Attitude checklist: Applicant insights for aged care

When continuity of care is so critical for the elderly, it's essential to hire aged care workers with the right temperament who are in it for the long haul.

Why soft skills matter in aged care

When talking about recruitment, we often talk about the concept of 'hard' skills and 'soft' skills. Hard skills are the technical knowledge and qualifications required to perform a role. Meanwhile, soft skills are the attitudes and interpersonal skills that enable someone to interact effectively with others and work well in a team.

Hard skills typically come with certificates, so they're the kind of skills which are much easier to see on a resume. That can be frustrating, because it's the critical soft skills that often determine whether someone is a great candidate for a role.

There are few industries where soft skills are as important as they are aged care. It's right there in the name, aged 'care' relies not just on the hard skills of knowing how to medically treat someone, but also the soft skills of knowing how to care for someone.

Unfortunately, aged care facilities regularly struggle with high staff turnover, which disrupts the continuity of care for residents. This can be very unsettling for the elderly people who benefit from seeing familiar friendly faces.

The new Aged Care Act (starting 1 Nov 2025) is about delivering care that enables dignity, autonomy, and quality of life. With reputational risk at stake, aged care providers must ensure staff are able to meet these higher expectations of empathy, listening and communication.

Addressing the challenge of high staff turnover in aged care facilities goes right back to the hiring process. If you're simply flicking through resumes and glancing at hard skills to decide who gets an interview, you'll struggle to find applicants who are both qualified and a great fit.

Related article: You think you know me from my resume, but you don't

Find carers with the right temperament

Amid the aged care skills shortage, it's tempting to snap up anyone who seems even half-qualified. The problem is that placing too much faith in resumes means you often fail to gain a true picture of the candidate.

Just because someone has the word 'care' listed on the resume, in a qualification or previous job title, doesn't mean they're actually well-suited to a caring role.

Along with the right qualifications and experience, aged care workers also need the right disposition. Otherwise they're less likely to connect with the people they're caring for and more likely to quit after a while, putting you right back where you started.

Working in aged care requires someone with the right temperament, who is unfailingly kind and also unflappable with a calm and patient demeanour.

This kind of temperament demands empathy and emotional intelligence, so aged care staff can meet the mental, physical and emotional needs of elderly residents. Obviously, this empathy is built on strong communication and listening skills.

Of course, working in aged care doesn't just require a caring nature. Aged care roles also require a high degree of self-management, with the ability to adhere to care plans and policies in order to ensure consistency and quality of care.

Related article: Smart predictive tech meets talent demand for aged care

Discover hidden gems beyond the resume

With all that in mind, you're very unlikely to identify the best applications by simply flicking through a pile of resumes.

Instead of just relying on resumes, Expr3ss! uses short surveys to quickly and cost-effectively pinpoint job applicants with the right skills, attitudes, temperament and cultural fit for the role. It's especially valuable in aged care, with the ability to tailor the questions to ensure applicants unambiguously address the requirements of the job.

The surveys typically take around six minutes, while ensuring that the best applicants make it through to the interview stage, not just those who seem to have the best hard skills. 

If the survey results point to a candidate's potential attitude problems, then you know exactly where to focus your attention during the interview.

This kind of insight also helps when talking to a candidate's list of references. A candidate's referee might be reluctant to mention their bad attitude but, if you get on the front foot with the right behavioural questions, you'd be surprised how often referees open up and tell you about temper tantrums and other reasons why the candidate really wasn't a good fit for their previous job.

Related Case Study: Q&A: disAbility Living

Hire on attitude, then train for skill

With a shortage of aged care workers, you also need the ability to find those hidden gems who might be a bit rough around the edges but are well-suited to the role. That's where Expr3ss! excels.

Remember, it's much easier to improve the skills of an eager worker with a good attitude than it is to improve the temperament of a highly-skilled worker with a bad attitude.

With a shortage of aged care workers, some aged care facilities try to address their staffing needs by hiring students. They might fill an immediate need, but it's a bad long-term strategy because these students often lack a long-term commitment to the role.

Once again, using Expr3ss! to ask insightful questions up front can help you determine an applicant's long-term ambitions and whether you can expect them to stick around.

When great aged care workers are so hard to find, hiring staff without considering their attitudes and temperament is a recipe for disaster. If you want to ensure continuity of care, it's important to ask your new carers the right questions before they walk in the door.