< Back to Hiring Blog

3 Candidate Experience Mistakes That Can Flatline Your Healthcare Recruiting Strategy

June 13, 2018
 
iCIMS Staff
3 min read
Learn how iCIMS can
help you drive ROI

In mid-June, caregivers from coast-to-coast are recognized as National Nursing Assistant Week commences. As this time is set aside to celebrate and acknowledge these dedicated, highly-skilled professionals, it’s also important to take the opportunity to walk in their (slip-resistant) shoes – not only as hardworking healthcare providers, but also as sought-after jobseekers.

Given that Health Leaders Media anticipates that nearly one in eight U.S. jobs will be within the healthcare sector by 2022, it’s essential to prioritize healthcare recruiting within this workforce. Just as nurses check vitals, healthcare recruiters should also be keeping a pulse on hiring top talent.

In addition to staying aware of these current trends in healthcare, recruiters should focus on the candidate experience, in order to attract and empathize with best-fit applicants. Avoiding the following can help prevent a bad candidate (and employee) experience:

1. A complicated, time-consuming application process

What to avoid: Organizations can easily lose out on top talent if their application process doesn’t support social and mobile, is too lengthy, or doesn’t provide the modern, consumer-like user experience that today’s applicants expect. A poor candidate experience could mean a poor reflection of a company’s brand – resulting in many candidates dropping off during the application process.

What to do instead: It is critical for healthcare recruiters to provide applicants with a candidate experience that is quick, easy and mobile-optimized. Often on the frontlines, administering and evaluating treatment, nurses deserve an experience that complements their fast-paced routines.

2. Tools that take too long to help fill open positions

What to avoid:. Businesses risk both their operations and results when they aren’t well-staffed. Becker’s Hospital Review estimates that every percentage point increase in nurse turnover costs an average hospital about $300,000 annually. Vacancies in this industry not only impact an organization’s bottom line – but also affect all of the patients needing hands-on care.  When too many vacancies exist, workers can easily become burnt out from the burden of taking on additional responsibilities while waiting for open positions to be filled. This exhaustion could also lead them to begin searching for a new workplace.

What to do instead: The recruitment landscape is complex and dynamic. With hiring in the healthcare industry continuing to become more aggressive, if companies don’t have the right tools to attract top talent, they could end up employed by a competitor instead. It’s imperative for healthcare organizations to prioritize recruitment and candidate experience – and equally as important to partner with a vendor who takes recruiting just as seriously.

3. Using the wrong method of communication with candidates

What to avoid: Due to the demands of their day-to-day responsibilities, most nurses are constantly on their feet and rarely in front of a computer. Trilogy Health Services, an award-winning provider of senior living and long-term healthcare services in the Midwest, found themselves struggling to keep in contact with their deskless candidates through phone calls and emails.

What to do instead: Since partnering with iCIMS and TextRecruit, Trilogy is able to easily communicate via text message with their hard-to-reach candidates, helping them to hire top talent faster. Candidates can quickly schedule or reschedule interviews, while also letting recruiters know if they are running late – just by responding via text message. Through text recruiting, Trilogy sees an average response time of just one hour.
With healthcare employment on the rise – increasing as much as 26 percent by the year 2022 according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics – healthcare organizations must streamline their recruitment strategy in order to stay ahead of the recruitment curve.

Whether engaging candidates through mobile recruiting, recruiting employees from within or utilizing social media recruitment strategies, healthcare recruiters should continually monitor and maintain a modern and simplified candidate experience to scale for the future.

×

Learn how iCIMS can help you drive ROI

Explore categories

Explore categories

Back to top

Join our growing community
and receive free tips on how to attract, engage, hire, & advance the best talent.

Read more about Healthcare

iCIMS February Workforce Report: A tale of unrequited love

Read more

By the numbers: The healthcare talent crisis

Read more

Why the best hospitals use automated reference checks

Read more