MightyRecruiterHow to Better Your Healthcare Hiring Process
Given it’s standing as the finest healthcare system in world, it’s little wonder that so many people want to be a part of the medical industry in the U.S. Few other occupations offer as many opportunities to work with and amongst the members of one’s community. However, those who enter this field should do so knowing that the challenges may be many and the stress level associated with the clinical environment is often high. The same may also be said for your position as a healthcare administrator. You’re tasked with ensuring that the clinicians that you hire have the requisite skills needed to adequately serve your particular patient population, along with the personality needed to help people in distress feel at ease. Thus, for you, the need for an effective healthcare hiring process couldn’t be greater.
Why the Healthcare Hiring Process is Unique
Those who work within the medical industry know full well just how unique the healthcare hiring process is. Before their own experiences show them otherwise, many patients enter a caregiving scenario with a Nurse Ratchet-like perception of healthcare workers. Some may argue that in the state that they’re in, patients are in no position to complain about the bedside manner of the nurses and technicians that assist them. Yet the truth is that much of a clinical support staff’s job involves ensuring that patients are at ease both mentally and emotionally before even addressing any physical ailments.
At the same time, a clinician’s skills have to go beyond being able to help patients feel the proverbial ïwarm fuzzy.ï Thus, the aim of the healthcare hiring process must be to find candidates that not only bring the right skills to the table, but that also possess the personality that fits the clinical culture. There are many that will tell you that it’s impossible to make the right hire every time. However, if you have a consistent hiring process in place, you may easily be able to prove that theory wrong.
Effective Healthcare Hiring Practices
Consider these steps when looking to improve your healthcare hiring process:
-Focusing on developing sourcing: If yours happens to be a teaching hospital or healthcare facility, then you already may have a reliable source of potential job applicants in place. Candidates coming from this applicant pool will already bring with them a working knowledge of your policies and procedures, and may have already developed good relationships with other clinicians on staff. If you don’t have any official academic affiliations, consider developing them with local trade schools or nursing programs.
-Keep culture in mind: It’s easy to want to immediately accept a candidate with the right skills to fill your position. After all, he or she would meet an immediate need. However, you must also consider the long-term effect of each of your new hires. Building and maintaining positive working relationships amongst your staff members plays a vital role in delivering good patient care. Thus, non-technical skills, such as being a good communicator, working well with others, and having a friendly personality are factors that should be considered during the healthcare hiring process.
-Keep qualified applicants in mind: In many cases, an applicant may not be the ideal candidate for your current position. However, you may have felt that he or she would fit very well into your organization’s unique culture. Don’t allow such candidates to slip away from you. Keep a copy of his or her resume on hand, and contact him or her when new positions open up.
-Place an emphasis on tech-savvy candidates: The guidelines regulating the healthcare industry are constantly changing. Many of them focus on updating current patient tracking and reporting practices to accommodate new technologies. Recent years have seen an emphasis placed on storing all patient information on electronic medical records. Anyone that you bring on will have to have the skills needed to learn the programs through which that data is accessed. Those who already have acquired tech skills will be much easier to train on such systems.
-Make retention a priority: Many don’t consider retention to be a part of the healthcare hiring process. However, what good is your process if you’re unable to retain the good employees that it yields Encourage executives within your organization to offer sufficient benefits to ensure that those that you bring on have every reason to stay.
Given all that’s riding on your choice of candidates to fill the clinical positions at your facility, it’s vital that you have a sound healthcare hiring process in place to identify the right candidates for the right positions. While such a task may seem daunting, it needn’t be if you have the right tools and resources supporting you. You’ll quickly find that Mighty Recruiter can offer you those.