Executive Summary
Like many senior living operators, Solera Senior Living faces persistent frontline staffing challenges driven by slow response times to applicants, inconsistent screening, and prolonged vacancies that strain on-site teams. To address these issues, Solera piloted a more disciplined hiring process at its Edgeworth Park community. Over three months, 4.3× more frontline employees were hired compared to publicly reported industry benchmarks, while significantly reducing 90-day turnover, without changing wages, job postings, or market conditions.
The Challenge
Before the pilot, Edgeworth Park historically a challenging site for recruitment experienced several operational pain points common across the industry:
- The Response Gap: Applicants were often reached days after applying, by which time many had already accepted roles with faster-moving competitors.
- Missed Candidates: High applicant volume created screening backlogs, leading to qualified candidates falling through the cracks.
- Inconsistent Screening: Evaluation criteria varied with recruiter availability and style, resulting in unpredictable quality in on-site interviews.
Leadership recognized that these issues were less about applicant supply and more about process execution and consistency.
Pilot Scope and Baseline
- Location: Edgeworth Park, Solera Senior Living
- Duration: 3-month pilot
- Roles: Frontline hourly positions
- Baseline: Benchmarked against the community’s performance in the prior quarter and industry standards.
- Control Factors: Wage rates, job postings/boards, and market conditions remained unchanged during the pilot to isolate the impact of process changes.
Process Change
Rather than introducing new roles or increasing compensation, Solera focused on tightening hiring discipline. The pilot introduced three core process changes:
- Immediate candidate engagement
Every applicant was contacted within minutes of applying, regardless of time of day. - Standardized screening criteria
All candidates were evaluated using the same structured screening questions, ensuring consistency across interviews. - Direct scheduling into the existing workflow
Qualified candidates were scheduled for on-site interviews without manual follow-up or handoffs.
MemoMate was used to operationalize this process directly within Solera’s existing ATS, ensuring consistency without adding recruiter workload.
Key Results
The results below reflect outcomes observed exclusively at Edgeworth Park during the pilot period.
| Metric | Solera Result | Industry Benchmark (from chart, p. 3) | Improvement |
| Interview Completion | 42% (357 of 853 applicants) | ~9%* | 4.7x Higher |
| Hire Ratio | 13% (46 hires) | ~3%** | 4.3x Higher |
| 90-Day Turnover | 50% | 54% | -4% |
Industry benchmark figures are derived from publicly reported sources summarized in the chart above.
Key observation:
Edgeworth Park hired 4.3× more frontline employees per completed interview than the benchmark, driven by faster response times and consistent screening, not changes in compensation or applicant volume.
Qualitative Outcomes Observed
Beyond funnel metrics, hiring managers reported meaningful operational improvements:
- Hiring managers reported that candidates arriving for on-site interviews were better vetted and had a clearer understanding of role expectations.
- By replying within minutes, the community significantly reduced the “time spent chasing” and the volume of interview no-shows.
- More predictable hiring outcomes week to week
Several team members hired through the pilot also reported a clearer understanding of role expectations earlier in the process.
What’s Next?
Following the Edgeworth Park pilot, Solera elected to expand this hiring process across its portfolio to improve hiring speed, screening consistency, and retention at scale.
Future efforts will focus on:
- Standardizing this process portfolio-wide
- Reducing time-to-fill across all frontline roles
- Improving operational stability by minimizing prolonged vacancies
Testimonials
“Partnering with MemoMate positions us to elevate our frontline hiring efforts without losing the human touch. It’s a powerful example of how well-designed AI programs can enhance the people experience and improve outcomes.”
— Adam Kaplan, CEO, Solera Senior Living
“MemoMate changed how we hire at Edgeworth Park at New Town. We are engaging more applicants, completing significantly more interviews, hiring at a much higher rate, and seeing materially lower early-tenure turnover — all with less manual effort from our team.”
— Victoria Brinkley, Executive Director, Solera Edgeworth Park
Sources
- Anecdotal*
- Careerplug, 2025, Staffinghub, 2025**