This year, HealtheCareers produced the 2017 Healthcare Recruiting Trends Report, which surveyed over 350 recruiting and Human Resources (HR) professionals. This report is an outstanding resource because it provides in-depth insight into what people believe the healthcare recruiting trends will be for 2017. We have distilled the report down to highlight some of our favorite insights we believe will help keep you informed as you make your budgetary recruitment marketing decisions.
Healthcare Recruitment is Ramping Up
According to the report, “Over the next six months, more than half (50.3%) of healthcare employers and recruiters anticipate hiring more professionals than they did during the last half of 2016.” What does this mean for you? It shows that the competition for healthcare professionals is going to be stiffer than ever even while you will most likely be tasked with more searches. It’s critical to develop a time-saving system to keep up with all the demands a recruiter faces. An ideal approach would be to create a proactive recruitment marketing and follow-up strategy that makes all of your candidates feel like they are being nurtured no matter what phase of the hiring process they are in.
Time to Fill and Turnover are Up
HealtheCareers revealed that, “Compared to 2015, 36% of survey respondents reported that turnover at their organizations increased in 2016. The time it takes to fill positions grew 49% as well—mostly due to an inability to find qualified professionals and stagnant candidate interest despite U.S. economic improvement.” This is a distinct issue because as healthcare recruitment ramps up recruiters will be given additional searches that extend longer than previously expected while dealing with the turnover from 2016. Again, this is a case for needing a talent pipeline and ongoing candidate nurturing process so that when turnover happens, the issue doesn’t extend throughout the year. Filling turnover slots is critical because without doing so will compromise your ability to fill new positions created by healthcare system growth.
Priorities
There is always a need for qualified Physicians and Nurses. According to this report the top shortages include:
Physicians
- Family Medicine
- Internal Medicine
- Psychiatry
Nurses
- Emergency Medicine
- Surgery
- Nursing Assistant
- Certified Nursing Assistant
- Operating Room
- LPN / LVN / RVN
We advise our client to take a broad-based approach with their recruitment strategy. We recommend inbound recruitment marketing, a careers microsite or subpage and awareness brand marketing to boost your healthcare system’s name in the local community as well as nationally.
Other notable information provided by this report includes:
- 80% of recruiters are seeking to fill positions that require 2-5 years of experience (nurses and physicians)
- Salaries and benefits are on the upward trend in order to remain competitive
- Branding is critical. But according to the report, “While 92% say that employer branding is an important means to attract talent, significantly fewer have a dedicated budget for employer branding (43%) or a dedicated role in charge of it (44%). This is unfortunate, as according to Human Resources Today, companies with positive employer brands get two times the number of applicants for jobs than their competitors⁶.”
At Harger Howe, we believe in a proactive recruiting that focuses on building your brand. Often times recruitment is one of the first budget items to get slashed. While it may seem like an easy area to cut dollars from, wouldn’t you rather get two times the candidates than the others? We think so!
--
Would you like to be ahead of the game when it comes to this year's recruiting? Great! We've got a guide for that!
