CNA Recruitment: What It Costs and What Actually Works (2026 Data)

Last updated August 6, 2026

CNA applicants cost $6.82 each across our 2025–2026 campaigns — double a caregiver, and about 43% of an RN. That middle position is the whole problem: certified nursing assistants are the one role in healthcare being pulled in two directions at once, and most facilities are only defending against one of them.

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The CNA squeeze

Every role in healthcare recruiting competes for candidates. CNAs are unusual in that they get competed for from two directions simultaneously, by employers offering opposite things.

From above: hospitals and health systems. Better pay, better benefits, a name on a badge that carries weight. A CNA who wants a clinical career path and eventually an LPN or RN license goes this direction.

From below: home care agencies. Not below in status — below in credential requirement. Most home care roles need training, not certification. Which means every certified CNA in your market is automatically qualified for every caregiver job in it, and those jobs frequently offer flexible scheduling, one client at a time, and no assignment of twelve residents on a short-staffed hall.

It shows up in the turnover numbers. CNA turnover in skilled nursing ran 42.3% in the most recent AHCA data — the highest of any position they track, above RNs, above LPNs, above dietary and housekeeping. It's a large part of why senior living and skilled nursing costs look better on reach than they do on retention.

Recruiting can't fix a pay gap or a staffing ratio. But understanding which direction you're losing people determines what your ads should say, and most facility job postings read as though the only competitor is the facility down the road.

What CNA recruitment costs

From 21 CNA and nurse aide campaigns across four employers in 2025–2026, representing 506 applications:

Where that sits against the rest of the clinical ladder — the full cost by clinical role is broken down separately:

A CNA costs roughly twice a caregiver and less than half an RN — which tracks the size of the eligible population at each rung. Every step up the credential ladder shrinks the pool you're advertising into while the number of employers chasing it stays about the same.

A note on how solid this number is

We'd rather show you the seams than present a clean figure you can't check.

Most healthcare employers advertise CNA roles alongside other clinical positions — a single campaign for "RN / LPN / CNA" in one market. That's normal practice, but it means the CNA cost figure is partly drawn from blended campaigns.

So we split them:

The two converge closely, which is reassuring — the blended figure isn't being distorted by clinical roles hiding inside it. Dedicated CNA campaigns performed slightly better on both cost and completion, which is itself a small argument for advertising the role on its own rather than bundling it.

Strategy 1: Write against home care, not just against the facility down the road

Most CNA job postings compete on the wrong axis. They lead with the facility's mission, its awards, its team culture — positioning against other facilities.

But if you're losing CNAs to home care, none of that lands. The home care pitch is one client at a time, a schedule you help set, and no hall of twelve residents on a short-staffed evening.

Facility work has real advantages that job ads routinely fail to state:

• A predictable schedule. 7–3, 3–11, 11–7. Home care hours fluctuate with client census, and a caregiver whose client goes to hospital loses hours that week.
• No unpaid drive time. Home care involves travel between clients, usually unpaid, in your own vehicle. Facility work is one location.
• No vehicle requirement. This excludes a meaningful share of the workforce from home care entirely — particularly in markets with transit and in a workforce where 36% of direct care workers live in or near poverty.
• Colleagues. Home care is solitary. Some people prefer that; many don't.

If your CNAs are leaving for home care, those four points are your ad. Not your mission statement.

Strategy 2: Advertise CNA roles separately

Our data shows dedicated CNA campaigns outperforming blended clinical campaigns on both cost and completion — $6.28 against $7.32, and 19.8% completion against 15.6%.

The reason is straightforward. An ad for "RN / LPN / CNA — Pittsburgh" has to speak generically enough to cover three roles with different pay, different requirements and different motivations. It ends up speaking specifically to none of them.

A CNA ad can state the actual hourly rate, the actual shift, and the actual resident-to-aide ratio. That specificity is what makes people stop scrolling.

Strategy 3: Keep the application under a minute

CNA applications complete at 17.4% in our data. Caregiver applications complete at 31.3%.

Some of that gap is real — certified candidates are more selective and more often employed. But a large share is form length. CNA applications routinely ask for certification numbers, issue and expiry dates, full employment history and sometimes a resume upload, at the front of the process.

Consider where the person is when they see your ad: on a break, on a phone, possibly on facility wifi that barely works. They may not have their certification number memorized. They almost certainly don't have a resume on their phone.

Ask what disqualifies, not what verifies. For most CNA roles that's four questions:

1. Do you hold an active CNA certificate, and in which state?
2. Which shifts can you work?
3. Do you have reliable transportation?
4. How many years have you worked in a facility setting?

Certification numbers, references and background paperwork all get verified after you've spoken — the way they always did.

The arithmetic here is worth internalizing: cost per applicant is cost per click divided by completion rate. Raising CNA completion from 17% to 25% would cut your cost per applicant by roughly a third, with no change to spend, targeting or creative. We cover how the application affects your cost in more detail, with the funnel broken out by role.

Strategy 4: Reach the CNAs who aren't looking

The number of CNAs actively searching in your market this week is small and every facility in the area is bidding on them. That's why job board costs climb exactly when you most need to hire.

The CNA you actually want is working days at a facility twenty minutes away. She'd move for a better shift differential, a shorter drive, or a manager who doesn't call her on days off. She's not browsing job boards — she's on her phone like everybody else.

That's the entire case for paid social in this category: it doesn't require search intent. And it's why the approach performs relatively better in thinner markets, where a job board may produce nothing at all in a given week because nobody there searched.

Strategy 5: Call the same day

CNAs apply to several employers in one sitting. The facility that calls back within minutes is talking to somebody still thinking about changing jobs. The facility that calls Thursday about a Tuesday application is calling somebody who already accepted an offer.

This matters more for CNAs than for higher-credentialed roles, because the alternatives are close substitutes. If three facilities and two home care agencies in your market pay within a dollar of each other, response speed is your differentiator.

Automated SMS on submission holds attention until a person can call. Measure your median time from application to first human contact in minutes — most facilities that measure it for the first time are surprised.

What recruiting won't fix

Worth stating plainly, because CNA turnover at 42.3% is not primarily a recruiting problem.

• Staffing ratios. The most-cited reason CNAs leave facility work. No ad changes how many residents are on the hall.
• Pay below market. If home care agencies in your area pay two dollars more for less physically demanding work, advertising surfaces that faster and more expensively.
• Mandated overtime. A significant driver of burnout and departure in skilled nursing.
• Supervisor relationships. The most common reason people leave any job.

What recruiting does is give you enough flow to be selective, and enough screening to hire people the schedule actually fits. Those matter — but they're a portion of the retention picture, not the whole of it.

Frequently asked questions

Figures come from 21 Boostpoint-managed CNA and nurse aide campaigns across four employers, 2025 through mid-2026, representing 506 applications — drawn from a wider set of 478 healthcare campaigns across 30 employers. Costs are what advertisers paid, inclusive of campaign management, and cover advertising only. The CNA sample is smaller than our caregiver and RN samples and should be read as directional. Turnover figures are third-party industry estimates and cited as such. This is a sample of Boostpoint campaigns, not an industry-wide study.

Related: Healthcare Recruiting · What It Costs to Recruit an RN vs LPN vs CNA · Senior Living Staffing · Caregiver Turnover