The Most Desirable Skills Of A Care Worker And How To Recruit Them

Care work is built on human connection. Whether it s supporting older adults, people with disabilities, or individuals with complex needs, the quality of care relies on the personal strengths and behaviours that care workers bring to their roles. The skills of a care worker shape every interaction - how someone listens, comforts, encourages independence, and ensures dignity. They also directly influence care outcomes, staff satisfaction and retention, and the overall reputation of a service.

In a sector facing ongoing recruitment challenges, understanding which skills truly make a difference, and how to spot them, is important. Below, we explore the most important care worker skills and offer practical guidance on recruiting candidates who can deliver compassionate, person‑centred care.

When recruiting a new member of a care working team, there are a number of key attributes that may not be initially considered but can help care workers find the best person for the role. These include being able to relate to people from a variety of backgrounds, patience and a sense of humour.

These are vital skills of a care worker because staff spend a lot of time with the same care recipients. For some of these individuals, they will have little or no contact with anyone else most days, so a good working relationship is crucial.

Core Skills

There are no mandatory qualifications for care workers. However, all new care workers should be inducted using:

• The Care Certificate in England
• The SSSC codes of practice in Scotland
• The All Wales Induction Framework for Health and Social Care (AWIF) in Wales
• The NISCC Induction Programme in Northern Ireland

Experience in health and social care is often the most prized asset for those seeking to employ a new care worker. It is undoubtedly important, as research in The Hidden Dynamics of Homecare has demonstrated.

However, there are many great care workers to be found in younger cohorts, and where a candidate lacks experience, using values based recruitment combined with exercises to look for the core skills below will enable you to find and hire great care workers with the right skills.  

English Skills

Although foreign languages can be extremely valuable when caring for those with none or little ability to speak English, reading and recording information and communicating with colleagues and wider teams (for example medics) requires a good level of spoken and written English.

General Employee Skills

Although we are now drifting into the territory of behaviours, skills like time management, the ability to learn from mistakes, listening and paying attention to what people are saying, responding well to challenging behaviour, stress tolerance and the ability to work well in a team are all very important skills of a care worker.

Compassion and Empathy

At the heart of care work is the ability to genuinely understand and share in another person’s experience. Compassion helps care workers offer emotional reassurance, respond sensitively to difficult moments, and build trusting relationships. Empathy can’t be taught in a classroom, but it can be recognised through a candidate’s past behaviour, personal motivations, and the examples they share during interviews. Ask scenario‑based questions such as “Tell me about a time you supported someone through something difficult”. Look for signs of emotional awareness and a desire to make a meaningful difference.

Communication Skills

Clear, calm and respectful communication underpins safe and effective care. Care workers must be able to explain tasks, listen attentively, and pick up on non‑verbal cues, especially when supporting individuals with dementia, sensory impairments or communication challenges. During interviews, pay attention to tone, clarity and active listening. Group interviews or role‑play activities can help you assess how candidates interact with others in a natural setting.

Critical Thinking

Every person receiving care has unique needs. The ability to identify small changes, respond to risks, and make thoughtful decisions is a vital care worker skill. Strong problem‑solvers can adapt quickly, keep people safe, and act with confidence when unexpected situations arise. Present hypothetical scenarios, such as noticing a sudden change in a client’s behaviour, and ask candidates what steps they would take. This helps reveal their judgement and understanding of person‑centred care.

These core skills can be combined into an assessment that can be used as part of your candidate selection process. For example, create a scenario that is common but challenging in care, like a person is refusing to take their medication and says they have already taken it themselves in the morning.

Ask the candidate to describe how they would handle the situation. They should show how they might utilise skills in managing challenging behaviour and stress tolerance given the difficult nature of the situation.

They should also use their number skills to review the eMAR/MAR chart against how many medicines are left, to see if the person has indeed taken their medicines or is confused or not telling the truth.

They should then be able to suggest or guess, depending on their experience, suitable actions, such as trying to reason with the person to take their medicines, stressing why it is important that they do so and ideally recording an incident note. The latter will demonstrate their written English communication skills.

The overall way in which the person responds to both the task and your prompts/directions you give as they work through the task will also reveal how much they pay attention and listen. Although this might sound like a low-level skill it is rare to find people who base their actions fully or mostly on what another person is telling them.

Paying attention to this degree can firstly help care workers avoid making mistakes It will also help them identify hidden issues a person in their care may be having.

Using scenario based tasks like this can help you to understand to what extent a candidate has both the values and the skills they need to deliver safe, compassionate, high quality care for the people your organisation cares for. 

Recruiters must be able to spot the following skills in candidates for them to be able to be moved forwards in the process:

• A natural passion for care. Some days the job may be challenging, and care workers tend to work long shifts, so even on bad days, they should still be passionate about the service they provide.
• A good work ethic. A good attitude to working in general is vital in care roles. Whether that means working an extra hour or two to complete admin tasks, or to pick up extra shifts if a colleague is unwell, a drive for working is very important in this industry.
• The ability to manage time effectively. Working in care often means having a number of things ‘on the go’ at any one time. Thankfully, with software, like that offered from The Access Group, appointments and rostering can be automated, meaning that difficult time management scenarios can be easily resolved.
• The ability to understand policies and procedures. In the care sector particularly, it is vitally important that policies are followed. This keeps the working environment for both care worker and care recipient safe and compliant. Staff must be able to adapt as quickly as changes are made. This applies to CQC guidelines too, and staff must be willing to learn on the job in order to practice safely.

How do you recruit the right care worker?

Social media has become a powerful tool and is arguably now the best way to recruit candidates who already live or work in a particular local area.

Beyond that, identifying pull factors which will appeal to potential recruits is also critical, such as providing quality training as standard. Appealing to an energised, hard-working group will help to improve the quality and quantity of applicants for open posts. Along with positive working conditions, flexible working and competitive pay rates can encourage potential candidates to enquire.

While experience is of course valuable, it may not directly translate to diligence and skills if it has been accrued without a passion for caring. Although skills are important, they can be taught on the job. When recruiting, employers should look for individuals that have a clear passion and ideally an understanding of the importance of professional standards in healthcare.

Premier Care, a home care provider with over 20 years of experience, dramatically improved its hiring efficiency after implementing Access Screening. Before the change, the organisation relied on multiple disconnected systems and a heavily manual process for candidate checks. This created significant admin pressure, a high risk of errors, and ongoing concerns about compliance in a tightly regulated sector.

By adopting Access Screening, Premier Care streamlined its entire vetting and onboarding workflow. Candidates now complete their own details through a branded portal, reducing admin workload and ensuring consistent, CQC‑compliant checks. The platform’s reusable workflows and compliance dashboard helped the team monitor progress easily and minimise delays.

As a result, Premier Care shortened candidate turnaround by two weeks, saved the equivalent of a full admin role, and significantly improved accuracy and compliance. The team also reported excellent support from Access Screening, with quick responses and guidance whenever needed.

Read the full case study here.

The most effective care workers bring far more than qualifications or experience. The combination of empathy, clear communication, resilience, and practical competence creates the foundation for truly person‑centred support. When these care worker skills come together, they help people feel understood, respected and safe. And for individuals receiving care, that sense of trust can be life‑changing.

For care providers, investing time in recognising and nurturing these qualities is a powerful way to strengthen your service. Thoughtful recruitment, values‑based interviews and supportive onboarding all play a part, but so does choosing the right tools. When your hiring processes are consistent, fair and efficient, you can focus more energy on what matters most: finding people with the heart and dedication to deliver exceptional care.

That’s where the right screening solution can make a real difference. Access Screening for Care helps organisations quickly and confidently identify candidates who align with their values, meet compliance requirements and demonstrate the behaviours needed to thrive in care roles. With smoother vetting, less admin and faster time‑to‑hire, you can build a team you can trust, without compromising on safety or quality.

If you’re ready to bring more compassionate, skilled and reliable people into your service, explore how Access Screening for Care can support your recruitment journey.