How to Hire Caregivers for Your Assisted Living Home

assisted living business tips assisted living staffing caregiver application form caregiver background check caregiver certifications caregiver hiring process caregiver onboarding gusto payroll for caregivers how to hire caregivers Jun 30, 2025

Hiring caregivers is one of the most important steps in running your assisted living facility, but it's also stressful. How do you find reliable staff? What paperwork do you need? How do you avoid hiring the wrong person?

This beginner-friendly guide breaks it all down for you. Whether you’re hiring your first caregiver or building a full team, this will help you hire smarter—not harder.

Let’s get into it!

Check out this video, too:

Why Hiring the Right Team Matters

Your caregivers are the heart of your facility. They interact with residents daily, support families, and keep your operations running.

Ask yourself:

✅ What qualities do I want in a caregiver?
✅ Am I hiring someone full-time, part-time, or overnight?
✅ Do I need certifications like CPR or CNA?

Taking the time to define what you're looking for will make the process smoother and help you avoid costly mistakes.

Need guidance on this step? Apply to the Success System to get expert feedback and support from Brandon.

Step 1: Create a Simple, Clear Caregiver Application

Start with a well-designed job application. It should be easy to complete and help you quickly spot who’s serious and who’s not.

Here’s what to include:

📌 Contact information and availability
📌 Previous work experience
📌 Certifications (like CPR, CNA, or first aid)
📌 Shift preferences (day, night, weekends)

💡 Want a ready-to-use caregiver application? Check out the Accelerator program to get started!

Step 2: Choose the Right Pay Structure

How you pay your staff matters—for your business and your team. Two popular options are:

✅ Hourly Pay – Easier to track and adjust by the hour
✅ Flat Rate Per Shift – Simplifies payroll and avoids overtime confusion

Whichever model you choose, make sure it’s clear, consistent, and matches your financial plan. Using a software like Gusto to help run payroll is also a life save!

💡 Use our free underwriting calculator to make sure payroll fits into your budget!

Step 3: Run Background Checks the Smart Way

Background checks help you protect your residents and your business, plus its a requirement in most states. But they can also cost money.

A smart approach is:

📌 Pay for it upfront
📌 If the employee quits in the first 60-90 days, reimburse yourself by deducting it from their final paycheck (make sure you have paperwork the employee signs before they start that says you'll do this)

Step 4: Handle Certifications Like a Pro

Many caregivers need certifications like CPR, med tech training, or food handler permits. You can offer to cover these costs—but protect yourself.

Here’s how:

✅ Cover the cost upfront
✅ Include a reimbursement policy if they leave early
✅ Put everything in writing

💡 A clear policy helps build trust and keeps your expenses predictable.

Step 5: Use Tools to Simplify Payroll & Onboarding

Managing payroll and onboarding doesn’t have to be overwhelming. Platforms like Gusto can help with:

📌 Tax documents and W-2s
📌 Direct deposit setup
📌 Employee onboarding and policies

This gives you more time to focus on your residents and less time buried in paperwork.

Step 6: Set Expectations from Day One

A smooth onboarding process helps your team hit the ground running. Make sure your new hires understand:

📌 What’s expected during each shift
📌 Dress code and conduct policies
📌 Rules around quitting or calling out

💡 Include consequences for no-call/no-shows or quitting without notice in your onboarding paperwork.

Next Steps: Build a Team That Supports Your Mission

Hiring doesn’t have to feel overwhelming. With the right process, you’ll build a team that’s dependable, professional, and aligned with your vision.

✅ Step 1: Download the Business Plan Checklist to start building your hiring system
✅ Step 2: Need help figuring out where to start? Join the next Roadmap Challenge and build your launch plan with me.
✅ Step 3: Follow this hiring guide and take action today!

▶️ Watch on YouTube

Show full transcript 👇

Transcript

00:00:02
Hey friend, it is Brandon Gustafson with assisted living investing. Excited to have you here with me on our live today. Today we've got a really exciting topic that I've seen a lot of people ask and it's, it's around,

00:00:16
How to hire people. What's that process look like? How do you go about hiring those people so that you can have some success? This actually came out of a request from somebody on one of our posts inside of the Facebook group. I want to thank you for that and I will make sure I tag you in the post. If you have other questions or things as you are going about your investment journey,

00:00:42
make sure you comment. It's a lot easier for me to get that in a Facebook group and to tag you and help you out. So with that said, let me share my screen here a little bit. Our topic for today, again, is how to hire caregivers for your residential assisted living business.

00:00:59
Before we get started, though, I want to remind you to get over to the website. I've got a free resource for you. We'll have it linked down below, and I've got a ticker here as well to help you get over to the website, assistedlivinginvesting.net slash BP checklist. That will get you the business plan checklist, and you can also get the free underwriting calculator if you get over to the website. There will be a button on there. Just follow that, and you can get the free underwriting calculator as well. I've got a bunch of free resources for you.

00:01:25
And then if you're interested in doing some coaching or something like that with me, make sure you get over to the website, assistedlivinginvesting.net. You can look at my packages there or we can jump on a call and I offer some extra coaching when I do that. So make sure you are reaching out to me if you're interested.

00:01:42
Now let's get started. Who am I? My name is Brandon Gustafson. If you're new to the channel, I own and operate two assisted living businesses. And my purpose with assisted living investing is to help you launch your own assisted living business. I operate my facilities out of state. I live in Utah and I operate one in Colorado and one in Idaho.

00:02:03
And I've secured over one and a half million in SBA funding. So I've got a lot of good experience doing that and being able to help you out on your investment journey to help you do something very similar to that and helping you launch your own assisted living business.

00:02:20
I have a master's in healthcare administration as well, have worked in the industry for over a decade, and have a lot of experience just kind of working through government-paid programs, assisted living. We do a lot of Medicaid in our facilities and things like that.

00:02:36
and yeah if you are new here type in newbie I love to see those people that are new so I can reach out and help you along the way and if you are just wondering because you're an operator and you want some experience with this or maybe you have some questions type in operator down below and we'll

00:02:53
We'll get to your questions. If you are here live, thank you, first of all. And then if you have questions as we go through this, I will have some time at the end for some Q&A. And we'll get back to you. I see we've got somebody here on Facebook. I can't see your name. But thank you. Excited to have you. If you have questions as we go along, please just type those in.

00:03:14
we will get to those here at the end of the end of the session so let's talk a little bit about finding staff oh sorry i'm having issues with my lighting today um there we go finding staff so how do you find staff in assisted living there are a few a few big kind of ways for you to do this um and i'm going to start with probably the two that are our least um

00:03:39
that are not quite as useful as they used to be, especially if you're a small organization. Number one would be your website. If you're a small company, you can definitely put this on your website. It's very simple to do to just create a landing page that's careers and then you can have a link or an application or they send you an email or something like that. There's a very simple way to do that. The problem is you're not getting out in front of a lot of people with that.

00:04:02
type of a post, and it's really hard if you're tiny. But you can do that. You can get your information out there on a website. Number two would be Facebook. Facebook actually used to be really, really good at this. They changed their rules about a year ago, and it has made it not as easy to find people. The easiest way that I found to do this on Facebook is you actually create an ad

00:04:25
That pushes people back to your website to apply and that will circumvent some of the things that Facebook has on there. So you just want to kind of be aware of that. There used to be a way that you could just have people automatically submit an application inside of Facebook. And last time we tried to use that, it had gone away, which is a bummer. We really like using Facebook to hire people.

00:04:47
But you can still use it in just a little bit more of a roundabout way. The one that we use now most consistently is Indeed. And Indeed is free to post jobs. You can look at applicants and then if you want to reach out to them, then you are paying for them at that point. So it's a really good and useful tool.

00:05:05
there as well for you to kind of look at and use. We really like Indeed. I highly recommend it. It's a great tool. And the other nice thing about Indeed is the majority of the people that you are trying to get into your positions as a caregiver or administrator, they're spending time on Indeed. This is very much the industry standard for healthcare service-based companies. So you're going to have a lot of

00:05:31
a lot of people that are available to that are looking for jobs. And so you need to put a little bit of effort into how you're going to build that job description.

00:05:40
Because that's going to attract people there. I mean, you're going to get people that are just clicking to every single job. But the ones that are more serious are going to read that job description and see what you have. And the more time that you spend kind of building that out, the better off you're going to be in getting higher quality applicants. That's true for everything, but especially Indeed. And you can find places online that can help you out with that.

00:06:04
Inside of one of my courses, I actually have a bonus material there that is a sample job description, so you can get access to that. If you go with the Accelerator coaching program, I have some of that information in there for you as well.

00:06:18
So that's how you can go and find staff. If you get over to the requirements, these are the things, these are the pieces of paper that people need to bring to you when staff start. And there's a few things here that you need to be aware of. One is background checks. Background checks is huge. And this is where the question really came from in the Facebook group.

00:06:37
was around background checks. Each state is going to have something that's slightly different, but at its core, there's a background check process. You're going to receive the information. Oftentimes, you have to receive paperwork from that staff member, that person that you're going to hire. The state will probably have its own form, and it's a consent form that says, yes, I consent that you can run a background check on me. And it will have their social security number, and they put their name and date and sign it.

00:07:06
It's typically what you're going to see there. It's a canned form. Each state is going to be different. You're going to receive that and then you're going to submit to a background check. Those are often done by, it could be done by the state's Bureau of Investigation. It could be done by the state police department. It could be a thing that they have that is just background checks. Some states have this.

00:07:29
There's a few different ways that you can do that. You'd want to work with a state to figure out exactly where you should be submitting your background checks. In Idaho, for example, we do it through what's called a BCU, which is a background check unit. We do a name-based search that way, and then we submit information as well to the Idaho State Police Department for a fingerprint-based background check.

00:07:56
Colorado it's a little bit different I can't remember the acronym that he is there but we use a system over there to kind of do the same thing but it is just through one vendor so it's really going to depend on the state and where you're located and and what their rules are but there is a background check needed and it will look at criminal history it will look and verify you know sex offender registry and

00:08:23
You could look at arrest records or if there's any drug use or things like that. It will look at a bunch of different things. Because you are dealing with residents, you're going to need to have somebody that has the background check and that has met your criteria and also the state's criteria for being able to work with residents.

00:08:43
So that's something you want to be aware of as you go through that, but it is going to be a requirement for you in your state. You just want to talk to probably like the health and welfare department. That's a really good spot to start because especially if you're Medicaid, because they're the people that are going to be working with those residents and they have certain standards you have to meet.

00:09:06
um health and welfare a really good spot for you to start you could also talk to the health department as you're working on your application and the question there would be something along the lines of hey i'm starting my assisted living business i want to get a jump on getting my staff hired what's the process for me to hire those staff specifically around background checks what does that look like and how does that process work here in our state and they'll be able to give you some of that guidance

00:09:33
So that's a big one. The next one is your I-9 documentation. If you have ever gotten a new job, they will ask for your driver's license and maybe a passport. There's this paper that has a list of all the things that you could have, and one of them, there's a thing that you need your birth certificate and a driver's license, or if you have your passport, that's fine. You probably are familiar with that. You're going to have to do that and get that information.

00:10:01
You're also going to want to do training, and there's internal training and external training. That external training is things that are going to be required for your staff, and that could be CPR, first aid, food handlers, those types of things. If you are doing any of those, you want to make sure those are in place, or you want to make sure that they happen very quickly after the person starts at your facility.

00:10:24
So those are some of those external training and certification things that need to happen. From an internal standpoint, you're going to need to have some kind of onboarding documentation, and you're going to want to make sure that you're training them on how to work the floor and how to – you're going to have a bunch of how-to policies that you give to staff, and they have to review them and sign off that they did it. I'm actually working on a –

00:10:49
some training documentation for that that i would that i will be putting together we use it for my facilities we're working on kind of standardizing it so we can give it out to other people if you're interested in that type training down below and and make sure you get on my email list so that you get notified when i put all that that information up but if you're interested in that type of training type in training and we'll add that to the things that you can get access to as well

00:11:18
So that's your internal training and some of those requirements that you need to have. The next thing I want to talk to you about is hiring. So when you hire somebody, there's a few things that you want to be putting on here that you want to make sure that you are

00:11:34
receiving from those candidates as they are applying for a job you want to make sure that you have their resume and then you also want to make sure you get references and as a person that that is going to be running a business I highly highly recommend that you get those references and that you reach out to those references and make sure that they're not putting just a family member or a friend or something like that and you don't have to have like a deep conversation with those references but having

00:12:04
Some level of a conversation about the person that you're trying to hire is going to be beneficial because it's going to allow you to just get a feel for who they are and did they leave a job all of a sudden or did they...

00:12:19
calling sick and not show up for their shifts or are they super reliable and that person was very sad to see them go. Get that information. Call those references. The more information that you get about somebody, the better off you're going to be as you hire them and start working with them. They're going to be a better employee for you. Take time up front. As much as hiring and staffing is an issue inside of this industry,

00:12:46
The more time you spend to find the right people, the better off you're going to be. It will save you a ton of time and money and headache if you get the right people up front. So take time to review their resume, review their references, and make sure you've got somebody that is going to be solid so that you can move forward with good employees and good staff.

00:13:08
Now let's talk a little bit about payroll. I am going to throw in a link, and I forgot to do this in the video description, but I will put it in the comments down below on both Facebook and on YouTube with a link to Gusto. Gusto is who we use for payroll. They are great for small businesses. They're just like really good. They're really helpful. And I just noticed that this picture goes over the top of that thing.

00:13:32
Anyways, it is something that you're going to have to have a payroll vendor. I talked to a lot when we got started. I talked to several vendors. I talked to ADP. I talked to Paychex. There were three or four that we talked to. We were actually moving forward with one of them, and they had a series of layoffs, and our sales guy left. I think this was with Paychex, but I could be wrong.

00:13:58
And so we started just like scrambling and we found Gusto and Gusto is great. I'm super happy with Gusto. Could not recommend them highly enough. So I will put a link down, just a referral link for you. I'll get a kickback, but I think you also get, you either get a Visa gift card for it or you'll get...

00:14:16
like a credit on your first payment or something like that. Really good software, especially for small assisted living businesses. If you are larger, midsize, you've got several facilities and you're struggling with this and Gusto is not meeting your needs, you might need to go with somebody bigger. I actually have somebody in my network that I used to work with years ago, and he is a rep for Paycom.

00:14:38
And so if you are interested in that, make sure you reach out to me and I can help give you some connections there. But yeah, I'm super happy to make connections for you there. Small facilities, Gusto is awesome. It works really, really well. And they have...

00:14:56
They're really good at getting back to you. Finding ways to reach out to them can be a struggle. But once you figure out how to reach out to them, they're really good at responding and having conversations and helping you out. So yeah, there's a point of frustration, a point of friction there, but it's not that bad. And you just kind of have to click around a few times on their website to get to the right spot to ask the right question.

00:15:18
Other than that, though, Gusto is great. So I'll put a link down below if you are interested in that. Now, are there any questions? Make sure you type those down below. And while you are typing those, just want to remind you to like the video, subscribe and ring the bell if you're on YouTube. And if you are wanting to interact with us on the Facebook group, make sure you join that Facebook group.

00:15:38
So that you also will get notified and just turn on notifications. If you submit a friend request to me, it will pop up a little bit more frequently and more readily inside of Facebook as well. So doing those types of things are going to help you there. And ring the bell as well if you're on YouTube because that will get you notified when I put out this content. We are putting out content twice a week.

00:16:00
Do our live sessions on Tuesdays. This one's a little bit earlier than normal, but I'm making sure people know that inside of the Facebook group. And we also put out our videos on Thursdays. So make sure you're getting out there. If you are interested in learning more about any of these topics, make sure you type in more down below. And as I am able to, I will reach out to you and we'll find a time for us to jump on a call and I can explain a little bit about the coaching process.

00:16:26
program that I have and see if it's a good fit for you at where you're at in your journey. And if it's not, that's great. You can keep consuming the free stuff and I will help you out along your journey or point you in the right direction if it's something beyond what I can help out with.

00:16:40
So got a few other questions in here. So the cost of a background check is the responsibility of the potential employee, correct? That's a really good question. I would say that's actually up to you as the owner. What we often will do is we will say that we will charge it. We'll actually put this in paperwork.

00:17:02
We will pay for it upfront, but if a staff member leaves within the first, it's like 90 days, 60 or 90 days,

00:17:12
then that amount that we paid for the for the background check will come out of their their last paycheck so and that is something that we have done for a long time we've never received pushback for it because it's a form that we put up front we do the same thing with something with if they don't give two weeks notice we actually drop them down to minimum wage for that last paycheck so we we put that in there as well which

00:17:38
really kind of dissuades people from wanting to just quit, just call in and quit because they know that that last paycheck is going to be significantly less than what they would be getting. So we do that with a lot of our training, the external certifications, CPR, med certification, the background check, all of those things. We put in a stipulation and give them some paperwork that they have to sign when they get started that says, yeah, we will pay for this.

00:18:05
And if you leave, we're going to take that within a certain time period, and we're going to take that out of your last paycheck. There are some states where background checks can travel with the employee. And in that case, a lot of employees will actually already have that in place.

00:18:22
background checks really aren't that expensive with those that where they can kind of travel with that and they can bring it to you typically those people have already paid for it to themselves and they don't have to do it background checks depending on the state will last for a period of time sometimes they'll last for three years for example three to five years sometimes they're less and sometimes they have to be specific to an employer but yeah hopefully that answers your question there that that's kind of how we handle it and

00:18:52
It seems to work really well for us.

00:18:55
but it's your business. You can kind of set it up however you want. If you want to require those employees or those potential employees to pay for their own background check, then you just make that a requirement and you share that with them as they're getting started that, Hey, we need, we want to hire you. You've got to do your background check. It's going to cost you $25. Here's where you go and do that. And please let us know when it's done. And then you have the job kind of a thing is how that conversation is going to go. So hopefully that was helpful.

00:19:22
Um, this to that, um, if you, I can't, I can't tell if you're on YouTube or you're on YouTube. Okay. Awesome. Um, if you could get on my website, you asked for, for more info on that. I get on my website and, um, go to assistedlivinginvesting.net slash strategy, um, and fill out the application there for us to, to jump on a call.

00:19:46
and just put in there that I watched the Facebook, or I watched the live on how to hire caregivers, and then just kind of fill in the rest of the questionnaire, and that will get you some time to get on my calendar, and then we can have a conversation about the coaching programs that I offer and see if I can help you out along the way. That's going to be the best way to do that, and glad it was helpful for you as well.

00:20:12
If there's any other questions, make sure you type those in. I've got just a couple more minutes before I've got to jump off to another meeting. I've got a day full of meetings today. But I want to thank everybody for being here on the live. It's been fun to chat with you and help you along your journey. Hopefully all this information was helpful. If you want more information or you want some of the free resources, get over to the website, assistedlivinginvesting.net slash BPchecklist. We'll get you the business plan checklist.

00:20:41
Again, we'll link that down below. You can also get the calculator by going to assistedlivinginvesting.net slash calculator or just going to the website. We'll get you that as well, the free underwriting calculator that I've used to secure over $1.5 million. I also have my programs online, the business planning guide, which will help you out in building a business plan, underwriting, and also the accelerator course. And you can get that by going to

00:21:10
assistedlivinginvesting.net slash ALA. Those links are all going to be down below on the YouTube video. And if you want more information on the Facebook group, then just reach out to me and we will set up a time for us to jump on a call. I want to thank you all for watching. Thanks for being here and for interacting with me. It was a lot of fun and excited to continue chatting with you in the future. Thanks, everybody, and have a great day.

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