How do I find out which shifts a caregiver can actually work before I hire them?
Ask concretely, at the moment they apply, and get it on record. An application checkbox says "available"; a real conversation surfaces "weekends are good, evenings are hard, I pick up my daughter at 6." Anna, Talent Pronto's AI interviewer, asks every applicant which shifts and days they can cover, how far they'll drive, and when they can start, then flags the constraints right on their scorecard so you never staff a case around availability that was never real.
"Available" is doing a lot of work on that application
Availability is where caregiver hiring quietly fails. An applicant checks "weekends" meaning every other weekend, or "evenings" meaning until her daughter's pickup at 6, or "full-time" meaning once her other agency cuts her hours. You hire against the checkbox, build a client schedule around it, and the mismatch surfaces as a call-off in week two, which in home care means a client without coverage. Availability mismatches sit behind a large share of first-quarter quits, and they're the most preventable kind: the applicant knew the answer the whole time. Nobody asked precisely.
Ask like a scheduler, not like a form
Anna interviews every applicant the minute they apply and treats availability as a conversation, because that's what it takes:
- Which shifts and which days, named against what you're staffing: weekend mornings, weekday evenings, overnights.
- The constraint behind the answer. A vague "mostly flexible" gets a follow-up, and "I pick up my daughter at 6" comes out before hiring instead of after.
- Geography. How far they'll drive, which changes what their availability is worth to your caseload.
- Start date, including notice owed elsewhere.
Answers land on the scorecard as flags you can see at a glance: a strong applicant might show "CNA, current; car and license; weekends only." She's still strong. You just staff her where she can actually show up. There's a live example of exactly this conversation on the home care page.
Match to the case, not just the bar
Because every applicant's real availability is on record, the shortlist becomes schedulable, and your hiring flips from "is this person qualified" to "which open case does this person fit." That's the decision you were always making; now you make it before the offer, with the constraints written down by the applicant instead of remembered from a call.
Common follow-up questions
Is this the same as interviewing candidates on weekends?
No, though Anna does that too. That page is about when the interview happens; this is about what she asks: whether the caregiver can work the weekend shifts you need covered.
What if someone's availability changes between applying and hiring?
Their answer is timestamped in the transcript, which makes the check-in on the offer call quick: "you told Anna weekends work; is that still right?" You're confirming a written answer instead of asking cold.
Can I set my availability requirements per job?
Yes. Each posting carries its own shifts and coverage area, and Anna asks against that job's needs, so a weekend-overnight posting screens differently than a weekday-mornings one.
Do applicants mind the detailed questions?
They rate the conversation 4.7 out of 5. Concrete questions read as a real agency describing a real job, and the applicants they deter are the ones whose availability was fiction.
