Healthcare Recruitment Strategies and Tips

These healthcare recruitment strategies will help any company or organization attract the best clinical and non-clinical medical professionals. Learn more!

Medical recruiters are currently facing a pressing issue. The Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC) has issued a warning: the United States is projected to experience a significant shortage of medical professionals by 2036. This urgent situation demands immediate and effective healthcare recruitment strategies to bridge the impending gap.

This article will provide the best healthcare recruiting strategies to help attract clinical and non-clinical talent to medical facilities. We’ll also cover some general tips related to recruitment and retention strategies in healthcare, including awareness of skills gaps, new recruiting techniques, and how to determine if a recruitment technology provider is a good fit for your organization.

Why is Healthcare Recruiting so Challenging?

Healthcare recruiting professionals are familiar with the complexities of creating recruitment strategies for healthcare organizations. But why is it so challenging to hire healthcare professionals in the first place? There are several reasons why healthcare recruiting is often difficult. Here are a few:

Medical providers are responsible for the lives and well-being of patients. Because of this responsibility, professionals often put extra pressure on themselves, resulting in healthcare burnout.
Some professions take a long time to achieve. Whether you’re looking at general or specialized care, finding the right fit is even more challenging when your talent pool is smaller than usual. This predicament is why the selection process for recruitment in healthcare tends to have an additional layer of difficulty.
The turnover rate tends to be higher due to the demanding nature of healthcare work. Professionals are under extreme stress to provide the best care and help save lives daily, causing many to burn out quickly.

In addition to these challenges, there is a shortage of medical professionals. A study by Mercer indicated that to keep up with the population, the medical care industry in the United States would have to hire 3.2 million professionals by 2026.

This shortage directly impacts patient care quality, as it can lead to increased workloads for existing staff, longer wait times for patients, and potential gaps in specialized care. Other factors that contribute to the shortage include:

A rising need for care amongst the baby boomer population
Increase in chronic disease cases
Aging healthcare workforce
Limited talent supply
Inability to attract and retain the right talent
Minimal talent in rural areas
Longer recruiting cycles

How to Recruit Healthcare Professionals

In the current healthcare recruitment landscape, offering a competitive salary is no longer sufficient. Candidates now consider factors like work-life balance and benefits before accepting a position. This challenging environment necessitates the use of creative medical recruitment strategies to attract top talent.

Some of the best recruitment and retention strategies in healthcare include the following:

Build a Reputable Brand

High-quality candidates are naturally drawn to employers with a strong reputation, particularly in the healthcare sector, where patients’ lives are at stake. Establishing your organization as a trustworthy brand and an excellent employer can significantly enhance your ability to attract top talent.

Establishing yourself as a trustworthy brand and an excellent employer makes it significantly easier to attract talent. This approach is a great way to stand out in an urgent and competitive market. Assess your brand’s fundamental values and communicate the vision clearly to potential job candidates.

Strengthen the message by uploading content to your website that speaks to your vision. Blog articles with employee testimonials or videos of them talking about their experience can give potential employees a better idea of what to expect.

Develop Relationships With Universities

Building relationships with top institutions that have well-established medical schools is critical to any plan for solid recruiting strategies for healthcare professionals. Jobs in the medical field often require advanced degrees, so it is the quickest way to access well-qualified talent.

Hiring from universities makes verifying candidates’ credentials and seeking references easier. By participating in on-campus career fairs and workshops, recruiters can meet prospects in person and arrange interviews on the spot.

The long-term benefit of partnering with universities is that recruiters can get help finding much-needed talent, and the institutions can provide internship and job opportunities to students. This not only helps in immediate recruitment needs but also fosters a pipeline of future talent, ensuring a continuous supply of skilled professionals for the healthcare industry.

Offer Enticing and Unique Benefits

A competitive salary isn’t enough to recruit and retain healthcare professionals. Attractive benefits are essential to your healthcare recruitment and retention strategies. Offering unique benefits can make your organization stand out and show that you care about your employees’ well-being.

A Society for Human Resources Management (SHRM) survey found that organizations that leverage their benefits program are twice as likely to maintain higher satisfaction levels amongst employees. They also reported better business performance than those not strategically leveraging a benefits program.

Perks like flexible time, mandatory time off, wellness perks, and education debt assistance are critical aspects of a good benefits package. Prospective candidates are also looking for mental health benefits to help keep anxiety and stress levels in check.

For instance, offering flexible working hours, mental health days, gym memberships, and student loan repayment assistance can make your benefits package more attractive to potential candidates.

Streamline the Interview and Screening Processes

With limited top talent, the best and brightest medical professionals have their pick when considering multiple offers. Therefore, your screening and interview processes must be efficient, or these candidates will move on quickly.

Review your current recruitment process and identify where you can potentially make improvements. To attract suitable applicants, take full advantage of your job postings to provide a detailed and accurate picture of the work scope. Utilizing recruitment software can help simplify recruiting processes by bringing the best-fitting applicants to the forefront of your candidate pool.

Because interviewing is time-consuming, automate your pre-screening procedures to select the applicants you want to interview. Give candidates a survey to determine their skill sets and include pre-interview questions to help filter the right individuals for the job.

The more efficient you are at selecting, interviewing, screening, and making an offer, the better your chances are at ensuring prospects will accept your job opening over another.

Hire Internally (and Replace Those Employees)

One of the best recruiting strategies for healthcare retention is to promote within an organization first. Internal recruitment strategies in healthcare can help address the skills gap by efficiently filling senior positions with existing talent. Since joining the organization, talented and proactive employees will have increased their knowledge, skills, and experience.

They have also built a good track record with their work and are familiar with the culture and internal processes. Current employees who stay and get promoted are a valuable resource for training new employees hired to replace them in their previous roles. This strategy ensures the continuity of best practices and helps build a positive workplace.

Common Hiring Mistakes to Avoid

In the healthcare industry, hiring mistakes can have significant consequences, affecting patient care, staff morale, and overall organizational efficiency. Here are some common hiring mistakes to avoid so you can find the best potential candidates:

Ignoring Cultural Fit

Cultural fit is critical in healthcare settings because it affects teamwork, communication, and patient care quality. A candidate might have the required skills, but if they don’t align with the organization’s values and work environment, it can lead to conflicts and reduced job satisfaction. Involve multiple team members in the interview process and use behavioral interviewing techniques to assess cultural fit.

Prolonged Hiring Process

The demand for healthcare professionals is high, and the best candidates often consider multiple offers. A slow hiring process can result in losing top talent to faster-moving competitors. Streamline your hiring process using applicant tracking systems (ATS) and clearly define each step from application to offer. Regularly update candidates on their status to keep them engaged and interested.

Insufficient Job Descriptions

Detailed job descriptions are crucial in healthcare as they set clear expectations and attract suitable candidates. Ensure job descriptions include specific duties, required certifications, and any physical or emotional demands of the role. This clarity helps potential candidates self-assess their suitability and reduces the likelihood of hiring mismatches.

Neglecting Employer Branding

Employer branding in healthcare is about showcasing your organization as a desirable workplace. These efforts include highlighting employee testimonials, showcasing your commitment to work-life balance, and promoting your organization’s achievements in patient care. Use your website and social media platforms to share stories and updates that reflect your values and mission, making your organization attractive to potential hires.

Overlooking Onboarding

A comprehensive onboarding process is vital for new hires in healthcare to understand protocols, systems, and their roles. Effective onboarding reduces turnover and increases employee satisfaction. Include shadowing opportunities, mentorship programs, and regular check-ins during the first few months to ensure new hires are supported and integrated into the team.

Failing to Utilize Technology

Leveraging technology can enhance the hiring process in the fast-paced healthcare environment. Software can automate repetitive tasks, streamline communication, and improve candidate tracking. Technology such as artificial intelligence (AI) can help identify potential candidates faster and match them to suitable roles, making the recruitment process more efficient.

Not Prioritizing Soft Skills

While technical skills are essential in healthcare, soft skills such as empathy, communication, and teamwork are equally important. Assess these skills through scenario-based questions and role-playing during interviews. Emphasizing soft skills ensures that new hires can provide compassionate care and work effectively within interdisciplinary teams.

Ignoring Workforce Diversity

A diverse workforce can improve patient outcomes and employee satisfaction. Make diversity a priority by creating inclusive job postings, using diverse recruitment channels, and implementing unbiased hiring practices. Diverse teams bring different perspectives and can better serve a diverse patient population.

Underestimating the Importance of Continuous Education

Continuous education and professional development are crucial in healthcare. Ensure your organization provides opportunities for ongoing training and supports certifications and specializations. This commitment to growth attracts high-caliber professionals and keeps your staff updated with the latest medical advancements and best practices.

Additional Healthcare Recruiting Tips

Coming up with innovative healthcare recruitment strategies often isn’t just about having an actionable list of items. It can become overwhelming to bear the burden of talent acquisition in a limited pool of qualified medical candidates, so it may be necessary to think outside the box.

The following medical recruiting tips focus on the possibility of seeking alternative measures, managing expectations, and making your recruiting work more efficient.

Recognize the Skills Gap

Putting together a good team with the proper combination of skills remains a challenge. For example, increasingly limited clinical opportunities for nurses mean many cannot complete the mandatory practical training needed for graduation. This situation results in a group of potential talent ready to join the healthcare workforce but cannot due to the circumstances.

Another assumed skills gap is that potential hires don’t have the necessary qualifications and require a lot of on-the-job training to be up to speed. This oversight results in employers offering less than a candidate’s expectations and rejection of the offer by the candidate. Conversely, applicants hesitate to apply for a job if the requirements are rigid.

There’s no easy way to fill a skills gap. However, you will improve your chances of hiring good people by accepting the gap and focusing more on giving them access to proper training and other resources. Also, make sure to offer new hires the average salary of healthcare jobs in your city or state. Recognizing a skills gap helps manage expectations during the recruitment process.

Be Willing to Try Different Recruiting Methods

To stay competitive, healthcare professionals must be open to trying new recruitment and retention strategies. Creativity is critical in the healthcare industry.

Reach more candidates through social media, streamline your hiring processes, and simplify candidate application submissions. Job applications via mobile now surpass desktop submissions, so consider using cloud technology to make your process mobile-friendly.

Healthcare staffing firms can be a valuable asset to leverage in your recruiting efforts. These firms specialize in connecting healthcare facilities with qualified professionals, offering services from temporary staffing to permanent placements. Leveraging the expertise of healthcare staffing firms can broaden your reach and expedite the hiring process.

Partner With a Recruitment Technology Provider

Healthcare recruiting and hiring challenges are expected to persist. If healthcare organizations need help automating the recruiting process and finding solid candidates, they can always partner with a recruitment technology provider.

Recruitment platforms should have additional tools and resources to help find the specialized talent you seek in the medical field. These tools and resources include:

The ability to create a company careers page to attract quality applicants
Posting to major job boards in one click
Access to aptitude assessments and interview and reference check guides for consistent candidate evaluation
Candidate communication and interview scheduling in the software platform

A comprehensive provider can also offer applicant tracking and onboarding functionality to help automate your hiring process even further. Utilizing recruitment software can help simplify recruiting processes.

Streamline Your Medical Recruitment Strategy

Even if you have enough internal staffing to handle your recruitment needs, you’ll need the right technology to help your team do things efficiently. APS can help home health agencies, ambulatory clinics, and other medical facilities with their healthcare HR software needs. Automating your HR and payroll tasks with your recruitment process saves you time and allows you to hire better-quality candidates.

With APS Hire, you can efficiently pre-screen candidates, track applicants, and confidently hire top talent.
APS Hire can help with:

Improving ways to attract job seekers with mobile-optimized applications, customized job postings, and automated job promotions
Filtering applicants with assessments and prescreen questions to identify qualified candidates faster
Utilizing text messaging and calendar integrations for streamlined interviewing
Leveraging background checks and verifying references to ensure you’re hiring quality employees