Healthcare Hiring Best Practices

The United States job market has been quite the hot topic over the past couple of years, with reverberations from the pandemic still being felt as we begin to move into 2023. What does this unique job market mean for the healthcare industry? What is the state of our healthcare job market? What challenges can you expect to encounter? And what best practices can you implement to overcome those challenges? Let’s take a look.

What is the state of the healthcare job market?

Demand for healthcare workers is currently high, with postings above the overall market trend. Additionally, healthcare employment is expected to grow 13% from 2021 to 2031, resulting in about 2 million jobs over the course of 10 years. This is much faster growth than the average for all other industries. To put it simply, the healthcare job market has a lot of open positions and not enough candidates to fill them.

What healthcare hiring challenges are practices facing?

Because of the shortage in healthcare professionals compared to the number of open positions, there is a great deal of competition to hire the most highly skilled candidates. This competition requires organizations to go above and beyond to ensure they are the most attractive choice for their desired candidates. This requires a delicate balance as practices try to make their offer desirable without knowing what other practices are offering, and while trying not to overextend themselves.

6 Best Practices to Secure Your Ideal Staff

In such a competitive market, it’s important to put as many best practices into effect in your organization as possible. Here are six best practices that can help to set you apart from your competition:

1. Highlight your employer brand. Branding allows your organization to share its culture with potential candidates so you can attract the best possible fit. Make it a priority to sit down and determine your identity as an employer, as well as the kind of staff you’d like to attract. Keep this information in focus as you post open positions and proceed through the hiring process.
2. Automate recruitment tasks wherever possible. Hiring is a time-consuming process and a timely response to interested candidates is essential. Automating tasks early in the recruitment process and employing prescreening tools can help you focus your efforts most efficiently and get back to candidates quickly.
3. Use clear job descriptions. The main purpose of a job description is to let candidates know what to expect of the position they’re considering. By being clear about expectations, compensation, and culture, you will allow candidates who aren’t a good fit to recognize that and move on to other opportunities.
4. Post openings to niche job boards. General job boards like Indeed and Monster are great, but you’re specifically looking for health professionals. Posting to a specific job board, such as HealthJobsNationwide, Health eCareers, or CareerVitals, can get you directly to the candidates you’re looking for, weeding down the potential field to the best of the best.
5. Get creative with your benefits. In such a competitive market, it’s important to set your organization apart. While compensation is important, it can be one the most difficult areas in which to compete. Highlight what you can offer beyond compensation, for example flexible working hours to allow for better work/life balance or more modern technology solutions that can ease the stress of the workday.
6. Get professional help. The hiring process is taxing and time-consuming. If resources allow, partnering with a firm that specializes in the hiring process can ease the pressure and increase success.

While the competitive job market can be intimidating, it doesn’t have to be impossible to navigate. By being knowledgeable about the status of the healthcare job market and proactive enough to implement the above best practices, you can succeed in hiring the highly qualified staff you desire.

And if you’re ready to bring on some professional help to streamline the process, MicroMD is happy to offer Talentcare as one of our Solutions vendors. To learn more, visit micromd.com or call 1-800-624-8832.