A Cup of Joe with Joe - Part 2: How Caring Support Is Helping Solve the HR Challenges within Healthcare

The Canadian healthcare sector is currently facing many challenges, and one of them is related to Human Resources and recruitment. Healthcare organizations are understaffed and struggling to find and retain healthcare workers, while workers feel overworked and burned out. It is a complex situation worth discussing in-depth, which is why we chose it as the topic of this second and last part of "A cup of joe with Joe", a special interview series featuring Joseph Jongsma, founder and CEO of Caring Support.

But before reading the interview, click here to view Part 1, if you need a recap. We're sure you will find inspiration and encouragement as Joe talks about his entrepreneurial journey and more. If not, then let's dive right into this interesting Q&A:

1. You speak with many healthcare organizations and employers on a weekly, if not daily, basis. What are some things that you often hear as challenges currently faced in healthcare?

What I'm hearing what's going on in healthcare is massive burnout. We all understand that. We've heard that a lot on the news as well. Ghosting interviews... people aren't showing up for interviews,  which is a waste of money, resources, time and huge effort on the health care organization to have the opportunity to interview. There are so many jobs out there right now and opportunities in healthcare that the caregivers, the candidates, are getting multiple job offers at the end of the day.

And the other thing is not enough qualified candidates in the market. We're dealing with those post-secondary institutions helping to supply the funnel of candidates into the market, into healthcare. And last but not least, this terrible virus. So many people off of work with Covid hampers the recruitment process. You could have, let's say, a hundred people on your staff in health care and 30 of them are off sick. You now have to hire 10 to 15 more people or 30 more people just to supply the demand.

So, once again, burnout, ghosting interviews, not enough qualified candidates, and definitely the COVID issue out there are the biggest challenges right now.

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2. How is caring support helping the healthcare sector overcome these challenges?

We help in many ways. For instance, there are a lot of health care individuals that are out there burnt out, not wanting to go back to work, scared to catch COVID or to give it to their families and other loved ones. We're helping with that by putting more people into the job market.

Also, we're helping post-secondary institutions find students that want to get into health care, and the other way around, introducing students to these post-secondary institutions for education, to get them into the healthcare field. We've developed a platform where post-secondary institutions can also invite all of their students to build a profile. They then can champion them by simply clicking on their profile and sharing it with any health care organization right over the platform to help them find co-ops, practicum, internships, and new grad employment opportunities.

And then when we look at ghosting interviews, we want our online messaging system to be front and centre here by making sure that the line of communication is open between healthcare organizations and the caregiver, the candidate. To help with that we are in the process of looking at webcam interviews right on the platform too, as well as reminders that say "hey, you have a webcam interview here coming up in the next few minutes, hours or whatever that may be." The ghosting of interviews is an issue out there and we want to figure out how we can help with that.

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3. What is the value proposition of Caring Support? What makes the platform unique?

I think the value proposition is less time to hire. I think that's really important. We're focused on the time of the use of the platform to get the same results as what you're getting from LinkedIn. We want it to be like in 15 minutes of an hour spent on Indeed, you can get the same result.

Also, really understanding how to narrow down searches and not seeing the same people applying to the same jobs all the time. Just figuring out what that differentiator is compared to the Indeeds, the Zip Recruiters, the Talent.coms and all those out there. Being dedicated to healthcare, I think is really, really important. We're taking that niche market out, building that community.

And what I mean by community is giving them the content that they're looking for on a daily basis. The educational part, the influencers, the topics that need to be discussed and want to be discussed. We bring in the PSIs, the post-secondary institutions, we bring in the caregivers and the candidates into their channel, and then we also have a channel with the healthcare organizations. I think bringing these three on, and soon to be immigration and a few other channels, the marketplace and stuff...

I'm getting ahead of myself a little bit. But, I think that that's what makes us so unique. It's a healthcare dedicated platform with instant communication, instant searching for qualified candidates through multiple filters, language, skill sets, willingness to relocate, all these kinds of things... Driver's license, medical records, all of that is included in these profiles. We really push our candidates and our caregivers to have wholesome profiles because they are representing themselves to these healthcare organizations and looking to get employment.

This isn't just health care. It's eyes, ears, nose, mouth, teeth, massage, chiropractors, physiotherapists, mental health, addiction, social workers, anything to do with Caring Support in regards to health care is who we are attracting to the platform.

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4. what can people expect to see from caring support over the next while? Are there exciting features in the pipeline that users can get excited about already?

Well, we just got done on the latest sprint and that was building out resume builder on the platform. It is a great tool for post-secondary institutions. We're providing that ability to come onto the platform while building that professional profile. They can go in there and build that professional resume through our Resume Builder tool.

What's coming down the pipeline? Our next sprint is tiers. Tiers, really looking at their reporting, the KPIs, and the data collection that our health care organizations are looking for. We're building that out right now. We pretty much almost have that part done from the report card standpoint, but building out enterprise level, so that's the tiers where you have a super admin, an admin, several talent acquisition managers, all able to log in username and passwords, but then it all reports up.

We have a marketplace coming where the candidates, the caregivers, will be able to buy their scrubs, their crocs, insurance, and maybe some further education courses provided by some of our post-secondary institutions. The list goes on and on and on. Anybody that really wants to get their attention and supply a product or service to them, we'll be able to do so through our marketplace. So that just allows building that community and further strengthening the community.

We're looking at an awards ceremony, we're looking at conferences, we're looking at everything down the pipeline. We are so excited about this, and we got a really good feeling that this has the opportunity to really be something. But it can't be if it's just us. We need everyone to love Caring Support, want to be a part of Caring Support, find their job using Caring Support, find their employee using Caring Support, and these post-secondaries support that student and help them find their dream job.

We want longevity of job placement. We don't want the short stint of six months. We want these health care organizations to be able to come onto the platform and build a robust profile and represent themselves well with that. We also want healthcare professionals coming on board and looking at their profiles and saying "hey, this is a company I really do want to work with" because ight on our platform, we give the healthcare organization the opportunity to talk about the perks, the benefits of working there, the culture, the diversity, inclusion, all of that great stuff is on that profile for them to express themselves.

So, yeah, lots and lots... an immigration channel as we talked about. We'll be able to support people wanting to get into health care outside of Canada, and we're excited about that.

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5. What does it mean for you and collectively for the Caring Support team to be part of such an ambitious project?

Well, it's definitely ambitious. It is a big, big program. And like I said, you know, it's going to require more people. It's going to require funding. It's going to require raising funds and all of that kind of stuff to get to where we need to go. And trust me, we're a dedicated team that wants the outcome, so we will get there.

There's no question. What do I always say? It's just a matter of time. So, just applying our efforts and making sure we're all on the same wavelength and moving in the same direction. I just need more people to come on and help us go down that road. And funds to make sure that those people that are coming on board have a beautiful career with Caring Support.

I just look forward to helping and changing the way people hire people. I've hired a thousand plus people in my life. and it was definitely a struggle. We're creating something that's more simple. We hear that a lot. This is so simple. User friendly. Incredible. Those are keywords that when we were building this platform we wanted to hear and we hear them every single day. So we just have to keep building and things will continue to happen. I'm more than excited.

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We hope you found value in the words of our platform's founder and CEO, Joseph Jongsma, a great entrepreneur with vast experience in the business world and an increasing passion for healthcare. To learn more about him, visit the Meet Our Team section of our website or connect with him on LinkedIn.

Thank you for reading!