From 4 hires to 27 in a single month

The problem: growing fast, hiring slow

This provider runs residential care homes across England. By January this year, they had grown to 12 homes — up from 9 the year before. More homes meant more vacancies. But their recruitment team hadn't grown with them.

The numbers told the story. In January last year, across 9 homes, they made just 4 new hires. That's 0.44 hires per home. For an industry with annual turnover rates above 25%, that pace wasn't close to keeping up.

Like most care providers, the team was stretched thin. Chasing candidates. Leaving voicemails that went unanswered. Watching good applicants ghost before they ever reached an interview. The pipeline wasn't broken — it was blocked.

What changed: Lily took over the phones

When this provider started using Lily, the first thing that changed was speed. Lily contacts every applicant — by phone — within hours of their application. No waiting. No chasing. No hoping they'll call back.

And Lily doesn't stop at 5pm. 33.4% of candidates were contacted out of hours — evenings and weekends, when care workers are most likely to be free. That alone unlocked a pool of applicants the team had been missing entirely.

At a 73.2% engagement rate, Lily reached nearly three-quarters of all applicants. Before Lily, the team estimated 10–15% successful contact with candidates.

On the busiest single day, Lily made 36 screening calls. At roughly 15 minutes each, that's 9 hours of structured phone screening — with no breaks, no admin, no rota juggling. Lily handled all of it.

The results: January, one year apart

The comparison is stark. Same month. Same team. Same local market.

Even adjusting for the three additional homes, that's a 4–5x increase in hires per home, year-on-year. The growth wasn't just about having more vacancies. It was about finally being able to fill them.

Full-year hiring: a steady climb

The January figures didn't come out of nowhere. Over the previous year, as Lily bedded in, the hiring numbers climbed steadily.

Total: 144 new starters across the year — with a clear upward trend as the team and Lily found their rhythm. The first quarter averaged 5 hires per month. By Q4, it was 16.

The weekend that proved the point

When the provider first piloted Lily, the team had a backlog of roughly 1,600 applicants who had applied over the previous six months but never been contacted. Ghost applicants — people who'd shown interest and heard nothing back.

On a Friday afternoon, Lily started reaching out to all 1,600.

By Monday morning, 123 fully screened applicants were sitting in the team's dashboard, ready to action. No weekend overtime. No agency fees. Just a queue of real, screened candidates waiting for the team when they walked in.

1,600 ghost applicants contacted on a Friday. 123 screened and ready by Monday. That's the difference between a pipeline that's blocked and one that flows.

Why it worked

Three things made the difference for this provider.

Speed. Lily contacts applicants within hours, not days. In care recruitment, where Skills for Care data shows the average time-to-screen is 9 days, that speed matters. Candidates who wait a week often accept another role — or simply lose interest.

Reach. With a 73.2% engagement rate and a third of contacts happening out of hours, Lily was reaching candidates the team physically couldn't. There aren't enough hours in a working day to make 36 calls. Lily doesn't have that constraint.

Consistency. Every applicant gets the same structured screening call. Every response is scored the same way. The team spends their time on the candidates who are genuinely right for the role — not chasing people who were never going to show up.

For care providers growing across multiple sites, that combination of speed, reach, and consistency isn't a nice-to-have. It's the difference between filling rotas and running short-staffed.

Frequently asked questions

How quickly does Lily contact applicants?

Lily contacts every applicant by phone within hours of their application — including evenings and weekends. The average time-to-screen with Lily is 0.83 days, compared to a 9-day industry average.

What is a "ghost applicant" and how does Lily handle them?

Ghost applicants are people who applied for a role but were never contacted — or were contacted too late and stopped responding. Lily can re-engage these applicants at scale, as this provider demonstrated when 1,600 were contacted over a single weekend.

Does Lily work for multi-site care providers?

Yes. Lily is built for care providers of all sizes, from single homes to large multi-site operators. This provider grew from 9 to 12 homes while increasing their hires per home by 4–5x — without adding recruitment headcount.

What does Lily cost?

Lily charges a flat fee of £300 per successful hire on the End to End plan, or £99 for screening only. No subscription. No setup fee. You pay only when you hire.

How does Lily's engagement rate compare to manual outreach?

This provider reported a 73.2% engagement rate with Lily, compared to an estimated 10–15% before. The difference comes from speed (contacting candidates within hours), persistence, and reaching people outside office hours.