4 Ways to Improve Healthcare Recruiting Efforts - ApplicantStack
The article outlines four strategies to improve healthcare recruiting amid significant workforce shortages, emphasizing the development of a strong company brand and employee value proposition that highlight unique mission statements, competitive compensation, career development, and work-life balance incentives to attract and retain healthcare professionals.
Recruiters in the healthcare sector know firsthand what the statistics reveal: The United States is facing a serious shortage of healthcare workers. Burnout and career changes exacerbated by the pandemic show projections of significant physician shortages over the next decade. Pre-existing shortages in nursing and support staff continue, making healthcare recruiting a unique challenge.
Through 2032, the BLS projects huge growth rate numbers in occupations like nurse practitioner (45 percent), physician’s assistants (27 percent), and speech language pathologists (19 percent). Projected job growth for registered nurses is at nearly 175,000, with physical therapists at nearly 38,000. Each of these providers requires support staff like assistants, lab technicians, and medical records clerks, making the field wide open in seeking new hires.
For your organization to improve healthcare hiring, consider a systematic approach to your recruitment. Here are some ways to boost your efforts.
Develop a Healthcare Recruiting Strategy
A recruitment strategy is made up of the building blocks of company identity and culture. Consider some of the following:
- Craft a Strong Company Brand. Healthcare differs from other sectors like retail or technology in that selling is not the primary goal. So then what is your primary goal? Craft a mission statement that’s specific and easy to understand by someone being introduced to your organization for the first time. What makes your healthcare different from another and what makes you interesting to prospective candidates?
- Craft an Employee Value Proposition. The EVP is the salary and benefits package that makes you stand out in the crowd of eager healthcare employers. Beyond compensation and standard benefits like health care, other incentives might include career development opportunities, recognition with bonuses, a path to career advancement, work-life balance rewards like gym memberships, generous paid time off policies, or remote work flexibility.
- Maintain Communication During the Hiring Process. A whopping 81 percent of candidates surveyed by Career Builder said “continuous continuous status updates would greatly improve their overall experience.” Even if sheer volume makes that a hard goal to meet, it’s worth considering how your company can improve this metric. A tool like ApplicantStack can help you organize every job applicant and give a clear picture of where they are in the process. From the tool you can send emails or text messages and have an instant record of your communication.
- Build Out a Strong Onboarding Program. Even seasoned healthcare workers need time to learn the systems and practices of a new company. A thoughtful and organized onboarding program can help new employees feel welcome, avoid being overwhelmed on day one, and allow reasonable time to integrate and take on a full complement of tasks.
Find Many Paths to Healthcare Recruiting
- Create an Employee Referral Program. When you’re meeting the needs of your existing employees, they can become your best tool in attracting top talent. Who better to advertise your company but those who find it challenging and rewarding? Consider compensating employees for referrals that turn into hires.
- Focus on Internal Mobility. Just as current employees are great recruiters, existing talent is a great pool to choose from for promotions. External recruiting costs time and money; by some estimates it can take up to 100 days from posting to offer. Support roles in healthcare present opportunities for managerial and supervisory roles. Current employees can be a great fit for those jobs since they know the systems inside and out. Internal mobility shows your commitment to an employee’s continued success and professional goals and should be met with concrete actions. Shortages in healthcare hiring may mean slotting people into temporary or acting leadership positions to fill a desperate need. But without assurances like a pay increase, renewed contracts, or commensurate benefits, you can lose your most valuable asset in a shortage: trained, committed employees. A reasonable workload, reliable schedule, and appropriate compensation are vital parts to a positive internal hiring experience.
- Foster Relationships with Colleges and Universities. A survey by CCRC found that community colleges “hold the largest market share of program offerings in four instructional program groups: Mental/Social Health (76 percent), Allied Health (Diagnostic, Intervention, Treatment) (68 percent), Clinical/Medical Laboratory Science (69 percent), and Practical Nursing (58 percent).” With these institutions training the majority of the prospective candidates for a huge range of healthcare jobs, a recruiting relationship is a vital avenue for finding eager candidates ready to start their healthcare careers.
Organize Your Candidate Pools by Category
In a stagnant job market, companies may have their pick of candidates from a large pool of similarly-qualified individuals. In the more challenging sector of healthcare, recruiting managers may need to get creative and look for attributes beyond just degrees and experience. Consider the many valuable and important soft skills that a prospective employee can offer. Unlike passing a test in school, these attributes can be harder to learn and, for some people, come naturally:
- Problem-solving
- Time management
- Multitasking
- Conflict resolution
- Adaptability
- Integrity
- Fast learner
- Empathy
- Negotiation
Much like you would categorize candidates by their education and experience, consider grouping people by their soft skills. A person with these attributes may be worth taking a chance to hire, even if they may need some additional training time. ApplicantStack is a perfect tool to keep track of a candidate’s many qualifications.
Focus on Retention
According to the CDC, 46 percent of healthcare workers reported feeling burned out in 2022, up from 32 percent in 2018. And 44 percent of healthcare workers intended to look for a new job in 2022, up from 33 percent in 2018. The pandemic understandably changed the way many healthcare workers view their place in the job market, and dissatisfaction and worker shortages follow.
While companies will always need to fill employment gaps, tending to the workers you already have is a vital aspect of long-term stability. Viewing the causes of worker burnout with empathy and understanding may inspire you to change benefit packages, offer more flexibility with time off, or offer clear paths to career development. Making sure all roles are filled ensures existing staff aren’t called upon to fill extra shifts or cover for sick employees. When employees feel undervalued and overused, retention numbers fall.
Challenges in healthcare hiring demand open-mindedness, creativity, and organization from recruiters. Increasing demand combined with worker burnout make for a competitive environment for attracting top talent. For savvy hiring managers, a focused recruitment strategy includes an ATS like ApplicantStack to give a holistic picture of each candidate and keep lines of communication open.
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