6 Tips to Recruit The Best Healthcare Workers

Staffing for nurses and doctors was an issue even before COVID-19. The American Association of Medical Colleges (AAMC) predicts a shortage of as many as 122,000 physicians by 2032. As it stands now, the country needs to replace 200,000 nurses each year just to cover the rate of retirement. The most important thing to remember about healthcare recruits is that they are busy. A good candidate experience is a fast candidate experience. 

Knowing how to recruit new healthcare workers involves looking in the right places for recruits, defining “good fit” guidelines for your organization, adopting technology to streamline the hiring process, and supporting hires with generous benefits packages and mentoring opportunities. We’ll get you started on revamping your hiring process with 6 tips to recruit your ideal healthcare professional.

1. Focus on campus healthcare recruitment early

Young healthcare workers fresh out of college serve as a vital pipeline for promising talent. You should begin nurturing potential healthcare recruits as early as possible. Some options you can implement are: mentorships, internships, summer work opportunities, college TA positions, and tuition assistance programs.

Of course, healthcare facilities should also still be posting on job boards, your corporate website, and social media. But don’t overlook the slow drip channels, where prospective workers can become your most devoted employees. 

2. Think beyond job duties when recruiting healthcare workers

Many healthcare organizations list job duties and responsibilities but fail to clarify company culture and to define their guidelines for “good fits”—the ideal candidates who will excel in your work environment. For instance, you may be looking for a bedside nurse with compassion and roots in community service, or a self-starting, ambitious healthcare worker proficient in the latest technology. 

Those are two very different candidates with diverse skill sets and work styles. Using a tool like interview builder can help you narrow down the best questions to ask in a video interview so you’ll find the ideal candidate for the position. 

Apart from getting to know your candidates on a more personal level, you must devote time to expressing who you are as a person and as an organization. This transparency will lead to a more streamlined interview process and help you find candidates whose career goals will align with your offer.    

3. Make remote interviews standard procedure in your healthcare organization

The problem recruiters are facing is not just finding enough candidates but securing those that are a good fit. One common reason for a rejected job offer is that the candidate has accepted a competing job offer — often before you make yours. Conclusion? Long hiring processes cost companies top talent. 

Added flexibility in the recruitment process can lead to decreased time-to-hire. For example, healthcare companies using one-way video interviews screen candidates faster than their competitors — most candidates record their responses less than 24 hours after receiving the invitation.

Other useful tools include live video interviews that help you reach candidates quickly without the need for an in-person meeting. Or you can try an automated interview scheduler to enable your candidates to choose their own date and time for the final in-person interview. By avoiding too many back-and-forth emails about dates and times, you respect the jobseeker’s time, while freeing up your own.

4. Promote diversity within the medical industry

Diverse workplaces are more innovative, data-focused, and drive greater revenue. In addition, many job seekers today consider workplace diversity to be one of the most important factors in deciding where to work. 

To that end, recruitment efforts may include reaching out to historically black colleges, minority student organizations, and other organizations that promote diversity in the workplace. On top of the benefits to your employees, recruiting for diversity benefits your patients.

5. Take another look at your benefits package for healthcare staff

There’s no getting around the shift toward a jobseeker’s market. Even before the global pandemic, more than half of hiring managers (63%) had to make their compensation packages more attractive to remain competitive. 

It’s not just about dollars and cents – particularly for Millennial and Gen Z workers. They’re looking for scheduling flexibility, work-from-home policies, flex time, paid time-off, and increased maternity or caregiver leave. Leveraging perks like gym memberships, relocation assistance, and sign-on bonuses can also help sign your ideal hire. 

Healthcare is a demanding field, notorious for understaffing, long shifts, and burnout. Showing that your organization values staff mental health and work/life balance could be the differentiating factor that causes your employees to stay.  

6. Welcome new hires to the family

A poor onboarding experience can sour new hires. Giving them too little direction or too much responsibility right off the bat can sour their experience and affect their longevity in your organization.

Each new hire should be paired with a senior staff member to share knowledge, values, training, and insights. Training should encompass job-specific tasks, career development, and soft skills courses like communication and collaboration. Video mentoring with tools from interviewstream offers another helpful way to personalize a training program and keep channels open, even when mentors have a full plate.

And don’t forget to check in with your new hires. Whether it’s at 30-60-90 days, we recommend using a one-way video interview tool to ask your new team members for feedback on their experience at your organization.

Find your top candidates with interviewstream

We’ve worked with healthcare organizations across the board to find the perfect video interviewing and scheduling solutions for their needs. Finding the right candidates for your organization is getting more and more difficult, so let us modernize your interviewing process.

At interviewstream, our goal is to simplify and transform your hiring process. We make it easier for you to find the right candidate and cut down your time-to-offer with our time saving technology. Easy to implement and easy to use, talk to one of our hiring experts today about how to implement interviewstream at your organization.

About The Author

Drew Whitehurst is the Director of Marketing, RevOps, and Product Strategy at interviewstream. He's been with the company since 2014 working in client services and marketing. He is an analytical thinker, coffee enthusiast, and hobbyist at heart.