Healthcare Recruitment Guide & Hiring Tips

Recruiting for healthcare can be hard work. While the number of available candidates is bound to rise and fall, the demand for new talent never ceases. This creates substantial competition for employers within the care industry, making it essential to maintain an effective hiring strategy.

Here we discuss our top five tips for successful healthcare recruitment, helping care providers to attract, hire, and retain the best new professionals in their industry.

How to recruit for care & healthcare settings

Healthcare recruitment will always have its challenges, but it doesn’t need to be a gruelling task! 

Here’s how you can develop a more sustainable healthcare recruitment strategy – increasing the volume and quality of your applicants, and retaining colleagues for the long run.

#1 – Follow a step-by-step recruitment plan

Behind every strong recruitment process is a concrete, step-by-step hiring strategy. Work with your team to map out each stage of your hiring journey – from application right through to onboarding.

The ‘seven-step recruitment’ model is one of the most commonly practised by HR professionals. This covers:

• Planning
• Analysis
• Talent Attraction
• Screening
• Engagement (interview)
• Selection
• Onboarding

This approach ensures your team is equipped to manage candidates effectively at every step of their journey, increasing the speed and efficiency of your hiring turnaround. 

Read more about the seven stages of recruitment

#2 – Invest in the right recruitment software (ATS)

Is your HR software toolkit up to scratch? Using tools like an Applicant Tracking System (ATS) will save both time and money for your organisation, while making life easier for your team.

ATS platforms are one of the most popular software solutions used by employers worldwide, providing a wide range of tools and automations to make hiring easier. This includes secure storage of applicant data, candidate tagging/filtering, advertising tools, email/SMS automation, and even remote hiring capabilities!

– Why do I need recruitment software?

Without the right recruitment software, your team will find it difficult to track, engage, and support candidates throughout the hiring process. This not only reduces the success of your hiring strategy, but can damage your reputation as an ‘employer of choice’.

Using an ATS ensures all candidates are accounted for, with their information stored securely in one central system. This gives you total visibility over every one of your applicants, allowing you to screen, rank, filter, engage, and progress them accordingly.

Learn about Talos ATS – the all-in-one recruitment software package

#3 – Target the right kind of candidates: quality over quantity

While attracting applications is the primary goal of any hiring strategy, you need to make sure these come from compatible candidates. Focus on attracting only the most suitable talent in your sector, rather than becoming inundated with unsuitable applicants.

If your search for talent remains too broad, you’ll end up wasting time screening and interviewing incompatible candidates. It’s therefore critical to hone in on the most suitable talent for your specialist healthcare area. 

– Use industry-specific job boards

Use healthcare industry job boards to find professionals with the most suitable skills and qualifications for your vacancies. This is more effective than sticking to more ‘generic’ job posting sites, which tend to attract a large number of incompatible applications.

– Build a careers site for your organisation

Centralise your recruitment outreach strategy by building a dedicated careers site for your organisation. This gives potential candidates a one-stop-shop for all your vacancies, workplace information, testimonials and benefits.

– Recruiting graduates for healthcare

Graduates are an incredibly valuable audience for healthcare recruiters. Each study year sees even more qualified care professionals enter the industry, providing a great opportunity for employers to snap up new talent! 

Make sure your hiring strategy is optimised for graduate recruitment. Build relationships with colleges/universities, and advertise across graduate job boards to attract the next generation of talent.

View our graduate recruitment guide here

#4 – Focus on candidates’ ‘soft skills’

In healthcare, candidates are assessed on much more than their formal qualifications. Consider the personal qualities – or ‘soft skills’ – that are most critical to your line of work. 

This may include things like teamwork abilities, time management, and empathy – all incredibly valuable qualities of future healthcare professionals. While these may not be as easy to gauge as formal qualifications/experience, they can be effectively assessed through interview/application questions.

It’s important to hire candidates sustainably, with long-term retention and performance in mind. If, for example, your field requires a high degree of teamwork, you’ll need to identify candidates’ strength and experience in working alongside their colleagues.

#5 – Develop a foolproof onboarding process

The strength of your onboarding process has a huge effect on employees’ future success, career satisfaction, and long-term retention. Give new recruits the best start possible with your team by planning and delivering a foolproof onboarding process.

Contrary to popular belief, onboarding isn’t just another ‘HR formality’. It’s important to get new recruits off on the right foot – including providing employer brand information, setting up equipment/software, and introducing them to colleagues and stakeholders.

Meet with new recruits regularly during their first few months to discuss their progress, objectives, and any additional support needed. This will help you to maximise the strength of your training strategy, and bring recruits up to speed in a way that works for them.

Introducing…

Talos ATS: All-in-one healthcare recruitment software

Talos ATS is our all-in-one solution to healthcare recruitment. The platform combines next-generation applicant tracking software with remote hiring tools, advertising management, AI automations, and onboarding resources.

With Talos ATS, there’s no need for multiple software subscriptions! We’ve combined all the best hiring tools into one user-friendly dashboard, giving your HR team a true end-to-end resourcing solution.

Talos ATS includes:

• Next-generation ATS
• Virtual interview room
• Recruitment advertising tools
• Multi-platform job post scheduling
• Email/SMS automation
• Automated AI candidate screening
• Employer-branded careers page included
• Onboarding tools and resources

Make sense of healthcare recruitment: