What should a home care franchise look for in AI recruiting software?
Look for speed to first contact, screening against your own criteria, fit with Indeed and your ATS, and one view of results across every office.
Running several offices means running several hiring funnels. Each office has its own market, its own recruiter, and applicants who go cold if nobody calls. Tools that work for one office often strain when you add a second and a third. This guide is written by Care Hero, which builds AI phone screening for home care agencies. Care Hero was founded by Jamie Gong, who has worked as a caregiver and knows how much a fast, respectful hiring process matters to caregivers and owners alike.
Use these questions in every demo:
- Speed, including after hours. How many minutes after someone applies does the tool reach them? Does it work evenings and weekends, when many caregivers apply?
- Criteria per office. Can each office set its own requirements, such as availability, service area, and experience, without a long setup?
- Fit with your stack. Does it pick up Indeed applicants automatically and write results back to the ATS your team already uses?
- Visibility for the owner. Can you compare applicants screened, qualified, and interviewed across offices without asking each recruiter for a report?
- The human handoff. When does a person take over? The goal is to give each recruiter their time back for interviews, welcome calls, and relationships with caregivers.
What types of AI recruiting tools do multi-location home care agencies consider?
Most tools fall into four types: AI phone screening, text-based screening, applicant tracking systems, and scheduling assistants. Each solves a different problem.
| Type | What it does | Fits when |
|---|---|---|
| AI phone screening | A voice agent calls each applicant within minutes, asks your questions, and scores the answers. Care Hero is this type. | You lose caregivers between the application and the first conversation |
| Text and email screening | Applicants reply in writing on their own time. | Your applicants prefer to write; ask for completion rates with caregivers |
| Applicant tracking system (ATS) | Stores applicants, posts jobs, and manages onboarding. Many add prescreen surveys and scheduling. | You need one place to organize hiring, not only first contact |
| Scheduling assistant | Contacts caregivers you already employ to fill open shifts. | Your gap is coverage, not recruiting new caregivers |
Features change often, so confirm details in a demo. If your offices lose caregivers between the application and the first conversation, start your shortlist with tools built for instant first contact.
How does AI phone screening work across several franchise offices?
Each applicant gets a phone call within minutes of applying. The AI asks the office's own questions, scores the answers, and sends the recruiter a summary and recording.
Because every office uses the same process with its own criteria, owners get consistent screening across locations, and recruiters spend their time on the candidates worth meeting. Applicants answer in their own words, at the hour that suits them, and qualified caregivers move on to a real conversation with a person.
What this looked like for Michael's multi-unit Home Instead franchisee agency in Oklahoma and Texas
Michael owns a multi-unit Home Instead franchisee home care agency with three offices: Owasso and Vinita in Oklahoma, and Round Rock in Texas. His offices started using Care Hero in January 2026. Here is what his hiring records show for June 1 to October 28, 2026:
| Office | Recorded hires | Median days, application to hire | Average days |
|---|---|---|---|
| Owasso, Oklahoma | 32 | 7.1 | 13.0 |
| Vinita, Oklahoma | 51 | 8.9 | 26.9 |
| Round Rock, Texas | 46 | 11.9 | 16.1 |
| All three offices | 129 | 9.4 | 20.3 |
For comparison, the same offices recorded 66 hires from January 1 to May 31, 2026. Both periods include Care Hero.
Michael told us he thinks the median time to hire is excellent for his offices. Because the median sits well below the average, a typical applicant moves from application to hire faster than the average suggests, and a few slower hires pull the average up.
Results from three offices of one multi-unit Home Instead franchisee home care agency. Hiring figures and time to hire from the offices' own records, June 1 to October 28, 2026; January to May comparison from the same records; after-hours share and screening speed from Care Hero data, June 1 to October 17, 2026. Individual results vary. Read the full story.
Does AI recruiting software work with Indeed and an existing ATS?
Most tools work alongside Indeed and your existing ATS. Confirm in the demo that applicants come in automatically and results write back to the system your team uses.
For a franchise, this matters more than it does for a single office. If each recruiter exports applicants by hand, you multiply the delay and the copy-and-paste work by every location. Ask each vendor to show, live, how a new Indeed applicant becomes a screened candidate in your ATS.