Your Augusta application is designed to automatically screen applicants and help your team prioritize the candidates most aligned with your hiring needs.
Keeping your qualification rules and settings up to date helps your agency:
- Create more candidate conversations
- Reduce reactive recruiting
- Prioritize applicants more effectively
- Adapt to changing client and staffing needs
Where to Make Changes
To edit your question & qualification settings:
- Go to your Augusta Dashboard
- Click the Smart Job Application tab
- Open the Qualification Rules & Settings sub-tab
From here, you can manage:
- Question Settings
- Geo Qualification Rules
- Required Qualifications
- Flexible Qualifications
Question Settings
This section allows you to configure the question prompts and answer prompts shown inside your Augusta application.
Your selections dynamically adjust the application experience for applicants.
Example
If driving is required for your agency, Augusta will ask applicants follow-up questions about: Driver’s license, Auto insurance, & Willingness to drive to/from shifts
If driving is not required, those questions are removed, and applicants may instead be asked about: Reliable transportation & Valid state ID
This helps ensure that applicants see only questions relevant to your agency’s hiring needs.
Best Practices
- Review this section whenever your hiring requirements change
- If you update your questions, make sure your qualification rules still align with your current hiring goals
- Use the Preview button at the top of the page to see exactly what applicants experience during the application process
Qualification Rules
Geo Qualification Rules
This section allows you to define how applicants are screened based on their distance from your service area(s).
Augusta calculates distance using:
- The applicant’s zip code submitted through their Augusta application
- Google Maps API distance mapping
- The center point of your configured service area(s)
You can configure mileage thresholds that automatically determine whether applicants are: Qualified, Further Review, or Disqualified
For example, you may choose to:
- Automatically qualify applicants within 10 miles
- Place applicants between 10–20 miles into Further Review
- Disqualify applicants beyond 20 miles
These settings allow your agency to define realistic travel expectations based on your actual hiring and retention patterns.
Why This Matters
Travel distance can directly impact:
- Caregiver retention
- Scheduling reliability
- Shift coverage consistency
- Call-offs and turnover
- Overall client satisfaction
While some applicants may say they are willing to travel long distances, agencies often find that long-term caregiver retention is strongest when caregivers live within a reasonable distance of their assigned service areas.
Your Geo Qualification Rules should reflect the typical travel patterns of your most successful and retained caregivers — not rare exceptions or one-off situations.
As a best practice: Configure mileage thresholds based on what is realistically sustainable for the majority of your workforce over time.
Required Qualifications
These are your agency’s non-negotiables: requirements an applicant must meet to be considered hireable.
Use Disqualified only when there is no realistic short-term workaround after recruiter review or conversation with the applicant.
Examples may include:
- Work authorization
- Driver’s license requirements
- Background check acknowledgements
- Legal age requirements
- Required certifications
Within this section, applicants can be screened as:
- Qualified (No Rule)
- Further Review
- Disqualified
Why This Matters
Required Qualifications are designed to help agencies automatically identify applicants who truly cannot meet core hiring requirements.
These should represent genuine hiring limitations — not temporary scheduling or client preference changes.
Best practice: Only use Disqualified when there is no realistic path to hire the applicant now or in the near future.
Flexible Qualifications
These are negotiable criteria that may change based on:
- Current client cases
- Scheduling needs
- Recruiter conversations
- Future staffing opportunities
Examples may include:
- Weekend availability
- Desired hours
- Overnight availability
- Experience level
- Interest in companionship-only roles
Within this section, applicants can be screened as:
- Qualified (No Rule)
- Further Review
Disqualified is intentionally not available within Flexible Qualifications.
Why This Matters
Hiring needs in home care change constantly.
New client cases begin unexpectedly, schedules shift, caregivers leave, and client hours increase or decrease regularly.
A candidate who may not align with your needs today could become a strong hire in the near future.
Flexible Qualifications are designed to help agencies:
- Avoid over-disqualifying candidates
- Create more recruiter conversations
- Build stronger long-term staffing pipelines
- Recruit proactively instead of reactively
Example
If an applicant cannot work weekends, that may not fit your current needs today.
However, if your staffing needs change next week or next month, that same applicant could become a strong hire.
Using Further Review allows your team to make case-by-case hiring decisions instead of automatically closing the door on a potentially hireable candidate.
Important Note for Existing Augusta Customers
Some existing qualification settings may still display “Disqualified” within Flexible Qualifications.
These settings will remain unchanged unless manually updated.
If a Flexible Qualification is changed from “Disqualified” to “Further Review” or “Qualified,” the “Disqualified” option will no longer appear for that setting moving forward.
This approach is designed to help agencies avoid over-disqualifying potentially hireable candidates based on short-term staffing needs while still giving your team full control over recruiter review and hiring decisions.
Final Recommendations
We recommend reviewing your qualification settings regularly to ensure they align with:
- Your current client needs
- Staffing goals
- Recruiter bandwidth
- Long-term hiring strategy
The agencies seeing the strongest hiring consistency are typically those creating more recruiter conversations and building proactive staffing pipelines instead of only recruiting for immediate openings.
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