How to Build a Winning Healthcare Recruitment Strategy

Healthcare recruitment has always been a challenge for many organizations, but the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic and a continued shortage of physicians haven’t made things any easier. Not to mention, the cost of recruitment can be exceedingly high, especially for physicians, nurse practitioners and physician assistants.

So, how can your organization stand out and build winning medical recruitment strategies that fill roles quickly and drive down the cost of acquiring new talent? In this article, we’ll cover some of the most important things for healthcare organizations to focus on as they recruit talent, including a focus on retention, providing top benefits, and building a talent pipeline. Let's get right into it.

Focus on Retention

Although it might seem counterintuitive, the first step you should take when recruiting healthcare talent is to look inward at your organization. Not only are your current employees some of your most valuable assets, they’re also one of your best advertisements; their satisfaction will be assessed by prospective candidates, so it’s in your best interest to ensure they are indeed satisfied.

By building a welcoming and supportive culture, you’ll naturally make your healthcare organization a place people truly want to join. That kind of reputation in the demanding field of healthcare can make your recruitment efforts both easier and more effective.

Hire From Within

Another smart, indirect healthcare recruitment strategy is to hire from within. Promoting staff who deserve it is not only a great way to retain quality employees, but it also looks good to prospective employees.

Candidates want to know that they’ll have the opportunity to grow and evolve during their time with you, and by promoting employees from within, you’ll be able to demonstrate that your organization lives by this.

Additionally, hiring from within and promoting current staff to more senior positions can reduce the burden on your recruitment team. Finding more experienced staff may be more difficult, especially if you’ve developed relationships with local institutions and established a talent pipeline you can tap into.

Finally, hiring from within can make onboarding new staff easier, as new staff can be trained by the person who previously held their position, leading to a smooth transition.

Provide Competitive Benefits

As we mentioned, your staff are some of your organization’s most valuable assets, and a great way to both recruit and retain your talent is through competitive benefits that take care of them.

Burnout is especially common in the healthcare field, and it can cost your business both through medical errors and an increased turnover rate. Building a benefits package that provides ample time off, flexibility, and support both at work and at home is essential to recruiting top healthcare talent.

Additionally, consider offering bonuses for referrals. Your current employees understand what it takes to succeed in your organization, and encouraging them to refer talent from their networks can expedite the process of finding qualified candidates.

Build Collaborative, Cross-Organizational Relationships

One less common, but highly valuable healthcare recruitment strategy your organization can take is to cultivate relationships that build talent pipelines. By collaborating with the organizations and institutions that produce top talent, you can increase your organization’s exposure and access to emerging healthcare professionals.

Additionally, by providing opportunities to students at local universities or medical schools for training, job shadowing, and internships, you can generate interest in your organization and expose future candidates to your culture.

By doing this, you can position yourself as a highly-attractive employer that candidates are already familiar with.

Provide Opportunities for Continuing Education

Not only will prospective candidates want to know that they have the opportunity to advance professionally, they also want to know that they’ll gain new, valuable skills while employed by your organization.

One of the best ways to meet this desire is to provide opportunities for continuing medical education (CME). CME conferences give staff an opportunity to take a break from the daily requirements of their job while learning new skills and connecting with other professionals. If your staff craves flexibility, providing them with the opportunity to attend online CME courses can help them grow professionally without the need for any travel.

CME is required in almost every state, but it benefits your staff in many more ways than simply maintaining their compliance. CME reminds employees why they entered the healthcare field in the first place. This can often have a positive effect on job satisfaction, and can play an important role in mitigating burnout.

Optimize Your Job Postings and Application Process

One essential element of any successful healthcare recruitment strategy is to optimize your job postings and simplify the application process. Your job postings should be accurate and provide a realistic summary of what the day-to-day responsibilities of the position include.

It’s important to be transparent throughout the recruiting process; new staff who find a position to be significantly different from what they applied for might not stick around for long. Job postings that are realistic could potentially result in few applicants, however, those who do apply will be fully prepared for the demands of the role.

Finally, your posting and application process should be as simple as possible. Submitting an application will typically be the first actual interaction a candidate has with your company, and making a good first impression matters. Additionally, assess your postings when they’re live and check the following items:

Are bullet or number lists outlining responsibilities or benefits formatted properly?
Are links in your job posting working, and do they lead to the right pages?
Is anything missing?

Remember that recruiting is a relationship, and that candidates will be assessing your organization with the same level of scrutiny that you use to assess their qualifications, soft skills, and experience. Removing as much friction from the application process can help that relationship start on the right foot.

Recruitment and Retention Work Together

Recruitment is just one part of your overall employment strategy. As you start to implement a new medical recruitment strategy, remember to focus on retention just as much as you do on attracting new candidates, because your current employees are some of your greatest assets.

Individuals and healthcare organizations alike can turn to the same place for the best opportunities and candidates: Continuing Education Company’s Career Center. By leveraging our extensive network of qualified professionals, we help organizations find the right candidates quickly and for a great value, while helping professionals grow.

Healthcare organizations can target our professional database using our emailed Job Flashes, job postings and advertisements on our site, or through exhibition opportunities at our live CME conferences.

To learn more about posting a job or the many other valuable resources we offer recruiters, check out the Continuing Education Company’s recruiting options today.

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