Maintaining staffing levels in medical practices is essential to provide patients with quality care. It starts with a comprehensive healthcare recruiting strategy to attract and retain qualified professionals. Streamlining the medical hiring process reduces ever-increasing medical staff turnover rates, which reached 20.7% in 2023, saving you thousands or millions of dollars.
The healthcare recruitment industry’s competitive nature makes it imperative to adopt strategies that bring in candidates to improve business performance and patient satisfaction.
Build a Positive Employer Brand and Reputation
Employers must differentiate themselves when looking to attract top talent, which starts by boosting their brand image and maintaining a positive reputation. Creating a compelling medical practice brand involves demonstrating company culture with a prominent mission and vision.
Sharing values, employee testimonials, and objectives on your company website and job postings helps candidates determine if their professional aspirations align with the expectations. As a result, you encourage well-qualified candidates to apply and turn away those who do not fit in.
New team members who understand your practice from Day One are more likely to stay around longer and be more productive in the long term. A diverse, inclusive culture is a distinct strategic advantage. It also results in a broader reach because you encourage everyone with the talent and skills to apply regardless of their gender, race, background, age, and abilities.
Another way to take advantage of your company’s reputation is to ask employees who they know. Creating incentivized referral programs encourages current employees who already trust you and believe in your practice’s mission and values to recommend qualified candidates for open positions. Engaging the whole team in the recruitment process strengthens the company culture.
Tailor Detailed Job Descriptions
A well-written job description is often the first point of contact for job applicants. Therefore, it must accurately represent your medical practice and communicate the responsibilities, skills, certifications, and qualifications required for the role. Write straightforward, concise job descriptions to filter out ineligible candidates early in the hiring process.
Adding details beyond fundamental job responsibilities piques candidates’ interest and gives them a more comprehensive understanding of the role. Include enough information to help people picture themselves in the role and ascertain whether their skills and abilities match your needs:
- Job title
- Position status — full-time vs. part-time, hourly vs. salaried
- Job duties, listed in approximate order of importance
- Working conditions and expected work schedule, including flexible work arrangements as applicable
You may choose to list a pay range for the position. If so, do market research before settling on compensation and ensure reimbursement sustainability to make it competitive and aligned with industry rates, standards, and trends.
Use Digital Recruitment Platforms
You can use multiple online platforms to streamline your medical practice recruitment. Digital resources can attract many more people than traditional newspaper advertisements and word of mouth. They provide access to a broader talent pool, increasing your chances of finding the most specialized skills and talents and engaging passive candidates who aren’t currently seeking employment.
Your company website is the perfect place for posting job listings that drive organic web traffic and reduce the costs of external advertisements. Social media platforms like LinkedIn provide details on potential employees’ qualifications, experience, and achievements, helping hiring managers find people who fit open positions.
Leverage Technology to Optimize Talent Screening
Today, technology is vital for improving preliminary talent screening. It speeds up the candidate screening process, minimizes geographical limitations, and improves efficiency. You can use applicant tracking systems, or ATS, to simplify the recruitment process and reduce the time it takes to find talented people.
ATS are becoming more popular because they alleviate some of the most significant pain points in the medical field during the hiring process. Some of the top ways ATS technology proves helpful include:
- Automates the candidates’ shortlisting process
- Improves collaboration among the hiring team
- Saves time and resources spent reviewing resumes and cover letters
- Analyzes the performance of open job postings
- Minimizes distractions and bottlenecks
- Delivers actionable insights about your hiring process
Combining applicant tracking with innovative background screenings that complete employment verifications and criminal record checks will help you make informed decisions about prospective hires. Another way to use technology is by conducting video interviews to bypass geographical barriers and improve efficiency.
Develop a Robust Onboarding Program
Your entire recruiting process should focus on giving candidates a sense of what it’s like to work for your medical practice. Create a supportive, warm, and welcoming experience to help them acclimate to your work environment and succeed in their new role.
Before onboarding, you can enhance candidates’ experiences by ensuring transparency and respect in the recruitment and interview process, prompt communication, and timely feedback. After selecting the best applicant, curate an onboarding process to provide a smooth transition into your organization’s culture and surroundings by:
- Organizing orientation sessions
- Introducing them to the rest of the team
- Providing training opportunities
- Offering ongoing support to address their challenges and concerns
- Reviewing appointment and payment practices
- Setting up their technology in advance for increased productivity
Constantly Improve the Recruitment Process
The healthcare industry is constantly changing, so you must find ways to adapt by routinely evaluating your recruitment strategies, outcomes, and metrics and finding ways to improve them. Gather feedback from HR and management consultants, hiring managers, and current employees to gain valuable insights and identify areas for improvement.
Staying updated with the latest medical practice management trends, emerging roles, updated skill requirements, evolving patient needs, and technological advancements will help you streamline your healthcare recruitment strategy. Understanding the changing job market expectations, such as the importance of work-life balance and flexibility for younger generations of employees, will ensure you attract the best candidates.
Outsource Your Healthcare Recruiting Services to Professionals
DoctorsManagement is a full-service consulting firm for physicians and healthcare professionals looking to mitigate compliance risk, boost productivity and profit, and reduce stress on their staff. We provide recruiting services that assist with writing professional job ads, screening resumes, doing telephone interviews, completing criminal background checks, and curating compensation and benefits package designs.
We can also work with your manager or administrator to help you choose and retain the very best staff for your practice while sustaining employee morale, satisfaction, and retention rates. Please contact us today for more information about our medical practice manager recruiting services.
