7 Stats You Need to Know for Healthcare Recruiting

If your healthcare company has a weak employer brand or outdated talent qualifiers, you’re losing out on valuable clinical talent. That’s the message from several surveys and studies published in the last two years. The studies provide insights into both what candidates want in an organization as well as what organizations can do to attract more candidates.

The following numbers should help inform you of not only the state of healthcare hiring in 2018, but also the steps you can take to improve your hiring process. Here are seven statistics from The Talent Board, Healthcare Recruiters International, and the Bureau of Labor and Statistics to keep in mind as you shape your recruiting strategy for the next 12 months.

Everyone Needs More People

• 33% of jobs within the healthcare industry are clinical. According to BLS, healthcare industry occupations account for 14 of the 30 fastest growing occupations.
• By 2026, 14% of all U.S. jobs will be in the healthcare and social assistance industry, and the healthcare industry will add nearly 4.0 million jobs.

Great Candidates are Harder To Find

• 80% of employers require 2-5 years of experience for professional positions such as nurses and physicians.
• 50% of surveyed hospitals said they did not see an increase in applicants in 2017, 15% said they saw slightly less and 6% said they saw significantly less compared to six months prior.

The Main Differentiators for Candidates

• 92% of candidates say employer branding was an essential resource for them, but less than half of employers commit resources to build their employer brand.
• 41% of global candidates who had “negative” job-seeker experiences take their loyalty and purchases elsewhere. These candidates often share their poor experiences socially on sites like LinkedIn.
• 75% of candidates said that hospital websites were their most commonly used recruiting resource.

The Key Takeaways

The healthcare industry is growing quickly and includes a wide range of specialist and technical occupations. The best candidates are beelining for organizations with the best employer brands and encourage their networks to avoid other employers. Companies are still looking for experienced candidates despite getting fewer applicants each year, but are hesitant to commit resources to build their brands.

What This Means For Recruiting

1. Build a broader talent pool and create a career path for existing employees
   Make sure your recruiters are drawing from a diverse applicant pool, and that they aren’t just relying on resumes or job boards for postings and candidate sourcing. Encourage them to post jobs on non-traditional sites and engage passive candidates. Provide internal mobility to candidates within the organization as well. Consider how their skills, competencies, and institutional experience may qualify them for a horizontal or vertical job shift.
2. Surface skills that matter instead of basing choices on experience
   With a diminished pool of candidates with 2-5 years of professional experience, think outside the box and screen candidates for the skills that they need instead of their time in the industry. Use structured interviews to find candidates that have the competencies and aptitudes necessary for success. If every candidate answers the same questions, every candidate has an equal shot of showing off their abilities and approaches to a situation.
3. Build a great candidate experience to boost your employer brand
   Make sure candidates can easily find and apply to positions. Commit to providing them prompt feedback and dispositioning notices, and solicit their feedback on the hiring process. Not only will it give you insight into what works and doesn’t work with your hiring process, it will reduce the chances they vent a frustrating experience on Glassdoor or another employer rating service.

Learn How to Conduct a Competitive Employer Brand Audit

Your employer brand will be a core differentiator between a candidate’s interest in your company and staying at their current position. With diminishing applications, you need to find faster ways of surfacing competencies and gauging aptitudes from a wider range of applicants. Build a recruiting function that can meet these needs to find the clinical talent that will make your organization successful.