Healthcare is the nation’s biggest employer. It’s also one of the hardest professions to recruit for. Widespread clinical shortages are going to hit us hard in the coming years. The best way to shore up a pipeline for your community healthcare organization is simple—build a pipeline.
What is a Candidate Pipeline?
A pipeline is a delivery mechanism. In the real world, a pipeline ensures the steady flow of something to the consumer of the product. In this case, we’re talking about a pipeline of job candidates. A pipeline of job candidates is difficult to build and requires constant maintenance, particularly in healthcare. But like the movie said, “If you build it, they will come.” How can you build a healthcare candidate pipeline for your FQHC?
Building an FQHC Candidate Pipeline
Keeping up with the increasing demand for talent in healthcare requires constant and consistent candidate-building. To do this, you must follow a series of steps to ensure your FQHC pipeline remains robust. What are those steps?
- Start by defining your target applicant. What or who might be your ideal candidate? What are the hard and soft skills the candidate will need to do the job well?
- Create a job description that appeals to the candidate. This still matters, particularly in the healthcare field where there are more jobs than candidates. When writing the copy for a job posting, consider what it is about the FQHC world that would appeal to a potential job candidate.
- Work on increasing your visibility around brand and culture for your FQHC. To stand out, you will want to create buzz around your organization by sharing the stories that will matter to the candidates you’re targeting.
- Make the application process as simple as possible. Healthcare organizations are notorious for creating an unwieldy application process. Try to make it as easy as possible for healthcare candidates to reach you.
Now you’re ready for the final step in the pipeline, which is knowing where and how to look for candidates. To find healthcare talent for your FQHC, concentrate on the passive job candidate.
How to Fill Your Pipeline with Passive Job Candidates
Passive job candidates are the ones that aren’t actively seeking employment by applying but are instead proactively recruited by an organization. As you might imagine, this is an incredibly time-consuming process of sourcing the right candidates and then reaching out to them individually to start the conversation. It’s a process that firms like UHC Solutions are very good at—FQHC and general healthcare recruiters don’t do this type of work all day. Ultimately, this process yields a steady stream of potential candidates into an organization. This network is always active and you can draw from it anytime you have an opening.
It takes time and effort to build a talent pipeline. Most HR teams lack the time to seek out job candidates in this way. That’s exactly why they partner with firms like UHC Solutions. We specialize in finding community healthcare organizations with the clinical and administrative talent they need. Call on us. We can help.
