NDIS and aged care marketing
Recruiting
support workers.
Care providers are competing for workers as much as clients. Job ads for aged and disabled carers ran 70.7% above the 2019 average in April 2025, and 45% were outside capital cities. The occupation is in persistent shortage, mainly because people leave. So recruitment marketing works best when it's local, honest about the job, fast to respond, and measured on who stays, not who applies.
Written by Dan Picken, a marketer who checks the sources. Last checked 2 November 2026.The shortage,
in numbers.
Jobs and Skills Australia found 3,500 job ads for aged and disabled carers in April 2025, 70.7% above the 2019 average, with over 360,000 people employed and growth of 16.7% projected to May 2029. It describes a persistent shortage driven mainly by retention.
The good news is in the same data: in the Aged Care Worker Survey 2024, with more than 21,000 responses, 65% said they want to keep working in aged care. People who stay are worth looking after.
Recruit
locally.
45% of carer job ads are outside capital cities, against about 30% for all jobs. A support worker usually wants work close to home, so search and social ads aimed at the suburbs you serve often beat a national job board.
A careers page on your own site, with a page per role and location, gives those ads somewhere to land. Google's job posting structured data helps the roles show in Google's job search features.
What a hire
really costs.
Cost per applicant flatters every channel. What matters is the cost of a hire who's still there in three months, after screening, interviews, onboarding and early leavers.
Hire cost
What does a hire
who stays cost?
Put in your own numbers. The starting ones are made up.
Cost per hire still there after 3 months
-
Plan for
screening time.
Workers in risk-assessed roles at registered NDIS providers need an NDIS Worker Screening clearance. Over 1.48 million people now hold one, but a new applicant without one adds time before they can start.
Say in the ad whether you help with screening and what it costs the applicant, if anything. Then keep in touch while they wait, or you'll lose them to a provider who calls first.
What to
say.
Be honest about the work: the hours, travel, pay rate, how shifts are offered, and the support new workers get. People leave when the job isn't what the ad promised.
Show real staff, with permission, and let them say what the work is like. Keep client details out of it.
Reply
the same day.
Applicants for support work often apply to several providers in a week. The provider who calls first, books a short chat and explains the next steps usually gets them.
A simple rule helps: every applicant hears from a real person within one business day, even if it's only to say when the interview will be.
Keeping them
is recruitment too.
Every worker who stays is one less to replace. Ask leavers why, and ask stayers what keeps them. The answers make better ads than anything an agency writes.
What I see most often
What I'd check first
in a provider's recruitment.
- 1
Applicants left waiting
Applications that wait days for a reply, while other providers call the same day.
- 2
One job ad for every role
The same ad for every role and region, with nothing about the area or the shifts.
- 3
Measured on applicants
Reports that count applications, not hires who stayed.
The honest bit. Marketing can fill the top of the funnel. It can't fix pay, rosters or how new workers are treated, and those decide who stays.
Questions
people ask.
Where is the best place to advertise support worker jobs?
Locally, where the work is. 45% of carer job ads are outside capital cities, so local search, social ads and your own careers page often beat national boards.
Is there a shortage of support workers in Australia?
Yes. Jobs and Skills Australia describes a persistent shortage driven mainly by retention.
Do support workers need a screening check?
Workers in risk-assessed roles at registered NDIS providers need an NDIS Worker Screening clearance.
How do I measure recruitment marketing?
By cost per hire who stays, not cost per applicant. The calculator above works it out from your own numbers.
Related
Keep
going.
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