It comes as no surprise to you that hiring in today’s climate is tough — especially in healthcare.
For the last three years, we’ve seen a talent shortage across the board, which means that qualified and available applicants get hired faster than ever before. Add to that the number of speciality certifications required in healthcare, and hard-to-fill positions at your facility can take months to find the right candidates for.
All around, attracting talent to this industry, hiring qualified individuals, and retaining your current staff is becoming increasingly more difficult. Additionally, if your facility is guilty of any of the following pitfalls, you could be putting yourself in a worse spot to hire than that of your competition.
Here’s a list of common mistakes to avoid in your hiring process at your facility.
Not using reference checks
Reference checks give you great insight into how a candidate has performed in the past, and a glimpse of what they may be like at your agency. It also allows you to see employees strengths and weaknesses before they join your team.
Companies sometimes skip this step to save time, but it can be costly in the long run when the employee doesn’t turn out to have the required skills or a great overall fit. Automating your reference checks will alleviate you of the back and forth that often comes with the process, and can save you valuable time in your day-to-day.
Hastily hiring
While speed in hiring is key, you shouldn’t put just anyone in your open roles. Sometimes agencies that are in a hiring bind have a mentality of “anyone is better than no one”, which isn’t the case — especially when you need to uphold high standards of patient care and your overall employer brand.
Don’t compromise speed for quality because it will likely result in a poor hire, and you’ll be immediately back searching for a replacement. Instead, keep the process moving as best you can, but make sure you’re doing your due diligence by properly vetting, interviewing, and screening candidates.
A slow hiring process
On the opposite side of the spectrum is a slow hiring process that essentially makes candidates feel like you’re not interested in them. Moving the process along, and communicating with your applicants, makes them feel like they are valued and important to the company, even before they’re hired.
You should always err on the side of over-communication — make sure your recruiters are reaching out often, either over text messages, phone calls, or email, to keep your best candidates interested and let them know that interest is reciprocated. You should use automated candidate communications where you can so that your candidates never feel like they’re left in the dark on where they stand with your organization.
And make sure each step of your process is efficient so that you’re not leaving your candidates high and dry for months while they wait for a decision to be made. Hireology has a great feature where you can analyze all steps of your hiring process to see where you have room for improvement. With this feature, you can ensure you’re moving at the right pace to keep top talent engaged.
Still using a manual hiring process
This ties in nicely to the above section, as “manual” and “slow” are often synonymous. By relying on pen and paper, or an excel spreadsheet, to manage your hiring process, you’re wasting valuable time, manpower, and you’re likely letting important compliance requirements slip through the cracks.
Using software to run your hiring process can give your HR team back hours and hours, can help you avoid making costly mistakes, and can get your new hires in the door much faster. When choosing which platform is right for your agency, think about how it integrates with your current scheduling and payroll softwares, look for an option that’s well-known in the healthcare industry, and one that offers a one-stop-shop for your hiring needs, like Hireology.
Letting retention efforts slip
Your job isn’t done once a new employee signs their offer letter, or even after their onboarding process. It’s important that your agency devotes time and resources to retention efforts, because otherwise, you’ll be back searching for new candidates in no time. The average cost of turnover per employee is approximately 33% of that employee’s annual salary, so to save you a nice chunk of change — not to mention improve your culture, employee referrals, productivity, and general employee satisfaction — you should prioritize retention. Making sure that your healthcare employees feel fairly compensated for the work they do is critical to keeping top talent on your team.
This can be done through ongoing training, career development opportunities, internal promotions, and making improvements to your current processes — like hiring and onboarding. And feedback never hurts, so enlist your team to give you a better understanding of what they’re looking for long-term, and adjust accordingly.
Recognizing and avoiding these hiring hazards will help you get your new employees in place faster, and will keep your organization focused on your patients. We’d love to show you how Hireology can solve for these — and other — hiring concerns, so if you’re interested, schedule a one-on-one consultation today.
