September 3, 2025 • 51 mins
Summary
In this episode, Jerry Vinci and Ira Kerns discuss the evolving landscape of recruiting in the senior living industry. They explore the challenges posed by outdated practices, the impact of COVID-19 on staffing, and the changing expectations of the workforce. Kerns emphasizes the importance of listening to top performers, the potential pitfalls of sign-on bonuses, and the need for a strong recruiting brand. They also delve into strategies for retaining staff and the role of AI in enhancing the recruiting process.
Learn More
- Connect with Ira Kerns on LinkedIn
- Learn more about J Ross LA Recruiting
Takeaways
- The biggest recruiting problem is outdated thinking.
- Staffing crisis in senior living is a pressing issue.
- Leadership roles are equally affected by staffing challenges.
- COVID-19 has exacerbated staffing issues in the industry.
- Attracting mission-driven talent is crucial for success.
- Recruiting efforts must be hyper-local to be effective.
- A strong brand can attract quality candidates.
- Sign-on bonuses may create resentment among existing staff.
- Creating a positive work environment is essential for retention.
- AI can streamline recruiting but should not replace human interaction.
Chapters
00:00 Welcome to From Leads to Leases - A Senior Living Business Podcast
02:21 The Evolution of Recruiting in Senior Living
10:44 Changing Workforce Expectations and Challenges
15:13 What Top Performers can Teach Operators about Recruiting
17:22 Are Sign-On Bonuses Helpful or Hurtful?
22:19 Can Bigger Culture Outweigh a Bigger Salary?
25:39 How to Start Building a Strong Recruitment System
31:54 Retention Strategies for a Stable Workforce
39:05 The Role of AI in Recruitment
44:35 How AI Can Benefit Recruiting and Identifying Top Performers
46:14 Do Operators Know What Inspires Staff to Stay?
Keywords
senior living, recruiting, staffing crisis, COVID-19, workforce expectations, employee retention, sign-on bonuses, recruiting brand, work environment, AI in recruiting
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
Recruiting is sales. It's your brand, it's
competitive. There's a lot of pressure right
now to use a lot of automated systems and job boards and and
things of this nature. But being in control of that
recruiting process yourself about dependency on that and
having a brand that's perceived by candidates as professional
(00:20):
and supportive, giving candidates a perception of a
brand that's attractive so that people want to work in your
building. What if the biggest recruiting
problem in senior living isn't alack of candidates, but outdated
thinking? Today's guest has been over a
decade sourcing clinical and executive talent and long term
care, and he's here to challengehow our industry hires, retains
(00:43):
and inspires its people. Welcome to From Leads to Leases,
ACCR Growth podcast that helps senior living providers
transform their complex challenges into opportunities.
Listen in for stories from industry leaders, innovative
strategies and insights, and with our expertise, learn how to
increase occupancy faster, Guaranteed.
(01:07):
Welcome back to another episode from Lease to Lease is the
podcast that dives deep into thesenior living and senior care
industries, bringing you insights, strategies and stories
from the experts at the forefront of innovation,
leadership, and care. I'm your host, Jerry Vincey, CEO
of CCR Growth. For those of you who don't know
about us, CCR Growth is a full service marketing and growth
agency exclusive to the senior living industry.
(01:28):
And through this podcast, I'm here to guide you through the
evolving landscape of senior care, exploring the innovations,
the strategies and leadership insights that are shaping the
future of the. So whether you're a provider, a
caregiver, or industry leader, this show is here to help you
make informed decisions and create meaningful impact.
All right, today's guest is Ira Kearns, a healthcare recruiter
(01:48):
with over a decade of experienceworking with senior living and
long term care organizations nationwide.
As an executive recruiter at J Ross LA Healthcare Recruiters,
Ira specializes in placing mission driven talent and high
stakes clinical and operational roles.
He spent thousands of hours listening to candidates,
learning what drives them and what drives them away.
(02:09):
His frontline insight into what's working and what's broken
in the hiring process makes him one of the most thoughtful
voices in the space. So, Ira, welcome to the show.
I'm so glad to have you. Here.
Thank you. I'm glad to be here.
This is such an interesting topic, I think right now,
because all I hear about everywhere I go is the staffing
crisis, the staffing crisis and it's, it's, it's been, it's been
(02:31):
interesting to hear some of the solutions that people have to
that problem and or lack of solution.
So I'm really excited to get your spin on it.
You've been in this industry forover a decade.
What would you say has changed most about recruiting and senior
living over that time? Well, I believe that the
industry takes it a little more seriously than they used to.
You know, the staffing shortage has always been a problem.
(02:53):
It's probably exasperated now with the alternative positions,
especially on frontline workers.There's a lot of competition
that's paying the same rate or higher and doesn't require, you
know, the sense of purpose the caregiving and, and can be quite
less stressful. I mean, frankly, if they can
(03:13):
pour coffee at a coffee shop, itmight be a lot less stressful
than answering call lights or providing customer service or
aid to folks. I think that's been the
challenge is to not only be competitive, but also identify
those people where giving customer service, giving care is
(03:34):
why they get up in the morning. You know, recognizing them help
them grow, attracting them to your facility.
I mean, isn't that it? You want them working for you,
especially, you know, as an operator or director of
healthcare, it's your team, right?
And and you want the best peopleand you're not able to
accomplish things all by yourself.
(03:54):
Are you seeing a similar trend amongst the the leadership roles
as well? I think that the leadership
roles is have become even affected the same way.
I think that we we've seen turnover.
I think it's exasperated a bit by the COVID, you know, it was
hard for people. Maybe we just take a moment just
to thank the people that are in the industry because COVID, not
(04:17):
only are they asked to do thingsthat are above and beyond on a
daily, right? And they struggle with amazing
burden of compliance that they still care and they do with a
smile and they try to spread andencourage people and provide a
great environment for these residents, you know, but it
wears them out. And there are alternatives.
(04:39):
You know, a lot of people have moved back into hospitality as
operators because it's a little less stressful for them and it
pays well. But we need those folks back.
I mean, the resumes that we see nowadays, unfortunately, there's
a lot of movement and a lot of it doesn't make sense.
The question of why, I guess this is part of the conversation
(04:59):
to, to throw out there, you know, why is someone leaving an
operational position, you know, or, or, or any other corporate
level positions in a year? I mean it's hard to accomplish
anything in 12 months. You know, these are the
conversations that I guess should be had amongst people
about the industry and how do weretain people?
How do we make it more engaging?How do we find those people that
(05:22):
want to be engaged, that want tospread the word, that want to,
you know, be a living mission statement and a living
caregiver? Yeah, I mean, we see that too on
our side, even in the marketing space.
When a community struggling withleadership or maintaining staff
numbers, it affects everything. It affects occupancy.
It affects the overall morale inthe community and so it just
(05:42):
becomes increasingly difficult across the board, I think, for
the community to stay profitableand successful.
It is a vicious cycle, right? It seems that in some ways in it
for this conversation, we could say we could start the cycle
with staffing. You know, if we can achieve that
level of staff at least in a full capacity, meaning we're not
(06:03):
using an agency and and ruining budgets that people are coming
in, we can train them and then they're giving good care.
We have happy residents, we havehappy family members.
We get good quality outcomes clinically, right?
It all just starts building up. Next thing you know, word of
mouth on the street is awesome. The marketer has a full list of
(06:23):
people wanting to come into the facility.
People come to work every day, tend to learn the rules, they're
good. And your compliance burden is is
reduced, right? That's reduced.
You have a happier clinical service director, happier Ed,
and next thing you know, what happens, it's profitable, right?
Yeah, So. Imagine that I.
Mean imagine that and but as simple as that is, I know that
(06:47):
people in the business, it's daunting that the factors are
limitless in this. I know you can speak about it
maybe from a corporate perspective with working on
things, but I think one thing for operators is that maybe
it's, it's kind of like hyperlocal in terms of efforts.
You know, I mean, maybe, you know, putting things in place
(07:07):
or, or working on your recruiting, so to speak, tends
to be any help you could get from a corporate entity is
awesome. But you know, maybe you really
need to take it in as a facilitylevel issue because like we were
just talking about the cycle, boy, if you could fix that one,
it might lead to the rest reallyfalling in line and then success
(07:29):
is what we all want to achieve. I think a lot of things in this
industry have to be hyper local,though.
That's how we handle marketing as well.
I don't think a corporate approach makes sense, especially
when you're recruiting from yourlocal pool of talent.
You have to have a strategy for that, and what works in one area
may not work in another area. Absolutely, Yeah.
You know, recruiting, I mean, recruiting is sales, it's your
(07:51):
brand, it's competitive. There is a lot of pressure right
now to use a lot of automated systems and job boards and and
things of this nature. But being in control of that
recruiting process yourself without dependency on that and
having a brand that's perceived by candidates as professional
(08:12):
and supportive and human contactis going to be more and more
important as we move forward. And maybe certain competitors of
in the industry are relying on things that aren't giving
candidates a perception of a brand that's attractive so that
(08:32):
people want to work in your building, right?
People, people see an ad or theysee your social media posts and,
and they're, they've been waiting for it.
You know, I mean, isn't that maybe the, the dream that you've
achieved something, right? You have a waiting list on, on
your recruiting for candidates. And, and it's, it's possible,
(08:53):
you know, it's possible to achieve that.
I mean, when folks reach out to myself and other third party
recruiters, obviously they've exhausted all of their resources
and they're in a jam. This, this position is really,
really, really, it's problematicon so many levels, not only
financially, but across the board.
And what does the recruiter do? I mean, what is the value that
(09:15):
they're doing that you don't have?
And I would say that one of the key ones is especially in
markets that you have a recruiter that's experienced or
a firm that's that's dug in there.
They have a database, right? They're, they don't, they don't
want to run a job board ad they know what's on the job boards.
They have those candidates contact information and they
(09:37):
have a good sense of what they're looking for.
They know they can pare it down and then they contact them.
So that's what they're doing. On top of there's obviously cold
calling outreach and different marketing things that a firm may
do. But the bottom line is that they
have a database of candidates that they're able to leverage
without having to use the job board.
So it's possible to do that for yourselves.
(09:58):
You know, it's possible to to generate that between all the
contacts any given set of peoplein a facility may have.
From there, if they're properly addressed and brought together
and used to kind of for referrals, you have a much
better chance of finding the people you're looking for.
Engaged people, people who care,people are passive that weren't
(10:20):
necessarily desperate to get outof a facility for whatever
reason that they're in now. And you happen to be their next
dream job, right? It's their lucky day that you
reached out to them. And I think that's kind of the
goal with recruiting and the goal that everyone has.
I mean, you, you want to have that candidate, you want to call
them, you want to say, hey, listen, I just found the job.
You told me a month ago this wasyour dream.
(10:41):
I found it. Here they are and they want to
talk to you tomorrow. Are the expectations of that
you're seeing today in the workforce, are they different
than they were 10 years ago? Well, I think that what we've
seen specifically in long term care and senior living is that a
lot of the senior leadership as far as the clinical folks and
even down to maybe some of the frontline nurse management
(11:01):
positions and even to a degree the executive directors,
administrators are aging out. You know, they're at their
retirement ages. The reasons they got into the
industry, I think are a little different, a little less
financially oriented and they knew what the job was and the
job was caregiving and they understood that taking
leadership positions in that business was going to be a
(11:24):
challenge and it was going to berelentless.
And they took it because they wanted to take it on.
They want to achieve it and thatwas their professional goal.
What I've seen shifting now is that people and you know, we
could point to COVID, I would say just do it as a historical
fact that it happened. But I mean, if you use that as a
turning point, I think that between folks aging out, new
(11:47):
generation, new culture of people that folks are a little
more concerned about their financial short run gains than
they used to be. And you know, we can lament all
day about how we want to not have that be the case.
I mean, it, it is the case, you know, they're looking for work
life balance, they're looking for flexible schedules, high pay
rates, not so much concerned as they used to be about health
(12:10):
benefits and, and contributions to education and, and, you know,
benefits packages and, you know,corporate culture.
And I mean, it's a shame because, you know, I would think
that these are the things that people would be interested in if
all things being equal, but I feel like we're really getting
into a stage of me first. How much and you know, how do
(12:33):
we, how do we get around that? I guess it's the question that
comes out of that. I think it's a realistic premise
too, to to say that COVID was the catalyst for a lot of that
and it changed so many aspects of our lives.
And I know for a lot of people, they're just not willing to go
back to the way things were before.
So some people not having the career aspirations that maybe
they had before. And now they're just looking at
it as one thing they're doing during their, you know, time on
(12:56):
this planet, not the only thing that matters or the only thing
they aspire to do. And, you know, they want to
have, they want to have families, they want to have
personal time, they want to focus on their health and
Wellness. It's changed so many different
aspects. I just think that's it's very
interesting. Right.
But the industry hasn't changed,right?
So we're still, we're still stuck with, you know, the rising
cost of operations. We're stuck with an unstable and
(13:19):
never ending regulation. You work in an industry where
you know, mistake is fraud, right?
This is the pressure you're under, right?
And then to if you're in management, you know, you have
the pressure of geez, no one showed up for work today.
I have to do this myself. And this is the business, you
know, because the care has to begiven.
(13:40):
The residents are there, it's their home we're working in, so
to speak. It is very difficult and I think
that, you know, people now are shying away from those
challenges. I mean, because, you know, there
used to be a time where in recruiting, if I had a trouble
building, I could search around and ask for referrals and say,
(14:01):
Hey, listen, I need a fixer. I need somebody that just gets
in there and just fix it. And people say, oh, I know call
so and so they're the fixer thatthe fixer person is really
disappearing. You know, there there were
people that would say, I want tochallenge.
And I hear that less and less. And it's sad, sad because I
mean, in some ways, if you're inthe leadership position, I would
(14:23):
think and have talked about it for years with people, this is
opportunity, right? This is your chance to shine.
Yes, there's a problem. There are multiple problems.
There are huge problems. You know that these need fixing.
They should be seen as opportunity to lead rather than
heck no, no, no, not interested,right?
(14:44):
So I mean, I've been hearing it more and more.
I'm not saying, you know, not tobe negative, just to have
conversations about maybe what are the, the, the, the pressors
on these. So, you know, what's changed And
if it has changed, like how do we listen to the people in the
industry now that are successful?
(15:05):
How do, how do we find those people?
How do we find the new people, the new industry leaders and
achieve the outcomes we want to?That was actually.
Going to be my next question too.
I mean, you talk about the importance of listening to those
top performers. What could the operators learn
if they actually did that well? I mean, obviously in any given
situation, right? You've got people that you count
(15:26):
on every day, people that come in and people that make a
difference. And why are they still there?
What I mean, has anyone asked them?
You know, I mean, that's the key.
I mean, a lot of the data I think that people are looking
for is right in front of them. You know, if you have, I think,
a talented enough HR partner in your building or your staff
(15:49):
development person, you know, that you've sat down and
discussed at length about what are they hearing and how can we
get more feedback? You could take advantage of
hyperlocal changes or policies, you know, to start to address
those and build your own program.
I mean, I mean, it may be the building blocks of culture.
(16:12):
You know, I know that there's been four years since the 80s.
You know, culture has been a bigthing, starting with the tech
companies, right? I mean, everyone sees folks, you
know, working on a bean bag, right?
I mean, this is like, you know, we have pinball machines, right?
Yeah. But long term care, not the
case, right? So, but that being the point is,
(16:34):
you know, they started paying attention to the employees and
then and they use that we use that case of extremism to
illustrate that, hey, they created a culture that was
attractive so that they could get the most competitive people
in the industry to want to work with them.
So simplify that and just maybe find out from your top
(16:54):
performers what makes it good. What are your suggestions,
right? You know, hey, why are we having
turnover? I mean, if you have the luxury
of exit interviews with people, take advantage of those.
If not, I'm sure the staff knowswhy so and so walked out the
door or why people why their friends are working down the
street and why they won't come to your facility.
(17:16):
I mean, the answers are there ifwe ask what we do with them.
You know, I wish I had the answers.
About sign on bonuses, do you think they're hurting more than
helping? I personally don't care for the
sign on bonuses. I think you can look at it a
couple ways. I think if you want to look at
it from an ideal situation, you know, it's kind of a red flag to
(17:38):
candidates and to your competitors.
You can't fill this. So you're throwing out a ton of
money on top because you got problems that no one's
interested. So I mean, I think initially
that's kind of a first impression.
I think the second is, you know,you start to attract people that
are interested to money. You run the risk of alienating
(17:58):
current employees. You know how they don't want to
work with somebody who just got an extra, even if it's 500 bucks
for some of these frontline positions.
So and so just got $500 to come and start here and working the
same rate as me. Yikes.
Why didn't I get 500 bucks? I was here through the last
three years through, you know, crisis after crisis, right?
(18:19):
I was here, you know, through COVID.
So you run that risk and ultimately it's money.
You're throwing money out there.People realize that at the end
of one year, all right, you're going to get a pay cut or
they're expecting that plus a raise.
You know, it brings up all of these things and, and you know,
(18:39):
unfortunately a lot of the job boards now are forcing people to
put money up there. You know, I think that if we in
a situation where you could leanon your brand, you worked so
hard to build a lean on your word of mouth, you've worked
real hard to build and lead withthe important things.
I think that would be an ideal situation.
Probably not the case. And the industry a little bit
does it to itself because if you're in a, in a smaller radius
(19:03):
of 25 miles and you have 5 facilities, you know, all you're
doing is forcing musical chairs basically with the candidates,
especially frontline. I mean, is that helping you guys
as a whole, right? I mean, is it that dog eat dog
amongst each other that that's what you want to do?
You know, in the bigger markets,I can see that you may have to
(19:23):
run a sign on bonus if it's thatcompetitive.
But again, you run the risk, you're just throwing the money
out there. It's it almost becomes a
retention bonus, right, If they cut it up and they pay it out in
pieces. So at least I have that nurse
manager for a year, right? But is that going to be
sustainable in the long run, right?
(19:44):
Is that really what you want to do?
I don't know if you answer that question knowing all the burdens
that operators have. I mean, you can't fault people
for that, you know, trying to say that people are not wanting
to do other things. I think that people are
stretched so thin. But I think we've come to a
point now that it's going to be necessary to really focus on my
(20:07):
own personal ability to fill my staff, you know, because.
Staffing agencies aren't gettingany cheaper, and COVID allowed
them to recruit into their own staff, their own staff pools,
many, many, many nurses. And now they're selling your
nurses back to you at a higher rate.
I mean, at some point the industry's got to, you know,
kind of step back and say maybe we do need to invest a little
(20:30):
more in this long run strategy of building that brand on my
candidate side, right? I spend a lot of money on the
other side. How about we take that same
sense of urgency, you know, thatsame need to exceed expectations
with people and we apply that toour recurring, you know, because
we want energy, energy. We want, you know, engaging
(20:52):
processes. We want as much human
interaction as possible. You know, we want professional
onboarding, We want professionaloffer letters.
We want a whole system. We want people to feel like,
wow, I'm really lucky to be here.
We don't want them to perceive because I, I think this is what
happens is that people one, it'sa huge leap of faith sometimes
(21:14):
for people to leave one job and go to another and look at it
from their point of view. 2 if they start to see things that
aren't commutative and strong and professional, it's kind of
just letting them know how things are going to be once I do
show up for work. I mean, honestly, it's a
precursor, right? If it takes three days to get
something back, vague offer letters, you know, no one
(21:35):
available. You know, when, when someone at
the offer stages to to walk themthrough the benefits and just
really be energetic and engaging, like, hey, we're glad
to have you. Welcome to the family, right?
People just they just ghost. They just turn down off first,
they don't show up. And we wonder why that happens.
(21:56):
And a lot of times it it it's that's a part of it on, you
know, a little shortfall on, youknow, the industry side.
And, you know, we want to blame the candidates for being flaky
and ghosting, but maybe, maybe, just maybe, we could have a
little better job, you know, with really exciting brand for
(22:18):
people to engage with. I've got a lot of thoughts and
I've tried to figure out the thebest order of operations to talk
about them. But when going back to your
extreme example of the the brandand the culture building, I
think that's what communities, if that's what operators want,
they want to build brand and they want to build community.
But you can't build it with cash.
So you can't build it by offering people more money just
(22:39):
to come work for you because they're not driven by culture,
they're not driven by values or brand, they're driven by
dollars. So have you ever seen an
organization, and that doesn't necessarily have to be in senior
living, but have you seen an organization that strategically
is actually offering less in, ina market if they know like all
their competitors are offering say 150,000 for the position
(23:01):
they're coming in at like 135 or125?
I mean, for me, I would be like,well, how, why are they not
offering the same amount? What's the catch?
I would want to know why. And maybe maybe it's because
they have those values, they're focused on culture and brand,
and it actually would be a placeyou would want to work.
I think that's the ideal case. I think that a lot of the the
(23:22):
faith-based nonprofits tried to hold on to that.
I know that they're even getting, you know, their numbers
are shrinking dramatically, but there are people that will go to
work and take the faith-based nonprofit over the for profit
with the expectation that there's a true commitment to the
(23:43):
resident it themselves and the quality outcomes, you know, and
a lot of them being faith-based.There's, there's that aspect to
it, different culture in the buildings, how residents are
dealt with. You know, they're, they
traditionally will pay less. Sometimes they'll make it up
with heavy benefits packages, but it's getting harder and
harder. Honestly, like that shift is
really dramatic with the money. It it, it's, I know they're
(24:07):
frustrated because I'm frustrated not dealing with it.
So I know that they're, and I work with multiple clients
across the country and it's frustrating, right?
Because you want to, you want tothink of something.
I mean, I know one administrator, he had sat down
and was losing nurses to local clinics in the hospital system.
That was kind of really giving him a hard time.
(24:28):
And he kind of got some feedbacklike what's the difference?
And what he came out of it was, you know, that his environment
wasn't particularly professional.
So he went to extreme lengths tofind the money to make sure that
they were funding the scrubs. They're nice IDs.
He he made them. So when they came to work in his
long term care facility, they looked like professionals, even
(24:49):
all the way down to to the lowest level frontline person.
You know, he encouraged them. And that way he went through and
put in a whole new locker system.
He made it look like a hospital,you know, he upgraded the
scheduling system. I mean, he listened to them.
You know, he ultimately it wasn't him, but I know some
folks have listened and and goneto the hourly pay for frontline
(25:09):
workers because that's what they're getting at, what they
perceive is is more attractive. I mean, these are changes that
people have tried to make by listening to them to to be more
attractive. And so I think ultimately, if
it's a safe, engaging environment that you're
portraying, it's professional, it's going to go a long way in
(25:29):
the in the long run because people won't put the time in to
create those environments and people will talk to their
friends. I mean, ultimately that's where
you're going to get your best employees is from referrals.
You talked about kind of building that system, that
recruiting system, and obviouslythe entire organization has to
have that cultural fit as well behind it for people to want to
be there. But how do operators get started
(25:51):
if they want to build something like that?
Well, I think after they've kindof figured out, listened to
their employees and started the,the grass roots idea of what do
I, where do I go from here? What, what would be most
appealing locally for me to be the premier hiring person in, in
the area needs a way to kind of control all that stuff.
(26:11):
You know, we all need robust ATSsystems for HR so we can track
the candidates all the way through and payroll.
But a lot of times what's missing in there is, is a CRM
component, which is, is this like a sales tool?
You know, someone applies last year and was working on their
license. Does someone know to follow up
(26:33):
with that person or if we're looking to fill it, someone able
to easily reach out to that person?
How many years have you spent interviewing, gathering all of
this awesome personal data that people wanted to share with you
for future employment? And we're not using it.
So I think that, you know, in especially smaller markets, it's
(26:53):
not inconceivable that within a year or two, you should have
been able to figure out pretty much everybody in an entire
marketplace and actively get as many of those people opted into
your system so that you can market them.
Because even if it's not them, it may be their friend, right?
And then all of a sudden, prettymuch you're filling your jobs
(27:16):
left and right. And consider that database that
you're slowly building, that CRMas, I mean, that's your waiting
list. You know, even if that building
is full, even if you have reached the best place you've
been in years, you should never take your foot off the gas,
right? Because you want to make sure
(27:39):
that that brand you've created when that opening comes up and
you May 1st post it out internally that that's filled
within a week, right? Or at least within a week, you
have gotten response from qualified people.
And I, I think that that would, would be the win if you're in,
(28:00):
in a market that ultimately thatwould be the win for you, you
know, to have your staff development person or if you
have resources to have a dedicated recruiter to it or you
know, your HR folks to, to be able to do that.
Hiring managers says, Hey, I need this, no problem, I got it.
I have a system 123 steps. We'll go right through it.
I'm going to start with the internal start with our database
(28:22):
and job board last. Going back to the financial
discussion too, about people being more money driven than in
the past. I forgot to ask, do you think
that's due to rising costs of living?
I mean, I, I remember, I don't know, back in like college or
right after college, they were talking about like the formulas
of how much of your paycheck should go towards each thing.
(28:43):
And then at that time it was like, oh, 15% should go towards
your, your housing. And I, I feel like now it's
probably anywhere from 25, probably 30 to 50% for most,
most people. I mean it obviously they're,
they have far less bandwidth in terms of money coming in to do
more. What's is that why they're you?
(29:03):
You think they're more driven bythat?
I well-being that I do it on a couple of different levels.
I would say that, you know, if you're talking about operators
or corporate folks, I mean, I believe that, you know, they
just they're savvy professionals, right?
They know what they want. They're willing to make a move
and they're not going to move for less money.
(29:24):
Bottom line, I think they're theway they look at things is
justified, you know, in terms ofthey may make a compromise if
there's a better fit for them ina professional manner.
But generally people, nobody's going backwards.
I think with the frontline staff, they just, they have the
perception, right or wrong, fromwhat I hear every day that I can
(29:44):
get a better job, I can get a better offer.
And so I know that there's a stressor with all of us right
now, no matter how you look at it politically or culturally or
economically. Look, there's a lot of
indecision right now from everybody's point of view.
And people are a little worried,right?
And things do cost more, right? Bottom line, they've gone up at
a rate we haven't seen in a while.
(30:05):
And people are scratching their heads.
People are worried about the future.
So they have that pressure to want more money, but I just feel
like especially with the clinical side of things, it's
like, yeah, I can, I can get it better elsewhere.
So and so has it. I'm just going to wait.
I'm going to, you know, the worst thing you don't want to
hear is like, hey, why would I leave, you know, my facility
(30:25):
with this horrible problem and come to your facility with that
horrible problem. That's probably the biggest
thing you got to get over. It's the, you know, hey, I don't
want to go out of the frying paninto the fire.
You know, you hear that. But I mean, I really honestly
think that they just the perception is I can get more.
I don't know where that comes from.
All the sign on bonuses. Maybe, you know, they go on the
(30:45):
job boards and they see all thisand they see all these openings
and I, I don't know. And it seems to me they're just
savvy. They asked, they're asking for
more than they've ever asked before.
I mean, everyone always asks fora little bit more money, but I
just feel like now the pressure is amazing at what they ask.
And you scratch your head, you're like, how is that?
You know, I don't know that that's particularly true, but
(31:06):
they'll stick to it. They'll stick to it.
So I guess your only defense is go back to that brand you've
worked so hard at building, you know, to to make them want you.
Maybe that's the conversation, right?
I feel like we flipped even harder to the candidate driven
side of the fence, right. And if that's the case, it's
(31:26):
always going to be more money. I want more, I want more, I want
more, right? We've lost leverage from an
operator's point of view of like, hey, you know, I need this
particular specialized nurse. And if you don't want the job,
we're not interested. Well, that doesn't kind of fly
anymore because they'll hold youout, you know, especially in
some smaller markets, you know, you, they'll win that.
(31:48):
And you know, again, defense would be getting them to want to
work for you besides money. And talking about retention now,
what would be some simple but impactful ways communities could
better retain staff? Well, I think that if people
feel like they're being heard, Ithink it's number one, right.
People feel like they're being heard and a safe environment,
(32:09):
not only for themselves, for thefor the residents as well.
You know, and I think a lot of that goes to strong policies,
you know, in terms of disciplineand just even the, the daily
checking into a facility, you know, I think people find
security in that. If they see, you know, things
that they perceive, you know, asgoing unaddressed, or they feel
(32:33):
like, you know, resident care isnot doing well or people aren't
being disciplined in doing theirwork and their end up doing it
all. Or, you know, people calling out
there's, you know, favors with schedules, like all of these
things, which, you know, come out in talking to people, right,
that if these things exist, you're going to you're not going
to retain people. That's the bottom line with
(32:53):
that. They're they're just, they're
it's back to the frying pan intothe fire kind of conversation.
And that can't happen, right. I mean, there's, there's no
buyer's remorse in recruiting. I mean, if you can't spend hours
of your schedules interviewing people and not have find a
person that actually accepts thejob and shows up for work and
(33:14):
then is successful, you can't just even have failure at that
point. That level.
You know, again, I can't stress enough about, you know, if
you've got a core of nurses or got a core of people in your
dietary or that are just so successful.
Why, why, why, why is this so good, guys?
How can we, you know, how can wecapitalize on this?
(33:35):
It's there. I think the ultimate thing is to
retain people. You want them to be proud to
work for you, you know, and I think the key to that is just
nice, professional, positive listening environment.
You know, the people feel like when I if I have a concern and I
bring it to you, somebody stops,listens and addresses it, right?
(33:59):
I mean, I, I really think that'swhat people honestly that gets
around the community. Then you might have a push back
on the money. You might be able to Start Stop
this giant ask, you know, in this rising, you know,
unbelievably or unrealistic rateof expectation of salary.
You know, where people are like,Hey, you know what, I, I get
(34:19):
Peace of Mind. You know, I get up, I can't tell
you. I mean, obviously as a
recruiter, people call me and they're like, I can't sleep at
night. I've got to go to work.
When I say I can't sleep, I got to Get Me Out of there, right?
And the last thing an operator wants to have is that kind of
word of mouth on the street like, you know, it's horrible,
you know, and because I truly believe that everybody in the
(34:42):
industry, they work as best theycan with what they have, right?
I refuse to believe that there'sa giant bunch of, you know, CD
people, you know, literally out there taking advantage of folks.
I mean, they they want to do thebest with what they've got as a
budget. And so, you know, when they get
into these situations, it's kindof hard, you know, like, how do
(35:02):
I turn this right? I just took over this facility.
It's a beautiful, we've got all the amenities, but geez, you
know, we really have a bad word of mouth on the street.
How do we get around that? You know, we're talking to
people and they're turning down jobs after the initial
conversation because, you know, it's their people in their
facility gave horrible reviews about us.
Or maybe they have an online thing they have to deal with.
(35:23):
I sympathize with them, right, because the job is to care for
residents. We got to get that done.
But I think as a shift in thinking about our recruiting as
sales and being following through with that constantly to
change that and making sure thatthat's a priority.
Maybe that's a solution. Maybe maybe that's, that's the
way to eventually get around it because right now it's chasing
(35:46):
its own tail to get through the next quarter or to get to the
next survey. And that's not where anyone
wants to be. I, I, I refuse to believe that
there are operators out there that think that that's a
business model. I think that they, people have
been forced into it by necessity, right?
I don't, I don't think anyone chooses that.
No one, no one wants to do that.But, you know, how do we combat
(36:08):
the idea that, you know, I'm OK with hiring somebody?
It's changed jobs 10 times in 10years.
So if they leave me in a year, that would be they lived up to
their resume or, you know, or just the flat out saying, I
understand that situation, but Idon't have a pool of candidates
to back this up. I need this job performed.
If they stay 12 months, it's a win.
(36:31):
And so they find themselves there.
You know, I don't, I don't, I don't think the conversation is
in any way like finger pointing at people for not caring, you
know, not really honestly wanting things to be different.
I just think that maybe people are stretched so thin, you know,
that getting to this kind of forward building type of plan
(36:54):
is, is hard. It's another challenge on top of
a already blazing bonfire, right?
That they, that they control every day for the sake of the
residents in their, in their building.
So, yeah, it's, it's quite the, the dilemma that, that we face.
But I think that a lot of peopleshould understand that if you're
feeling like you're alone, you're not alone.
(37:15):
It's all across the country, youknow, and it's, it's actually
even harder for people in rural,rural areas because, you know,
they, their pool of candidates is even tinier.
So it really doesn't matter where you are.
You know, I can say from doing, chatting with people who say up,
I'm happy here. I've been here 10 years and I've
never leaving. Well, how's your staffing?
Is there anything else that you,oh, no, staff's fault.
(37:37):
Geez, How did you do that? The directors of nursing
generally say, you know what? I'm consistent.
They know they're safe here. They know what they get, right?
I stop what I'm doing. I answer a call, you know, if
they need help, I give it. And the administrators, the same
way, you know, the administrators will be on the
(37:59):
floor serving food. You know, they're part of the
community. You know, that's one thing I can
share that I do hear, you know, from the people who tell me, oh,
Nope, I'm happy. Been here forever.
And it's rare. It's getting more rare all the
time. You know, the same thing with
reference checks. You check references on somebody
who's getting a huge promotion, moving up to their dream job.
(38:21):
Go through it. What do they say?
Geez, that was the best person Iever worked for.
They told me I could achieve high things.
They helped me achieve high things.
You know, I perceive that personas a solution.
When I saw them walk in my department, not a problem,
right? They never, ever, ever showed a
(38:41):
crack. You know, they got out of their
car in the morning, waved everybody through the windows
before they got in the front door, right.
And so from years of people thatgot their dream jobs up to
corporate and and trying to scale this out, maybe those
reference check insights are, are helpful because are we doing
those things? Is, is that is that in my my
(39:04):
environment? Yeah.
Yeah, that's super insightful. What about AI?
What's your take on AI and recruiting and where do you see
the potential as well as the risks in that?
Well, I think, you know, we're old enough to remember Google.
So all right, we had Google camealong.
Next thing you know, we could, we could search things.
(39:26):
So I mean, AI is very similar. I mean, we use it here for
administrative tasks, right? It's amazing.
It's streamlining administrativethings.
So, you know, things that we're taking of your day can be
simplified, you know, as far as note taking, summarizing, you
know, drafting common things that need to be done.
(39:48):
It's kind of like having an assistant.
The tools are going to get more and more prevalent.
I think what a lot of people see, I mean, I get calls all the
time. Hey, we have an AI recruiter,
right? It's probably the same salesman
that called me last year and said, hey, I got a database I
want to sell you with all the nurses in, right?
It's the same sales pitch, right?
(40:09):
But so beware, right? Beware, because the bottom line
is. Where are they getting these
things? So you're going to see a lot of
that in there, but it's super handy.
It's a tool for humans, right? And, and so if you can work it
in, you know, it's handy if you can use it particularly for the
HR people to save time for reference checks.
It's gotten amazingly advanced as far as you're able to conduct
(40:31):
interviews. And it will actually do a better
job of transcripting, summarizing it for you and load
it right into your database system.
And it's not cheap, right? But it's it's out there, you
know, it helps people search forthings a little more accurately
than they used to. But at the end of the day, you
still have to talk to the candidates.
And I think that back to our conversation about treating it
(40:52):
like sales. I know that people at facility
level are really busy and that, you know, people work on a nine
to five schedule. But out here in the recruiting
world, it's 24/7, right? If I have something to fill and
somebody's calling or, you know,inquiring at 10:00 or 11:00 at
night on a Sunday, that call gets answered and responded to
as best possible. You know, because the market's
(41:16):
that competitive. I think a lot of people are
relying too much on auto responders, right?
Like, and I get it, it takes time and it it does take time.
Sometimes when I have more frontline things that we're
working on, we might have 40 or 50 responses.
Not everybody's super qualified,but if you they're even remotely
there, somebody's got to talk tothem, right?
(41:37):
And get their permission to opt in for first future contact and
be in the database and find out that information because you
know what, down the line, that person, that's how you end up
three years from now having a hugely saturated database full
of everybody in the market. But AI now is giving people a
little bit of a bad taste in their mouth.
(41:57):
I think when they're, you know, being forced into these systems
online, it's like this. Is that the experience we want?
Is that the brand we're working on?
Yeah. Forced forced AI.
Because I understand, I understand the holes.
I get it. You know, we have bigger
operations, right? And you may have 40 facilities
to staff and you have one corporate website and the people
(42:18):
are going through the ATS recruiting system that way.
But have you done enough to makesure that it feels human enough?
Or is it just constantly rattling?
You know, you know the AI from from, I will say from senior
living in long term care perspective.
And I would challenge people to say I'm wrong on this one, that
(42:40):
resumes are not the most comprehensive, detailed,
especially for clinical and a few other positions, right?
You know, the resumes are not, they're just not very
sophisticated. So if you're thinking you're
going to use AI to parse these things at a high volume to find
candidates, it's I don't know how that's going to work.
I'll get tenured nurses that arefabulous caregivers, right?
(43:03):
But the resume is, you know, I don't know, quarter page in some
markets where I'm recruiting fornurses, I don't have a resume.
I don't even have one, you know,obviously we're going after
referrals and getting passive candidates, you know, but even
sometimes if we are running an ad, I'll get resumes that just
would be unacceptable in other industries.
(43:25):
But they're acceptable to us because we know that maybe
behind that person is an amazingcaregiver that just really has
gotten her job for or his job from word of mouth for his
entire career. But no one will.
AI won't be able to tell that yet anyway.
True. So I I would be aware, but you
know, if you're not utilizing itin some fashion, or at least I
(43:46):
would would say to people that share that.
My take on it is I spend a lot of time paying attention to the
tools that I get sent to me. And you know, I pay attention.
You know, I read the professional takes on some of
these things. So I can understand like where
are the ones that make a difference?
Because it is going to change everything.
It's going to, it's going to change.
(44:07):
And I, I'm hoping for the betterbecause in this industry, I
promise you, there's no department that's not
overworked, right? So if we could lessen the
burden, they could be a retention tool, right?
Especially in the business offices to start with, you know,
and then as electronic medical records become more AI oriented,
you're going to take the error rate out of the nursing and the
(44:29):
burden of stress out of the nursing.
So these could be retention tools if they're if they're
appropriate. I was thinking about AI really
benefiting the recruiting space or retention space would be so
organizations that are always talking about, they're
identifying one or two key employees and I wish I had ten
of them or 20 of them. They're the ideal candidate.
Or maybe they have a group of people that are all working for
(44:51):
them and they're not sure exactly what the common thread
is, but they know that there's something in that type of person
that they value and that works really well in their
organization. I mean, you could potentially, I
mean, data tells a story, right?So you could potentially use AI
to help you maybe identify what the hidden common theme is
between all of those team members.
(45:11):
And then when you go to recruit,you know exactly what you're
looking for. I would say for years, if you
can afford it, there are sophisticated HR tools that give
profiles that have been developed by incredibly
intelligent folks with psychology basis to kind of
really narrow down. Do we have that luxury in long
(45:33):
term care, probably out of the budget.
I think where we're at, I mean, ideally it couldn't hurt, right?
But ideally, I mean, sitting down in a conversation out in
what they used to call the butt Hut, you know, or in the break
room, or at least being somebodywelcomed enough to have them be
candid, you know, where there's a few retribution and, you know,
(45:53):
that management is open to constructive criticism, you
know, may go a real long way andnot cost you anything.
And in the meantime, you may have built some goodwill and
some buy in and some retention that way.
But everybody likes to be asked their opinion.
I would think, Yeah. Yeah, I would.
I would think so. My last question for you, do you
(46:14):
think most operators truly understand what inspires people
to stay? I think they do.
I, I really think that everybodyin the industry cares.
I think that people have chosen this as their profession.
But it's a daunting task. You know, between regulation,
between all the operational stresses financially and the
staff retention clinically, not to mention their marketing
(46:37):
burden. It's a lot for one person
oversee I I think they really docare.
I think that our conversation, hopefully we'll just maybe get
some people thinking maybe we should spend an hour a week
maybe on this on long term recruiting, you know, or hey,
(46:58):
you know, we really don't have acomprehensive package.
You know, maybe we should think about creating 1, you know, and
for some people we know you care.
And I personally everyday try tohelp people to ask me for help.
Hey, you know, I'm dying here. I have to have somebody
tomorrow, you know, and it's in the middle of nowhere and I've
(47:19):
tried for a year, I can't find somebody.
I've filled things all over the place, like strangest things,
what we would call a wild goose chase, right?
That's why I know they care, right?
I'm just hoping the take away would be, you know, you're not
alone if you spend just a littlebit of time listening to people
in the staff, if you just take some extra time to do that if
(47:42):
you're not doing enough and kindof see where that goes.
My thoughts are from listening to the candidates that I talked
to that that would lead you downa path that would probably
benefit not only yourself and where you want to achieve when
your facility, but also be better for the people that work
for you, which would then make your residence really good and
(48:03):
start that positive cycle where we want to go to high
profitability, full waiting list, no complaints, right?
Happy people showing up at work.So that good snowball rolling
down the hill. Exactly.
Exactly. And I would caution people
against like overusing the AI tools, you know, pay attention
to them. But in our industry, I think,
(48:26):
you know, with, with our candidate pool, still people are
looking for that, you know, personal contact, you know, I'll
pay attention to that recruitingbrand, You know, if you can just
kind of grab a few things and what you have, awesome, What you
don't have. Maybe we're just kind of
reinvigorating some thoughts on that issue because it's it's
daunting for everyone and everyone's in the same boat.
(48:47):
You know, people are spending a lot of money to get off the job
boards. And you know, I would say,
listen, that would be my advice.Listen to your current
employees. Reward them as much as you can.
They're they're the secret sauce.
You know, I help people with crazy searches all the time.
Happy to help. I will never run out of work.
I do the stuff that no one else can find.
(49:08):
But if people are want to chat about lost in the circle, I'm
happy to help people. But that's.
How, if they if they do want to reach out to you, where, where
can they go to learn more about Jay Ross or.
I would say, you know, you contact me LinkedIn directly,
you know, reach out to to chat with me and I'm happy to, to
chat, you know, whether they want services or not, it's fine.
But you know, if they want to just ask a question or you know,
(49:31):
happy to share, you know, it benefits in the long run all.
Right, Thank you so much for such a great conversation.
I, I know our audience definitely is going to take a
lot away from this. I'm taking a lot away from this.
So thanks for the opportunity. Yeah, no, this was, this was
great. As we wrap up today's episode, I
want to extend a heartfelt thankyou to Ira Kearns for joining us
and sharing his honest, unfiltered take on what
(49:51):
recruiting really looks like andsenior living.
From generational shifts to signon bonus traps to the value of
top performer insights, IRA's expertise offers a wake up call
and a road map for providers serious about building stronger
teams. So if you want to connect with
Ira, you'll find his LinkedIn link in the show notes.
So as always, we hope you found this episode insightful and
(50:13):
inspiring. Don't forget to subscribe to our
podcast on your favorite platform and stay tuned for more
episodes where we continue to explore the evolving world of
senior care, covering everythingfrom innovative care models and
leadership strategies to family support, technology and the
future of aging. Also, remember that from Lisa
Lisa's isn't just an audio experience.
We're also a video podcast. So if you want to see the video
(50:34):
versions of our episodes, make sure to subscribe to our YouTube
or Spotify channels. I'm Jerry Vincey, CEO of CCR
growth. Thank you for joining us on from
Leads to Leases and please like,subscribe and share this episode
with anyone who might find it useful.
Until next time, leave a strategy and with heart chat
with you again soon. Thanks, Ira.
Thanks for listening to From Leads to Leases.
(50:56):
Are you ready to fill your roomsfaster and increase occupancy?
Visit ccrgrowth.com to learn about our Senior Growth
Innovation Suite, a proven system to generate highly
qualified tour ready leads, accelerate sales and reduce
acquisition costs. Let's connect and turn your
challenges into opportunities. See you next time.
Recruiting is sales. It's your brand, it's
competitive. There's a lot of pressure right
now to use a lot of automated systems and job boards and and
things of this nature. But being in control of that
recruiting process yourself about dependency on that and
having a brand that's perceived by candidates as professional
(00:20):
and supportive, giving candidates a perception of a
brand that's attractive so that people want to work in your
building. What if the biggest recruiting
problem in senior living isn't alack of candidates, but outdated
thinking? Today's guest has been over a
decade sourcing clinical and executive talent and long term
care, and he's here to challengehow our industry hires, retains
(00:43):
and inspires its people. Welcome to From Leads to Leases,
ACCR Growth podcast that helps senior living providers
transform their complex challenges into opportunities.
Listen in for stories from industry leaders, innovative
strategies and insights, and with our expertise, learn how to
increase occupancy faster, Guaranteed.
(01:07):
Welcome back to another episode from Lease to Lease is the
podcast that dives deep into thesenior living and senior care
industries, bringing you insights, strategies and stories
from the experts at the forefront of innovation,
leadership, and care. I'm your host, Jerry Vincey, CEO
of CCR Growth. For those of you who don't know
about us, CCR Growth is a full service marketing and growth
agency exclusive to the senior living industry.
(01:28):
And through this podcast, I'm here to guide you through the
evolving landscape of senior care, exploring the innovations,
the strategies and leadership insights that are shaping the
future of the. So whether you're a provider, a
caregiver, or industry leader, this show is here to help you
make informed decisions and create meaningful impact.
All right, today's guest is Ira Kearns, a healthcare recruiter
(01:48):
with over a decade of experienceworking with senior living and
long term care organizations nationwide.
As an executive recruiter at J Ross LA Healthcare Recruiters,
Ira specializes in placing mission driven talent and high
stakes clinical and operational roles.
He spent thousands of hours listening to candidates,
learning what drives them and what drives them away.
(02:09):
His frontline insight into what's working and what's broken
in the hiring process makes him one of the most thoughtful
voices in the space. So, Ira, welcome to the show.
I'm so glad to have you. Here.
Thank you. I'm glad to be here.
This is such an interesting topic, I think right now,
because all I hear about everywhere I go is the staffing
crisis, the staffing crisis and it's, it's, it's been, it's been
(02:31):
interesting to hear some of the solutions that people have to
that problem and or lack of solution.
So I'm really excited to get your spin on it.
You've been in this industry forover a decade.
What would you say has changed most about recruiting and senior
living over that time? Well, I believe that the
industry takes it a little more seriously than they used to.
You know, the staffing shortage has always been a problem.
(02:53):
It's probably exasperated now with the alternative positions,
especially on frontline workers.There's a lot of competition
that's paying the same rate or higher and doesn't require, you
know, the sense of purpose the caregiving and, and can be quite
less stressful. I mean, frankly, if they can
(03:13):
pour coffee at a coffee shop, itmight be a lot less stressful
than answering call lights or providing customer service or
aid to folks. I think that's been the
challenge is to not only be competitive, but also identify
those people where giving customer service, giving care is
(03:34):
why they get up in the morning. You know, recognizing them help
them grow, attracting them to your facility.
I mean, isn't that it? You want them working for you,
especially, you know, as an operator or director of
healthcare, it's your team, right?
And and you want the best peopleand you're not able to
accomplish things all by yourself.
(03:54):
Are you seeing a similar trend amongst the the leadership roles
as well? I think that the leadership
roles is have become even affected the same way.
I think that we we've seen turnover.
I think it's exasperated a bit by the COVID, you know, it was
hard for people. Maybe we just take a moment just
to thank the people that are in the industry because COVID, not
(04:17):
only are they asked to do thingsthat are above and beyond on a
daily, right? And they struggle with amazing
burden of compliance that they still care and they do with a
smile and they try to spread andencourage people and provide a
great environment for these residents, you know, but it
wears them out. And there are alternatives.
(04:39):
You know, a lot of people have moved back into hospitality as
operators because it's a little less stressful for them and it
pays well. But we need those folks back.
I mean, the resumes that we see nowadays, unfortunately, there's
a lot of movement and a lot of it doesn't make sense.
The question of why, I guess this is part of the conversation
(04:59):
to, to throw out there, you know, why is someone leaving an
operational position, you know, or, or, or any other corporate
level positions in a year? I mean it's hard to accomplish
anything in 12 months. You know, these are the
conversations that I guess should be had amongst people
about the industry and how do weretain people?
How do we make it more engaging?How do we find those people that
(05:22):
want to be engaged, that want tospread the word, that want to,
you know, be a living mission statement and a living
caregiver? Yeah, I mean, we see that too on
our side, even in the marketing space.
When a community struggling withleadership or maintaining staff
numbers, it affects everything. It affects occupancy.
It affects the overall morale inthe community and so it just
(05:42):
becomes increasingly difficult across the board, I think, for
the community to stay profitableand successful.
It is a vicious cycle, right? It seems that in some ways in it
for this conversation, we could say we could start the cycle
with staffing. You know, if we can achieve that
level of staff at least in a full capacity, meaning we're not
(06:03):
using an agency and and ruining budgets that people are coming
in, we can train them and then they're giving good care.
We have happy residents, we havehappy family members.
We get good quality outcomes clinically, right?
It all just starts building up. Next thing you know, word of
mouth on the street is awesome. The marketer has a full list of
(06:23):
people wanting to come into the facility.
People come to work every day, tend to learn the rules, they're
good. And your compliance burden is is
reduced, right? That's reduced.
You have a happier clinical service director, happier Ed,
and next thing you know, what happens, it's profitable, right?
Yeah, So. Imagine that I.
Mean imagine that and but as simple as that is, I know that
(06:47):
people in the business, it's daunting that the factors are
limitless in this. I know you can speak about it
maybe from a corporate perspective with working on
things, but I think one thing for operators is that maybe
it's, it's kind of like hyperlocal in terms of efforts.
You know, I mean, maybe, you know, putting things in place
(07:07):
or, or working on your recruiting, so to speak, tends
to be any help you could get from a corporate entity is
awesome. But you know, maybe you really
need to take it in as a facilitylevel issue because like we were
just talking about the cycle, boy, if you could fix that one,
it might lead to the rest reallyfalling in line and then success
(07:29):
is what we all want to achieve. I think a lot of things in this
industry have to be hyper local,though.
That's how we handle marketing as well.
I don't think a corporate approach makes sense, especially
when you're recruiting from yourlocal pool of talent.
You have to have a strategy for that, and what works in one area
may not work in another area. Absolutely, Yeah.
You know, recruiting, I mean, recruiting is sales, it's your
(07:51):
brand, it's competitive. There is a lot of pressure right
now to use a lot of automated systems and job boards and and
things of this nature. But being in control of that
recruiting process yourself without dependency on that and
having a brand that's perceived by candidates as professional
(08:12):
and supportive and human contactis going to be more and more
important as we move forward. And maybe certain competitors of
in the industry are relying on things that aren't giving
candidates a perception of a brand that's attractive so that
(08:32):
people want to work in your building, right?
People, people see an ad or theysee your social media posts and,
and they're, they've been waiting for it.
You know, I mean, isn't that maybe the, the dream that you've
achieved something, right? You have a waiting list on, on
your recruiting for candidates. And, and it's, it's possible,
(08:53):
you know, it's possible to achieve that.
I mean, when folks reach out to myself and other third party
recruiters, obviously they've exhausted all of their resources
and they're in a jam. This, this position is really,
really, really, it's problematicon so many levels, not only
financially, but across the board.
And what does the recruiter do? I mean, what is the value that
(09:15):
they're doing that you don't have?
And I would say that one of the key ones is especially in
markets that you have a recruiter that's experienced or
a firm that's that's dug in there.
They have a database, right? They're, they don't, they don't
want to run a job board ad they know what's on the job boards.
They have those candidates contact information and they
(09:37):
have a good sense of what they're looking for.
They know they can pare it down and then they contact them.
So that's what they're doing. On top of there's obviously cold
calling outreach and different marketing things that a firm may
do. But the bottom line is that they
have a database of candidates that they're able to leverage
without having to use the job board.
So it's possible to do that for yourselves.
(09:58):
You know, it's possible to to generate that between all the
contacts any given set of peoplein a facility may have.
From there, if they're properly addressed and brought together
and used to kind of for referrals, you have a much
better chance of finding the people you're looking for.
Engaged people, people who care,people are passive that weren't
(10:20):
necessarily desperate to get outof a facility for whatever
reason that they're in now. And you happen to be their next
dream job, right? It's their lucky day that you
reached out to them. And I think that's kind of the
goal with recruiting and the goal that everyone has.
I mean, you, you want to have that candidate, you want to call
them, you want to say, hey, listen, I just found the job.
You told me a month ago this wasyour dream.
(10:41):
I found it. Here they are and they want to
talk to you tomorrow. Are the expectations of that
you're seeing today in the workforce, are they different
than they were 10 years ago? Well, I think that what we've
seen specifically in long term care and senior living is that a
lot of the senior leadership as far as the clinical folks and
even down to maybe some of the frontline nurse management
(11:01):
positions and even to a degree the executive directors,
administrators are aging out. You know, they're at their
retirement ages. The reasons they got into the
industry, I think are a little different, a little less
financially oriented and they knew what the job was and the
job was caregiving and they understood that taking
leadership positions in that business was going to be a
(11:24):
challenge and it was going to berelentless.
And they took it because they wanted to take it on.
They want to achieve it and thatwas their professional goal.
What I've seen shifting now is that people and you know, we
could point to COVID, I would say just do it as a historical
fact that it happened. But I mean, if you use that as a
turning point, I think that between folks aging out, new
(11:47):
generation, new culture of people that folks are a little
more concerned about their financial short run gains than
they used to be. And you know, we can lament all
day about how we want to not have that be the case.
I mean, it, it is the case, you know, they're looking for work
life balance, they're looking for flexible schedules, high pay
rates, not so much concerned as they used to be about health
(12:10):
benefits and, and contributions to education and, and, you know,
benefits packages and, you know,corporate culture.
And I mean, it's a shame because, you know, I would think
that these are the things that people would be interested in if
all things being equal, but I feel like we're really getting
into a stage of me first. How much and you know, how do
(12:33):
we, how do we get around that? I guess it's the question that
comes out of that. I think it's a realistic premise
too, to to say that COVID was the catalyst for a lot of that
and it changed so many aspects of our lives.
And I know for a lot of people, they're just not willing to go
back to the way things were before.
So some people not having the career aspirations that maybe
they had before. And now they're just looking at
it as one thing they're doing during their, you know, time on
(12:56):
this planet, not the only thing that matters or the only thing
they aspire to do. And, you know, they want to
have, they want to have families, they want to have
personal time, they want to focus on their health and
Wellness. It's changed so many different
aspects. I just think that's it's very
interesting. Right.
But the industry hasn't changed,right?
So we're still, we're still stuck with, you know, the rising
cost of operations. We're stuck with an unstable and
(13:19):
never ending regulation. You work in an industry where
you know, mistake is fraud, right?
This is the pressure you're under, right?
And then to if you're in management, you know, you have
the pressure of geez, no one showed up for work today.
I have to do this myself. And this is the business, you
know, because the care has to begiven.
(13:40):
The residents are there, it's their home we're working in, so
to speak. It is very difficult and I think
that, you know, people now are shying away from those
challenges. I mean, because, you know, there
used to be a time where in recruiting, if I had a trouble
building, I could search around and ask for referrals and say,
(14:01):
Hey, listen, I need a fixer. I need somebody that just gets
in there and just fix it. And people say, oh, I know call
so and so they're the fixer thatthe fixer person is really
disappearing. You know, there there were
people that would say, I want tochallenge.
And I hear that less and less. And it's sad, sad because I
mean, in some ways, if you're inthe leadership position, I would
(14:23):
think and have talked about it for years with people, this is
opportunity, right? This is your chance to shine.
Yes, there's a problem. There are multiple problems.
There are huge problems. You know that these need fixing.
They should be seen as opportunity to lead rather than
heck no, no, no, not interested,right?
(14:44):
So I mean, I've been hearing it more and more.
I'm not saying, you know, not tobe negative, just to have
conversations about maybe what are the, the, the, the pressors
on these. So, you know, what's changed And
if it has changed, like how do we listen to the people in the
industry now that are successful?
(15:05):
How do, how do we find those people?
How do we find the new people, the new industry leaders and
achieve the outcomes we want to?That was actually.
Going to be my next question too.
I mean, you talk about the importance of listening to those
top performers. What could the operators learn
if they actually did that well? I mean, obviously in any given
situation, right? You've got people that you count
(15:26):
on every day, people that come in and people that make a
difference. And why are they still there?
What I mean, has anyone asked them?
You know, I mean, that's the key.
I mean, a lot of the data I think that people are looking
for is right in front of them. You know, if you have, I think,
a talented enough HR partner in your building or your staff
(15:49):
development person, you know, that you've sat down and
discussed at length about what are they hearing and how can we
get more feedback? You could take advantage of
hyperlocal changes or policies, you know, to start to address
those and build your own program.
I mean, I mean, it may be the building blocks of culture.
(16:12):
You know, I know that there's been four years since the 80s.
You know, culture has been a bigthing, starting with the tech
companies, right? I mean, everyone sees folks, you
know, working on a bean bag, right?
I mean, this is like, you know, we have pinball machines, right?
Yeah. But long term care, not the
case, right? So, but that being the point is,
(16:34):
you know, they started paying attention to the employees and
then and they use that we use that case of extremism to
illustrate that, hey, they created a culture that was
attractive so that they could get the most competitive people
in the industry to want to work with them.
So simplify that and just maybe find out from your top
(16:54):
performers what makes it good. What are your suggestions,
right? You know, hey, why are we having
turnover? I mean, if you have the luxury
of exit interviews with people, take advantage of those.
If not, I'm sure the staff knowswhy so and so walked out the
door or why people why their friends are working down the
street and why they won't come to your facility.
(17:16):
I mean, the answers are there ifwe ask what we do with them.
You know, I wish I had the answers.
About sign on bonuses, do you think they're hurting more than
helping? I personally don't care for the
sign on bonuses. I think you can look at it a
couple ways. I think if you want to look at
it from an ideal situation, you know, it's kind of a red flag to
(17:38):
candidates and to your competitors.
You can't fill this. So you're throwing out a ton of
money on top because you got problems that no one's
interested. So I mean, I think initially
that's kind of a first impression.
I think the second is, you know,you start to attract people that
are interested to money. You run the risk of alienating
(17:58):
current employees. You know how they don't want to
work with somebody who just got an extra, even if it's 500 bucks
for some of these frontline positions.
So and so just got $500 to come and start here and working the
same rate as me. Yikes.
Why didn't I get 500 bucks? I was here through the last
three years through, you know, crisis after crisis, right?
(18:19):
I was here, you know, through COVID.
So you run that risk and ultimately it's money.
You're throwing money out there.People realize that at the end
of one year, all right, you're going to get a pay cut or
they're expecting that plus a raise.
You know, it brings up all of these things and, and you know,
(18:39):
unfortunately a lot of the job boards now are forcing people to
put money up there. You know, I think that if we in
a situation where you could leanon your brand, you worked so
hard to build a lean on your word of mouth, you've worked
real hard to build and lead withthe important things.
I think that would be an ideal situation.
Probably not the case. And the industry a little bit
does it to itself because if you're in a, in a smaller radius
(19:03):
of 25 miles and you have 5 facilities, you know, all you're
doing is forcing musical chairs basically with the candidates,
especially frontline. I mean, is that helping you guys
as a whole, right? I mean, is it that dog eat dog
amongst each other that that's what you want to do?
You know, in the bigger markets,I can see that you may have to
(19:23):
run a sign on bonus if it's thatcompetitive.
But again, you run the risk, you're just throwing the money
out there. It's it almost becomes a
retention bonus, right, If they cut it up and they pay it out in
pieces. So at least I have that nurse
manager for a year, right? But is that going to be
sustainable in the long run, right?
(19:44):
Is that really what you want to do?
I don't know if you answer that question knowing all the burdens
that operators have. I mean, you can't fault people
for that, you know, trying to say that people are not wanting
to do other things. I think that people are
stretched so thin. But I think we've come to a
point now that it's going to be necessary to really focus on my
(20:07):
own personal ability to fill my staff, you know, because.
Staffing agencies aren't gettingany cheaper, and COVID allowed
them to recruit into their own staff, their own staff pools,
many, many, many nurses. And now they're selling your
nurses back to you at a higher rate.
I mean, at some point the industry's got to, you know,
kind of step back and say maybe we do need to invest a little
(20:30):
more in this long run strategy of building that brand on my
candidate side, right? I spend a lot of money on the
other side. How about we take that same
sense of urgency, you know, thatsame need to exceed expectations
with people and we apply that toour recurring, you know, because
we want energy, energy. We want, you know, engaging
(20:52):
processes. We want as much human
interaction as possible. You know, we want professional
onboarding, We want professionaloffer letters.
We want a whole system. We want people to feel like,
wow, I'm really lucky to be here.
We don't want them to perceive because I, I think this is what
happens is that people one, it'sa huge leap of faith sometimes
(21:14):
for people to leave one job and go to another and look at it
from their point of view. 2 if they start to see things that
aren't commutative and strong and professional, it's kind of
just letting them know how things are going to be once I do
show up for work. I mean, honestly, it's a
precursor, right? If it takes three days to get
something back, vague offer letters, you know, no one
(21:35):
available. You know, when, when someone at
the offer stages to to walk themthrough the benefits and just
really be energetic and engaging, like, hey, we're glad
to have you. Welcome to the family, right?
People just they just ghost. They just turn down off first,
they don't show up. And we wonder why that happens.
(21:56):
And a lot of times it it it's that's a part of it on, you
know, a little shortfall on, youknow, the industry side.
And, you know, we want to blame the candidates for being flaky
and ghosting, but maybe, maybe, just maybe, we could have a
little better job, you know, with really exciting brand for
(22:18):
people to engage with. I've got a lot of thoughts and
I've tried to figure out the thebest order of operations to talk
about them. But when going back to your
extreme example of the the brandand the culture building, I
think that's what communities, if that's what operators want,
they want to build brand and they want to build community.
But you can't build it with cash.
So you can't build it by offering people more money just
(22:39):
to come work for you because they're not driven by culture,
they're not driven by values or brand, they're driven by
dollars. So have you ever seen an
organization, and that doesn't necessarily have to be in senior
living, but have you seen an organization that strategically
is actually offering less in, ina market if they know like all
their competitors are offering say 150,000 for the position
(23:01):
they're coming in at like 135 or125?
I mean, for me, I would be like,well, how, why are they not
offering the same amount? What's the catch?
I would want to know why. And maybe maybe it's because
they have those values, they're focused on culture and brand,
and it actually would be a placeyou would want to work.
I think that's the ideal case. I think that a lot of the the
(23:22):
faith-based nonprofits tried to hold on to that.
I know that they're even getting, you know, their numbers
are shrinking dramatically, but there are people that will go to
work and take the faith-based nonprofit over the for profit
with the expectation that there's a true commitment to the
(23:43):
resident it themselves and the quality outcomes, you know, and
a lot of them being faith-based.There's, there's that aspect to
it, different culture in the buildings, how residents are
dealt with. You know, they're, they
traditionally will pay less. Sometimes they'll make it up
with heavy benefits packages, but it's getting harder and
harder. Honestly, like that shift is
really dramatic with the money. It it, it's, I know they're
(24:07):
frustrated because I'm frustrated not dealing with it.
So I know that they're, and I work with multiple clients
across the country and it's frustrating, right?
Because you want to, you want tothink of something.
I mean, I know one administrator, he had sat down
and was losing nurses to local clinics in the hospital system.
That was kind of really giving him a hard time.
(24:28):
And he kind of got some feedbacklike what's the difference?
And what he came out of it was, you know, that his environment
wasn't particularly professional.
So he went to extreme lengths tofind the money to make sure that
they were funding the scrubs. They're nice IDs.
He he made them. So when they came to work in his
long term care facility, they looked like professionals, even
(24:49):
all the way down to to the lowest level frontline person.
You know, he encouraged them. And that way he went through and
put in a whole new locker system.
He made it look like a hospital,you know, he upgraded the
scheduling system. I mean, he listened to them.
You know, he ultimately it wasn't him, but I know some
folks have listened and and goneto the hourly pay for frontline
(25:09):
workers because that's what they're getting at, what they
perceive is is more attractive. I mean, these are changes that
people have tried to make by listening to them to to be more
attractive. And so I think ultimately, if
it's a safe, engaging environment that you're
portraying, it's professional, it's going to go a long way in
(25:29):
the in the long run because people won't put the time in to
create those environments and people will talk to their
friends. I mean, ultimately that's where
you're going to get your best employees is from referrals.
You talked about kind of building that system, that
recruiting system, and obviouslythe entire organization has to
have that cultural fit as well behind it for people to want to
be there. But how do operators get started
(25:51):
if they want to build something like that?
Well, I think after they've kindof figured out, listened to
their employees and started the,the grass roots idea of what do
I, where do I go from here? What, what would be most
appealing locally for me to be the premier hiring person in, in
the area needs a way to kind of control all that stuff.
(26:11):
You know, we all need robust ATSsystems for HR so we can track
the candidates all the way through and payroll.
But a lot of times what's missing in there is, is a CRM
component, which is, is this like a sales tool?
You know, someone applies last year and was working on their
license. Does someone know to follow up
(26:33):
with that person or if we're looking to fill it, someone able
to easily reach out to that person?
How many years have you spent interviewing, gathering all of
this awesome personal data that people wanted to share with you
for future employment? And we're not using it.
So I think that, you know, in especially smaller markets, it's
(26:53):
not inconceivable that within a year or two, you should have
been able to figure out pretty much everybody in an entire
marketplace and actively get as many of those people opted into
your system so that you can market them.
Because even if it's not them, it may be their friend, right?
And then all of a sudden, prettymuch you're filling your jobs
(27:16):
left and right. And consider that database that
you're slowly building, that CRMas, I mean, that's your waiting
list. You know, even if that building
is full, even if you have reached the best place you've
been in years, you should never take your foot off the gas,
right? Because you want to make sure
(27:39):
that that brand you've created when that opening comes up and
you May 1st post it out internally that that's filled
within a week, right? Or at least within a week, you
have gotten response from qualified people.
And I, I think that that would, would be the win if you're in,
(28:00):
in a market that ultimately thatwould be the win for you, you
know, to have your staff development person or if you
have resources to have a dedicated recruiter to it or you
know, your HR folks to, to be able to do that.
Hiring managers says, Hey, I need this, no problem, I got it.
I have a system 123 steps. We'll go right through it.
I'm going to start with the internal start with our database
(28:22):
and job board last. Going back to the financial
discussion too, about people being more money driven than in
the past. I forgot to ask, do you think
that's due to rising costs of living?
I mean, I, I remember, I don't know, back in like college or
right after college, they were talking about like the formulas
of how much of your paycheck should go towards each thing.
(28:43):
And then at that time it was like, oh, 15% should go towards
your, your housing. And I, I feel like now it's
probably anywhere from 25, probably 30 to 50% for most,
most people. I mean it obviously they're,
they have far less bandwidth in terms of money coming in to do
more. What's is that why they're you?
(29:03):
You think they're more driven bythat?
I well-being that I do it on a couple of different levels.
I would say that, you know, if you're talking about operators
or corporate folks, I mean, I believe that, you know, they
just they're savvy professionals, right?
They know what they want. They're willing to make a move
and they're not going to move for less money.
(29:24):
Bottom line, I think they're theway they look at things is
justified, you know, in terms ofthey may make a compromise if
there's a better fit for them ina professional manner.
But generally people, nobody's going backwards.
I think with the frontline staff, they just, they have the
perception, right or wrong, fromwhat I hear every day that I can
(29:44):
get a better job, I can get a better offer.
And so I know that there's a stressor with all of us right
now, no matter how you look at it politically or culturally or
economically. Look, there's a lot of
indecision right now from everybody's point of view.
And people are a little worried,right?
And things do cost more, right? Bottom line, they've gone up at
a rate we haven't seen in a while.
(30:05):
And people are scratching their heads.
People are worried about the future.
So they have that pressure to want more money, but I just feel
like especially with the clinical side of things, it's
like, yeah, I can, I can get it better elsewhere.
So and so has it. I'm just going to wait.
I'm going to, you know, the worst thing you don't want to
hear is like, hey, why would I leave, you know, my facility
(30:25):
with this horrible problem and come to your facility with that
horrible problem. That's probably the biggest
thing you got to get over. It's the, you know, hey, I don't
want to go out of the frying paninto the fire.
You know, you hear that. But I mean, I really honestly
think that they just the perception is I can get more.
I don't know where that comes from.
All the sign on bonuses. Maybe, you know, they go on the
(30:45):
job boards and they see all thisand they see all these openings
and I, I don't know. And it seems to me they're just
savvy. They asked, they're asking for
more than they've ever asked before.
I mean, everyone always asks fora little bit more money, but I
just feel like now the pressure is amazing at what they ask.
And you scratch your head, you're like, how is that?
You know, I don't know that that's particularly true, but
(31:06):
they'll stick to it. They'll stick to it.
So I guess your only defense is go back to that brand you've
worked so hard at building, you know, to to make them want you.
Maybe that's the conversation, right?
I feel like we flipped even harder to the candidate driven
side of the fence, right. And if that's the case, it's
(31:26):
always going to be more money. I want more, I want more, I want
more, right? We've lost leverage from an
operator's point of view of like, hey, you know, I need this
particular specialized nurse. And if you don't want the job,
we're not interested. Well, that doesn't kind of fly
anymore because they'll hold youout, you know, especially in
some smaller markets, you know, you, they'll win that.
(31:48):
And you know, again, defense would be getting them to want to
work for you besides money. And talking about retention now,
what would be some simple but impactful ways communities could
better retain staff? Well, I think that if people
feel like they're being heard, Ithink it's number one, right.
People feel like they're being heard and a safe environment,
(32:09):
not only for themselves, for thefor the residents as well.
You know, and I think a lot of that goes to strong policies,
you know, in terms of disciplineand just even the, the daily
checking into a facility, you know, I think people find
security in that. If they see, you know, things
that they perceive, you know, asgoing unaddressed, or they feel
(32:33):
like, you know, resident care isnot doing well or people aren't
being disciplined in doing theirwork and their end up doing it
all. Or, you know, people calling out
there's, you know, favors with schedules, like all of these
things, which, you know, come out in talking to people, right,
that if these things exist, you're going to you're not going
to retain people. That's the bottom line with
(32:53):
that. They're they're just, they're
it's back to the frying pan intothe fire kind of conversation.
And that can't happen, right. I mean, there's, there's no
buyer's remorse in recruiting. I mean, if you can't spend hours
of your schedules interviewing people and not have find a
person that actually accepts thejob and shows up for work and
(33:14):
then is successful, you can't just even have failure at that
point. That level.
You know, again, I can't stress enough about, you know, if
you've got a core of nurses or got a core of people in your
dietary or that are just so successful.
Why, why, why, why is this so good, guys?
How can we, you know, how can wecapitalize on this?
(33:35):
It's there. I think the ultimate thing is to
retain people. You want them to be proud to
work for you, you know, and I think the key to that is just
nice, professional, positive listening environment.
You know, the people feel like when I if I have a concern and I
bring it to you, somebody stops,listens and addresses it, right?
(33:59):
I mean, I, I really think that'swhat people honestly that gets
around the community. Then you might have a push back
on the money. You might be able to Start Stop
this giant ask, you know, in this rising, you know,
unbelievably or unrealistic rateof expectation of salary.
You know, where people are like,Hey, you know what, I, I get
(34:19):
Peace of Mind. You know, I get up, I can't tell
you. I mean, obviously as a
recruiter, people call me and they're like, I can't sleep at
night. I've got to go to work.
When I say I can't sleep, I got to Get Me Out of there, right?
And the last thing an operator wants to have is that kind of
word of mouth on the street like, you know, it's horrible,
you know, and because I truly believe that everybody in the
(34:42):
industry, they work as best theycan with what they have, right?
I refuse to believe that there'sa giant bunch of, you know, CD
people, you know, literally out there taking advantage of folks.
I mean, they they want to do thebest with what they've got as a
budget. And so, you know, when they get
into these situations, it's kindof hard, you know, like, how do
(35:02):
I turn this right? I just took over this facility.
It's a beautiful, we've got all the amenities, but geez, you
know, we really have a bad word of mouth on the street.
How do we get around that? You know, we're talking to
people and they're turning down jobs after the initial
conversation because, you know, it's their people in their
facility gave horrible reviews about us.
Or maybe they have an online thing they have to deal with.
(35:23):
I sympathize with them, right, because the job is to care for
residents. We got to get that done.
But I think as a shift in thinking about our recruiting as
sales and being following through with that constantly to
change that and making sure thatthat's a priority.
Maybe that's a solution. Maybe maybe that's, that's the
way to eventually get around it because right now it's chasing
(35:46):
its own tail to get through the next quarter or to get to the
next survey. And that's not where anyone
wants to be. I, I, I refuse to believe that
there are operators out there that think that that's a
business model. I think that they, people have
been forced into it by necessity, right?
I don't, I don't think anyone chooses that.
No one, no one wants to do that.But, you know, how do we combat
(36:08):
the idea that, you know, I'm OK with hiring somebody?
It's changed jobs 10 times in 10years.
So if they leave me in a year, that would be they lived up to
their resume or, you know, or just the flat out saying, I
understand that situation, but Idon't have a pool of candidates
to back this up. I need this job performed.
If they stay 12 months, it's a win.
(36:31):
And so they find themselves there.
You know, I don't, I don't, I don't think the conversation is
in any way like finger pointing at people for not caring, you
know, not really honestly wanting things to be different.
I just think that maybe people are stretched so thin, you know,
that getting to this kind of forward building type of plan
(36:54):
is, is hard. It's another challenge on top of
a already blazing bonfire, right?
That they, that they control every day for the sake of the
residents in their, in their building.
So, yeah, it's, it's quite the, the dilemma that, that we face.
But I think that a lot of peopleshould understand that if you're
feeling like you're alone, you're not alone.
(37:15):
It's all across the country, youknow, and it's, it's actually
even harder for people in rural,rural areas because, you know,
they, their pool of candidates is even tinier.
So it really doesn't matter where you are.
You know, I can say from doing, chatting with people who say up,
I'm happy here. I've been here 10 years and I've
never leaving. Well, how's your staffing?
Is there anything else that you,oh, no, staff's fault.
(37:37):
Geez, How did you do that? The directors of nursing
generally say, you know what? I'm consistent.
They know they're safe here. They know what they get, right?
I stop what I'm doing. I answer a call, you know, if
they need help, I give it. And the administrators, the same
way, you know, the administrators will be on the
(37:59):
floor serving food. You know, they're part of the
community. You know, that's one thing I can
share that I do hear, you know, from the people who tell me, oh,
Nope, I'm happy. Been here forever.
And it's rare. It's getting more rare all the
time. You know, the same thing with
reference checks. You check references on somebody
who's getting a huge promotion, moving up to their dream job.
(38:21):
Go through it. What do they say?
Geez, that was the best person Iever worked for.
They told me I could achieve high things.
They helped me achieve high things.
You know, I perceive that personas a solution.
When I saw them walk in my department, not a problem,
right? They never, ever, ever showed a
(38:41):
crack. You know, they got out of their
car in the morning, waved everybody through the windows
before they got in the front door, right.
And so from years of people thatgot their dream jobs up to
corporate and and trying to scale this out, maybe those
reference check insights are, are helpful because are we doing
those things? Is, is that is that in my my
(39:04):
environment? Yeah.
Yeah, that's super insightful. What about AI?
What's your take on AI and recruiting and where do you see
the potential as well as the risks in that?
Well, I think, you know, we're old enough to remember Google.
So all right, we had Google camealong.
Next thing you know, we could, we could search things.
(39:26):
So I mean, AI is very similar. I mean, we use it here for
administrative tasks, right? It's amazing.
It's streamlining administrativethings.
So, you know, things that we're taking of your day can be
simplified, you know, as far as note taking, summarizing, you
know, drafting common things that need to be done.
(39:48):
It's kind of like having an assistant.
The tools are going to get more and more prevalent.
I think what a lot of people see, I mean, I get calls all the
time. Hey, we have an AI recruiter,
right? It's probably the same salesman
that called me last year and said, hey, I got a database I
want to sell you with all the nurses in, right?
It's the same sales pitch, right?
(40:09):
But so beware, right? Beware, because the bottom line
is. Where are they getting these
things? So you're going to see a lot of
that in there, but it's super handy.
It's a tool for humans, right? And, and so if you can work it
in, you know, it's handy if you can use it particularly for the
HR people to save time for reference checks.
It's gotten amazingly advanced as far as you're able to conduct
(40:31):
interviews. And it will actually do a better
job of transcripting, summarizing it for you and load
it right into your database system.
And it's not cheap, right? But it's it's out there, you
know, it helps people search forthings a little more accurately
than they used to. But at the end of the day, you
still have to talk to the candidates.
And I think that back to our conversation about treating it
(40:52):
like sales. I know that people at facility
level are really busy and that, you know, people work on a nine
to five schedule. But out here in the recruiting
world, it's 24/7, right? If I have something to fill and
somebody's calling or, you know,inquiring at 10:00 or 11:00 at
night on a Sunday, that call gets answered and responded to
as best possible. You know, because the market's
(41:16):
that competitive. I think a lot of people are
relying too much on auto responders, right?
Like, and I get it, it takes time and it it does take time.
Sometimes when I have more frontline things that we're
working on, we might have 40 or 50 responses.
Not everybody's super qualified,but if you they're even remotely
there, somebody's got to talk tothem, right?
(41:37):
And get their permission to opt in for first future contact and
be in the database and find out that information because you
know what, down the line, that person, that's how you end up
three years from now having a hugely saturated database full
of everybody in the market. But AI now is giving people a
little bit of a bad taste in their mouth.
(41:57):
I think when they're, you know, being forced into these systems
online, it's like this. Is that the experience we want?
Is that the brand we're working on?
Yeah. Forced forced AI.
Because I understand, I understand the holes.
I get it. You know, we have bigger
operations, right? And you may have 40 facilities
to staff and you have one corporate website and the people
(42:18):
are going through the ATS recruiting system that way.
But have you done enough to makesure that it feels human enough?
Or is it just constantly rattling?
You know, you know the AI from from, I will say from senior
living in long term care perspective.
And I would challenge people to say I'm wrong on this one, that
(42:40):
resumes are not the most comprehensive, detailed,
especially for clinical and a few other positions, right?
You know, the resumes are not, they're just not very
sophisticated. So if you're thinking you're
going to use AI to parse these things at a high volume to find
candidates, it's I don't know how that's going to work.
I'll get tenured nurses that arefabulous caregivers, right?
(43:03):
But the resume is, you know, I don't know, quarter page in some
markets where I'm recruiting fornurses, I don't have a resume.
I don't even have one, you know,obviously we're going after
referrals and getting passive candidates, you know, but even
sometimes if we are running an ad, I'll get resumes that just
would be unacceptable in other industries.
(43:25):
But they're acceptable to us because we know that maybe
behind that person is an amazingcaregiver that just really has
gotten her job for or his job from word of mouth for his
entire career. But no one will.
AI won't be able to tell that yet anyway.
True. So I I would be aware, but you
know, if you're not utilizing itin some fashion, or at least I
(43:46):
would would say to people that share that.
My take on it is I spend a lot of time paying attention to the
tools that I get sent to me. And you know, I pay attention.
You know, I read the professional takes on some of
these things. So I can understand like where
are the ones that make a difference?
Because it is going to change everything.
It's going to, it's going to change.
(44:07):
And I, I'm hoping for the betterbecause in this industry, I
promise you, there's no department that's not
overworked, right? So if we could lessen the
burden, they could be a retention tool, right?
Especially in the business offices to start with, you know,
and then as electronic medical records become more AI oriented,
you're going to take the error rate out of the nursing and the
(44:29):
burden of stress out of the nursing.
So these could be retention tools if they're if they're
appropriate. I was thinking about AI really
benefiting the recruiting space or retention space would be so
organizations that are always talking about, they're
identifying one or two key employees and I wish I had ten
of them or 20 of them. They're the ideal candidate.
Or maybe they have a group of people that are all working for
(44:51):
them and they're not sure exactly what the common thread
is, but they know that there's something in that type of person
that they value and that works really well in their
organization. I mean, you could potentially, I
mean, data tells a story, right?So you could potentially use AI
to help you maybe identify what the hidden common theme is
between all of those team members.
(45:11):
And then when you go to recruit,you know exactly what you're
looking for. I would say for years, if you
can afford it, there are sophisticated HR tools that give
profiles that have been developed by incredibly
intelligent folks with psychology basis to kind of
really narrow down. Do we have that luxury in long
(45:33):
term care, probably out of the budget.
I think where we're at, I mean, ideally it couldn't hurt, right?
But ideally, I mean, sitting down in a conversation out in
what they used to call the butt Hut, you know, or in the break
room, or at least being somebodywelcomed enough to have them be
candid, you know, where there's a few retribution and, you know,
(45:53):
that management is open to constructive criticism, you
know, may go a real long way andnot cost you anything.
And in the meantime, you may have built some goodwill and
some buy in and some retention that way.
But everybody likes to be asked their opinion.
I would think, Yeah. Yeah, I would.
I would think so. My last question for you, do you
(46:14):
think most operators truly understand what inspires people
to stay? I think they do.
I, I really think that everybodyin the industry cares.
I think that people have chosen this as their profession.
But it's a daunting task. You know, between regulation,
between all the operational stresses financially and the
staff retention clinically, not to mention their marketing
(46:37):
burden. It's a lot for one person
oversee I I think they really docare.
I think that our conversation, hopefully we'll just maybe get
some people thinking maybe we should spend an hour a week
maybe on this on long term recruiting, you know, or hey,
(46:58):
you know, we really don't have acomprehensive package.
You know, maybe we should think about creating 1, you know, and
for some people we know you care.
And I personally everyday try tohelp people to ask me for help.
Hey, you know, I'm dying here. I have to have somebody
tomorrow, you know, and it's in the middle of nowhere and I've
(47:19):
tried for a year, I can't find somebody.
I've filled things all over the place, like strangest things,
what we would call a wild goose chase, right?
That's why I know they care, right?
I'm just hoping the take away would be, you know, you're not
alone if you spend just a littlebit of time listening to people
in the staff, if you just take some extra time to do that if
(47:42):
you're not doing enough and kindof see where that goes.
My thoughts are from listening to the candidates that I talked
to that that would lead you downa path that would probably
benefit not only yourself and where you want to achieve when
your facility, but also be better for the people that work
for you, which would then make your residence really good and
(48:03):
start that positive cycle where we want to go to high
profitability, full waiting list, no complaints, right?
Happy people showing up at work.So that good snowball rolling
down the hill. Exactly.
Exactly. And I would caution people
against like overusing the AI tools, you know, pay attention
to them. But in our industry, I think,
(48:26):
you know, with, with our candidate pool, still people are
looking for that, you know, personal contact, you know, I'll
pay attention to that recruitingbrand, You know, if you can just
kind of grab a few things and what you have, awesome, What you
don't have. Maybe we're just kind of
reinvigorating some thoughts on that issue because it's it's
daunting for everyone and everyone's in the same boat.
(48:47):
You know, people are spending a lot of money to get off the job
boards. And you know, I would say,
listen, that would be my advice.Listen to your current
employees. Reward them as much as you can.
They're they're the secret sauce.
You know, I help people with crazy searches all the time.
Happy to help. I will never run out of work.
I do the stuff that no one else can find.
(49:08):
But if people are want to chat about lost in the circle, I'm
happy to help people. But that's.
How, if they if they do want to reach out to you, where, where
can they go to learn more about Jay Ross or.
I would say, you know, you contact me LinkedIn directly,
you know, reach out to to chat with me and I'm happy to, to
chat, you know, whether they want services or not, it's fine.
But you know, if they want to just ask a question or you know,
(49:31):
happy to share, you know, it benefits in the long run all.
Right, Thank you so much for such a great conversation.
I, I know our audience definitely is going to take a
lot away from this. I'm taking a lot away from this.
So thanks for the opportunity. Yeah, no, this was, this was
great. As we wrap up today's episode, I
want to extend a heartfelt thankyou to Ira Kearns for joining us
and sharing his honest, unfiltered take on what
(49:51):
recruiting really looks like andsenior living.
From generational shifts to signon bonus traps to the value of
top performer insights, IRA's expertise offers a wake up call
and a road map for providers serious about building stronger
teams. So if you want to connect with
Ira, you'll find his LinkedIn link in the show notes.
So as always, we hope you found this episode insightful and
(50:13):
inspiring. Don't forget to subscribe to our
podcast on your favorite platform and stay tuned for more
episodes where we continue to explore the evolving world of
senior care, covering everythingfrom innovative care models and
leadership strategies to family support, technology and the
future of aging. Also, remember that from Lisa
Lisa's isn't just an audio experience.
We're also a video podcast. So if you want to see the video
(50:34):
versions of our episodes, make sure to subscribe to our YouTube
or Spotify channels. I'm Jerry Vincey, CEO of CCR
growth. Thank you for joining us on from
Leads to Leases and please like,subscribe and share this episode
with anyone who might find it useful.
Until next time, leave a strategy and with heart chat
with you again soon. Thanks, Ira.
Thanks for listening to From Leads to Leases.
(50:56):
Are you ready to fill your roomsfaster and increase occupancy?
Visit ccrgrowth.com to learn about our Senior Growth
Innovation Suite, a proven system to generate highly
qualified tour ready leads, accelerate sales and reduce
acquisition costs. Let's connect and turn your
challenges into opportunities. See you next time.
Popular Podcasts
NFL Daily with Gregg Rosenthal
Gregg Rosenthal and a rotating crew of elite NFL Media co-hosts, including Patrick Claybon, Colleen Wolfe, Steve Wyche, Nick Shook and Jourdan Rodrigue of The Athletic get you caught up daily on all the NFL news and analysis you need to be smarter and funnier than your friends.
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
I’m Jay Shetty host of On Purpose the worlds #1 Mental Health podcast and I’m so grateful you found us. I started this podcast 5 years ago to invite you into conversations and workshops that are designed to help make you happier, healthier and more healed. I believe that when you (yes you) feel seen, heard and understood you’re able to deal with relationship struggles, work challenges and life’s ups and downs with more ease and grace. I interview experts, celebrities, thought leaders and athletes so that we can grow our mindset, build better habits and uncover a side of them we’ve never seen before. New episodes every Monday and Friday. Your support means the world to me and I don’t take it for granted — click the follow button and leave a review to help us spread the love with On Purpose. I can’t wait for you to listen to your first or 500th episode!
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com