How To Address Talent Crisis In Healthcare Industry

5 tips to recruit non-clinical healthcare candidates

The healthcare industry faces a perfect storm of challenges that are making it harder than ever to attract and close on talent for non-clinical positions.

Not only is healthcare one of the fastest-growing industries, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor, but pandemic-induced layoffs and hiring freezes for non-clinical personnel created massive labor gaps for nearly all healthcare systems.
 

Now that hiring has resumed — seemingly all at once — healthcare organizations are competing against each other to hire for backfilled positions and fill new positions required for growth. To get a leg up on the competition and fill open non-clinical positions quickly, healthcare recruiters need to adapt their recruiting practices to the current environment. 

5 Tips to Recruit Non-Clinical Healthcare Candidates

Non-clinical healthcare personnel (e.g., billers, coders, schedulers and more) are essential to ensure smooth and safe operations for clinical staff and patients. So, even though today’s hiring landscape is extremely competitive, healthcare organizations can’t afford to keep open positions unfilled.

The following tips can help you overcome today’s challenges to attract, recruit and close on the right non-clinical healthcare candidates:

1. Leverage data — We have easier access to historical data than ever before as the world becomes more digitized, so use it to your advantage. Look at how your job postings performed a year or two ago compared to now. What are the differences in application rates and offer acceptances? How does the quality of resumes and candidates compare? 

For example, if you’re still experiencing the same application rates but fewer acceptances of offers, you may want to adjust the job description and see if it makes a difference in closing the gap. Or perhaps the salary may need to change. Leveraging data will help you tweak your hiring practices along the way to determine what’s effective. 

2. Set flexible work expectations — Today’s job candidates prioritize flexible work. The term “remote” is a top 10 searched keyword among job seekers and 55% of the workforce wants to be remote at least three days a week. If you can offer fully remote or hybrid work options it will be easier to hire high-quality candidates. 

Hybrid work is beneficial to employers as well. “Earned” remote days can be used to reward employees for doing great work and incentivize productivity. If your organization can’t accommodate regular hybrid or remote work, there are other ways to offer flexibility that are attractive to candidates, like rotating summer Fridays off or raffles for remote days. 

Regardless of your benefits, a company’s remote work policy is now a key consideration for candidates, so setting expectations upfront will ensure applicants aren’t surprised and you’re not wasting your time evaluating candidates who will ultimately turn down the role. 

3. Approach temporary positions strategically — Prior to the pandemic, healthcare systems were able to recruit for permanent positions and contract-to-hire positions fairly consistently. Today, given the amount of open permanent positions available, it’s significantly difficult to fill temporary roles. 

When determining whether to hire a full-time or temporary employee, decide how crucial it is to fill the position quickly. For example, if you have an open customer service role, your patients may experience inferior support and switch providers. If it’s a small team and the role is left unfilled, other employees in the position may feel overburdened and either look for new opportunities elsewhere or be easily poached by a competitor.

If time is of the essence, consider offering a single permanent role rather than several contract positions. If permanent status is not possible, other tactics that can help you fill the role quickly, including increasing the pay rate, offering the potential for full-time, evaluating less experienced but high-potential applicants and working with a recruiting partner that has a network of candidates looking for temporary positions.

4. Understand your market and build connections — Unfortunately, there’s no one-size-fits-all approach to recruiting. The same healthcare system located in two different states (or even two different cities) will experience widely different time-to-hire rates when trying to fill the exact same position. Building local connections and tailoring the recruiting process to your market will make your hiring efforts more effective. 

Form partnerships with local organizations, like universities or talent agencies, who can help get the word out to potentially interested candidates. You may also find it necessary to perform a granular comparison of salary and benefits to other healthcare systems in your area.

5. Embrace agility — Healthcare systems are notoriously slow to change, but it’s clear that legacy processes won’t work in today’s environment. By dragging your feet and holding onto antiquated hiring processes, you’ll miss out on filling positions you need to operate and sustain long-term growth. 

The takeaway for healthcare recruiters is to be more agile. If you find a good fit, be decisive and make an offer quickly. If your position isn’t gaining traction after the first week, evaluate the cause and take action. To paraphrase the old adage, bad recruiting is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result.

Although recruiting for non-clinical healthcare positions is becoming more of a challenge, these positions need to be filled as quickly as possible — and with the right people — to help your organization maintain operations and grow. By adapting your recruiting practices to the current environment and finding local partners that you trust, you can close on the talent you need today and set your organization up for success tomorrow. 

Ross Johnson is Senior Vice President at Addison Group. Visit www.addisongroup.com  Connect Ross Johnson