A new report on trends in home-based care hiring got me thinking about my own tech habits.

Over the past few years, I’ve tried to reduce digital distractions. In that effort, I’ve been putting my phone on Do Not Disturb or leaving it in another room in the evenings.

As a consequence, I am often slow to respond to texts. If I go quiet in a group chat for a few hours, friends will sometimes joke about it: “I hope Morgan is okay, wherever she is.” Most people in my life have adjusted to my delayed replies, but it has been a transition.

This digital detox underscored to me just how deeply our society demands near-instant availability. Email used to be the prevailing digital communication method, and with that came estimated response times of a few hours, maybe a day or two. Now, we expect replies in minutes.

This isn’t just true for social interactions or work communications. We can download a movie instantly, book a flight from our phones, or use a retailer’s chatbot to process a return in seconds.

These societal expectations are also shaping the home care industry.

Home care is competing for many of the same workers sought by retail, hospitality, warehousing, fast food and gig platforms. Those industries have reshaped expectations: a prospective worker can see an opening, apply on a phone, receive a response and sometimes begin work within days.

The importance of speed to interview was my top takeaway from the Q1 2026 National Caregiver Recruitment Benchmark Report from Augusta, a home care recruitment technology company, which analyzed data from over 122,000 caregiver applicants across North America. But the report’s lessons are not exclusively about speed or technology. The report also reinforces the value of referrals, direct relationships and human connection.

Taken together, these insights demonstrate that home care cannot treat caregiver recruitment as a standalone HR activity. The winning home care recruitment platform is tech-enabled, particularly in order to beat the clock that starts ticking the moment an application is submitted, and human-centric, which is crucial to closing the hire and setting up a new worker for success.

In this week’s exclusive, members-only HHCN+ Update, I’ll offer analysis and key takeaways from the National Caregiver Recruitment Benchmark Report, including:

– Why providers must meet the moment on quick response times

– Why providers can’t rely on a digital recruitment experience alone

The speed to interview necessity

The speed at which our society communicates and expects responses is clearly demonstrated in the Augusta report.

The report advises providers to interview applicants within four days of their application. But the report also found that results are noticeably better in terms of engagement and hires when applicants are interviewed within 24 to 48 hours.

Within days, applicants can lose interest due to a lack of clarity or engagement early on or have moved on to another opportunity, per the report. For caregivers applying to several roles at once, silence is a signal to move on.

Conducting interviews this quickly requires more than increased urgency from an individual recruiter. Providers must have systems in place that can acknowledge applications promptly, communicate next steps and make it easy for applicants to schedule interviews — ideally through the device most applicants already use throughout the day: their phones.

  

I think this is one example where AI simply shines as a tool for home care providers. I’ve written before about how the home care industry is somewhat divided on where AI should and shouldn’t be used. But those concerns are largely with client-facing tools — most folks seem to agree that to maintain sustainable margins in an industry characterized by workforce shortages, AI is an answer.

Comfort Keepers has used AI in its recruitment process, and the results have included a shorter time to hire, Chief Operating Officer Ramzi Abdine recently told HHCN’s new senior reporter, MK Manoylov.

“We engage with the candidates online through these platforms, we screen the resumes, and in some cases, … the AI conducts the first round, or a couple of rounds of interviews, so it’s a pretty comprehensive, complete journey,” Abdine said. “We don’t have a lot of participating agencies doing that, but anecdotally, there’s strong evidence that this is really leading to much, much greater efficiencies and just shorter time to hire.”

Given the report’s findings and a large provider like Comfort Keeper’s use of AI to expedite the process, home care providers must ensure that their applicants don’t get snapped up by another provider that is using AI or other methods to hasten the time to interview.

The high-conversion human touch

The role of tech in recruitment is clear in situations in which providers need quick response times and efficiencies. But, in my opinion, and per data included in the report, speed and scale should not come at the expense of the more human parts of recruitment.

From Q3 2025 through Q1 2026, Indeed was the most common avenue for caregiving applications, according to the report. But while Indeed wins in applicant quantity, it does not win in conversion quality. That award goes to in-person events, which make up a tiny (0.09% of applicants, but hit far above their weight class in terms of conversions, with a 3.1 times higher-than-average conversion rate.

Of course, that’s likely because job seekers who come to an in-person event are likely more serious about a job in home care. But I don’t think providers should underestimate how in-person interactions can create a level of trust and mutual understanding that a job-board application and a series of AI interviews alone may not. Putting a face to a name still means something.

I’m not suggesting that providers sink the majority of their recruitment budgets into in-person events, but this conversion rate does make me think that recruiting requires a portfolio approach. High-volume avenues should be running in the background at all times, but operators must deliberately develop referral programs, community events and local partnerships to ensure a pipeline of high-quality, high-converting applicants.

Research backs up the use of AI in the hiring process. A study from the University of Chicago found that AI agents are more efficient at screening job seekers and lead to more hires and better employee retention — though with a human making final decisions about a hire. According to a 2023 Pew Research Center poll, most Americans believe that AI will have a major impact on workers generally over the next 20 years. The same poll also found deep unease about AI making final hiring decisions, with 71% in opposition.

Technology may be part of the future of a home-based provider’s recruitment platform, but it cannot be the only element. The agencies best positioned to compete will pair technology’s speed and scale with the human connection that turns an applicant into a committed caregiver.