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The masks, supply shortages, and lockdowns that characterized the darkest days of the pandemic may now be in the rearview mirror, but the nationwide shortage of healthcare workers is here to stay.
Though healthcare employment has been steadily recovering since 2022, total employment still has not returned to pre-pandemic levels, and an estimated 47% of healthcare workers plan to leave their jobs by 2025. While every type of medical professional is in short supply, the nursing shortage is particularly acute: the American Hospital Association estimates that at least 200,000 nurses a year need to be hired to meet rising demand.
As recruiters struggle to attract and hire qualified healthcare professionals to fill these roles, hiring events—both in-person and virtual—are one of the most efficient ways to source better talent and speed up the hiring process. In this article, we explore five healthcare hiring event challenges and how to solve them.
Challenge #1: Resources for Event Management are Limited
It’s not just frontline healthcare workers who are stretched to the max. Healthcare recruitment professionals are stretched thin, too, and many lack the bandwidth, energy, and budget to plan, promote, and manage a hiring event on their own.
Planning a successful healthcare hiring event requires clear communication, effective promotion, and an environment that facilitates meaningful interactions, but for time- and budget-strapped recruitment professionals, checking all these boxes can be a nearly impossible task.
At Rave Health, we’ve got the tools that can help, with solutions that streamline the process for both virtual hiring events and in-person events. Our virtual hiring event platform lets you set up an entire event—creating customized registration pages, engaging candidates with an intuitive sign-up process, and sending automated text and email reminders—in just five minutes, while our in-person hiring event services let you tap into our tools and industry-leading data ecosystem to boost attendance through targeted candidate outreach.
Challenge #2: Getting the Word Out
With the healthcare industry facing a significant talent shortage, skilled professionals are in high demand. To attract a wide pool of experienced candidates to your hiring event, effective promotion is perhaps the most critical aspect for success. But how do you get the word out? Just sending out an email about your healthcare hiring event isn’t enough. A successful strategy requires reaching your target audience across channels.
If you want to attract the right mix of healthcare professionals, you need to:
- Execute a well-thought-out marketing mix that reaches your candidates across a variety of channels
- Develop compelling creative,
- Use A/B testing to understand how well your efforts are performing
Rave Health can help execute an efficient, targeted omnichannel campaign that casts a wide net for your event through email, direct mail, and social and digital advertising. Our experienced team of marketing experts, data scientists, copywriters, strategists, and designers manage every part of the promotion process, from developing creative messaging that gets noticed to continuously optimizing the campaign to make sure you’re attracting top talent and driving attendance.
Challenge #3: Competition for Top Talent
As long as there’s a shortage of healthcare workers, competition for top talent will continue to be fierce. In this highly competitive recruitment environment, how can you break through the clutter and make your organization stand out from other local healthcare employers?
The first step is making your hiring process better for time-strapped candidates—and virtual hiring events are a win for both you and job seekers. They provide a seamless and convenient way for you to connect with local healthcare professionals and get a clear picture of your potential candidates. Today’s tech-savvy job seekers appreciate the ease and convenience of being able to connect with potential healthcare employers from the convenience of their personal devices, with no need to travel or take time off of work.
A generous compensation package is an obvious next step in attracting qualified candidates, but perhaps just as important is creating a workplace culture that is attractive to potential employees. A recent Harvard Business Review article reported, “Competitive pay and other support options are essential to recruiting caregivers, of course, but organizational culture, including a commitment to excellence, is what makes them stay.”
To showcase the strength of your organizational culture, you need an employer brand story that makes people want to work for you. It should clearly convey your values and mission and demonstrate your commitment to creating a safe and supportive environment, offering reasonable job security, and providing pathways for career advancement. And that message needs to be clearly woven throughout all your hiring event materials.
Challenge #4: Candidate No-Shows
Getting candidates to sign up for your event is one thing; getting them to actually show up for it is another.
Candidate drop-off for any type of hiring event, whether it’s virtual or in-person, is a given. With their unpredictable schedules, long, exhausting shifts, and last-minute schedule changes, most healthcare workers are stressed for time and more likely to cancel or fail to show. In fact, realistic attendance levels for healthcare hiring events are between 50-70% of registrants (according to data we’ve collected). This makes it vital to nurture the relationship with candidates who’ve signed up for your event. You can increase the likelihood that they’ll attend by sending out email and text reminders in the days leading up to the event; be sure to highlight the benefits of your organization, such as sign-on bonuses or flexible work schedules.
Don’t have time for this follow-up? When you partner with Rave Health, our virtual hiring event platform automatically sends out regular, personalized text and email reminders in the days leading up to your event.
Challenge #5: Getting Healthcare Candidates Into the Hiring Funnel
Remember that hosting a healthcare virtual hiring event is just the first step in filling your open positions. Post-event, you still need to get them to fill out an application and go through the formal hiring process.
How do you keep them interested and engaged? Communication is key. With a dismal average of only 15 qualified healthcare workers per hire, it’s imperative that you act fast to ensure that your top candidates don’t lose interest and start looking at other employers: follow up regularly and strategically, make sure team members are available to answer questions, and move candidates through the hiring funnel quickly.
Create a Hiring Event Healthcare Professionals Can’t Say No To
If you’re struggling to meet your organization’s staffing needs, Rave Health has the solutions you need to increase attendance at in-person hiring events and create virtual hiring events that help you effortlessly connect with candidates and speed up your recruitment process. Contact us to learn more.
