The growing demand for nurses prompts healthcare organizations to adopt proven hiring strategies. After all, appointing qualified staff can help offer better medical services to patients.
Each year, there are over 200,000 open vacancies for registered nurses. Hence, effective nurse recruiting strategies can help you hire the top talent in this ever-demanding profile.
Factors like burnout, an aging population, a decline in nursing schools, and growing chronic illness rates create an imbalance in the demand and supply of registered nurses.
So, how can you counter such challenges and develop apt nurse recruitment campaigns? Explore this blog to know more.
Existing Challenges That Influence Nurse Recruiting Strategies
Currently, there are around three million registered nurses in the US. However, the healthcare sector requires 275,000 additional nurses.
Hence, it is apparent that the demand for certified nurses is higher than the supply. In addition, the following challenges exert a considerable influence on developing an actionable nurse recruitment plan:
- The COVID-19 pandemic is a primary reason nurses and healthcare workers face burnout. Â 66% of nurses consider leaving the profession
- The ageing population requires more healthcare services. Hence, the requirement for nurses grows exponentially
- The educational institutes offering nursing education face problems like lack of funding and staff
- Nurse care is in high demand due to more emphasis on preventive medical measures
Hence, your nurse recruiting strategies should counter all these practical difficulties. The different tactics should utilize resources like a nurse contact database.
What Should Be the Focus of Your Nurse Hiring Strategies?
Before moving on to the different tactics, you should have a clear agenda behind recruiting nurses. Here are the main points to consider:
- Create personalized messages for certified nurses
- Focus on career advancement opportunities
- Instill confidence in optimum work-life balance
- Promote your workplace culture and positive aspects
- Highlight the professional benefits of your nurse recruiting strategies
Ensure that the different tactics in your nurse recruitment plan cover all these vital aspects. This way, you can assure these crucial healthcare workers of reducing burnout and offering decent returns for their service.
Top Nurse Recruiting Strategies to Attract the Best Talent
You need to connect with enthusiastic and qualified nurses to fill the vacant positions. These nurse recruitment campaigns can work wonders to strengthen your healthcare workforce.
1. Emphasize Work-life Balance in Your Outreach
As a recruiter, it is natural to think from a one-directional perspective. You might be eager to reinforce talented nurses at your healthcare center. However, modern nurse recruiting strategies demand a bi-directional approach.
The workload on nurses is evident due to factors like the pandemic, the aging population, and the requirement for primary healthcare. Hence, you can focus on one of the primary necessities, i.e., work-life balance.
Here’s what you can include in your hiring campaign:
- The maximum number of working hours
- Access to auxiliary staff and support
- Presence of top-notch medical equipment
- Periodic counseling to counter work stress
- Self-care programs and initiatives
These factors can instill a feeling of trust in your organization. Nurses will feel comfortable as they can simultaneously manage work and personal commitments.
How To Implement This Aspect in Your Nurse Recruitment Plan?
Include the available schemes, infrastructure details, and working hours in your job descriptions. Also, highlight these pointers in the hiring emails or flyers.
2. Leverage Multiple Channels for Advertising
Modern B2B recruitment should be dynamic. Be it healthcare workers, IT professionals, or any other sector, you need to capitalize on the following communication channels:
- Emails
- Direct mails
- Education programs
- Medical conferences
- Online advertisements
- Healthcare journals
- Local newspapers
- Social media websites
- Online job portals
A practical nurse recruiting strategies includes job promotions on all these channels. For this purpose, you can assign a dedicated team to engage with talented nurses.
Pro Tip to Receive High ROI From This Tactic
Outsource the content from professional agencies. These firms modify the tone depending on the mode of communication. Hence, you can save time on creating suitable content for hiring nurses.
3. Use Employee Referral Programs
A traditional nurse recruiting strategies like employee referrals are still helpful. However, the changing professional requirements demand modifications in such programs.
Here are the different types of referral programs that you can include in your nurse recruitment plan:
- Conventional referrals:Â Ask your existing nurses and healthcare staff to refer their friends or former colleagues. In this case, you do not require to set any prior evaluation parameters.
- Day one referrals:Â Instruct your new nurses to enlist five recommendations on their first day of joining. This way, you can create a nurse database for your corporation. For the best results, offer apt incentives.
- Proactive referrals:Discuss the need to hire new nurses for your organization. Next, offer rewards to your current staff who recommend talented registered nurses.
- Customized skill referrals:You can shortlist and connect with certified nurses with specific domain expertise. For this purpose, create a list of the desired skills and discuss the same with your staff.
Offering incentives and rewards to your existing staff save the hassle of conducting a multi-stage assessment process. Also, you positively message the incoming nurses that staff opinions and suggestions matter.
Overall, registered nurses will prefer a workplace with employee referral programs.
4. Highlight Your Brand USPs
You should focus on highlighting your organization’s offerings from the onset of your recruiting process.
Here are some of the main aspects that can work as your unique selling propositions:
- Suitable compensation with benefits
- Medical insurance and other coverage
- Flexible working schedules
- Training and mentorship programs
- An active nurse community
- Performance management
- Safety at the workplace
Moreover, you can attract skilled professionals by including such information in your nurse recruiting strategies. All these facets are vital to instilling confidence in modern-day nurses.
Hence, you should cover these factors to bolster the recruitment drives. In addition, these USPs will elevate the brand’s reputation profoundly.
A Useful Pointer to Highlight These Plus Points
You can create brand videos designed especially for the recruitment process. Provide a link to the video in the email or online outreach. Furthermore, your website can enticingly present these benefits.
5. Promote Apt Supervision Program
In most cases, experienced nurses choose leading healthcare organizations. However, if you own a small or medium medical unit, it is essential to compensate for the lack of experience.
New registered nurses are dynamic and eager to learn relevant skills. Still, the absence of a specialized training module can limit their interest. As modern recruiters, you should understand the value of a supervision and training program.
Design your nurse recruitment campaigns and offer this crucial perk. For this purpose, you need to establish a mentorship program by following these steps:
- Discuss the required skills with clinical leaders
- Nominate or hire a dedicated supervisor
- Establish a full-fledged supervision and monitoring program
- Include the highlights of this program in your job description
You need to market such a crucial workplace facility to attract new talent. Eventually, dynamic nurses will become invaluable assets for your healthcare unit.
To improve your outreach, you can design a particular graphic containing details of this program. However, share it with the nurses in the second or third round of the hiring process.
6. Collaborate with Nursing Schools
You can solve the funding and staff problem by offering adequate support to nursing educational institutes. This way, you receive access to numerous nursing applicants and can train them for potential internship and job opportunities.
Such nursing recruiting strategies are an indirect way to attract the best talent. Notably, you can utilize additional resources and promote your organization with this tactic.
Here are some suggestions for collaborating with these schools:
- Offer required medical equipment and tools
- Conduct seminars and teaching workshops
- Connect your recruitment pipeline
- Offer internship opportunities
Moreover, you require a decent budget to plan this strategy. It is still lucrative to create this tactic and customize it for the long run.
Assessing the ROI after preparing such an intensive nurse recruitment plan is vital. The results will eventually surface and help promote your brand’s identity simultaneously.
In a Nutshell
The demand and supply for certain professionals are dynamic. Healthcare businesses need registered nurses to meet the ever-growing public requirement.
Your nurse recruiting strategies should focus on both short and long-term gains. To recruit and attract nurses immediately, you should focus on direct promotions. Include work-life balance, brand USPs, and an existing supervision program in your outreach.
For this purpose, it is crucial to use multiple marketing channels. On the contrary, you can collaborate with local nursing institutes to create a long-term recruitment pipeline.
All these aspects are cumulative to developing a robust nurse recruitment plan.