A combination of demographic, economic, and supervisory changes is driving a new demand of the job positions within healthcare, creating fields that didn’t even exist in the industry 10 years ago. These external factors are transforming the available positions and changing the process of healthcare recruiting, placing a greater stress on hiring demand and an emphasis on fast placement of qualified talent.

Medical Staffing and Recruiting Statistics

Hiring Demand for Healthcare Professionals in the US – 4 Year Hiring Trend

Source: Wanted Analytics

Hiring demand for medical and healthcare positions continue to outpace the supply of qualified candidates. The top 5 most advertised jobs in the healthcare and medical industry are:

• Physical Therapist
• Occupational Therapist
• Registered Nurse
• Pharmacist
• Speech Language Pathologist

As the baby boomer population ages, so does the need for home healthcare.  “As healthcare shifts from hospital to home, we are seeing an increased need for at-home professionals,” reports Eric Rackow, M.D., CEO of SeniorBridge, in monster.com interview. “We’re contracting with health plans and physician provider groups to keep patients at home.”

With the current rise in demand for healthcare employment, staffing and recruiting agencies have been in a bind to find candidates that qualify for these hard-to-fill positions.

Social Media Trends in Healthcare Recruiting

Like the rest of the staffing and recruiting industry, social media has penetrated the healthcare and medical sector. It has become a medium that is accessed multiple times on a daily basis, for an extensive amount of time. Your staffing and recruiting firm cannot afford to ignore the social media bandwagon any longer; it is not going to go away.

Using social media to source and recruit talent, the context does make a difference. According to a 2012 National Physical Therapist Survey, of those who prefer to be contacted via social media, LinkedIn was the network of choice.

Turns out, LinkedIn is a goldmine for finding talent in the healthcare sector:

Source: LinkedIn Healthcare Hiring Trend Webinar 9-13-12

There are many targeted LinkedIn groups that recruiters can join and search for candidates. Since the demand of hiring ranges from entry level to CEO/Director, LinkedIn offers a level playing field for recruiters – they have immediate access to talent on all levels.

How we communicate has changed, so should your agency’s recruiting and staffing strategies. Given the intense nursing shortage and difficult nature of physician and pharmacist recruitments, healthcare-specific recruiters are recognizing the value social media brings to their game.

Mobile Trends in Healthcare and Medical Recruiting

For the healthcare and medical sector; mobile is substantially increasing.  70% of healthcare staffing clients have data-enabled smartphones, up compared to a year ago. For job seekers, 37% review job opportunities on a mobile device.

Take advantage of the significant opportunity to reach new clients and job seekers through mobile devices. Healthcare clients and talent are quickly embracing interaction through mobile technology.

Integrating mobile will give you the upper hand. Mobile will allow you to target savvy job seekers quickly, leading to a more efficient hiring process.  Mobile enables recruiting and staffing agencies to find and place quality hires immediately.

The Rise of Staffing and Recruiting Technology

In recruiting, especially healthcare recruiting and staffing, efficient and accurate placement is always necessary.  Streamlining the recruiting process is a way to lower costs and boost productivity.  That’s where healthcare staffing and recruiting software come into play.

Staffing software companies are now integrating ATS systems with CRM systems in order to simplify the complicated traditional process that used to be the norm. Companies are constantly improving their systems in order simplify life of recruiting and staffing agencies.

With the rise of mobile and social recruiting, staffing software vendors have established social media job posting integration and mobile applications. Ultra-Staff’s staffing solution allows for automatic LinkedIn posting of open job positions, and is the preferred social network in healthcare (mentioned above). There are vendors that have an extended medical feature to help recruiting and staffing agencies focused solely on the healthcare sector.  Ultra-Staff recently released a brand new medical staffing enhancement, tailored specifically to simplify medical/healthcare staffing scheduling and billing.

Staffing and recruiting software provides healthcare recruiters access to niche job boards, easy posting distribution, automated candidate sourcing, employee referral and social media programs. Healthcare recruiters can now break out of painful and protracted ways to a more efficient placement process.

Megan Curth is the Marketing Coordinator of Automated Business Designs, Inc., software developer of Ultra-Staff staffing software for the staffing and direct hire industry. Ultra-Staff is a staffing software business solution with components for front office, back office and the web. Megan’s email address is megan.curth@abd.net or for more information on Ultra-Staff go to www.abd.net. 

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