It’s never been an easy time to be in healthcare recruitment: finding candidates with the right skills and qualifications is a daunting task even under the best circumstances. And you don’t need us to tell you that the last three years have been anything but the best circumstances.
Making mistakes in the hiring process can cost your organization time and money. We’ve identified some of the most common healthcare recruiting mistakes hiring teams make — and how to avoid them.
#1: Not Leveraging Data
Topping the list of mistakes to avoid in healthcare recruiting is not tapping into all the data at your disposal. If you’re not using data to help you source candidates for open positions, you’re missing out on one of the most effective recruitment strategies.
Data can be used to inform almost every aspect of your candidate sourcing process, helping you make more successful hires, shorten time-to-fill, and ultimately reduce your recruitment costs. With more than 20 years of experience and the largest, most comprehensive database in the industry, Rave Health can help you source top candidates quickly, unlocking your reach to 99% of the healthcare professionals in the country.
#2: Relying Too Heavily on General Job Boards
Another common healthcare recruiting mistake is focusing too much of your effort on big job boards like Monster and Indeed. While these job boards can play a role in an integrated recruitment strategy, relying on them too heavily is a common healthcare recruiting mistake.
Because these job boards are so general and don’t target healthcare workers specifically, your ad may end up attracting the wrong candidates who are just submitting applications to as many jobs as possible. This can flood your pipeline with a stream of unqualified applicants and leave your recruitment team to sift through a pile of applications that don’t meet your basic requirements.
A better bet is to focus on niche, healthcare-focused job boards, especially when you’re recruiting for specialty roles.
#3: Only Sourcing Active Candidates
In healthcare roles, the best candidates are often already employed and not actively searching for a job. Why? With the demand for healthcare workers at an all-time high, these passive candidates are likely competent, highly skilled, and valuable members of their healthcare team who bring knowledgeable, high-quality patient care, long-term commitment, and stability to the workplace.
A 2021 survey of US workers by Workable found that 37.3% of the workforce is passively open to new opportunities. These passive candidates tend to be highly qualified, experienced, and successful in their current roles — exactly the type of person you want to attract to your organization but that you’re not reaching with an active candidate strategy.
Another benefit of building relationships with passive candidates? It builds your pipeline of candidates for future roles.
#4: Not Taking Advantage of Virtual Hiring Events
You don’t need us to tell you about the shortage of healthcare workers: the AMA projects there will be a shortage of between 37,800 and 124,000 physicians within the next 11 years while the US Bureau of Labor Statistics projects 194,500 average annual openings for registered nurses through 2030. But there is a way to give your organization an advantage in the race to hire top talent: tapping into virtual hiring events, which will expand your talent pool beyond your geographic region.
Virtual hiring events took off during the pandemic — more than 90 percent of employers attended a virtual career fair in 2020 — and they don’t show any signs of going away. Why? These events make it easy and cost effective for organizations to connect with top talent and fill positions quickly and more efficiently.
Unlike traditional in-person recruiting methods, virtual events allow you to connect with a wider pool of qualified candidates regardless of geographical or scheduling constraints — and with the ongoing healthcare worker shortage, this is an advantage you can’t afford to pass up.
#5: Waiting for the Perfect Moment
Those days of waiting for candidates to come to you or haphazardly using tactics and hoping you happen to catch the right talent just at the moment they’re looking for a new role? They’re long gone.
Today, you need to be in it for the long haul with a continuous marketing strategy that reaches active and passive candidates over and over again to ensure your organization is top of mind when healthcare professionals are ready for their next role. This means reaching them with a steady stream of email, direct mail, ads, social media posts, and other targeted tactics for an extended period of time. In other words, instead of sitting around and hoping for that perfect moment when the right candidate sees your message, you’re actively creating the perfect moment.
#6: Mismanaging Candidate Relationships
Competition among healthcare organizations for talented candidates is particularly fierce due to the high demand for specialized skills, limited pool of qualified professionals, and the critical nature of the work. That means you need to maintain a good relationship with candidates from the start.
If you’re not managing your relationships with candidates well, it can lead to miscommunications, misunderstandings, and a breakdown in trust that don’t just harm your relationship with one candidate — and that can damage your organization’s reputation, leading you to lose out on other potential candidates, too.
If you aren’t already, follow these best practices to engage candidates effectively and efficiently:
- Follow up within 12-24 hours of initial response
- Reach out to candidates at least 5 times
- Vary the time of outreach (and don’t ever call candidates at work!)
- Vary the type of outreach with a mix of calls, emails, and text messages
- Schedule and track outreach, and upload responses to your CRM
#7: Leaving the Sourcing to In-House Recruiters
If your in-house recruiters are still responsible for sourcing candidates, there are better ways you could be using their time. A recent survey found that most healthcare organizations have trouble finding qualified candidates for their open positions because many of the roles they are looking to fill require specialized certifications and credentials.
Proactively sourcing candidates with highly specific skills is a very necessary part of the healthcare recruitment process, but it is time-consuming and keeps your HR staff from focusing on other essential aspects of their job.
What’s the solution? Outsource this step to a company, like Rave Health, that has the data and expertise to reach and source the right talent. You’ll free up your in-house talent so they can focus on nurturing candidate relationships, hiring quickly, and building a robust pipeline of talent.
Let Rave Health Help You Avoid Common Healthcare Recruiting Mistakes
Finding the right talent is not an easy task, but if you avoid these seven common healthcare recruiting mistakes, the recruitment process will be smoother for your team and your candidates. Contact Rave Health today to learn how we can help you build relationships, create a positive candidate experience, and make your hiring process more efficient, effective, and enjoyable for everyone involved.