The short version: in Tasmania’s small aged care labour market, a recommendation from a current staff member often beats a job board listing on speed, cost and fit.
Most aged care providers still put their recruitment budget where the ads are. Job boards, agency fees, the occasional social media push. Meanwhile the best hire of the year came in because a current staff member mentioned the role to a friend from their old ward.
That is not a coincidence specific to any one facility. Referral hiring performs well in most markets, and the effect is sharper in a small one like Tasmania’s aged care sector, where anyone senior enough to be worth hiring already knows several people in the industry.
The economics are hard to argue with
The average cost to hire an employee in Australia sits around $23,860 and takes roughly 40 days to fill a vacancy, once direct, indirect and soft costs are counted. Employee referrals, by comparison, typically cost between two and six per cent of the role’s salary, a fraction of what an agency placement or extended job board campaign runs to. For an aged care RN role, that is the difference between a four-figure cost and a genuinely material one.
Why referrals also tend to stick
Cost is only half the argument. A referred candidate arrives with a more accurate picture of the job, because they heard it from someone actually doing it, not from a polished ad. They also arrive with a built-in support person on day one. Both factors show up in the research as genuine retention advantages for referral hires over other recruitment channels, which matters more in aged care than most sectors given how expensive and disruptive turnover is.
| Channel | Typical cost | What it’s good for |
|---|---|---|
| Job boards | Ad spend plus screening time | Volume, broad reach, casting a wide net |
| Recruitment agency | 15 to 20 percent of salary, or a flat fee | Speed on hard-to-fill or senior roles |
| Employee referral | 2 to 6 percent of salary | Cost, cultural fit, faster ramp-up, better retention |
The honest limitation, and how to manage it
Referral-heavy hiring has a real downside: it can narrow your pool to people who look and think like your existing team, which is a genuine risk in a sector that increasingly relies on internationally trained and culturally diverse staff. The fix is not abandoning referrals, it is running them deliberately alongside broader channels rather than letting them happen by accident.
- Ask directly, don’t wait for it to happen: a simple staff message when a role opens often outperforms a formal program
- Consider a modest referral bonus, it rarely needs to be large to work in a tight-knit workforce
- Pair referral hiring with at least one broader channel per role to protect diversity of applicants
- Track where your best long-term hires came from, most providers have never looked
A job board finds you an applicant. A referral often finds you someone who already knows what the job is really like.
The bottom line
None of this means dropping job boards or agency support, particularly for specialist or urgent roles. It means recognising that in a small market like Tasmanian aged care, your own workforce is one of your most under-used recruitment channels, and treating it that way deliberately rather than hoping it happens on its own.
If you would like a recruitment approach shaped around your own Tasmanian labour market, Community Health Connect is glad to talk it through. Every search is handled personally.
Get in touch