Like many industries, the healthcare sector is continuing to adapt to rapid technological advancements, growing economic pressures and uncertainty, and increased expectations for virtual service delivery and flexibility in the workplace.
Zooming in from this macro outlook, pervasive recruitment challenges are still affecting healthcare TA teams, making it difficult to fill necessary roles. Challenges such as an aging workforce, burnout, turnover, and ongoing shortage of clinical staff, with a projected potential global shortage of 10 million health workers by 2030.
But it’s not all doom and gloom. Healthcare TA teams are demonstrating remarkable resilience by tailoring proactive recruitment strategies, focusing on retention, and leveraging technology to do more with less – and increasingly, by using a data-driven approach to maximize effectiveness.
If you’re looking to engage top healthcare talent, consider capitalizing on these leading trends to enhance your organization’s capabilities and resilience.
Sourcing digital skills to meet virtual healthcare service demands
As healthcare grows more patient-centric, virtual, and technologically equipped, key services, such as telehealth, are on the rise. Virtual healthcare has become an important component for medical organizations to reach and serve more patients, while addressing resourcing and staffing shortages. Real-time treatment and connections delivered to patients via phone and video calls, mobile apps, text-based messaging, and other communication methods, are facilitating better patient care and accessibility, particularly in rural and remote areas, and care facilities.
As such, many healthcare TA teams are supporting their organization’s virtual service capabilities by recruiting staff with digital literacy, to use software and tools confidently, ensure data security, and maintain a high level of service. Other key skills you may like to assess include strong written and verbal communication skills, flexibility, and adaptability.
Engaging talent through values and social responsibility
More applicants are seeking organizations with values that align with their own. So, healthcare recruiters are focusing on social responsibility to attract quality candidates.
Harness your career site to its full potential by amplifying your organization’s values and purpose, including charitable, community, and educational initiatives, a commitment to DEI, and more. Tap into your talent pools to unlock the value of passive candidates who resonate with your culture and values. By analyzing and improving your talent pooling strategy, can you reach more values-driven candidates and win successful hires? Determining sourcing channel effectiveness from talent pooling is a great way to demonstrate ROI and optimize your approach.
Promoting your internal mobility strategy is another great way to show candidates you’re an employer that’s dedicated to nurturing and developing its people. The key is to be authentic: today’s candidates do their research, and they’ll be able to spot generic or false values a mile away. Whatever your mission statement and values are, make sure they reflect your true culture and beliefs.
Using technology to amplify recruitment marketing
To build top-of-the-funnel talent engagement initiatives, healthcare recruiters are adopting software to streamline recruitment marketing, improve employer branding, and tap into and build talent pipelines. Proactive talent attraction initiatives often include targeted social media posts and advertisements with compelling calls to action (CTAs). These include:
- visit our career site
- sign up for job alerts
- join our talent network
- connect with our alumni members
- subscribe to our talent community newsletter.
Measure the ROI of these recruitment marketing initiatives to see what’s working well and identify areas for improvement. A consistent online presence can drive both active and passive job seekers to your company career site, and engaging CTAs encourage more people to join your talent network.
Automation can also work in your favor, such as job alerts, abandoned application workflows, and talent community communications. You may like to leverage AI tools as well to improve your hiring approach. For instance, by using AI to optimize job postings, reduce biased language, and write stronger job descriptions.
Using technology to streamline screening
For the majority of organizations, creating a positive candidate experience is a top priority – but perhaps even more so in fast-paced healthcare environments, where applicants are increasingly time-poor. The good news is AI, automation, and virtual screening processes are ideal solutions for strengthening the candidate experience, while creating efficiencies for recruiters.
AI and automation tools
AI and automation support healthcare recruiters through advanced screening processes, such as by anonymizing qualified candidates to eliminate unconscious bias from hiring. These tools can also be used to isolate data and identify best-fit candidates based on factors over and above resume qualifications. Not to mention, you can also automate time-consuming administrative tasks, such as scheduling interviews and contacting candidates, freeing up time for critical tasks that require a more personal, human touch.
Clinch healthcare recruitment marketing software uses AI and automation technology to support one leading medical organization streamline hiring, improve the candidate experience, and reduce time-to-fill.
Virtual screening platforms
Many candidates have become accustomed, and even expect virtual recruitment processes. Candidates and recruiters alike are finding it simple and easy to conduct interviews via Zoom or other video conferencing software throughout the hiring process. This is especially useful for nurses, who are often helping patients daily and have limited time for in-person interviews. For positions that require multiple rounds of interviews, you may like to conduct video interviews first, and reserve in-person meetings for final candidates.
Virtual recruiting not only reduces the time and resources spent on assessing candidates, it can also expand your applicant pool to those outside your immediate geographic area. You may just find your ideal candidate is one who’s willing to relocate or work remotely.
Additionally, mobile communication, such as texting, allows for an automated, streamlined hiring process that is still personalized and agile.
Recruitment analytics
At the end of the day, better recruitment analytics lead to better recruiting practices. So make the best use of your tools with a data-driven approach. Tracking and assessing critical metrics such as application rates, screening and interviewing times, offers and acceptance rates can help you identify bottlenecks and areas for improvement in your hiring process. It’s a clear pathway to strengthening your organization’s overall candidate experience.
Aiding retention through internal mobility
Considering the consistently high turnover rates across all segments in the healthcare industry, the business opportunity for internal mobility is clear.
The power of internal mobility comes from avoiding replacement and recruitment costs when people leave, bolstering retention, and creating a better experience and more opportunities for internal team members. This, in turn, positively shapes your employer brand and workplace culture to attract more of the right-fit candidates – making recruitment faster, more effective, and less expensive.
Your existing team members are more likely to be engaged, stay longer, and hit the ground running from being already familiar with your organizational values, culture, and processes. In a competitive market, this is a critical advantage. But many organizations struggle to do internal mobility well.
Many healthcare recruiting teams lack formal processes or technology to identify current employees who qualify for promotions or new roles. So what can be done to fix this?
Consider partnering with your learning and development team to create a strong internal mobility program. This may include collecting a database of current employees’ KSAs (knowledge, skills, and abilities), career interests, and any training or resources required to address qualification gaps. For internal hiring, you’ll also need to broaden your focus from narrow technical skills to transferable skills, such as leadership and problem-solving.
A great solution is to build a dedicated internal careers page. This can include job listings, job alerts, and career path stories shared by employees who’ve made successful internal moves. Having a central point for employees to view open internal roles, share experiences, and ask questions is vital to promoting a successful internal mobility strategy. Measure, optimize, and demonstrate results.
Aiding retention through flexible working models
With healthcare workers burning out at alarming rates, more organizations are recognizing a duty of care for those who care, so to speak. It’s clear there’s a greater need for employee support – with flexibility and work-life balance as meaningful starting points.
In recent years, healthcare and medical practices have proven that remote work is not only possible, but highly beneficial. In fact, 83% of practices that adopted a hybrid or remote working model during the pandemic have no plans to stop anytime soon.
If your organization can offer employees greater flexibility and work-life balance, you’ll be well-placed to attract and retain healthcare staff. This means defining what work-life balance looks like for specific roles and considering ways to tailor working arrangements for employees to manage external commitments. This may include flexible start-finish times, part-time or job-sharing opportunities, and remote work.
Whether you’re focused on proactive recruitment initiatives, supporting retention, or leveraging technology, measure ROI to strengthen your capabilities. A data-driven approach is crucial for ensuring healthcare organizations have the skilled professionals needed to deliver quality patient care.
Hiring to fill healthcare positions can be a challenging responsibility. But with the right recruitment partner, it doesn’t have to be. Clinch partners with healthcare recruiters to support them in identifying and engaging top applicants, automating screening processes and candidate communications, and increasing brand awareness. Learn more about Clinch recruitment marketing software or request a free demo.
