Money Research Collective’s editorial team solely created this content. Opinions are their own, but compensation and in-depth research determine where and how companies may appear. Many featured companies advertise with us. How we make money.
How to Hire a Personal Care Assistant
By Susan Doktor MONEY RESEARCH COLLECTIVE
Many families include members who need assistance with daily tasks. They may be disabled. Or they may have simply reached an age when grocery shopping, preparing meals, bathing and other routine activities are too difficult for them. Often, family members don’t have the time to care for relatives in need of that kind of help. They have demanding careers or children they care for at home. That’s when hiring a personal care assistant (PCA) may be a workable solution. But how do you go about hiring someone who’s capable and trustworthy to look after your loved one?
We’ve teamed up with ZipRecruiter, one of the best job sites for employers, to look into that precise question. Here’s a review of the steps involved in finding the ideal personal care assistant for your household.
What is a personal care assistant?
Before you set out to hire a personal care assistant, let’s clarify what the job title means. It may actually be helpful to start with what it doesn’t mean! Personal care assistants don’t necessarily receive any medical training — though they frequently assist with such health-related tasks as administering medications. They normally don’t work in hospitals or nursing homes, either. Their purview is caring for patients in their homes.
Now let’s define “personal care assistant” by looking at what one does.
What does a personal care assistant do?
Personal care assistants play a vital role in helping patients live safely and happily at home. Here’s a list of the responsibilities they often take on:
- Assisting with bathing, grooming, toileting and dressing
- Supporting a patient’s mobility: helping them walk, sit or stand
- Making sure medications are taken on time and in the proper dosage
- Planning and preparing nutritious meals, keeping any dietary restrictions in mind
- Helping with eating and drinking when necessary
- Assisting with light housekeeping, laundry and maintaining a clean living environment
- Driving and helping patients run errands
- Getting patients to medical appointments
- Companionship: Engaging in conversation, providing emotional support, and participating in recreational activities.
- Monitoring the patient’s health, observing and reporting worrisome changes to a healthcare professional.
- Assisting with continuity of care, maintaining accurate records of the care they provide and noting pertinent observations.
How to hire a personal care assistant
When you hire a personal care assistant, your loved one’s (or loved ones’) health, safety and happiness are your chief concerns. There’s a lot of trust involved in asking someone to care for a family member. But how do you assess whether a job candidate will earn your trust? You can start by having a well-thought-out recruitment strategy. We’ve put together a step-by-step list of how to go about recruiting someone for this very sensitive role.
Know the personal care assistant education and licensing requirements
Many personal care assistants don’t have special training. They’re just capable, caring people with good basic life skills and a lot of patience.
You don’t need a license to become a personal care assistant, though some states and health agencies may require personal care assistants to complete a certificate program. There’s one major exception: if a personal care assistant is being paid through a federal program like Medicare or Medicaid, he or she must participate in at least 75 hours of training and pass a proficiency exam. Earning a state certification may also satisfy the requirement.
But just because it isn’t legally required in your state doesn’t mean you can’t set your own standards of education and experience. You may want to hire someone who has a long and successful history of caring for patients at home.
Write a detailed personal care assistant job description
Every household and every patient’s needs are different. So before setting out to hire a personal care assistant for someone you love, it’s important to spend time thinking about the specific tasks the employee will be asked to perform. Consider carefully what skills, experience and character traits will help him or her succeed in the role. Then incorporate your insights into a job description. Need help getting started? ZipRecruiter offers a wide range of job description templates you can reference as you begin to write.
We recommend asking candidates to supply references when you do post your job on a job site. Candidates have been known to inflate their experience on their resumes. You’ll want to double- check that a candidate has the experience, skills and temperament to take good care of your loved one.
Decide how you want to recruit qualified candidates
Families have a wide range of choices when it comes to creating a recruitment plan. Many use several different resources to search for the perfect candidate. Sometimes you’ll get lucky and find a personal care assistant in a matter of days. Or your search may be more protracted. After a while, you may discover that one resource performs better than the others. Here are a few of the ways you can connect with qualified candidates.
Healthcare staffing agencies
Healthcare staffing agencies focus exclusively on finding candidates in the healthcare category. If you search the internet, you’ll find several of them. Larger cities may have local agencies that can connect you with candidates that live in your community. You may have a narrower field of candidates to choose from, but your chances of recruiting a candidate improve when the job you offer doesn’t require relocation. Bear in mind that healthcare staffing agencies will charge you a handsome fee if you hire one of the candidates they connect you with. Sometimes the fee is based on a percentage of the salary you pay the candidate and others charge a flat fee.
Company career page
Many corporate websites feature career pages. Some are devoted exclusively to open internal positions, but others open their career pages up to external employers. Is there a school nearby that trains personal care assistants? That might be a great place to start posting your job. You can assume that there’s a pool of recent graduates looking for work. You’re also assured that the candidates who apply for your role have received specific training in personal care assistance. One advantage of recruiting through company career pages is that it’s typically free to do so.
Job posting sites
If you’d like to access the widest possible pool of candidates, your best bet is to post your job on a major job posting site. Household name job posting sites like ZipRecruiter are often the first place candidates turn to search for jobs. Such sites also broadcast your open position to other smaller sites and provide ancillary services to help make your search more efficient. Generally, job posting sites are much less expensive to use than turning to a healthcare staffing agency.
Examine each applicant’s resume
Once you’ve armed yourself with an excellent personal care assistant job description, reviewing resumes should be a simpler task. You already know what you’re looking for and that’s half the battle. Depending on the response to your job listing, reviewing resumes may be quite time-consuming, though.
The most important factor in evaluating a personal care assistant’s resume is experience. You may be tempted to look only for candidates who have lengthy experience in caring for people who closely resemble your loved ones, but keep an open mind. The ability to adapt to different kinds of patient needs is an asset. It shows flexibility. In addition, many of the skills needed to care for, say, an adult with Muscular Dystrophy, will overlap with the skills needed to take care of a senior citizen — for example, bathing, dressing, grooming, meal preparation, transportation and light housekeeping.
Prepare your interview questions
Once you’ve narrowed down your candidate choices to a manageable number of well-qualified individuals, it’s time to start interviewing. Many families don’t have experience with interviewing and may be intimidated by the process. But it’s not rocket science. If you prepare a list of questions in advance, you can learn what you need to know about the candidates you’re considering.
Here are a few questions tailored to interviewing personal care assistants. We’ve selected questions that will reveal a candidate’s experience, skills and personal qualities. You can also make use of ZipRecruiter’s sample interview questions feature to decide on the best questions.
What types of clients have you worked with in the past? Once again, if a candidate has experience working with a wide range of clients, they’ve demonstrated their flexibility and their ability to learn new skills.
Describe a situation when you had to help an uncooperative client. How did you manage it? Having to rely on another person to help you complete routine tasks can be frustrating and stressful for clients. Sometimes clients can be obstructive. They can flat out refuse the care offered. People with dementia may be especially difficult to care for. Candidates’ answers to this question will reveal their conflict management skills and how patient and creative they are in handling tough situations.
Are you able to lift and transfer clients? Depending on your loved one’s needs, these can be critical skills. If your family member is wheelchair-bound or can’t lift him or herself out of bed, you want to be assured, largely for safety reasons, that a candidate is physically capable of lifting and transferring and has been trained to perform these tasks in the safest manner possible.
Tell me about an experience you’ve had where compassion really made a difference. Compassion is the emotion that makes us want to help others who are suffering. It isn’t that a personal care assistant can’t be a personal care assistant without it. But if the job is just a paycheck to a candidate, it’s unlikely that your loved ones will connect emotionally with their caregivers. Emotional connection is something we all need to live happily. Part of your job when interviewing candidates is to identify those that know the meaning of compassion and experience it naturally. Look for examples of compassion in action in candidates’ experience.
Check references and run background checks
Once you’ve narrowed your potential employees down to less than a handful, it’s time to start validating what you think you learned about them during their interviews. Checking references is essential when a position entails as much trust as serving as a personal care assistant. When you check references — whether personal or professional — it’s a good idea to ask some open-ended questions to begin with. “Why would you recommend or not recommend Candidate A?” or “Describe what it’s like working with Candidate A.” are questions that can get the ball rolling. You don’t want to burden a candidate’s references with too many specific questions. Let them be themselves and discuss the candidate freely in their own words. If you have specific safety concerns, such as whether the candidate is a safe driver or whether he or she was capable of transferring patients safely, you might want to tuck those questions in at the end. They’re yes or no questions that can be answered quickly without taking up too much of a reference’s time.
Once you make a decision about who you’d like to hire, you’d be well advised to order a background check on the candidate. Most background checks include information about a candidate’s criminal history, employment history, education history and credit history. They may also include information from candidates’ social profiles. Background checks can cost anywhere from $10 to $100. Generally, you get what you pay for. Criminal background checks — arguably the most critical check you should perform — are usually the most expensive kind, followed by employment, education and credit.
Offer an employment contract
Many families aren’t experienced at hiring a personal care assistant or anyone else to work in their own or their loved ones’ home. So they tend to approach the process casually. But you’re better off bringing certain formalities to the hiring process. Having an official employment contract is one of them. Employment contracts lay out both employee and employer responsibilities. They should include information on work hours, specific duties, salary and any benefits you may offer. They should also cite specific grounds for dismissal, such as patient neglect, disregard for safety protocols and stealing.
Bear in mind that a thorough employment contract outlines your responsibilities as an employer, as well. If you violate your contract, that may be grounds for legal action on the part of your employee.
Personal care assistant vs CNA
You may be wondering whether a personal care assistant can provide the right kind of care your loved one needs. That especially may be true if your loved one is dealing with significant health challenges that need to be addressed frequently. If that’s the case, you may want to look into hiring a Certified Nursing Assistant (CNA). Let’s take a look at the difference between PCAs and CNAs.
The first difference relates to training. PCAs typically have less training than CNAs. PCA education isn’t regulated so candidates applying for the job may or may not have completed high school. It’s entirely possible for a PCA not to have any formal training in healthcare.
CNAs, on the other hand, must earn certification by graduating from a training program. These programs typically last anywhere from 75 to 120 hours and include classroom time and hands-on training in a clinical environment. Certified Nursing Assistants have studied anatomy, physiology and medical terminology and have been trained in basic nursing skills.
In general, PCAs provide basic personal care, such as bathing, dressing and grooming. They may also assist with housekeeping, transportation and running errands. CNAs, by contrast, are responsible for providing a wider range of care than PCAs, including assisting with medical procedures, taking vital signs and changing dressings.
Finally, you can expect to pay a CNA more than you would a personal care assistant for hire. According to ZipRecruiter, the average annual CNA salary is about $30,000. While the work they do is vitally important, personal care assistants may not earn much more than the minimum wage in your state.
Summary of Miami Herald’s how to hire personal care assistants
Hiring a personal care assistant for your loved one can be life-changing — for better or worse. Your choice of candidate shouldn’t be taken lightly. Here is a summary of the steps you should take to find the best person for the job.
- Write a thoughtful, thorough and candid job description.
- Decide how you will publicize your job opening.
- Review resumes carefully and look for the skills and experience that matches your job description.
- Prepare interview questions that focus on the hard and soft skills a candidate needs to succeed in the position.
- Check references and order a professional background check.
- Once you’ve found the best candidate for the role, present a formal offer of employment (contract) that details both the employee’s and your own responsibilities.