7 Proven Healthcare Recruiting Tips to Reduce Turnover

The higher your turn over rate, the more money it costs your company to hire and train replacements.

If you’re’ tired of hiring the wrong people for your healthcare establishment, then keep reading for 7 tips for healthcare recruiting.

1. Find People With A Calling To Serve

The medical field is a lot like the teaching field. The most successful are the ones that are called to do that type of work.

The problem is that you can’t really tangibly observe this type of passion. What you can do is access it in their cover letters and doing interviews.

Once you get these great candidates applying, one way to really reel them in is by having great benefits.

2. Improve Benefits

The medical industry is a competitive place. So when it comes to attracting the best candidates, you need an edge.

To gain this edge, you need to get creative regarding compensation, benefits, and flexible work environments. These benefits appeal to every different kind of candidate.

Some like traditional style packages, while others want opportunities to learn, mentor, and career growth.

Some like financial benefits. Some hospitals offer stipends for employees who accept jobs while they’re still in training. To keep good employees, you have to offer them incentives to stay.

Great benefits can bring them in, but they won’t apply if they don’t know about you.

3. Better Branding

Most job hunters who just graduated from college will do research before committing to putting in an application. Therefore, the best way to appeal to this job market is through positive branding.

One of the best ways to do this is by highlighting company benefits and culture. You can show off company culture easily by sharing awesome stories about your workplace and employees on your website.

Another way to show off is by attending job fairs at your local medical and nursing schools. Maintaining a presence is key in making candidates aware of you and spreading your brand.

Once the hiring starts, you need to look at the little details in their application and personality as a whole.

4. Look At Little Details

As much as it takes someone with a calling to do the job, a want to have the job doesn’t necessarily make for the best candidate. Anyone can want the job.

To this end, you need to look out for the little details when going over resumes and cover letters. Look for little grammar, spelling, and formatting mistakes. Only select the best resumes out of the bunch.

As harsh as this sounds, if the candidate didn’t’ care enough to take the time on their resume before they submitted it, they don’t want the job that badly.

So, you pick a great candidate, and it’s time for the interview. How do you conduct it?

5. Offer Real-Life Scenarios In the Interview

Another good idea in healthcare recruiting is offering real-life scenarios during the interview process. You need to make sure that they will make the right decisions when it comes to sticky situations.

This doesn’t even have to end by making sure they can handle the hard stuff, but the everyday simple stuff in a medical facility. You want to make sure they can handle the day to day pressures that can occur.

Like a retail establishment might ask you to sell them a pen in an interview, you can also have them do a simple physical exercise.

The way they handle these scenarios can give you a huge insight into the type of employee they will be.

They might have a ton of medical knowledge, but it’s a no go if they are bad with people.

6. Observe Them With Patients

How employees treat patients is a huge inside look at who they are as a person. This doesn’t mean letting them provide medical treatment to someone before they are hired but letting them handle the easy stuff.

Watch how they greet patients, have them work the desk and ask people to sign in. Watch them discretely, however. Someone will act as leagues different if they are being watched.

If patients like them, though, or pass along compliments, that’s a good sign that they will be good with them. You want to hire those who are people-friendly. A good idea is to add someone on who maybe worked in customer service as a teenager. They typically know how these things work.

It might also be best to hire people who are bilingual so they can further help your patients.

Sometimes you hire people, and it doesn’t work out. For these situations, you need to think long-term.

7. Think Long-Term

Sometimes you will run into applications that aren’t a fit for any positions you have open at the moment but maybe great for one down the line. Always place these applicants in a talent pool so you can pull from them again later. This is essential for healthcare recruiting.

You should be aware that keeping up with great potential applicants is ideal for future hiring. Look into long-term hiring. That way, when someone quits or is no longer right for your facility, you will have a talent pool to pull from.

8. Healthcare Recruiting

A huge part of having a prosperous healthcare facility is filling it with quality employees that care about your patients and the job they are performing.

One bad employee can throw a wrench into everything. Use these 7 healthcare recruiting tips, and reduce your turnover rate.

For information on hiring quality nurses, visit our blog for more info!