Three Healthcare Hiring Trends for 2019 – What You Should Know

April 1, 2021
April 1, 2021

While shortages will continue to plague healthcare talent acquisition efforts (unemployment rates in the U.S. are currently at record lows and nurse and physician shortages are undiminished in most of the country), there are some emerging issues and trends that may help point healthcare HR leaders toward the most effective recruitment strategies:

1. Healthcare employers’ brand is important.

An employer brand helps candidates anticipate what it will be like to be part of the organization and should help them understand what differentiates us from the “rest of pack.” Marketing and HR professionals need to work together to insure that the brand does two things:

  1. It should increase the visibility of the organization to potential candidates.

  2. It should help those candidates understand the culture and values of the organization.

Evaluate your candidate portal. Does it accurately describe your brand? Is the brand sufficiently socialized to help insure that it is increasing the organization’s visibility? Can the right candidates find us and will they see our organizations as attractive places to work and grow their careers? If a candidate would not be able to accurately describe our employer brand after spending time on the website, it is time to partner with the marketing department to help strengthen the employer brand.

2. Strategy needs to catch up with how healthcare candidates seek opportunities.

A 2017 study of 801 talent evaluators and candidates conducted by the Hinge Research Institute showed that some channels most utilized by job seekers were at least somewhat undervalued by talent acquisition professionals. For example, nearly 63% of the candidates interviewed for this study were likely to use an organization’s website; however, just 45% of talent evaluators said that the website was an important resource used by candidates. A similar disparity was reported with LinkedIn.

It is important to close the gaps between traditional channels used in talent acquisition and channels that are most preferred and likely to be used by candidates. Your candidate portal and LinkedIn presence are important to today’s candidates.

3. There is a new healthcare provider ‘kid’ in town.

Amazon is moving into healthcare in a big way. Amazon has created an exploratory healthcare team that is believed to include approximately 30 people who have been recruited from industry giants such as UnitedHealth Group, CVS Health, and Express Scripts. Amazon’s move into healthcare is likely to include significant efforts aimed at cutting costs of their own employees’ healthcare as well as medical supplies, pharmaceuticals and OTC products, and care at primary care clinics to name just a few of the components of their expansion into healthcare.

With such diverse healthcare entities and their history of effective recruiting and a well-defined employer brand, they are likely to emerge as a serious competitor for talent from a variety of disciplines.

Amazon’s presence in the healthcare arena may well represent one of the most significant disruptions seen in healthcare in the last decade. Our employer brands and recruitment strategies need to be sharpened if we are to compete with one of the worlds’ most astute talent recruiters and clearly defined employer brands.

Discover HealthStream solutions for improving healthcare talent management.