Attracting and retaining talent in the healthcare industry demands different strategies and advanced technologies in contrast to other industries. Job matching technology and other virtual healthcare hiring solutions are essential for overall success in healthcare recruitment.
The 2023 World Social Report from the United Nations informs that the number of people aged 65 and older worldwide will increase by more than double from 761 million as of 2021 to 1.6 billion by 2050. This is just one staggering statistic that shows the need for more skilled healthcare professionals in geriatric care to take care of the aging population.
The Problem: Healthcare Is A High-Turnover Industry
It’s no secret that healthcare is a high-turnover industry. The stresses of ensuring high-quality patient care while dealing with a high-stress environment because of unexpected turns in client health can take a toll on healthcare workers.
The 2024 NSI National Health Care Retention & RN Staffing Report shows how much turnover is in specific segments throughout the industry. The overall hospital turnover rate between 2019 to 2023 was the highest for all employees in 2021 at 25.9%. This rate has stabilized to 20.7% in 2023.
Of all the RN specialties, telemetry experienced the highest turnover rates at 27.1% in 2022 and 23.7% in 2023. Different specialties evaluated for their turnover rates included pediatric, burn center, surgical services, women’s health, behavioral health, and others.
The Solution: Streamlining the Healthcare Recruitment Process
Healthcare recruitment is a complex process because of in-depth evaluations to ensure organizations are onboarded qualified talent to safeguard their patients’ health and well-being. Tapping into healthcare talent acquisition solutions streamlines the industry’s recruitment process. Automating tasks, enhancing communication, and expediting decision-making with enhanced collaboration all contribute to a streamlined hiring process.
Automating Administrative Tasks
Implementing ATS software can help automate many administrative tasks in healthcare recruitment such as resume screening with AI-driven resume parsing. Having candidates schedule their interviews from pre-selected time slots that work for the hiring manager is another automated task that reduces the administrative burden on the recruitment team.
The software can also send automated updates to candidates whether their applications have been accepted or declined. This refines the candidate experience while keeping applicants informed through the hiring process. Hence, automating all these tasks contributes to more time the recruitment team can spend on building relationships with potential hires.
Enhanced Communication Tools
Communication is vital in an involved industry like healthcare where many stakeholders are involved throughout recruitment and the employee lifecycle. Automated emails or text messages can help facilitate real-time communications between candidates, hiring managers, and recruiters. Especially since healthcare is a high-turnover industry, administering automated texts for mass hiring and scheduling interviews can enhance the time-to-hire metric to instill productivity back into the organization with new talent.
Improved Collaboration Amongst Stakeholders
Human resources leaders, department heads, and clinical leaders are just some of the many involved stakeholders in the healthcare recruitment process. Improving collaboration amongst these teams is crucial for overall success in making the best hiring decisions.
Collaboration platforms such as Slack for messaging and Google Meet for virtual meetings can facilitate enhanced communication and collaboration among these stakeholders. Adding comments in a Google document that includes all the candidates’ data can also refine these collaborative efforts.
Healthcare Job Matching Technology
Matching healthcare professionals to jobs on the market that resonate with their skills, experiences, and career aspirations is vital in today’s modern recruitment methods for the industry. This advanced technology employs AI-driven algorithms to cross-reference a candidate’s profile with job descriptions to discover the best candidate fit.
As healthcare organizations are under pressure to fill open positions quickly to keep saving lives, healthcare job-matching technology is now more important than ever to continually innovate.
The benefits of this advanced technology include:
- Enhanced candidate selection.
- Improved candidate experience.
- Reducing the time-to-hire metric.
- Fostering diversity and inclusion in the organization.
- Integrating with other recruitment tools such as ATS software.
Telemedicine Recruitment
Engaging in telemedicine recruitment allows healthcare organizations to access a broader talent pool of candidates beyond general recruitment measures with job boards like Indeed or ZipRecruiter. Finding healthcare professionals specializing in virtual care solutions helps initiate a better treatment plan for some patients who have trouble commuting to in-person appointments.
The rise of telehealth solutions occurred because of COVID-19 when the need for remote consultations increased to hinder the disease’s spread. COVID-19 is now a disease that ranks as the 10th most common disease causing death for Americans in 2023 in contrast to being the 3rd most common in 2020 and 2021. Despite the disease not being as rampant as four years ago, telehealth solutions remain popular to ensure the safety and well-being of high-risk patients.
Telehealth professionals are best onboarded with specialized job boards for healthcare recruitment. This increases the chances of qualified individuals applying to open requisitions rather than the mix of results achieved by posting on a general job board.
Virtual Hiring In Healthcare
Virtual hiring solutions in the healthcare industry have risen in popularity because of global events making remote work more prevalent. Video interviewing has become more mainstream to align with a hiring manager and a candidate’s schedule. This method ensures flexibility for both parties’ schedules without the restraints of commuting to meet for an in-person interview.
With advancements in telehealth and virtual hiring in healthcare, the industry can now access a wider geographical pool of candidates. This enhances a more diverse talent pool that can help healthcare organizations find the best professionals for specialized roles.
Besides video interviewing, virtual hiring solutions also allow for standardized assessments to evaluate candidate fit. This ensures a quality hiring decision to keep turnover as low as possible. Plus, stakeholders can utilize collaborative tools to communicate their objective overview of each candidate before finalizing a hiring decision.
Conclusion
Advanced technologies continually streamline healthcare talent acquisition solution. Telehealth recruitment, job-matching technology, and virtual hiring solutions all contribute to onboarding the most specialized professionals in different healthcare segments to serve patients with many health needs. Effectively utilizing these technologies will allow organizations to onboard the best talent with the correct technical and soft skills needed to fulfill their role effectively.
