this traditional process, they really want to evaluate somebody on their full work history. It's one of the most common questions that I hear from recruiters. Well, I need to be able to see whether or not they were a job hopper. And I am here to say, I actually think it's, hopefully this isn't too controversial or anything, but like, I think it's much more important.

that when you talk to an applicant, if they have the skills and the qualifications, first of all, prioritize talking with people who are in the right location, have the general right experience level, right schedule, et cetera. And then when you're talking to them, ⁓ basically find out about what actually happened at their last job. Like they asked for 20 hours and they were given 10. They asked for to be paired with a client who was only within 10 miles of their house because they have to be available to pick up their kid at school.

because they're the primary caregiver at home, but they ended up getting scheduled for a case that was 20 miles away and across town from their other client with a different agency. basically I think we can just put each person's experience in a little bit more context of the last position that they had and the one before that and like really uncover that information about each person to find out.

It's not just so much that they, if they job hopped, but like what was going on? What's the other context around ⁓ that job hopping?

Miriam Allred (26:06)
Mm.

should we be asking caregivers, applicants for resumes or no?

Jen Waldron (26:15)
I don't think so.

Miriam Allred (26:17)
Okay, because when you talk about like work history, the resume typically shows the work history, but if they have, this is down, this is the science of like, okay, don't ask for it upfront. If they are a good fit, then you can ask about their work history in the interview. Is that the approach?

Jen Waldron (26:18)
Yeah.

Yeah,

that's what I would say. would say basically screen for the criteria that you can actually hire for now then and make the best connection that you can with the top applicants for the people who actually match your cases, like the ones that you can actually hire now. It doesn't matter if they have an amazing personality, if they don't have any schedule that matches your clients or live in the right area. You know what I mean? So like get that information first.

And before you try and get a caregiver to keep giving you tons more information, updated your resume, give me this long application, treat your applicants like they are your top applicant. If they were your hottest lead ⁓ on the sales and marketing side of the business, if they were your hottest client lead and they were gonna be a 24-7 case and they were great for the business and a ⁓ perfect match for your ⁓ cultural fit, all these different things.

you would get on the phone with that person immediately, you'd set up ⁓ an intake immediately, you would be on it, right? That's how you gotta be with the top caregiver applicants. But what top means starts with whether or not they actually match your cases, you know, like in a very concrete way. I wouldn't recommend starting with personality, That's kind of like the next level. The reality is, is most

matches are actually made based on location and schedule. That's where, I mean, everybody wants to match based on personality and all these other amazing qualities. But distance to the client, schedule, essential skills. That's what the matches really come down to, essentially. Yeah.

Miriam Allred (28:07)
Yeah, which

honestly, like we should just boil it down to that. It's like it maybe companies are it's like get the most essential information and like you say that you layer in the other components, but absolutely don't bog down the top of funnel with things that are secondary to the top priority. So a specific question around asking them for availability and scheduling. This is so pivotal. I'm curious exactly how you collect that.

Is it an open text so they can write in Monday through Friday dates and times and hours or is it checkboxes? Availability is so nuanced and in a minute we're going talk about flexible hours and everybody wants flexibility but it's like, what does that actually mean? And that's ambiguous for both the caregiver and the agency and that's doing us a injustice. How do you get them to give you really good availability that's credible and accurate?

Jen Waldron (29:00)
Yeah. So we basically are, like I said, we're talking about a full operating system here. So it's the smart application is one component of it and it's meant to be used in conjunction with a real great interview with a real human recruiter. So basically what the smart application does is it with basically it narrows down each agency's top 30 % of their applicants.

we're very confident that the not qualified applicants are really not qualified. Like our customers are 2,200 % more likely to hire somebody that they identified as qualified in our system versus those that are not qualified. So we know basically our disqualification super on point. But the top 30%, what we're asking them as far as a scheduling question is what days are you not available and what times are you not available?

And then we basically give them multiple choice options. it's, can work all days, can't work Saturdays, can't work Sundays. ⁓ Shoot. could, yeah.

Miriam Allred (30:08)
That's okay, but the concept

being what they can't work, black out days and times that they can't work, and then assuming there's the flexibility in all of the hours that they can work.

Jen Waldron (30:20)
Yes, And then with that information, like I said, we're identifying the top 30%. So along with their schedule, let's say they also are in one of the agency's qualified areas. Then with that information combined, along with some of the other factors that we're helping them measure, then a recruiter basically would, ⁓ our system is set up for the next step for the recruiter to ask for more specifics on that.

So literally there's a tool built into our system where the recruiter is meant to specifically ask about their schedule again, get more details about it and document it in our system. So that way in theory, ⁓ a scheduler can come in and actually see that information to see who's at the bottom of the funnel with their scheduling information that they verified just again with a human.

Miriam Allred (31:06)
Yeah, it seems like at every touch point in the process, scheduling needs to be hit on again, because scheduling is just living and breathing. Their availability changes the time they fill out the application to the time they're in the interview to the time their first shift happens. Likely their availability has changed every single time. so making that a priority touch point at every part in the process. And it sounds like you do that. You try to capture it upfront, but then you're verifying at each step.

Jen Waldron (31:32)
Yeah, we're narrowing it down to the top 30 % based on schedule, location, experience, certifications, etc. And then we've basically created tools for the recruiter to make sure that they have that really consistent interview process with each applicant to get their schedule information again.

Miriam Allred (31:51)
Let's talk about location. Location, you're saying, is another key point, top of funnel, like out of the gate. You have to ask that. How far are caregivers willing to drive? Like what success are we seeing like geographically as far as distance goes? Like how far are most people willing to go?

Jen Waldron (32:11)
Yeah, so it does definitely depend on the service area. So downtown Los Angeles, people will only drive like five miles, right? Because traffic is so bad and takes so long to get everywhere. ⁓ Out in rural Iowa, different situation. People see driving 30 miles is like no big deal. On average though.

So there's always variation, right? But on average, 76 % of hires are made when they lived within 20 miles of either basically of a center point that the agency gave us, which could be their office or it could be a specific zone that they're hiring from.

Miriam Allred (32:54)
Something interesting in the report was a line about not a lot of people are highlighting location and distance in the job ad. Like we're talking about benefits, we're talking about hours, we're talking about pay, bonuses, we're talking about all the flashy things. Not enough people are talking about location and distance, even though that's so high priority for successful matching and recruiting.

Jen Waldron (33:12)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Miriam Allred (33:21)
Why aren't we talking enough about location and is that kind of like low hanging fruit for people?

Jen Waldron (33:26)
Yeah, it's definitely, well, it's part of the organizational alignment issues that I think happen at a lot of agencies, not certainly not all, but like at a lot of agencies where the recruiter did their job because they hired five people or 10 people or whatever it was. But none of those five people actually live within 20 miles of where their current open cases are, for example. ⁓ Then it's, ⁓ so it's that alignment issue, I think more so than

anything else because what we see happen in its schedulers just you're doing their absolute level best to get care to clients but they'll ask a caregiver who wanted to only work 10 miles from their client they'll ask them to drive 20 or 25 miles because they need to staff that shift and so that is really the kind of the problem that ends up happening and we see it very consistently because something we've started to do with some of our customers we do

in-person training sessions with some of our clients and in that workshop that we do, we'll actually go through basically an analysis of their retention, identifying the key factors, very concrete key factors about the last employees that churned and the last employees that stayed more than 30 days. And in that process, we almost always uncover a fundamental mismatch between the location that

the caregiver wanted and where they actually ended up getting staffed. So I can't stress enough how important it is. it's just extremely important. I think what agencies can do about this is they can not only specifically advertise, but also make sure their business is set up to accommodate making sure those matches are made. specifically advertising an easy commute and that we're going to pair you with a client who's

local, that will make a difference for sure. We know that it's the second most asked for benefit by caregivers. So one of the questions we ask in the smart application is what benefits are important to you and we have them choose their top one rather.

Miriam Allred (35:18)
Mm.

Jen Waldron (35:28)
It's flexible hours and then easy commute. so caregivers really value it being convenient for them to get from one client to the next, because they're, as we know, probably working for two agencies. So they're the ones who are coordinating that ⁓ and making it easy for them is ⁓ very important for the caregiver and really important for the business.

Miriam Allred (35:31)
Mm.

Yeah, and good nugget right there of doing that like historical analysis. Go look at all of your last 90 to 100 day to churn and retention and then you can see, the location of the client and of the caregiver and calculate that drive time and then see, comprehensively how far your caregivers are willing to drive. But then on a like a by case basis, we talk a lot about like asking for updated availability. That's very much in every agency.

It's a kind of chaotic and that we have to update availability all the time. Did the caregivers do that? Did the agency do does that? but also updating their commute preferences. I feel like that's not really baked into people's processes, but asking them again, such circumstances change, you know, for a period of time there, they're probably good with five miles for a period of time. They may think 20 miles like schedule. It has to do with their schedule, but also like I guess just gathering more insights about their commute preferences more often.

Jen Waldron (36:21)
Yeah.

Miriam Allred (36:49)
so that, you know, six or 12 months down the road, their commute preferences have changed, but they didn't tell you or you didn't ask. And therefore they're churning based off of commute alone because that happens.

Jen Waldron (37:00)
Yeah, absolutely.

The other kind of nuance that I would add about the scheduling pieces is it is partially like the actual schedule of like I can do Mondays and Fridays from this hour to that hour, you know what I mean? So there's that, but it's usually about the total number of hours that the caregiver got or didn't get that are related to the churn more so than like a specific schedule, So like it's what we've seen is that

is a combination very frequently of location mismatch, so they're a little bit further away than they said that they wanted to be, and they asked for 10 hours and were asked to do 25, you know, or vice versa. They asked for 20 hours and the agency could only get them 10. So, but it's usually a combination. It's like, I don't know, if you've ever like used any product and you tried to like work at it a little bit, like,

If one other thing happens when you're using it, you kind of drop off. You're like, well, this wasn't easy. It's actually kind of a similar thing with a caregiver. If there's too many mismatches that happen on concrete factors, then they're going to find another opportunity. Yeah.

Miriam Allred (38:17)
Yeah, you self opt out. You're like, this

isn't what I wanted or expected and I am choosing to do this thing or use this thing. Therefore, I don't want to anymore. So I'm opting out. So speaking of the concept, you said the number one caregiver benefit, flexible hours. I have like a bone to pick with this and that like, do they want flexible hours? They want full time hours. They want full time work. But is the flexible part, it's the hours.

Jen Waldron (38:24)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Miriam Allred (38:46)
the structure of the hours that they want to be flexible cater to their unique needs? Like how would you define what they want as flexible hours?

Jen Waldron (38:56)
so I think it's a little bit more related to what we just talking about than like total flexibility. I mean, let me go to the hard data that I have.

first, which is there's a great article that was published in McKinsey a couple years ago ⁓ that I can share with anybody who's interested

It was analysis of basically post COVID who's coming back into the job market. where, what are the sectors, like personas that are actually growing within the U.S. job market, ⁓ like for applicants, like people actually applying to jobs and trying to go get jobs. And they came up with like seven different personas. And one of them out of the entire U.S. job market is literally the caregiver persona. And this was based on a big, big data set. And it's essentially that and we are

know this but it's just like further validation. caregivers are usually the primary caregiver at home. So first off if their kid calls out of school like or I mean their kid is sick at school like they have they're probably the person who needs to go figure out how to get care for their kid. Like they may be able to get somebody else to help you know but like they are going to have to coordinate it so there's some time off there. They're a financially sensitive group of people so like when ⁓

⁓

part of flexibility is that, if they pop their tire or something like that, like they actually may need a lift from somebody. Like they may need the agency to call them an Uber, you know, because they haven't gotten paid yet and they've got that pop tire. Like, so that is maybe an aspect of the flexibility too. And then I think it's more so what we're seeing and like, don't have exactly hard concrete data on this yet, but

I think we're probably headed in that direction as I mean, I'm pretty sure it's more so just about total hours and within their life limitations, basically. So it's like they need a certain amount of money to make ends meet. And they may be getting some of the number of hours that they need from one agency and some of the hours that they need, hopefully from your agency.

And that has to basically add up to their total number that they need to live and be in proximity to their whole, the area that their life is, where their kid goes to school, where their doctor's office is, where the supermarket is, all these different physical factors in their life, those clients and the hours have to align with that as well.

so all of this is to say that I'm pretty sure when people say flexible hours, they really just mean that they need this to fit into their life. Like they're trying to live and they are trying to like puzzle piece, like your schedulers are doing it. They're trying to do it too, to puzzle. How do I get what I need out of this job? And so yeah, they are asking for flexibility to like go pick up their kid or get a certain number of hours in a certain location. ⁓

Miriam Allred (41:39)
Mm-hmm.

And the interview is coming up with this equation with them. Like the recruiting teams that I see succeeding, the interview process is basically this equation. And I actually have heard people starting with the financial piece, how much money do you need to bring in? us like super transparently to the caregiver, how much money do you need to bring in? Then we know how many hours you need to work. And then you tell us

what your availability, what that flexibility looks like, and then we build you the schedule. It's like you walk it back from how much money they need to make to live comfortably, survive, then the hours, and then the availability, and then the schedule. It's like that equation. And if you build that for them and you work with them on that continuously, because it will change, they are going to stay with you, especially if you're meeting the most important priority is that they're getting paid enough to live.

Jen Waldron (42:54)
Yeah, exactly.

Miriam Allred (42:56)
So my issue with flexibility is really just defining what that looks like. Like when people put that in job ads, it's like, make sure you as an agency knows what flexibility means and make sure the caregiver, the applicant knows what flexibility means because we throw that term around and everybody wants to be flexible, but making sure it doesn't do us or them an injustice by not defining it.

Jen Waldron (43:00)
Yeah.

Agreed, yeah, definitely. And I mean, we know it's problem too, like, I mean, our data supports that.

people should work on that issue specifically because since we've been measuring our applicants' data and since we've been measuring what benefits that agencies are offering, basically since the beginning of our company, since we've been studying it, it's been very consistent that the top benefit that agencies advertise, the vast majority of agencies are

flexible schedules while the caregivers just continue to ask for flexible schedules. So there's a fundamental mismatch going on, like that they're not actually speaking the same language otherwise we'd see the numbers change, you know, like that caregivers aren't getting the flexibility that they're looking for, you know. ⁓

Miriam Allred (44:10)
That's the validation

I needed to hear because that's how I feel about it, that there is misalignment and it sounds like the data supports that there is because otherwise the data would be telling us something else, that that's not what they're looking for and that's what they're getting, but clearly they're still not getting it or it's not clearly defined.

Jen Waldron (44:14)
Yeah.

Yes, there's a mismatch of definitions. I mean, this has been three years now that we've been measuring and we've got a million applicants who have been through the platform and hundreds of agencies. We've got enough data to know that ⁓ that part doesn't seem to be changing. ⁓

Miriam Allred (44:45)
Okay.

I'm glad we I have spent this much time on these pieces because these are the most important pieces and there's these tweaks that we've identified, identified that people need to make in these specifically for the next like couple of minutes. I want to do like rapid fire of a couple of other things that I want to just make sure we hit on quickly. So kind of like short answers to these, but, do you always recommend self scheduling is, is that, and should that always be an option?

Jen Waldron (45:12)
⁓ most of the time, yeah. There's... ⁓

Miriam Allred (45:15)
What's some of the nuance there?

Jen Waldron (45:20)
So first of all, know that speed really isn't optional anymore. Our data shows that basically the vast majority of hires are made when their interview was in the first four days of their application. So that's like the biggest cliff where people, where applicants are gonna fall out ⁓ in terms of speed. So self scheduling supports making that happen. And it also is an indicator of

of the applicant. It's not the end all be all, but it is a leading indicator that this caregiver really wants to talk with you, thought about when they would be able to do that. But self scheduling is not, like I said, it's not the end all be all. top agencies, they use it as an indicator, but they'll still very actively recruit.

caregivers that are already self-scheduled. They don't wait for the appointment time. treat the, since we've identified them as a top 30 % applicant, they treat them as if they're a top applicant and go after them.

Miriam Allred (46:18)
Okay, what did the data tell us in Q4 about in person versus video versus phone call? Like what was the breakdown in Q4 for those?

Jen Waldron (46:27)
so it was about 56%,

yeah, 54.6 % of hires had their first interview as an in-person interview. 32 % of hires had their first interview as a video interview. And 13.4 % had their first interview as a phone interview.

Miriam Allred (46:53)
And this is hire. So this is an important distinction. This isn't just all applicants. These are the people that were actually hired. So I guess I just want to highlight 50 % in person, 50 % either virtual or phone call, which is just interesting. post COVID, like you said, like it's just a new hiring landscape.

Jen Waldron (47:12)
So our software, it allows people to schedule any type of interview and there's a built-in video platform and all this stuff. But when somebody's scheduling an in-person interview, it doesn't mean that

they're going to really, really want your opportunity more than the 10 others that they just got offered. So our customers, even though they're scheduling an in-person interview, ⁓ we strongly recommend that they still call the applicant before that scheduled interview to do probably what is a relatively traditional phone screen. They verify the answers that we provided through the smart application and go through a structured list of interview questions about their schedule.

where they're willing to drive to, et cetera, cetera, And so just because the first interview was an in-person interview, it doesn't mean that they didn't actually connect on the phone first. They most likely did. yeah, I guess, yeah.

Miriam Allred (48:08)
I think it's

reflective of the market, like 50-50 in that some people want in-person, some people want virtual, and agencies can do both well. it's not 80-20, it's not 90-10 in-person to virtual, it's like 50-50. it's like agencies can do both well. There are some agencies doing virtual interviewing extremely well, and it's working for them. There's some people that prefer the in-person and that's working for them.

There's no one size fits all and one isn't showing us more success than the other. It really is just what the applicant prefers and that what you as an agency can do well.

Jen Waldron (48:45)
I think that's a really good point, each agency has their strengths of what they're able to support best.

I think there's an argument to be made that is actually more complex for the entire business to do in-person interviews. It's literally a bigger time investment for both the applicant and for the agency. And so there has to be some structures around to support that. Like, is there a receptionist that's going to offer this applicant a coffee and help introduce them around to the schedulers and the rest of the people who are working there? If they don't have that kind of role on the team or somebody designated to that, an in-person interview might be less successful. So

agency that like that maybe would prefer to do a video interview instead.

Other thing I was going to say about this is that I wouldn't necessarily take this data to say that like more hires will be made through in-person interviews necessarily. I would take it more so that each agency may have very good reasons that are specific to them for wanting to do it like the like specific set of interview steps. What we've seen is that smaller

Businesses who are really trying to index very very high-end quality and find that any turned caregiver is a huge hurdle and a huge challenge in their business Those types of agencies really strongly prefer to do a phone or a video interview and then an in-person interview literally making it two steps Versus some other agencies may have more structures in place where they can just invite people in for an in-person interview Then lastly our system it actually automatically branches

the interview type based on the quality of the caregiver. So that's the other thing that's kind of underlying this data is that like it could be one agency that's doing both video and phone, video and in-person interviews, but they're just doing it with different like candidates who actually live close to the office are automatically brought in in person. Candidates who live far from the office are automatically ⁓ set up with an interview, a video interview.

Miriam Allred (50:42)
Yeah, more dynamic in nature. that's kind of my take is, we were talking before about like companies reinventing themselves and reinventing processes. We're kind of in this mode of like, yes, you need your SOPs and you need your way of doing things. But there also needs to be this certain level of like, dynamicness and that you need to be malleable in your processes to accommodate.

the preferences of these applicants. And that's a perfect example, like distance dictates in-person versus virtual. But then also the candidate can trump that, like, okay, I prefer in-person even though I'm driving 30 miles. Like, there's just got to be like budgeted in flexibility. A couple other things. I know we're close here on time, but I want to shift gears a little bit and talk about a couple things that I thought were interesting. Indeed is absolutely king for sourcing applicants.

High level question, is it saturated? Is Indeed saturated or every agency should be there no matter what?

Jen Waldron (51:42)
⁓ Indeed is extremely consistent in bringing in volume and we can tell through our data that their quality is actually even improving through their Healthy Marketplace initiative. absolutely indeed.

definitely worth investing in. It has the highest volume of applicants anywhere and they are not a company that's resting on their laurels. They're a very innovative tech company and they're just gonna continue to get better and better, I think. So yes, I would say it's, in any service area there is a maximum number of people. Literally, if you live in a town of 200, there might be 100 of them on Indeed and you can reach half the town there.

But there is a population limit from that perspective. But as far as advertising jobs to the right people, that's the top place to go.

Miriam Allred (52:36)
Yeah, good answer and good insights on and your take like you know, no indeed probably better than a lot of people, knowing that they're like innovative, they're pushing this workforce forward and doing it to help both the applicants and the providers using the platform. So that's great. ⁓ You all have some sort of like exclusivity program with Indeed that I think you have access to, but maybe like the general.

home care agency doesn't, can you just explain kind of that relationship and what people get by working through you to Indeed?

Jen Waldron (53:08)
Yeah, so basically, since our solution is one of the very few in the entire recruiting space at all, regardless of even not just our industry, literally just recruiting in general, ⁓ our solution involves literally a process by which we use a different application, It means that traditionally Indeed gets their data back, like who was hired, who was interviewed, who was qualified. They get that information back when somebody

applies through Indeed. So what they wanted to do for companies like us is they only invited a handful of companies. I think we're the only one that's specific to senior care. They invited us to basically be a part of this program where we built a special integration where we send data back even when an applicant applies through our smart application. So we're going to send back like were they qualified, were they interviewed, were they

hired and then indeed is able to use this information to ⁓ get our customers really strong placement of their ads in the algorithm, meaning that the ads are shown to more of the right people for the right type of jobs, basically.

Miriam Allred (54:16)
So one hyper specific question, if a caregiver hits apply now on Indeed, for you all, it, is the application baked into Indeed or is it taking them to kind of a different webpage where the smart application lives?

Jen Waldron (54:30)
for the vast majority of our customers, they have the option to allow ⁓ applicants to apply through Indeed. And there are use cases where that makes sense. That's definitely down in the weeds. But generally speaking, an applicant clicks apply and it actually takes the applicant to an exact matching job on the agency's website. And we show them, rather than, basically we show them a visual version of a job description,

which

is entirely specific to caregivers. So it literally tells them, here's where you will work, how much you will make, and how great it is gonna be to work with this team, but we show them in pictures. And then from there, that's when they apply and we capture them in the smart application.

Miriam Allred (55:13)
Because is a branded experience important at that very first, maybe second touch point like indeed to the website, like is the branding and the recognition and the visual really important at that very first step?

Jen Waldron (55:29)
every time I talk to people about this, this always resonates. Unfortunately, most applicants just never read the job description. So just basically leaning into not making them do that and seeing the difference in your team, literally seeing pictures of the team, seeing a map of where they're going to work. Like that is the type of experience that's extremely easy to consume and actually tells the caregiver what they need when they need it. It has an ancillary benefit for the agency in addition

to creating a great branded experience for the applicant, it has an insular benefit of actually helping to improve their SEO over time because it's literally more website visitors from a trusted referral source staying on their site longer because of the type of content that's there.

Miriam Allred (56:13)
I like that concept of more visuals. Forget the lengthy, wordy, half-written-by-AI job description. It's like give them visuals that will stick with them more than just words.

Jen, this has been awesome. I know I've kind of strung you along in a lot of different areas, but these are the types of things that agencies need to be reevaluating right now in their recruiting process. It's like there's all these tweaks. There's all of these micro concepts that, again, we need to just reinvent and rethink about.

the hiring landscape, the workforce is changing by the minute. The technology is changing by the minute. The type of care the families are demanding is changing by the minute. And so it's like, this is very real time. And these are the factors, the most important factors that we need to be considering. And back to where we started, which is where recruiting fits inside of your organization and the fundamental internal organizational alignment. That is probably a...

place where everyone needs to take a hard look at where recruiting sits and how it fits into the broader operation. Like that's the place to start. So last thing, tell us ⁓ where this report lives. We'll have a link in the show notes. Is the best way for people to download it right on Augusta's website?

Jen Waldron (57:32)
Yeah, if you go to our website, you'll see a banner right at the top saying you can order the report. It is free. we did a webinar explaining some of the top points of data. And that should be up this week on the website.

Miriam Allred (57:44)
Awesome,

awesome. So we'll have all of that linked in live in the show notes. You've talked a bit about Augusta and kind of filled in, you know, obviously some of your differentiators and some of your processes, just kind of like in a nutshell, who is best suited to work with Augusta? what size team, what size operation, like what mindset of owner is a good fit for what Augusta offers?

Jen Waldron (58:10)
I would say agencies that are in growth mode ⁓ and agencies that are looking to put in scalable, repeatable playbooks that they can basically, even if they're in that mode of their business where they're wanting to get out of the day-to-day of operations and they want to have somebody else take over.

You want to have a system that you can trust, like the whole operating playbook, not just a tool. So agencies that are looking for like the full recruiting solution, essentially, to make sure that their top of funnel is moving, fast, it's efficient, and it's transparent.

And I would say we're always looking to work with folks who want to innovate and try new things. And the processes that we recommend to our customers, a lot of people are like, whoa, we would never do that. And then they try it they're like, my God, it worked.

Miriam Allred (59:07)
Yeah, and I was just

going to say that you, Yvan, Sam, you guys are accessible. Even if it's just a conversation, people might be listening to this and thinking like, we've got a good amount of this in place, but I could ask you a couple of follow-up questions. Don't be a stranger to Jen and her team. Reach out to them, even just as a sounding board to ask some one-off questions. Recruiting is changing by the day and you guys are on the front lines. And so you've always got insights that operators can apply.

Jen, thanks for joining me in the lab. This has been fantastic. We'll go ahead and wrap here.

Jen Waldron (59:39)
and thank you so much for having me.