How Recruitment Tech is Transforming Social Care Hiring at Care UK

Workforce challenges in social care have been making headlines for several years.

Victoria Cole, Head of Resourcing, Care UK

As shared in a January 2025 case study by Athena Parnell, “the growing recruitment and retention crisis in the sector is associated with chronic lower pay, insecurity, and low status…” and “In recent years the gap has increasingly been plugged by attracting people from abroad.”

Arguably, one of the most challenged sectors, renowned for experiencing hiring crisis and staffing shortages, UNLEASH were excited to get the inside track on Care UK’s unique recruitment journey, challenges, and recent successes to share with our HR and Talent Acquisition community.

Care UK has faced an uphill journey in achieving recruitment success for an organization with over 14,000 team members, 160+ locations, and a high-growth strategy.

Through the session, the panel got the inside track on Care UK’s unique recruitment journey, with a focus on how to: 

• Reduce bottlenecks, fill roles with automation, and how technologies can keep your pipeline moving.
• Utilize communication platforms to deliver faster, more personalized interactions.
• Save thousands of hours on administrative tasks, freeing up your team for strategic work through automation.
• Hire efficiently at scale while maintaining candidate and hiring manager satisfaction.

To kick start the session, Cole shared that Care UK, which has over 165 residential care homes nationwide, has been on a significant growth journey. Cole was therefore eager to explore hiring at volume while maintaining efficiency.

As with any business, tackling factors such as rapid growth will present itself with several obstacles, which is why, before Cole shared her experience, we asked the audience what their own key challenges have been.  

Candidate experience ranked as our audiences’ biggest challenge collecting 56% of votes, followed by time-to-hire and recruitment efficiency in joint third.

Victoria Cole, Head of Resourcing, Care UKCole then discussed some of the specific challenges that Care UK has faced over the past few years. 

“A unique challenge to us is that we’re a growing organization – we’re growing really fast,” she says. “Over the last three years, we’ve opened nine new care homes employing roughly 100 colleagues at each, with a further trajectory of growth being planned over the upcoming years. 

“This, in itself, is a challenge in terms of growth, but our journey is not just about recruiting into that ever-growing vacancy need, but also ensuring that our industry is changing and challenging the perception of careers in care. 

“We want to attract a diverse range of people who historically may have perceived social care to be low-skilled and career-limiting.”

Shacklady later adds: “Whilst the recruiting processes for lots of companies on paper might seem similar, they all have their very own unique challenges, such as geographies, skills, industries, and lots of other variables. 

He then continued to recommend that companies should process and understand where the bottlenecks and friction lie within these processes, for example, by identifying where technologies can help with alignment and to overcome problem statements. 

“I think what the team at Care UK did well is they looked at the process end and identified where the drop off was,” Shacklady adds. “They focused on where they could increase efficiencies, and then they sought technologies, like Sense, to align and fix those problems.”

After discussing the implementation of different strategies, the tangible impacts on recruitment success, and many more important discussion points, Cole and Shakelady concluded the session by sharing their key takeaways from the webinar.

Discover more by watching this exclusive session replay.

Watch the replay