What was holding hiring back
Impact Home Health is a Medicaid home care agency staffing caregivers across Kansas from Wichita and Topeka. All of its caregiver recruiting runs through one person, Rena Jones, who before Care Hero called every applicant back and ran every phone screen herself.
Phone screening was close to a full-time job. Once no-shows and scheduling were counted, each completed interview took about 1 hour 45 minutes of recruiter time, or 611 hours over the 107-day baseline. Applicants who applied at night or on a weekend waited for the next business day, and many went cold.
“When I set them up through Microsoft Teams, and I send them an invite, they no-call no-show. This helps me limit that no call, no shows. So that helps me speed through the process faster.”
What changed
Care Hero plugged into Impact's existing Indeed and Paylocity workflow instead of replacing either.
- Every applicant reached within minutes, 24/7. Indeed applicants get a message right after they apply and call a local Kansas number to complete a short AI phone interview, evenings and weekends included.
- A rubric built on the recruiter's own criteria. Applicants are screened for home-health experience, hours that fit open Medicaid client schedules, comfort with dementia and behavioral redirection, and location, since Impact serves about 30 Kansas communities. The recruiter sees a summary, score and recording after every interview.
- A 9-day backlog reactivation. Care Hero re-engaged past Indeed applicants Impact had already paid for but never reached, and Impact made 23 hires in those nine days, before a single new ad ran.
- Connected to Paylocity. A daily sync picks up applicants from every other job board, and one click sends a selected hire into Paylocity Onboarding with no re-keying.
The numbers
The same one recruiter, before Care Hero, in the first month, and in the seven months since go-live:
| Metric | Before (Jan 1 to Apr 13) | First month (Apr 14 to May 14) | Since go-live (Apr to Oct) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Phone interviews completed | 3.3 a day, by hand | 6.7 a day (209), 2.1× | 895 AI phone interviews |
| Interviews completed after hours | Waited for the next business day | 47% | 36.6% |
| Time to hire a caregiver | 3 to 4 weeks to start a caregiver | Not measured | 5.7 days median, application to hire |
| First-round phone screens run by the recruiter | All of them | None | None |
Hires marked in Care Hero by month: April 48, May 56, June 40, July 30, August 32, September 35, October 59, for 300 in total.
“Overall, the sentiments are really good for my team and the results have been good as well. We've been getting a lot more interviews completed than we were expecting.”
Why this matters for Kansas agencies
In caregiver recruiting, the agency that reaches an applicant first usually gets them, and most applications arrive after a shift, at night or on a weekend. Medicaid home care agencies in Kansas run on tight margins and cover clients spread across many small communities, so adding recruiters to keep up is rarely an option.
Impact closed that gap without adding anyone. One recruiter now supports hiring across about 30 Kansas communities, and her day has shifted from chasing callbacks to hiring decisions. Applicants flow in from Indeed and Paylocity and hires land in Paylocity, so there is no second system to manage.
From setup to 300 hires
- April 2: live in 2 days. The first AI interviews ran on past Indeed applicants: 23 hires in nine days.
- April 14: every posting live. 24/7 AI interviews on a local Kansas number for every new Indeed applicant.
- May 14: first month. 2.1× the phone interviews, with the same recruiter.
- July: Paylocity connected. One click sends a new hire into Paylocity Onboarding.
- October: 300 hires. 895 AI phone interviews, with a median of 5.7 days from application to hire.