Recruiting High-Value Nursing Candidates: 5 Trends to Know Now

Healthcare is a fluid industry. Protocols, treatments and procedures and even the way in which employers recruit staff change rapidly. With the recent nurse shortage the demand for skilled nurses is higher than ever before. Healthcare organizations across the country must adopt a unique approach to recruiting high-value nursing candidates. 

A healthcare organization is most often defined by the frontline workers it employs. In fact the reputation of healthcare organizations ties directly to patient care excellence. When your nursing staff includes high-value nurses they strengthen the reputation of your healthcare organization.

5 Trends For Recruiting High-Value Nursing Candidates

While competitive salaries and a strong benefits package continues to draw high-value nursing candidates, recruiters today must also incorporate more innovative strategies into their recruitment process. Current trends in healthcare create opportunities for healthcare organizations to connect with high-value nursing candidates in ways that are much more creative and forward-thinking than ever before. Here are the 5 top trends we think you need to know now. 

1. Collaborative Recruiting

Sometimes your best path to recruiting high-value nursing candidates is hiding in plain sight. When you already have excellent nurses on staff, including them in the recruitment process lets them know you value their insight. And an experienced nurse is the best judge of those skills that make a candidate an excellent fit for your team. Another fantastic collaborative resource for streamlining the process of recruiting high-value nursing candidates is a nurse recruiting agency. Here are some additional benefits to using the trend of collaborative recruiting as a strategy.

  • Boosts Staff Morale: When your nurses actually have a say in the recruiting process it lets them know you value their experience and input. This contributes to a boost in morale and overall job contentment. 
  • A Good Fit for Your Organization’s Company Culture: Your values and mission as a healthcare organization form your company culture. Long time staff have the unique ability to gauge a potential candidate’s fit into the culture before the hiring and onboarding process commence. A good cultural fit means a seamless transition from candidate to staff member. 
  • Reduction in Turnover: Collaborative recruiting means current staff members involved in the process have a stake in the success of your healthcare organization. To that end they are less likely to move on out the door. The new hire is less likely to move on to another job once they are hired after being recruited by a colleague.
  • Staff Insight: Incorporating a collaborative recruiting process enables you to gain insight into current staff satisfaction. These insights can be utilized to create a better retention strategy.
  • Mentorship That’s Invaluable: When a member of your staff recruits a new hour they know their reputation is closely connected to the new member of the nursing staff. That means they will mentor their colleagues and help them adjust quickly.
  • A Nursing Agency: When you need someone right away who meets all of your criteria, a professional nurse recruiting agency is an excellent resource.  

2. Digital Recruiting

The digital age means potential candidates do most of their job searching online first. Your healthcare organization needs to harness the digital platform capabilities to your advantage. Running a successful digital recruitment campaign requires much more than simply posting on job boards. Here are some of the digital recruitment trends you should know about.

  • Job Boards Specific to Healthcare: Of course general job boards and platforms such as Indeed and LinkedIn are worthy avenues to pursue when recruiting high-value nursing candidates. However, in order to engage healthcare professionals with the specific skills you need and want you should include portals that are designed for healthcare. There are plenty of good digital healthcare jobs platforms including your local nursing organizations and schools.
  • Go Social and Target Your Desired Candidates: Social media platforms allow for much more precise targets. And they engage a multitude of users. Put their long digital reach to use for you. Create your ads in a way that engages with those candidates who possess the specific skills you need. 
  • Publish Content that Engages Talent: Engage potential candidates through content that highlights your healthcare organization’s brand. Content should focus on the positive aspects of your company culture, vision, values and the rewards of working for your organization. Certainly well-crafted articles on current and newsworthy topics as they apply to healthcare are engaging. Video content is among the latest recruitment trends in healthcare. They include earnest testimonials from current employees, a tour of the healthcare facility and offer a glimpse into the daily operations of your healthcare facility. 
  • You Get Real-Time Feedback: When you create a digital campaign you get the benefit of having real time feedback through analytics. Track your campaign’s performance by assessing click-through rates, application conversion rates and the level of engaged readers. Digital analytics are invaluable as they enable you to tweak and perfect campaigns for recruiting high-value nursing candidates.
  • Digital Campaigns are Cost-Effective: Far more cost-effective than traditional advertising methods, a digital recruitment campaign is far-reaching. Many digital platforms have a global audience allowing your organization to reach more people. These platforms, as mentioned above, can also be tweaked to recruit only those who are in your specialized demographic. 

3. Design a Virtual Job Fair

Digital media drives the trends in recruiting high-value nursing candidates. That’s why the digital job fair has become such a popular endeavor. This is a popular tool for reaching far beyond local recruits. Broaden your horizons by hosting a digital/online job fair or virtual hiring event to reach potential new hires wherever they may be.

  • Virtual Hiring Events are Cost-Effective: The digital job fair removes many of the costly components of traditional job fairs. You need not be concerned with venue, travel, accommodations and other logistical hurdles. 
  • Ease of Multimedia: Presentations are often much more engaging when viewed over a digital platform. Webinars and videos, power points and even interactive Q&A sessions engage candidates in a much more compelling way than through the traditional meeting room venue. 
  • Invaluable Interaction: Despite the digital platform virtual job fairs engage potential new hires in real-time interaction. That means recruiting high-value nursing candidates through live chats where they can ask questions that are pertinent to them and vice-versa. This real time interaction may also include a virtual tour of your healthcare facility, healthcare-related webinars and even a talk with current nursing staff members. 
  • Relaxed Application: The digital strategy offers a much more relaxed environment for your candidates. The convenience of attending a virtual job fair from the comfort of their home allows interested parties to attend without committing to a physical in-person event. You’re already off to a good start by creating a flexible and convenient opportunity for potential job candidates.
  • Real Time Analytics: When you craft a virtual hiring event you enable your healthcare organization to gather real-time analytics. Find out who is attending your event, demographically. Are they engaged in what’s being presented on screen? Use these metrics to help retool and optimize future events.

4. Using AI for Recruiting High-Value Nursing Candidates

Love it or hate it, AI has revolutionized how the world operates, including the healthcare sector. Why not harness the capabilities of artificial intelligence in your recruitment strategies? The efficiency in which AI can match specific nursing skills to those healthcare organizations who need them is nothing short of amazing. Here are some ways your organization can utilize AI to efficiently recruit the nursing candidates you want.

  • Find the Perfect Fit for Your Organization’s Culture: Skills and experience can easily be measured by traditional methods. Finding a high-value nurse who aligns with your healthcare organization’s culture is much more difficult. Often it takes a measure of time for new staff to acclimate and find out if they are indeed a good fit. Specific AI platforms for healthcare recruiting have the ability to analyze data including information about previous employment, online activity and personal interests that help identify the cultural compatibility. 
  • Identification of Candidate Patterns: This is where AI offers a great leg up in the recruiting process. AI is capable of analyzing numerous datasets and identifying patterns that fit with your recruiting needs. AI matches employers with job seekers with unbelievable accuracy. 
  • Recruiting Partner: AI provides recruiters with the ability to automate the process at various points. In addition to identifying cultural compatibility, AI can screen and schedule your candidates much more efficiently, which speeds up the hiring process. 
  • Get A Well-Rounded View of Your Candidate through AI: AI analyzes data across all aspects of candidates’ digital footprints. This provides a clear assessment of the skills specific candidates possess and streamlines the hiring process.
  • Retention Strategies: Recruiting high-value nursing candidates is only half the battle. You need to ensure you can retain these essential employees for the long term. Because of AI’s immense capability to analyze data and predict outcomes with such precision, you’ll have an idea of just how likely a specific candidate is to remain employed by your healthcare organization. 

5. Leverage Employee Referral Programs

Those who are already employed within the organization offer some of the best paths to recruiting high-value nursing candidates. By leveraging your employee referral program your utilizing your best resources. Show your employees you value their input and provide incentives for their efforts. Employee referral programs are incredibly valuable for several reasons.

  • Cost-Effectiveness: The bonuses and incentives you offer current staff for their input in the recruiting process is often far less costly than advertising, recruitment fairs and the like. 
  • Quality of Candidates: Referrals often stay longer, exhibit more job satisfaction and adapt sooner than other recruits. That’s because the staff member who referred them provided insight. In other words they already know what to expect.
  • Speeds Up Hiring: Because the potential new hire has been referred by a valued staff member you have a degree of trust already. That means a far more expedient vetting process.
  • Strengthening the Culture: Just as with collaborative recruiting when you work with your current staff in seeking new candidates you demonstrate that you value their input. You’re creating a cohesive team and raising job satisfaction and morale which translates into employee retention.
  • Bridge the Gap Between Recruiting and Staff: In order to maintain a successful referral program the recruiting personnel must forge a relationship with other healthcare staff members. Because of this relationship you gain insight through feedback. Have you had challenges in retaining staff? Dissatisfied nurses? Poor patient care? You’ll gain a better understanding of these issues and how to best remedy them when you communicate regularly with staff. An employee referral program helps.

Additional Trends to Know for Recruiting High-Value Nursing Candidates

Competitive compensation packages are still a huge reason candidates are drawn to healthcare organizations. Be sure your packages include:

  • Competitive Salary
  • Health and Wellness Benefits
  • Professional Development Compensation
  • Retirement Benefits
  • Regular Reviews
  • Performance Bonuses
  • Recognition
  • Additional Perks that Help Your Nurses (child care assistance, housing allowances, assistance in relocating)
  • Advanced Training Initiatives
  • Flexible Scheduling
  • PTO
  • Prioritize Job Satisfaction and Workplace Wellbeing
  • Work-Life Balance is A Must

Onboarding with ease including such programs as:

  • Peer Mentoring
  • Training for Pertinent Technology
  • Clear Understanding of Your Healthcare Organization’s Culture
  • Support and Resources
  • Open Communication

The Key to Recruiting Success

Recruiting high-value nursing candidates is crucial to the success of your healthcare organization. It’s not always easy to do, especially in the current environment. However, when you utilize current trends you’ll find a good measure of success in enticing candidates to your organization. For more information please contact BOS Medical Staffing.

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