The interview process is a difficult one on both sides of the desk. Of course, job candidates face the challenge of projecting their abilities and skills to be the best possible choice to add to your staff, but employers face multiple challenges as well. Here we examine the seven most common nursing interview challenges employers face, and provide solutions.
1. Effectively Dealing with The Competition
Challenge: One of the biggest nursing interview challenges healthcare organizations face today is competing for the same pool of qualified candidates. There is a serious nursing shortage in the US and that makes recruiting candidates difficult for healthcare facilities.
Solution: You must offer competitive salaries and compensation. Stand out from the crowd by offering sign-on bonuses, tuition/student loan reimbursement, strong professional development opportunities, and flexible scheduling. Of course, if your healthcare organization is already recognized for its top-botch workplace culture and positive brand, that’s even better.
2. Recognizing a Strong Cultural Fit
Challenge: Identifying a candidate’s cultural fit into your organization can be difficult. However, failing to do so may cause issues for you and them. If a candidate is not a strong cultural fit, they may have trouble integrating into the workplace. This can lead to poor patient care and job dissatisfaction, and they will leave by choice or being let go.
Solution: To identify a candidate who will thrive in your organization’s workplace culture, it’s necessary that you clearly define that culture. Create scenarios and ask situational questions that help identify the candidate’s cultural fit.
3. Ensure Clinical Skills and Competency Beyond the Resume
Challenge: What looks good on a resume doesn’t always transfer to real-case scenarios. Some candidates’ resumes may list impressive skills and certifications, but their experience may be lacking. The best way to practice these impeccable skills is through real-time patient care.
Solution: Use a good number of case-based interview questions or skills assessments so that you can evaluate their reasoning, clinical response, and knowledge. In doing so you have an opportunity to gauge whether or not they struggle with applying their clinical skills beyond their resume.
4. Be Sure to Assess Soft Skills Too
Challenge: Technical skills and credentials are highly important and go a long way in helping you identify a candidate’s qualifications for the job. However, certain soft skills make a nursing candidate invaluable. Skills like empathy, communication, and the ability to work as part of a team make a qualified candidate even better.
Solution: In order to identify your candidate’s soft skills, create role-playing scenarios. Or ask direct experience-based questions such as “Was there ever a time when you needed to deal with a difficult patient (or co-worker)? If so, how did you handle it?”
5. Addressing Turnover and Retention
Challenge: Burnout, lack of professional development opportunities, better opportunities, and overall job dissatisfaction all contribute to high turnover rates for healthcare organizations. While some of these things are beyond your control, there are ways to identify the candidate who is more likely to stick around for the long term.
Solution: Ask the candidate about their career goals, where they hope to be in a year, five years, etc. Also, find out what they expect out of work-life balance. If you haven’t implemented a mentorship program yet, do so. Statistics show a nurse mentorship program weighs heavily on a nurse’s decision to stay.
6. Managing Your Own Bias in The Nursing Interview
Challenge: Whether you are aware or not, your own bias may affect your decisions. Hiring someone you consciously or subconsciously prefer over another candidate may lead to missed opportunities.
Solution: One of the solutions to interview bias is to use blind resume screening. Another answer involves implementing a hiring panel to review your choices. Whether we want to believe it or not, many of us fall victim to bias when interviewing candidates.
7. Dealing with Expectations for Salary and Benefits
Challenge: As we noted earlier, a big challenge to the nursing interview is the sheer volume of competition vying for the same talent pool. If a candidate has interviewed multiple times they may have higher salary expectations than what you offer.
Solution: Transparency is key. Be upfront about your salary range and the benefits you offer, including non-monetary benefits such as work-life balance, flexible scheduling, professional growth and development, and a strong workplace culture. Very often what you offer tips the scales in your favor. And if you have to let a qualified candidate walk, then so be it.
For more solutions to the challenges employers face in the nursing interview please contact BOS Medical Staffing today.
