3 Tips to Help Recruiters Surge Ahead of the Competition
In today’s highly competitive physician recruitment field in which the pool of available physicians continues to shrink, what is the best way to find and place candidates?
The answer—for both recruitment firms and hospital recruiters—is to fully understand the needs of today’s physicians and those of hiring institutions (and the market as a whole).
Here are 3 tips that can help recruiters do exactly that.
-
Deepen your understanding of the medical field at this moment in time
The healthcare industry has changed quite a lot in the post-pandemic world. It’s to your benefit to keep up with breaking trends, regulations, and the specific needs of hiring organizations, which will help you more effectively target your effort.
Here are 3 important phenomena affecting hiring and recruitment today:
- An increased focus on physician wellness. Today, it’s a “buyer’s market” in many instances. Many docs seeking new jobs have their unique concerns, including dealing with burnout, other challenges, and technological and societal realignments, as our culture changes. Organizations that can offer options and support will be better able to attract these physicians. The bottom line: pay utmost attention to individual physicians’ needs.
- A greater focus on diversity and inclusion. We are seeing much attention and many efforts going toward making the workplace more attractive to all types of physicians and medical professionals, including “widening” the workplace culturally. Open-mindedness and a desire to embrace change are advantages in this new reality.
- An increased use of incentives by hiring institutions, which often include signing bonuses, competitive salaries, generous relocation assistance, and extensive professional development. Many hospitals are upping the benefits to try to get the edge on hiring. Become aware of individual institutions’ views and policies in this area.
-
Learn how to write compelling ads for your open positions
A lackluster cut-and-paste ad devoid of interest or flair can cause a job seeker to blaze right past it. Spend a few minutes (which is time well used!) to hone your ads to draw greater interest from busy, often stressed and stretched job seekers. Here are a few guidelines that can be of help:
- Don’t let your ads age. Slightly edit (change the copy) if your ad has been on job boards for quite a while. If you do so, Google will reward you with potentially higher rankings. See the top ad writing best practices.
- Include city and zip code in your ads. If you don’t, you may be penalized! Ads lacking in all the required information can be rejected from sites, including the large, highly viewed aggregators.
- Keep your ads in the 200-450 word range, which is considered optimal. If you do, the search engines will reward you.
-
Leverage technology to streamline your effort
There are many technological tools out there designed to aid the physician recruitment process. Take advantage of these useful aids, which seem to be propagating by the week.
- Applicant tracking systems allow you to track interactions and manage your process, from posting ads to reviewing CVs to filtering and ranking candidates. Leverage the power of an applicant tracking system or a database such as those offered by PhysEmp.
- Video interviewing platforms allow you to interview candidates by computer. You can save time and travel expenses and quickly assess candidates’ communication skills and personality.
- Artificial intelligence such as ChatGPT can help analyze resumes, applications, job descriptions and more, and provide instant responses to candidates’ questions to further streamline your process.
- On social media platforms such as LinkedIn, Twitter, and Facebook, you can source and connect with candidates, based on keywords and get your ads seen by many.
- Use online skills assessments, which require virtually no time on your part, to bring to light candidates’ technical and soft skills and help you decide which candidates are good potentials.
It pays to keep up to date and not let your understanding or systems go stale or fall behind the times. By understanding the changing market, you will increase your chances of success!
