6 Healthcare Recruitment Strategies to Draw in High-Performing Workers

Healthcare companies have encountered tremendous challenges in the previous two years. Since February 2020, hospital employment has dropped by roughly 94,000 jobs, according to Emsi statistics, which predicts a severe shortage of 3.2 million healthcare employees by 2026.

Healthcare recruitment is becoming more difficult as the population ages and job seekers have ample options at their disposal.

According to research, this is also one of the reasons healthcare workers were the most in-demand employees for 2019, and this trend is expected to continue. Staffing shortages in the healthcare business are predicted to worsen through 2030, as there are more job opportunities at present than quality candidates.

Healthcare organizations must develop robust recruiting strategies to attract high-performing employees while lowering turnover and increasing engagement.

Several successful ways to attract healthcare professionals who may make meaningful contributions to your organization are discussed below.

Six Creative Healthcare Recruitment Techniques

1. Promote Your Job Descriptions to the Upcoming Workforce

Every healthcare organization should post healthcare jobs on job boards to attract qualified candidates.

It’s also critical to build partnerships with academic institutions. This gives you a competitive advantage because while many outstanding applicants left the healthcare profession totally in 2021, enrollment in medical schools and nursing programs surged significantly in the previous year.

Unlike other industries, the healthcare industry necessitates intensive training for a significant portion of its personnel. Therefore, fostering partnerships is essential to building a unique, high-converting recruitment process.

In an American Medical Association webinar, Dr. Susan Turney of Marshfield Clinic Health System (WI) spoke on how talent recruitment is particularly difficult for her organization’s rural health system.

Marshfield teamed up with the University of Wisconsin School of Nursing to provide on-site training, resulting in a talent pipeline that will aid in the hiring and retaining of highly qualified employees. Truney’s health system also collaborates with the University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point to give clinical training to students enrolled in academic programs at the university.

Some companies have gone above and beyond to improve their recruitment processes.

Norton Healthcare, a Kentucky-based health company, teamed up with Jefferson County Public Schools to form a high school academy. With the long-term goal of solving future employee retention concerns, the academy offers work shadowing, internships, and volunteer opportunities.

2. Establish a Priority to Hire From Within

According to an SHRM survey performed before COVID-19 took the globe by storm, 46% of HR professionals said it was “very challenging” to fill full-time employment for high-skilled medical positions like nurses, doctors, and specialists.

Another 35% said it was “quite challenging” to find someone to fill those positions. This is primarily due to the occupation’s quick growth rate and perceived scarcity of talent in the employment market.

Employees will leave if they are unable to advance within your company.

Continuous learning, special projects, training programs, and other stretch assignments can all be beneficial in hiring existing talent rather than external candidates to fill roles that benefit the organization while satisfying employees’ desires for progress.

• You’ll reward highly engaged, productive employees for their efforts if you hire from inside.
• The technique demonstrates to other workers that professional advancement is achievable.
• You’ll also keep organizational knowledge and people, lowering training and onboarding expenditures.

Performance reviews and career development surveys can be beneficial when promoting workers. You’ll need to determine if employees stay engaged following promotions, if engagement rises within their department and if your career development initiatives are delivering the expected results. 

3. Your Job Postings Should Be Updated

To save time, several companies use templates for their job postings. This is a quick and easy approach to publishing a job opening.

However, as your firm expands and scales, the position you’re advertising will very certainly alter as well. Make sure your job titles are constantly updated so that the role matches the new hire’s skillset.

According to research by Hinge Research Institute, 63% of healthcare professionals look at a company’s website while looking for a job, and 84% examine the brand and culture they find there.

It would be best if you also used this time to define your career goals.

Are there any certifications required for this position? Is this a position for someone fresh out of school, or does it require some real-world experience? Make sure your job posting clearly defines the expectations to ensure you’re attracting the correct people for the job.

4. Participate in the Creation of Content

Developing your social media presence is essential to any healthcare recruitment strategy. It provides a cause for candidates (the vast majority of whom are inactive) to visit your pages.

Post industry-specific content to keep them informed about your company’s activities, employment, hiring events, and more. Remember to talk about what makes you distinct in your posts! Play up a smaller market’s picturesque environment; highlight hiring bonuses; offer continuing education programs, recognition, and awards; and leverage employee testimonials. 

Join Facebook groups like nurses to post jobs, initiate conversations, and build relationships with the people you’ll be hiring. Don’t dismiss the importance of social interaction. Like, share, and repost other people’s posts and leave comments on them. These are examples of methods to engage with followers who are engaging with you.

Maintaining an active social media presence gives candidates a complete picture of your company. It keeps you top of mind while vying for top talent. With so much noise in the environment, these approaches will help you stand out and be more innovative in your healthcare hiring tactics.

5. Focus on Online Skill & Behavioral Assessments and Predictive Learnability

The healthcare sector encompasses a wide range of professions that necessitate a wide range of highly certified and skilled professionals. Whereas nurses may require psychometric testing, doctors and physicians require behavioral examinations. As a result, extremely accurate skill assessments are necessary to qualify such people to identify suitable talent.

According to a poll performed by Health eCareers, 37% of recruiters stated it takes longer to find qualified personnel in the healthcare and pharmaceutical industries. The inability to find a qualified professional was cited by 50% of them as the cause.

Pre-screening online evaluations relieve you of the stress of manually evaluating hundreds of unqualified candidates.

A medical recruiter can send candidates the appropriate type of assessment for their function (technical exams, behavioral tests, personality tests, essay and grammar tests, and so on). Once a set amount of time has passed, you will automatically receive a list of all the candidates who qualify.

Such tests can assist you in identifying candidates who are qualified for the position while also providing insight into the person’s hidden potential. Along with its difficulties, this AI-powered pre-recruitment assessment tool offers a Learnability Index (LI). The LI is a highly accurate predictor of a person’s ability to learn and improve and a report on their performance and potential skill.

Such procedures are critical in reducing the danger of a bad hire and raising the likelihood that your company will outperform its competitors in the long run.

6. Achieve Scale Through Automation

According to predictions from the US Labor Department, the healthcare industry is expected to add 3.8 million new employment by 2024, making it the most critical growth engine in the US economy for the next decade.

With COVID-19, the demand for nurses, front-line personnel, and doctors is already strong. When you combine it with the ever-increasing need for better healthcare facilities throughout time, this demand will only expand.

You can now automate practically all of your hiring process with the help of technology. Even if modern recruitment software shares half of the hiring effort, you may easily quadruple your reach and talent pool while lowering your workload and time.

Not only that but owing to online standardized testing, recruitment automation ensures that you get excellent prospects even when hiring in quantity. The program will not qualify any candidate who does not meet all of your requirements, ensuring that you have a uniform pool of candidates for the job.

You’re missing out on possibilities to increase employee engagement, minimize turnover, and boost healthcare recruiting if you don’t engage in active discussion with your employees and applicants. Contact us today to learn more about how Recruiter.com can help your company hire more successfully.

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