For most healthcare companies, recruiting top talent is a major business challenge and priority. Considering that 69 percent of healthcare organizations are concerned or very concerned about competing with other healthcare providers for the same candidates, it's no surprise that many of them want to improve their recruitment efforts. However, knowing how to improve their recruitment efforts is another serious challenge altogether.
If you want to win the competition for top talent, there are certain steps you can take to make your recruitment efforts more effective than your competitors’. First identify recruitment challenges that you and other healthcare providers often struggle with, and then implement strategies to overcome these challenges. Once your company eliminates these common healthcare recruitment roadblocks, you will likely attract top talent before your competitors do. To help you with this process, we identified some typical healthcare recruitment problems and crafted possible solutions:
In the hyper competitive healthcare environment, employers that pay the best often win the best candidates. As a result, healthcare companies that can’t offer competitive compensation packages miss opportunities to recruit qualified candidates. Even if they offer exceptional signing bonuses, their employees may quickly leave if another company offers them a better signing bonus down the road.
The solution: If your company can’t afford to write generous paychecks or offer bonuses, draw less attention to your compensation and more attention to your other employee benefits. If you can’t pay the best, what can you do best? Perhaps you offer incredible career growth opportunities, a laidback work environment, or a flexible work schedule. Whatever your employment brand differentiator is, emphasize it on your website and during interviews so that candidates know why they should choose you over a high-paying competitor.
Compared to most other organizations, healthcare companies often have complicated organizational structures with multiple components. Although the HR department typically manages the recruiting practices, each department usually carries out its own hiring procedures. This complicates record-keeping for HR and causes each new employee to experience a different onboarding process, resulting in a broken and inconsistent employment brand.
The solution: Fortunately, cloud-based recruiting software enables healthcare companies to centralize and simplify their recruitment and onboarding practices. With HR software, all departments can log into the same system, find and review candidates, and file records and information. As a result, a recruiting or HR manager can easily oversee each department’s hiring practices to verify that they align with the employment brand and meet industry standards.
As Select International explains, most healthcare professionals are highly trained and possess a high level of autonomy. Because they know their worth and can receive multiple offers, qualified healthcare candidates are very selective about their employers. As a result, it becomes increasingly difficult for healthcare organizations to compete for top talent--especially for hard-to-fill positions.
The solution: Instead of looking outside the company to recruit for hard-to-fill positions, consider promoting employees from within. Creating a talent pipeline leads to stronger and happier employees, and increases retention rates. Also, maintain relationships with highly trained candidates even if they turn down your offer. These relationships can help you capitalize on referral opportunities, as talented candidates generally surround themselves with other talented workers. They can also be beneficial if the candidates re-enter the job market.
During the screening process, healthcare candidates must pass multiple tests required by the profession and state. These tests tend to involve tedious and lengthy processes, which can ultimately cause applicant frustration. When healthcare companies don’t provide applicants with a succinct and manageable screening process, applicant drop-off increases. In a 2013 study conducted by HireRight Health Care Spotlight, 47 percent of healthcare respondents reported that getting timely screening results is their number one screening challenge.
The solution: Give candidates more control and visibility into the screening process so that they can easily and quickly follow your company’s hiring procedures. A full-featured screening solution can allow applicants to check their status, complete tests, view pending activities, and electronically sign documents.
By overcoming common healthcare recruitment obstacles, your company’s recruitment efforts will outshine your competitors’ so that you can attract the best candidates. As a result, your company will possess phenomenal workers that aren’t just there for the money; they are there because they love their jobs and your company.
