The one thing any healthcare recruiter can count on is the difficulties inherent in finding medical talent for their organization. In fact, it’s harder now to lure employed clinical and administrative staff away from their existing position because most of us are too busy to even take the call of a recruiter. In the thick of all the challenges we’re facing during the COVD-19 crisis, how can a healthcare recruiter keep their candidate pipeline full?
What Challenges Do Medical Recruiters Face Today?
One big area of impact for the physician recruiter is all of the changes associated with the interview process. Candidates interview and tour facilities virtually now, which makes it harder to vet the candidate or entice them to select your facility as their top pick.
Some healthcare organizations actually froze recruitment momentum by stopping travel and halting the recruiting process altogether. As recruiters scrambled to adjust to these new normal, they began to adopt new strategies to make what is a “high-touch” process a high-tech process. Recruiters moved their base of operations to their homes and began conducting more video interviews. They worked out remote onboarding for new hires, filled the holes from canceled recruiting events, and became more creative in their workflows.
However, the reality is that your efforts to build a steady flow of physician candidates require some of the same techniques you used before COVID-19. Key to building a successful funnel is to never stop filling it with two key types of candidates:
- Passive physician candidates are actively engaged in their current role, considering a change, but haven’t actively begun working with a recruiting team. Finding these candidates, building details on how to reach them in the avenues they’re most comfortable in, establishing, and then building trust can be a long, arduous process. The key to this effort is to understand the needs, wants, and priorities of your candidate. Passive candidates are searching for a better practice opportunity. Find out what that means, build their trust, then match the opportunity to the candidate for a more successful pipeline.
- Active physician candidates are, in some ways, more difficult to engage with because they are already interviewing and looking at opportunities. That means your competition for these candidates is higher. It might also mean these candidates are more skeptical of your call; they just received ten other calls just like yours before you got there. Your efforts, in this case, must focus on standing out from a crowd of clamoring recruiters and flashy organizations. The job must be distinctive and fit exactly what they’re looking for to get their attention. The job should also be posted in the right venue that the frequent, whether it’s a NEJM job board or LinkedIn social media.
There are really two key things to note about filling your physician pipeline these days. The first is that you must never stop reaching out to clinical workers online, by phone, or in other venues they frequent. If you stop filling your funnel, it will create gaps in your close ratio that will affect your income. The second thing to note about filling your funnel is that it isn’t about you at all—it’s about the needs, wants, and priorities of your target audience. If you get these two things right, your funnel will never run dry, referrals will come in, and you, and the doctors and clinical facilities you work for, will be happy.
For more information on how to recruit and retain top physicians, contact our top healthcare recruiters today for more information.
