Recruitment and staffing today isn’t just a process but a science. There’s a lot that goes on both the company’s and the candidate’s side.

Job seekers in 2021 are more fine-tuned to their own capabilities. They are self-aware, determined, and ambitious enough to know exactly what they want in a company and aren’t afraid to do the work to find the right place for them.

In 2021, companies will have to keep up with the changing trends to attract the best candidates. In this article, we will explain the three trends that have taken over the healthcare industry’s recruitment and staffing methods.

1. Healthcare Employer Branding

Before advertising for a vacancy in your company, ask yourself this question, “why should a candidate choose you over your competitor’s company”?

The healthcare industry candidates are tech-savvy, and they are capable of learning about a brand in a matter of minutes before applying for a job.

A survey conducted by LinkedIn found out that 75% of job seekers thoroughly go through the employer’s brand before applying for a job. That tells us how important employer branding is.

Employer branding refers to highlighting the particular strengths of your company so you can differentiate yourself from the competition. It could be on social media platforms (especially LinkedIn and Facebook), job portals like Glassdoor, Indeed, and various review sites.

Keeping that in mind, the candidates can see your current employees’ experiences, your company’s vision and goals, and the EVPs (Employee Value Proposition) you publish for a particular job position.

Your employer branding strategy should assist healthcare professionals in choosing their next employment avenue. Here’s how:

1. Answer these questions: How your brand is unique? What are the benefits you provide at your healthcare facility? How do you value your employees’ career development? How do you provide a better experience to your employees, staff, and patients than your competition?
2. Differentiate your organization from your competitors and demonstrate why candidates prefer you and view you as an employer of choice.
3. Craft an employer brand promotional plan and note your tactics, tools, and techniques to acquire and retain the top talent.
4. Depict your workplace environment in videos and pictures and populate your social media channels with helpful and relevant content to educate your audience.
5. Build a career site to give applicants the information they need before applying, like company culture, compensation packages, employment opportunities, and more.

Finally, get your current and former employees to share their experiences and stories at your healthcare organization. Word-of-mouth marketing spreads like wildfire. Furthermore, it is the best way to engage your current and prospective candidates.

2. Virtualization of Recruitment and Onboarding Processes

Social distancing and shelter-in-place lockdowns have taught us one thing – virtualization. According to a survey conducted by Recruitics, 94.9% of in-person interviews and 83.1% of in-person hiring events got canceled, postponed, or made virtual last year.

Although COVID-19 has thrown the recruiting and staffing industry a massive curveball, we can counteract the losses and resume our recruiting and staffing processes with virtualization and automation tools. Conducting virtual hiring events, career fairs, and interviews is the need of the time and a necessity of tomorrow.

Here is how you can give a 360-degree overview of your company through virtual events and attract top talent in the healthcare industry.

1. Landing Page – create a landing page where candidates can register for your virtual career fair. Keep the user interface of your landing page intuitive so the visitors know what to do and how to register for the event.
2. Lobby –like a physical lobby, this is the main event environment where the candidates can wait for the event to start. The lobby also helps candidates to break out to specific booths to learn about employment opportunities and company culture and connect with the recruiter.
3. Booths or Rooms – Depending on the event, there can be multiple booths or just one. Typically, booths are a place where candidates connect with recruiters to learn about specific opportunities via chat or video.
4. Resume Access – Most platforms allow candidates to submit their resumes when they are registering for an event. If it doesn’t allow submitting resumes/CVs during registration, candidates can submit it here. All of the resumes submitted at any stage are accessible to the host of the event.
5. Event Reminders – send automated emails or SMS reminders to everyone who is registered for the event.

Virtual events are more accessible than physical events, reduce costs such as travel, venue fees, catering, and are efficient to plan and conclude. Remember to be very organized, as disorganization and glitchy tools or pages will discourage candidates. This is your opportunity to shine, and an organized event will certainly shine a positive light on your company.

3. Employ Technology in Recruiting Methods

Technology is playing a vital role in every industry there is. In the same way, healthcare organizations can also utilize sophisticated and advanced technology to find, acquire, and retain talented healthcare professionals.

AI technology can help reduce bias, anonymize candidates, and focus on their skills instead of age, gender, or race. Additionally, recruiters and employers can also benefit from AI technology during candidate screening and interview scheduling.

Here’s how you can integrate technology into your recruitment and staffing processes.

1. Choose a tool to automate candidate assessment, schedule interviews, and notify candidates throughout their recruitment journey.
2. Simplify your application procedure by allowing candidates to apply directly through social media channels.
3. Partner with the right RPO who can guide you in implementing AI-driven solutions.
4. Reduce the time to recruit talented individuals by automating processes and providing high-touch assistance to interested candidates.
5. Monitor employee performance and track sources through analytical data and insights.
6. Use AI-powered tools to assess candidate’s true strengths, weaknesses, and skillset

In a nutshell, it’s time the healthcare facilities and organization orient their efforts toward technology and devise programmatic recruitment techniques to locate and hire talented and top-rated healthcare professionals.

Final Thoughts

While recruiting and staffing new hires, a general rule of thumb is to look over the business world’s contemporary state and see how best to use the present situation to your advantage. With the advancement of technology, we may have to adapt to newer trends and techniques for our business strategies and processes.

We’ve discussed the three trends above and summarize how company branding, virtual events, and tech upgrades in recruiting can lead to attracting and retaining loyal, hard-working, innovative employees.

Our advice to healthcare organizations is to blend modern recruiting methods into their hiring solutions. To attract both active and passive job seekers, enhance your employer branding efforts to attract a candidate who’s congruent to your organization’s culture.

Furthermore, adapt technology and AI to reduce the manual work and allow technology to attract loyal and hard-working employees.

For now, in this pandemic-ridden world, understanding these three trends and refining your recruiting strategies accordingly will do wonders for your company.