Medical Staffing Software Blog

4 Recruitment strategies that work for top healthcare staffing agencies

Written by Tim Teague | 7/2/18 4:37 PM

Recruitment in the current health care industry requires smart, innovative strategies.

Staffing challenges exist in every industry, where it can be a challenge to find the most qualified candidate to fill an available position. In a sector as specialized and unique as healthcare, however, recruitment can bring additional and distinct obstacles that staffing agencies must face head-on with the right strategies that will help ensure success.

Let's take a closer look at a few of the most beneficial recruitment strategies used by top healthcare staffing agencies, and how you can make these work for your organization:

1) Make your brand as attractive as possible

"Many employment candidates leverage a company's brand image in their considerations ahead of applying for a job."

Before recruiters even consider efforts to reach out to the potential candidate pool, it's imperative that they turn an eye inward and examine their employer branding. Many employment candidates leverage a company's brand image in their considerations ahead of applying for a job, so tailoring branding to appeal to potential new staff members is a beneficial strategy. 

2) Connect early - Campus recruitment

Another powerful strategy that can benefit staffing agencies is to connect with candidates early - particularly those studying more specialized areas of the healthcare field - through campus recruitment.

This tactic is by no means new - recruiters have been visiting college campuses for years. And the reason for this is that it simply works. Campus recruitment enables staffing agencies to eye out emerging talent, particularly for more unique and sensitive areas of study for roles that require certain training and expertise.

What's more, as Healthcare Global pointed out, this provides recruiters with the ability to help shape young talent through the suggestion of specific career paths or complementary skills.

3) Establish a candidate pipeline

This is a particularly powerful strategy for staffing agencies that operate or have connections in regions with a considerable talent pool. PeopleScout contributor Eric Dyson explained that by partnering with helpful resource agencies like public health departments, professional health care societies, higher education institutions and other organizations, staffing agencies can establish pipeline that ensures they're always aware of the next emerging crop of talented candidates.

Best of all, this type of strategy can help support diversity in recruitment and hiring, an important element in the healthcare industry.

Leveraging the right technological solutions is an imperative strategy for healthcare recruitment.

4) Achieve goals with a VMS

Now that technology plays such an imperative role in health care recruitment and hiring, staffing agencies must ensure they have the right tools in place, including a health care-centric VMS that can streamline and empower recruitment and staffing through key features like:

  • Automated selection of high quality candidates within the talent pool, saving recruiters critical time in filling the talent pool manually.
  • Support for different working styles, ensuring that staffing agencies can find the right candidate for the job, including those seeking travel, per diem, locum tenens and other types of positions.
  • Custom web portals to support streamlined communication between the staffing agency, its clients and subcontractors and the candidates being worked with.

A VMS is a crucial part of healthcare recruitment and staffing. To find out more about how a VMS can enable your organizations to become its own managed service provider, connect with the experts at BlueSky Medical Staffing Software today.