However, recruiting your own healthcare staff can be challenging, which is why using healthcare
recruiting services is such a good choice.
Hiring qualified healthcare professionals means dealing with several factors that are unique to this essential industry.
First, health facilities typically have a relatively high turnover rate. Healthcare is a demanding and stressful field, with people’s lives on the line daily. Many healthcare workers love their jobs but find it highly stressful. When you add bureaucracy and government regulations on top of everything, it can be difficult to keep your office properly staffed.
Some estimate that turnover in the healthcare field is as much as 20%. And that number was determined before the global pandemic that decimated healthcare facility staffing and pushed those remaining to their limits.
Second, the US has a persistent shortage of qualified healthcare professionals. Demand for healthcare employees – from physicians to nurse practitioners to food services workers – is high and always on the rise.
Even before COVID-19 hit our shores, demand for healthcare employees was higher than the supply. It’s estimated there’s a shortage of 40,000 workers today and a 130,000 shortage by 2030.
The pandemic exacerbated an existing healthcare staffing problem, and this presents several challenges for healthcare professional recruiting.
The last primary issue with healthcare recruiting is most workers need some kind of medical certification or credentialing to start working. Healthcare is a highly regulated field and most employees need specific degrees and accreditation to begin work.
Healthcare staffing agencies are highly accomplished in screening and sourcing healthcare employees. Most are specialized in the healthcare recruiting field and speak the healthcare language that people in this field use every day. Whether you need a physician, midlevel, nurse, or line worker, your staffing agency will send you the most vetted and qualified job candidates. This is a big time-saver for your organization and ensures you’ll bring in the best healthcare job candidates with minimal effort on your end.
Healthcare recruitment goes far beyond job ads these days. There are many healthcare forums and platforms where job candidates can communicate directly with healthcare recruiters and also post their resumes. If your organization only uses job ads to source employees, you may be unnecessarily limiting the talent pool. A healthcare recruiting service has the specific tools and expertise to find the job candidates you need by accessing a wide variety of employment platforms. Your recruiting agency is also highly flexible and can help you find permanent, part-time, or contract healthcare employees. Many organizations use a staffing agency to find temporary employees to ‘try them out,’ then hire them full-time at the conclusion of their trial period.
A healthcare staffing agency can deliver a broad array of job candidates for all kinds of healthcare roles. Your staffing agency can cast a wider net than you can and even double the size of the job network you source from. If your organization is trying to fill a hard-to-fill job, the healthcare recruiting agency will probably have the experience with sourcing that type of worker. Again, they’re experts in the field and can usually steer you in the right direction faster than if you did it yourself.
A healthcare recruiting service is usually faster in finding qualified and screened job candidates for you to interview. If you have an available physician opening and need it staffed yesterday, it’s smart to work with a recruiting agency. They can almost always find the right employee faster than you can. Because your staffing agency produces faster results, you can avoid staffing shortages that lead to patient care issues and employee burnout.
If you are part of a small healthcare office, working with an agency means the team can devote its time to clinical care and enhancing operations. Usually, working with a staffing firm means your healthcare staff can work more with patients, which is what healthcare is supposed to be about in the first place.
Finding excellent healthcare employees takes a lot of time, and remember that healthcare burnout is a serious problem. Instead of having your overworked staff handling yet another role, hiring a staffing agency can improve your team’s work and life balance.