As one of the most dynamic and fastest-growing industries, healthcare is presenting a unique set of recruiting challenges (and opportunities!) for organizations looking to ramp up their hiring. Let’s look at a few ways you can ramp up your healthcare hiring practices.

1. Embrace Diversity

Virtually all industries are looking to improve the diversity of their hiring pools, and with healthcare it can seem like an even stronger imperative, as increasingly diverse populations want healthcare that reflects the community at large. However, having diversity as a goal and implementing actual processes to support it, can be two very different things.

To improve the diversity of your candidates and hires, one of the most effective first steps is limiting bias in your recruitment or hiring process. Using artificial intelligence (AI) programs to screen candidates is one way to limit human biases (unconscious or not). Closely reviewing job descriptions for potentially biased or unnecessarily limiting language is another step to take to broaden your outreach.

2. Use Technology To Your Advantage

Although technology is a primary driver of the healthcare world these days, hiring processes aren’t necessarily keeping up. According to a 2018 study by Health eCareers, only 15% of healthcare organizations had a digital career and hiring portal. With a comprehensive portal, you can streamline the process, automate applications and applicant screening, and reduce the human touchpoints at every step of the way. Portals also serve as a point of reference for potential candidates, providing clear information about your organization and your needs.

AI platforms have capabilities that go beyond simple application screening as well, making the entire process more efficient for your organization. Some platforms can handle early-stage communications with applicants or interested candidates, schedule interviews, and manage job advertisements. Having a system that can handle tasks that don’t require significant human input or decisionmaking frees your team to focus on the more qualitative aspects of recruiting.

3. Build Your Organization’s Brand

With shortages in healthcare fields (especially for nurses and physicians), it becomes even more important to have a consistent, appealing brand that can bring in the best candidates. Understanding your organization’s reputation as an employer (through word of mouth websites like Glassdoor or PayScale) can help your team get a baseline and work to address any gaps and refine your best reputational qualities.

Again, having a portal or a comprehensive website that’s geared toward potential employees (not necessarily patients) is key. The window for connecting with candidates can be limited, and if you have a strong portfolio of digital resources, that can increase engagement at that essential time.

4. Use Behavioral Assessments

Working in healthcare often requires a delicate balance of professional skills and people skills—which aren’t always apparent in the earliest stages of recruitment. Incorporating behavioral assessments with the interview process can help you weed out candidates who won’t be a good cultural or personal fit with your organizations.

Behavioral questions (“How would you handle X?”) can be part of the interview process, or even come in earlier, during an AI software pre-screening process.

5. Find The Best Communicators

Although communication is often considered a soft skill in a field that calls for many specific hard skills, it’s becoming one of the most vital. In healthcare as a whole, telemedicine and other technological patient interactions are becoming more and more common. By prioritizing these skills in your recruiting outreach and hiring process, you’re helping to future-proof your organizations as more care moves out of the clinic and into the digital world. 

These trends are likely to keep evolving, and it’s important that your organization can keep up with the pace. By committing to technology and the advantages it can bring, you’ll be able to boost the productivity and long-term effectiveness of your recruiting.