Caregiver Recruitment: Why Your Website Loses Applicants to Indeed (and How to Fix It)

By Yousuf Ameer, Founder & Lead Developer · Published October 22, 2026

A caregiver is on her break, scrolling jobs on her phone. Three agencies are hiring near her. On Indeed, she can apply in about a minute with a saved profile. On your website, "Careers" is a link in the footer that leads to a PDF application form.

She applies to the other two.

That's not a reflection on your agency. It's friction, and most of it is fixable on your own website. Here's why agency careers pages lose applicants to job boards, and what a careers page that actually gets applications looks like, for agencies in the US and the UK.

Why does recruitment matter so much right now?

Because every agency is chasing the same people.

In the US, the Bureau of Labor Statistics projects about 760,500 openings a year for home health and personal care aides on average from 2025 to 2035, and says many of them will come from replacing workers who change jobs or leave the workforce. PHI's Direct Care Workers in the United States: Key Facts 2025 counts nearly 3.2 million home care workers, the largest part of a direct care workforce of nearly 5.4 million in 2024. PHI projects the home care workforce alone will add over 681,000 jobs in the next decade (report PDF).

In England, Skills for Care's State of the adult social care sector and workforce 2025 estimates that domiciliary care services had the highest vacancy rate of any service type in 2024/25, at 9.7%, and a turnover rate of 22.2% (report PDF).

When every agency is hiring, small points of friction decide where an applicant goes.

Why do caregivers apply on job boards instead of your site?

• Convenience. Boards have saved profiles and quick mobile applications. Many agency sites send people to a long form, a PDF or a portal login.
• Visibility. Boards show up in job searches. Agency careers pages often don't, because Google can't tell they're job listings.
• Missing information. Boards push employers to show pay, shifts and location. Agency pages often say "competitive pay" and little else.

Job boards aren't the enemy

Use them for reach. But own a channel too. A caregiver who hears about you from a friend, sees your car in her neighborhood or meets your staff will usually look you up. If your own careers page is weak, you lose even those warm applicants, the ones you didn't pay a board for.

The 6 leaks on a typical agency careers page

I'm new to home care, so I won't pretend to have audited hundreds of agency sites. But these leaks are the same ones I fix on every kind of service-business website, and they're easy to spot on your own site in five minutes.

1. "Careers" is buried

If the jobs link sits in the footer, most applicants never find it. Fix: put "Careers" or "Work with us" in the main menu, and add a clear "Now hiring" button on the home page.

2. No pay range

"Competitive pay" tells an applicant nothing, and she can see real numbers on the board next door. Fix: show the hourly range for each role, plus shift differentials if you offer them. In some states it's the law: for example, Washington requires employers with 15 or more employees to include a wage scale or salary range and a general description of benefits in job postings. Check your own state's labor department.

3. A long application, a resume upload or a bare portal link

Many caregivers don't have a resume on their phone, and a portal login with no explanation looks like a dead end. Fix: a short first step (see the two-minute application below). If you must use an applicant tracking portal, explain what it is, how long it takes and what happens next before you send people there.

4. No individual job pages

One paragraph listing "Caregivers, CNAs, HHAs" can't rank for any of them, and Google's job search can't read it as a job. Fix: one page per role and location, each with the pay, shifts, requirements and an apply button.

5. A slow, desktop-first form

Tiny fields, dropdowns that don't work on a phone and a page that takes ages to load all cost you applicants. Fix: large tap targets, the right keyboard for each field (number pad for phone numbers), and a light page. Test it on your own phone, on mobile data.

6. Silence after "submit"

If nothing happens after applying, applicants assume they've been ignored, and accept another offer. Fix: an instant confirmation that says when you'll be in touch and how.

What does a careers page that converts look like?

Start with the top of the page. In one screen, an applicant should see:

• The pay range for your main roles.
• The towns or areas you hire in.
• Shift types: days, nights, weekends, live-in.
• A button that says what it does, such as "Apply in about 2 minutes" (only if that's true).

Then give each role its own page: Companion, Personal Care Aide, Home Health Aide or CNA in the US; Care Assistant or Senior Carer in the UK. Add your training and benefits, and real photos and words from your current caregivers, with their consent. Stock photos of smiling models fool nobody.

Real photos matter more than most owners think. For a construction company client, I went to their office, pulled the information out of their project files and photographed their completed and under-construction projects myself. Real content from the actual business beats anything generic.

Finish with a short "What happens after you apply" section: for example, a call within one business day, an interview, background checks, orientation. It sets expectations and gives applicants a reason to wait for your call.

These are the caregiver recruitment pages I build into every home care site. UK agencies that want more local searches as well can see my home care SEO for UK agencies.

The two-minute application: what to ask (and what not to)

Ask at first contact:

• Name and mobile number
• Town, ZIP code or postcode
• Role they're applying for
• Availability (days, nights, weekends)
• Certifications held (for example CNA or HHA in the US; a care certificate in the UK)
• Earliest start date

Don't ask up front:

• Social Security or National Insurance numbers
• A full work history or a resume upload
• Any medical information
• Salary history. In Washington it's unlawful for employers to seek it, even as an optional question on an application.

Collect documents later, once you've spoken. Make the form work well on a phone, and if there's a longer second step, let people save and come back.

In the UK, keep the data to the minimum, link to a privacy notice (the ICO explains what it must include under the right to be informed), and explain later checks in plain terms: right to work checks and a DBS check. UK providers also have to show their CQC rating on their website under Regulation 20A, and your careers pages sit on that same site. Applicants check it too.

How do you get your jobs into Google's job search?

Add JobPosting structured data to each individual job page. Google's job posting documentation lists the required properties:

• title: the job title only, such as "Home Care Aide". No pay, dates or company name in it.
• description: the full job description, in HTML.
• datePosted: when you posted the job.
• hiringOrganization: your agency's name.
• jobLocation: where the caregiver reports to work, including the country.

Google also recommends baseSalary, employmentType (such as FULL_TIME or PART_TIME) and validThrough if the job has a closing date. Google says the salary in the markup must also be visible on the page.

Three rules that catch agencies out:

• Only on single-job pages. Google says not to use JobPosting markup on list pages, or on any page that isn't a single job. That's why this article doesn't use it.
• Remove filled jobs. Google doesn't allow expired job postings. Remove the page, or set validThrough to a date in the past. Leaving stale jobs up can lead to a manual action.
• Test it. Run each job page through Google's Rich Results Test before you rely on it.

Google Business Profile helps too

Caregivers search for agencies on Maps as well. Keep your profile complete, link your website, and use profile posts to say when you're hiring. For what Google changed in profiles this year, see my Google Business Profile changes in 2026.

Speed-to-contact: the website's job ends at "submit"

The website's job is to get the application. Then speed takes over.

• Send an instant confirmation by email or text, with the next step and timing.
• Route applications straight into your care software, applicant tracking system or CRM, not into a shared inbox where they sit for days.
• Recruitment guides for home care commonly recommend contacting applicants the same day. Treat that as good practice, not a statistic, and measure your own response time.

Track the source of each hire

Record where every hire came from: your website, Indeed, a referral, a Facebook post. Google lets you tag clicks from its job search with utm_source=google_jobs_apply, so you can see them in your analytics. After a few months, you'll know which channel is worth paying for.

Keep job seekers and families on separate paths

A careers page that's an afterthought causes a second problem: applicants call your client line, and families land on job pages. Give each group its own path: a "Careers" item in the menu, its own call-to-action and, if you can, its own phone number or text line.

That's the idea behind building one home care website with separate client and caregiver pipelines. Families see care. Caregivers see jobs. Neither gets lost. If you want the client side of the same site, read how independent agencies get private-pay clients online.

Want to know where your careers page is losing applicants? Send me your site and the towns you hire in, through the free site audit form. I'll send a short audit within 2 business days.

I'm also running a founding-client offer, limited to the first 3 agencies: a website build for $600 (standard rate $1,200 to $1,800), in exchange for a testimonial and permission to publish a case study. Details are on the home care websites page.

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