Recruiting recommendations from Isaac Abramovici of Community Home Care

Daniel Blaser (00:06):

Hello, and welcome to On the Clock, presented by Workstream. If you care about hiring and retaining hourly employees, you're in the right place. I'm Daniel Blaser, and today I am clocking in with Isaac Abramovici. Isaac is Outreach director at Community Home Care in New York City. He shares his tips for attracting applicants and how he gives employees a sense of belonging, even though they work across different locations. He also shares some recommendations for screening automation and more. Well, Isaac, thank you so much for chatting with me today. I am really excited.

Isaac Abramovici (00:37):

That was my pleasure, Daniel. Thank you. I run the marketing here at Community Home Care. And really what my job entails is sort of dealing with marketing on both, you know, we are a healthcare company, so we're a home care agency, so we help people at who are at home and need the extra help, whether it's a home attendant or a nurse or anything like that. So my job is to sort of deal with the marketing on hiring, you know, aides and at the same time bringing in the patients. So I sort of work on both ends of the industry. But generally speaking, I, I, I would say I run the marketing.

Daniel Blaser (01:15):

Yeah, that's interesting. Kind of do the marketing on both sides of, of that spectrum. Approximately how many employees are, you know, currently employed? How many, like, are you, you know, open positions are you trying to fill at any given time?

Isaac Abramovici (01:30):

So, community home care, we have like a little bit over a thousand employees during Covid. It was very, you know, hard to get people to work, you know, and now the demand, you know, for employment really went up. So now it's hard to get people to actually, you know, I'll have somebody in an interview and it's very hard to get them to actually take the job and go to the actual job. So we're, you know, we're, we're dealing with different challenges now than, you know, we've seen, you know, within the last two years. So to go back to your question on, you know, how many positions we have open you know, for the most part, you know, obviously we have in-office staff but we are not really, you know, hiring for that, for those type of positions on a day-to-day basis. But for, for the most part, we're trying to hire as many personal care assistants, nurses, home health aides, as many as we can, and we try to get as a good flow every single day of those positions.

Daniel Blaser (02:27):

So you mentioned, you know, that you're, you kind of act as you know, in marketing in a way. What are some challenges that you've been facing in your role? You mentioned one you know, getting getting candidates to actually accept positions and follow through with that. But what are some other challenges that you've been facing? You know, maybe in the last six to 12 months, let's say

Isaac Abramovici (02:51):

In the last six to 12 months, I would say the biggest challenge I have is getting good quality candidates. I would say, you know, I don't know if that's something that's new, you know, post pandemic but it's definitely something that, you know, especially if we have a lot of, you know, we have a special contract with the state of New York where we have you know, cases that are 24 7. So these are people who are quadriplegics, bedbound patients. So they need like an extra level of care that, you know, it's not just, you know, going to the grocery store, maybe just tidying, you know, helping somebody who's a little elderly and, you know, taking them to doctor appoint appointments, which that is very important, but when you have a case that's sort of a bed bound, you know, live in case they need that sort of extra level of care and it's not for everybody. So finding candidates for those type of positions can be very challenging.

Daniel Blaser (03:41):

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. In your position what have you learned, like what are some insights into maybe hiring and retaining hourly workers? I know that, you know, like you've mentioned, you're a little bit more on the marketing side, but you surely have learned a lot about what hourly workers and what these healthcare professionals, what they're looking for and, and what encourages them to stick around at a job.

Isaac Abramovici (04:05):

For sure. You know, a big part is, you know, I feel like there's a few answers to this question. One, you know, on a basic level, you know, if somebody's looking at a job post, they wanna see sort of what kind of benefits they're gonna get from our agency. You know, we happen to be part of a union here in New York, so they do get a lot of benefits. So when I'm trying to, you know hire or try to get applicants, you know, I try, I try to really stress that the benefits that they're gonna get for working for us, you know obviously the competition is tough, you know, in this in this environment. But, you know, we want to try to stress all the benefits that we have. At the same time, it's important to get like a good bookkeeping, you know, that can answer any of their questions.

(04:48):

You know, they might have questions about their pay. I would say like a good communication between the hourly workers and the, and the staff. 'cause In my industry, you know, they might, you know, they're not coming into the office every day. They're out in the field in patient's homes. So, you know, they can feel not connected to the company they're working for. So on our end, we're trying to have a good clear communication between the, between our workers and the staff. You know, re recently we've implemented sending out gifts on our home health aids, birthdays. That's something we just started, you know, just to sort of build that rapport with our aides and, and and other workers.

Daniel Blaser (05:29):

Yeah, that's really interesting. I know, you know, with, depending on what the company is, a lot of companies are trying to figure out how to encourage employees to feel more connected, maybe with some working remotely. And, but it is an interesting challenge to try to encourage that kind of employee engagement, even though, like you said, a lot of times the employees are all over the place doing their jobs. So I can see how that, that would definitely present some challenges. Why do you take pride in your, in your job? Like, why do you enjoy your, your role?

Isaac Abramovici (06:00):

Well, I enjoy my role. I would say, you know, again, you know, we are in a healthcare field, so we are helping people on a patient. And, you know you know, when I'm getting onboarding new patients, whether they're coming, you know, be getting referred to from different hospitals in the city or for different agencies, you know, I I get to hear their stories of people who are you know, really bad shape. You know, we get some really tough cases that come our way. Especially in a big city like New York. You know, one of the examples that I'm thinking about is I have somebody, a patient that lives by himself, has no legs, and he's just by himself in his home, you know? And, you know, he was referred to by one of our hospitals and you know, now he has a home health aide, somebody who can come help him, get him cooked, get him dressed, take him to his doctor's appointment. Just to think about somebody like that. How are they managing without anybody helping them? You know, a lot of people might not have any family or friends or anything like that. So it's, it's, it's cases like that where, you know, it's, you know, it's sad to hear, but at the same time, you know, when you're making a, you know, you know, it's a case where we're making a difference, you know, and we see that on a day-to-day basis, that's for sure.

Daniel Blaser (07:12):

Yeah, absolutely. I can see how that would be really gratifying. You mentioned, you know, one of the big challenges you've seen recently is just trying to get people to apply for positions. I'd like to kind of go into that a little bit further. Like what maybe what efforts have you put into that, that, that haven't panned out the way that you wanted to? Or maybe what are some channels that you've tried that you know, have kind of contributed to those challenges

Isaac Abramovici (07:41):

In the, in the past? You know, we, we, we had two different ways. You know we had, you know, recruiters in-house recruiters who their job was to sort of go out in the fields, job fairs you know, they would go to the schools where home health aides would get their certificates and try to recruit people that way. You know, before I got to the company, we had, we, we know they were doing some ad, some sort of advertisements on Indeed. And it was a little bit of a different process, you know, they would get their resume and someone would have to call and schedule them. And that's where, you know, when I was able to set up work stream for the company, it sort of bridged that gap where, you know, we're able to sort of advertise on a bunch of different job boards.

(08:27):

And, you know, not only is it sort of streamlines the process, but at the same time, you know, it, it just makes the, the hiring process much easier. One, because somebody sends you know, fills out a job application, the automatically get automated messages on, you know, what they need to do next, what steps they need to do, all the, you know, requirements they need to bring in for their, for the job interview. And it just makes things much. So since, you know, we've implemented workstream, it's been a much, a much made a big difference, that's for sure.

Daniel Blaser (09:03):

Well, that's, that's great to hear. You know, a lot of the people that listen to this podcast, they're there are other people that, just like you, they're trying to source hourly employees. A lot of times they're looking for new ideas or, you know, recommendations or advice. What advice would you give if someone else is listening and they're like, yeah, I'm also just having a hard time on the sourcing side. What advice or recommendations would you give to them?

Isaac Abramovici (09:30):

The advice that I would give to them, you know, it would be that we are, you know, we're trying to source all over the city, so it's not just sort of in one office, we're trying to source throughout the whole city. So my, my advice would be, you know, maybe two or threefold would be, you know, making your job posts very crystal clear and appealing. I would say also having somebody that's, you know, on top of, you know, the, the applicants. So people who are applying, even though there's that automation involved where they can schedule and they can just come in, you want us, you, you know, you want to put a personal touch to it. So you want to have somebody reach out to them, say, Hey, you have an interview coming up next week. You know, you know, is there any questions you have? You know, 'cause somebody could schedule an interview, doesn't mean they're necessarily gonna come in, so you wanna add that personal touch to it. That's about it.

Daniel Blaser (10:20):

No, those are great recommendations for that personal touch. Do you typically approach that with SMS or phone calls or,

Isaac Abramovici (10:27):

So, so what's good, what's good about workstream is when somebody does apply, we, we have it set up where they would get a email and a text. So we already sort of, we are already pretty solid on the text and email side, so we try to have actual phone call, here's somebody from the company, you know, again, you know, they found this job, oned, you know, they're walking in from basically just talking to a computer. So sometimes people are commuting an hour, an hour and a half on the train. So, you know, from all from just talking to, you know, a robot basically. So <laugh>, you wanna be able to say, Hey, you know, we are a company. This is what it is, this is who we are, you know, any questions. And, you know, it makes them feel a little bit more comfortable that, you know, they're gonna be coming in for this job interview.

Daniel Blaser (11:10):

You talked a little bit about you know, the importance of nailing down your job descriptions. And earlier you mentioned, you know, that to attract employee or candidates, you know, you need to have, offer good benefits, good compensation obviously pay is like the top most important thing everyone's looking for, but I wanted to ask you, beyond pay, are there any like perks or benefits that you have found have, like made a difference in, in attracting applicants that maybe it's something you didn't even expect, but it's something that has, you know, you've heard through the grapevine that has been appreciated.

Isaac Abramovici (11:46):

That's been obviously like, like you said, pay is definitely the most important one. I would say the next, the most important thing to people would be the health, health and dental insurance that they get in vision. So somebody who does work with us, all our employees do get health, vision, and dental. So that's sort of like the second tier. Anything that really surprised me, no, nothing really, you know that I, that comes to my mind. But those are really, you know, it's pay. And then I would say health, vision and dental again, you know, that's, it's the food that's on their table and then it's their health. So <laugh>, it's not I would say it's not something that surprised me. It's more of a no brainer. But yeah, you know, we do have matching 401k and we do have other benefits, you know that, that do come with it. But those are the two that, that, that stand out to me.

Daniel Blaser (12:34):

Yeah. Yeah. Fair enough. I just wanted to maybe open it up like once again with the context that a lot of people listening to this are, are you maybe in your same shoes any other final like advice or recommendations or anything that from your perspective that it might be helpful for, for everyone to hear?

Isaac Abramovici (12:54):

I, I would say one of the tips that that, that I've, that helped me, you know, because because of the field that we're in, we have patients with multiple different languages. So we're able, you know, we're looking for for AIDS, who can speak English, Spanish, Creole, French Russian, Mandarin, Cantonese. So we have all the languages. So what, what I liked about Workstream that really made a difference was they had these smart screening questions. So the two questions, you know, that I sort of smart screen, where are you legal legally able to work in the country? 'cause If you're not, you're not able to work. Are you 18 and older? So those were sort of givens. One of the things I asked was you know, do you have a certificate to do this job? That's a, that's an important one. So that really helped in our screening process. Another thing we, we asked on their application was what language do you speak? So now when we have a case that let's say is Mandarin speaking in Manhattan we're, I'm able to export all our applicants from workstream to Excel and sort of narrow it down by language. And that's made, you know, life much, much, much easier.

Daniel Blaser (14:08):

That's really cool. I, I actually have never heard anyone kind of call out that specific use case. And, and so that's, that's a great one to call out. Thank you so much for chatting with me. I think everyone's gonna enjoy listening to your perspective. It's, you know, your industry is not one that we've been able to hear from as often as like some of the other quick service restaurants and stuff. So I think people really enjoy that perspective and, and some of the unique insights that you bring. So thank you.

Isaac Abramovici (14:34):

For sure. My pleasure. Thanks Daniel.

Daniel Blaser (14:41):

Thank you for listening to On the Clock. For more info, visit workstream.us/podcast. I've also included a link in the show notes to connect with Isaac on LinkedIn. Until next time, we're clocking out.