Healthcare hiring looks different from the other service franchises, and the data reflects why. The brand is real and it matters, but it doesn’t do the same recruiting work that a fitness studio brand or a salon brand does.
This data is drawn from CareerPlug’s 2026 service franchise hiring report, which examined hiring activity across seven service franchise industries: fitness, home & commercial services, healthcare, personal care, education & childcare, cleaning services, and automotive.
Healthcare, at a glance:
| Metric | Healthcare benchmark |
|---|---|
| Applicants per hire | 53 |
| Days to first contact | 3.99 |
| Days from application to hire | 22 |
| Interview rate | 7.8% |
Table of Contents:
- Where candidates come from
- Why your brand doesn’t recruit for you
- Referrals and specialized networks
- Speed to first contact
- The 34-day benchmark
- Three moves to make
- Common questions
Job boards bring the volume, referrals bring the conversion
The 2025 data shows job boards are important to recruiting efforts because of total quantity, but other channels drive the most qualified applicants.
| Channel | Share of applicants | Share of hires | Conversion vs. job boards |
|---|---|---|---|
| Job boards | 65% | 47% | Baseline |
| Careers page | 18% | 25% | Nearly 2x |
| Referrals | 2.5% | 10.5% | 5.9x |
Source: 2026 Franchise Hiring Report, service franchise segment.
Job boards delivered 65% of applicants and 47% of hires across the service franchise segment. No franchise location is going to hire their way through a year without posting to a job board.
Your brand won’t bring caregivers to your careers page
Most CareerPlug healthcare clients are home healthcare agencies (caregivers, CNAs, home health aides), not the kind of consumer-facing business people encounter in their daily lives. What that means in practice: healthcare franchises can’t lean on brand visibility to bring candidates to their careers page the way consumer-facing franchises can.
Franchise brands who know this and invest accordingly are the ones hiring well.
Referrals convert at 4.5x, and specialized networks adds pipeline
Referrals are healthcare’s strongest hiring channel. They converted at 4.5x the job board rate, the highest single-channel multiplier. Combined with specialized industry networks like myCNAjobs, the channels beyond broad job boards accounted for 4% of applicants but 11% of hires.
The absolute share is modest but the conversion lift is real: every hour spent reviewing a candidate from these channels is more likely to result in a hire than time spent reviewing job board applicants. The largest caregiver and CNA network in the country, myCNAjobs is the clearest example as it was built specifically for the home healthcare industry.
Contact applicants within 24 hours and 39% schedule interviews
Healthcare franchises contacted new applicants faster than every other service industry in the data except personal care: 3.99 days on average, 2.43 days for applicants who ended up getting hired. Both numbers are noticeably faster than the service franchise segment averages.
That speed is paying off: Applicants contacted within 24 hours scheduled interviews at 39% versus 13% for those contacted after four weeks, a 3x multiplier and one of the strongest speed-to-contact effects in the segment. In a market where credentialed candidates are weighing multiple agencies at once, the agency that responds first often wins.
34 days or 49? What caregiver time-to-fill tells you
One pattern worth knowing: the two largest brands in our healthcare data filled caregiver roles in 34 days. Everyone else took 49. If your caregiver time-to-fill rate runs closer to 49 days than 34, you’re in the typical-operator range, not falling behind.
Three moves for healthcare franchises: networks, referrals, and speed
Plug into the specialized networks
If you’re hiring CNAs, HHAs, or caregivers, the highest-leverage investment you can make is activating the industry-specific channels where your candidates already are, starting with myCNAjobs.
Treat referrals as the trust signal they are
In an industry where franchisees are placing workers in patients’ homes, the trust signal a referral carries is doubly relevant. Build the workflow so when a current employee mentions someone, the response is immediate and visible. Trust signals fade fast in a tight candidate market.
Close before your competition does
A caregiver weighing your offer is almost certainly weighing two or three others at the same time, and a care coordinator or discharge planner is often waiting to place someone this week. The agency that can extend a confirmed offer faster is the agency that fills the placement.
What healthcare franchises ask about hiring
How many applicants does it take to make one healthcare hire? Healthcare franchises averaged 53 applicants per hire in 2025, and about 7.8% of applicants reached an interview, per our 2026 Franchise Hiring Report.
How long does it take to hire in healthcare? Healthcare franchises averaged 22 days from application to hire. They contacted new applicants in 3.99 days on average, and in 2.43 days for applicants who were hired.
What is the best way to find caregivers and CNAs? Referrals and specialized networks. In healthcare, referrals converted at 4.5x the job board rate, the highest single-channel multiplier.
Does the careers page matter for a healthcare agency? It matters less than in consumer-facing industries. Healthcare careers pages converted at 1.9x the job board rate, but candidates are far more likely to come through a referral than to type in an agency’s name.
How fast should a healthcare franchise respond to applicants? Within 24 hours. Applicants contacted that fast scheduled interviews at 39%, versus 13% for those contacted after four weeks, a 3x multiplier.
Want the numbers for your industry, too?
Healthcare is one cut of a much bigger picture. The same report covers six other service franchise industries, roughly 90,000 postings, 6.2 million applicants, and 70,500 hires in total, so if you’re operating across more than one vertical, this is the benchmark to work from. Get the full 2026 Franchise Hiring Report.
See where your own network stands
Benchmarks are useful. Knowing exactly where your locations fall against them is more useful. Current CareerPlug clients: reach out to your Partnership Manager, we’ll pull your numbers from PartnerHub and walk through what to fix first. Not a customer yet? Let’s talk.