Healthcare recruitment technology is changing the face of medical hiring as we know it. Staying on the cutting edge is critical if you want to keep pace in one of the most competitive healthcare markets in modern history.
Here, we’ll talk about some of the biggest ways technology is already shaping the future of recruiting in the medical field, from time-saving tools to artificial intelligence, and what to expect in the years ahead. But first, to fully understand the implications of emerging technologies, we must address another persistent issue in the healthcare field.
The Healthcare Staffing Crisis
Though the healthcare staffing crisis has subsided slightly since its peak during the pandemic, demand for qualified clinicians is still expected to outweigh supply by a sizable margin for years to come.
According to the Association of American Medical Colleges, the U.S. could see a shortage of as many as 124,000 physicians by 2024, with shortfalls in both primary and specialty care. Nursing turnover is a particularly challenging area; 31% of respondents in a recent survey of nurses said they were likely to leave their jobs in patient care in the near future.
To put it plainly, the staffing shortage in the medical field isn’t likely to be resolved any time soon. Add to that a faster-than-average growth in demand for physician assistants, pharmacy techs, physical therapists, and administrative support staff. You’ve got one of the hottest candidate job markets in the nation.
All of this means that your healthcare recruitment efforts must be sharper than ever. Investing in recruiting technology will help you keep pace with the industry’s massive growth, win top talent in a highly crowded landscape, and save time, which seems to be a more valuable resource than ever.
Ways Technology Will Impact the Future of Healthcare Recruiting
From sourcing candidates to retaining top performers, here are seven ways healthcare recruitment technology can strengthen your approach to staffing.
1. Widens the candidate pool more than ever before
Tech tools have removed geographical barriers in sourcing and screening talent for clinical and technical healthcare jobs.
VoIP services and video conferencing make it possible to conduct interviews from opposite sides of the country or anywhere around the world, with quality rivaling (and sometimes exceeding) that of an ordinary phone call. We’re fans of Skype for international calls and Join.me for video conferencing that does not require a software download.
Digital applications for screen recording and playback are helpful when reviewing and narrowing down candidates after the fact. These tools can also be useful for sharing interviews with multiple parties in the decision-making process, and most video conferencing platforms have the feature built-in.
Employing these and other virtual interviewing applications can trim recruiting travel budgets, allocating to both your hiring team and the candidates you’re considering.
2. Use search engines to your advantage
We talk about a wide variety of recruiting strategies, both traditional and contemporary, but one of the most underutilized strategies is search engine optimization. You can post on social media and recruit at job fairs until you’re blue in the face, but if you’re not taking advantage of SEO, you’re missing out on a slew of candidates who are searching for the exact roles you’re trying to fill. It’s low-cost, too.
Healthcare recruitment technology can help us create optimized, more engaging job descriptions that will place higher in search results and capture more active job seekers. Crazy Egg, for example, is one such tool that will help you optimize your individual job listings, craft a search-friendly careers page, improve your website URLs for search engines, and gain backlinks from the right job listing sites.
Try a free tool like Yoast to optimize job listing components like titles and descriptions. When you enter your job listing content, it’ll provide real-time recommendations for making it stand out in search results.
3. Predict which candidates are best for the job
Artificial intelligence is one of the most promising technology sectors for healthcare recruiting and business in general. According to McKinsey, 55% of companies have now implemented some form of AI, and 40% of firms plan to increase their investment in the technology.
Through machine learning, applicant tracking systems can match candidates’ skills to the job requirements with a high degree of accuracy, saving time, especially in roles with a high volume of applicants. This can free up hiring staff for more meaningful tasks like conducting interviews, building relationships, and having conversations with references
Now, emerging platforms can also draw upon unprecedented data points to predict culture fit, which has long been the X factor differentiating a good candidate from a fantastic one. Intelligent chatbots can answer candidate questions instantly, while AI can also be used to remove unintentional bias from the hiring process. It opens a whole new world of healthcare recruiting possibilities.
4. Save time by automating repetitive processes
No matter how much you optimize your hiring funnel, certain parts of the process are repetitive and mundane. Still, they must be done. Technology can help us automate recurring tasks like scheduling interviews, coordinating skills assessments, sending status update letters, and gathering candidate feedback.
5. Improve the overall candidate experience
These days, there’s no excuse for a poor application process, yet we still see companies with clunky, redundant, and buggy online application systems. Technology can improve your application process on the user end while streamlining data collection and hiring processes on the back end.
A smooth application process contributes to a positive candidate experience, which is good for attracting and retaining the best workers. In a Career Builder survey, 78% of candidates said their experience when interviewing with a company indicates how the company treats its people.
Still, your candidate experience probably isn’t as strong as you think it is. Only 47% of candidates said employers did a good job of setting expectations and communication during the hiring process. Technology—for example, automation of hiring status updates like we mentioned above—can help improve on this.
Your candidate experience is an important component of your employer brand, which, in a competitive healthcare recruiting market, can make or break your chances of winning an in-demand candidate.
6. Enhance analytics and reporting
Another area where AI has far-reaching implications is in analytics.
By leveraging automation, recruiters can now gather and aggregate vast amounts of data on candidates, job openings, and market trends in a fraction of the time it would take to compile the data manually. Then, using artificial intelligence, they can use that data to forecast future staffing needs, predict candidate availability, and anticipate market trends before they happen. Visualization increases usability by turning complex data into easy-to-understand visual models.
Imagine how much easier your job would be if you knew that in six months, a change in the market would cause ten team members in your pediatrics unit to resign for jobs elsewhere. Instead of being blindsided by the turnover, you could step up retention efforts by making your salaries more lucrative, get a head start on backfilling those roles, or take other proactive measures to keep staffing challenges from hindering your operations. Enhanced analytics make it possible.
7. Optimize your existing workforce
Until now, we’ve been discussing technology as a tool for attracting and winning new talent. Still, in a market with a staffing shortage, retaining and maximizing the talent you already have is equally important. Technology can help you analyze the efficiency of your existing workforce and identify resource leaks. This will reduce the impact of staffing gaps until vacant positions can be filled.
For example, a healthcare analytics application like Tableau can help you analyze how much time your staff members spend on various tasks and how those tasks translate into revenue. This can uncover opportunities to maximize staffing efficiency while also improving cash flow.
Optimizing your existing workforce also includes ensuring your employees are satisfied so that the best ones will stick around for the long haul. Take advantage of technology that breeds employee satisfaction, like collaborative apps, employee appreciation programs, and continued education resources.
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Best Healthcare Recruitment Technology to Make Hiring More Efficient
Applicant tracking systems
Applicant tracking systems (ATS) help manage and automate the entire recruiting process, from job posting to new hire onboarding. They also aid in candidate relationship management, which is an essential differentiator in a ruthlessly competitive market.
Look for an ATS system with a healthcare-specific suite of tools (Bullhorn is one such option), which will give you access to features for verifying clinician credentials, managing licenses, and maintaining compliance with healthcare industry regulations.
ChatGPT
You probably know ChatGPT can write articles and complete research, but did you know it can also help you develop stronger recruiting materials? The natural language processing tool allows healthcare recruiters to input a series of criteria and receive a highly tailored output that might include candidate outreach emails, recruiter phone scripts, lists of interview questions, and more.
Here are just a few examples of prompts you could use for a ChatGPT query:
- Develop a set of five interview questions to ask a nursing assistant candidate
- Create a 100-word email a recruiter can use to reconnect with a candidate who applied for a job two or more years ago
- Draft a short phone script a recruiter can use when screening applicants for a pharmacy technician role
ChatGPT isn’t limited to creating recruiting materials. You can also use the tool to help you brainstorm new and creative recruiting ideas, asking about topics like how to use social media to connect with new graduates or ideas to generate more applications in rural areas.
Related: How to Create a Job Description With ChatGPT
Chatbots
At a time when we’re all striving to do more with less, chatbots are a cost-effective way to offer round-the-clock candidate engagement. They can complete time-consuming pre-screening activities by asking candidates a series of questions before passing them through to complete an application, saving recruiters valuable time. And they can expedite other pre-hire tasks like scheduling interviews and following up with candidates with incomplete applications.
Another feature of chatbots that’s particularly interesting for the competitive healthcare market is their ability to facilitate multilingual recruiting. If your application materials are available in one language, but you’re looking for bilingual candidates, you can use a smart chatbot that offers support in the language the candidate is most comfortable in.
Analytics tools
Analytics technology is a powerful healthcare recruitment technology for saving time, enhancing efficiency, and boosting hiring accuracy. A platform like HireEZ allows you to track your candidate outreach in real-time and easily analyze the results of your efforts. This gives you a comprehensive understanding of which recruiting channels and methods yield the most success so you can best determine where to target future efforts.
Analytics technology can also help with candidate selection. Advanced analytics tools can leverage data from candidates’ resumes to determine which characteristics are most closely tied to strong performance and then help you screen for those traits.
Credentialing and compliance tools
In healthcare, verifying candidates’ professional credentials is a legal and ethical necessity, adding complexity to this already challenging recruiting area. A tool like Checkr can automate the process of confirming applicants’ licenses and maintaining compliance with all regulatory mandates. This not only saves you time but ensures patient safety.
Harness The Healthcare Recruitment Technology With 4 Corner Resources
While adopting new healthcare recruitment technology can be daunting, it’s a non-negotiable if you want to assemble the best medical staff in the business. Why not let an expert lead the charge? 4 Corner Resources works tirelessly to stay on the cutting edge of staffing technology, giving companies like yours access to proprietary applications that will help you locate, attract, and hire top professionals in the healthcare field.
We specialize in healthcare recruiting, filling positions like claims specialists, customer care representatives, medical coders, pharmacy technicians, and more. Our network of thousands of healthcare professionals spans the nation and ranges from entry-level to the C-suite. Whether you’re looking for direct hire recruiting for a hard-to-fill role, contract-to-hire services for periods of rapid growth, or temporary staffing services to cover seasonal gaps, we have a solution to fit your needs. We also offer convenient payrolling services to help you streamline your payroll and benefits operations.
See why the top names in healthcare have trusted 4 Corner Resources with their staffing needs for 15 years. Get in touch with a healthcare staffing specialist by contacting us now.
