A registered manager on the south coast had a plan to grow her domiciliary care service, and every week the paperwork and the daily running of the place got in front of it.
What she needed
She knew what would fix it, a deputy manager who could pick up the compliance and the operational side and give her the time to build the business, so she asked us to find one.
It's a harder hire than it sounds. A deputy here has to earn the trust of care staff who work one to one in clients' homes. They also need to understand regulation well enough to lift real jobs off the manager, and the good ones are rarely scanning job adverts.
Most owners in her position advertise, wait and read whatever comes in, which can take months while the service stands still and the manager works through applications, the one job she had no time for.
Phoning the people already doing the job
So we didn't wait for applications.
Our health and social care recruitment team listed the home care businesses in the area and rang their care managers and deputies, to ask whether they'd think about a move or knew somebody who would.
Three weeks later we sent the client one candidate.
Our questions had been about the care itself, and the answers soon showed who had done the work and who had only stood near it.
The client's verdict was that the person was perfect for the job.
We'd rather send one name we're sure about than pad a list.
A longer list would have looked better and told her less, and she'd have spent her limited time comparing people when she should have been running the service.
The compliance work and the day-to-day running moved to the deputy, and the registered manager went back to growing the business. She now had somebody to hand the paperwork to, and the growth plan stopped being something she'd get round to later.
How our fee works
Our fee is fixed and agreed before we start, and you only pay when your hire starts.
It covers all the work described above, from the list of businesses to the calls to the assessment. And the fee stays put if the salary changes.
If the deputy hadn't worked out, the registered manager would have been back with the same compliance pile. She'd also have had a second search to run.
That's what the three-month replacement and rebate guarantee on every placement is there for.
What we'd add is a straight conversation at the start. If the salary looks wrong for your area, you'll hear it from us on day one, not in week six, along with what we'd change in the pay, the advert or the brief.
How involved you are is your choice, from interviewing the shortlist yourself to leaving us to run the whole process.
Our own check on that is retention, and across our business 95% of the people we place are still in post 18 months later.
If you have a vacancy and the fee is making you hesitate, book a call and we'll talk through the role and what leaving it open is costing you. Or use the green Tell Us About Your Role button to send us the role in about a minute, and we'll come back to you within 20 minutes during UK office hours.
