Five healthcare recruitment strategies for medical professionals

1) Campus Recruiting

Seeing how most healthcare jobs require specialized training, degrees and character-types, the universities or colleges are always a good place to start the recruitment process. Not only are the people there working diligently to prepare themselves for a career in your field, but often times many of them are still in the process of deciding which sector, specialization or pathway they really want to take. This way, whether you are recruiting for a hospital or a pharmaceutical giant, you can send representatives to university job fairs and know you will have lots of interested parties on either side.

Targeting schools with notable or large medical schools and/or nursing programs, your organization is more likely to receive a qualified, educated and competitive team asset. At the same time, be sure to keep in mind that not all medical careers have to require specifically specialized medical training; medical assistants and medical office managers do not need medical training to take on these more administrative-type roles. Be sure to also canvas business programs and public administration programs to fill these still very important positions.

2) Cultivate younger generations

Embracing the “grow your own” strategy, finding new recruits by reaching a younger audience and shaping them to suit the needs of healthcare careers can be a great way to start. Sending representatives to talk to middle schools and high schools can plant the seed for the ways in which one can achieve a successful healthcare career, and by doing this, you are beginning to cultivate your own workforce from a young age. By giving kids the ability to begin thinking about long-term career prospects, you are exposing their minds to career opportunities while benefitting your organization at the same time. Since some specialized healthcare careers are not as popular as others, kids will now know the extent of the healthcare jobs that are available and profitable for the future.

Though this strategy does not provide immediate candidates for jobs in the current market, it can go a long way to growing a productive and hungry young workforce.

3) Internships and Returnships

A great way to gain public attention for your organization or to embrace the university system is to include either paid or unpaid (college-credit) internships at your organization. This presents a hands-on, company-culture immersed individual to have a trail run in your organization to see how he or she likes the career and the company, while providing your organization with a qualified, young professional. Internships pave the way to promising careers in the field, and with the ability to spend time working with a young college student, a company then has the chance to craft the individual to the specific culture and requirements of the organization, before hiring them as a salaried or full-time employee.

On the opposite end of the spectrum, offering returnships can be a great way to extend the opportunity of possible re-employment to individuals who are taken away from the company for unwarranted or unfortunate circumstances. This adds to the possible applicant pool when searching for people to fill those vacated positions, and if the individual was a hardworker and asset to the company, this allows for you to keep tabs on the people who you feel would do well being back at your organization.

4) Teaching Hospitals

Through the idea of teaching, your hospital or healthcare firm can offer in-house job training to students with the cooperation or teamwork of local universities by offering college credits to employees who can complete certain tasks. This can cut costs by offering in-house training opportunities, and you can reduce the permanent workforce by adding trainee physicians and nurses to the staff pool. If your hospital trains its own doctors, then those individuals will know exactly what the requirements and responsibilities of the position are.

When the training comes to an end, you then have a well-educated and well-trained potential employee to add to the staffing pool. This increases your chances of finding a qualified applicant who will mesh well with the existing company culture and company vision.

5) Staffing Agencies

Since surgeons and specialists have to undergo years of medical training, that means that these jobs are not only hard to fill, but that they are always in high demand. Advertising locally and even internationally will prove to be futile if and when there are no qualified applicants yet available to take those jobs. By partnering with a staffing agency that operates on a national level, you can be in constant communication with bodies of people who know of the best-in-class physicians and where they are located. These staffing firms can market vacant positions across the country and proactively contact people whose credentials meet your available positions needs.

Although sometimes a fee is required when working with staffing agencies, the pay-off from maintaining a hardworking and well-educated employee can outweigh that cost in a matter of months.