A cursory look at any of the many healthcare jobs boards out there will soon reveal that the number of vacancies available for highly skilled jobs is pretty vast. For certain healthcare institutions looking to recruit, this can pose a particular problem. Health Jobs Nationwide, one such healthcare recruitment service, notes that for certain healthcare institutions – especially smaller private institutions – the recruitment market can be incredibly competitive and so securing the best talent can prove a challenge. Many things can be working against you. For example, you might be geographically isolated, and your wages may be impacting your ability to hire.
In order to see more success then, one of the strategies is to do what you can to make your vacancies that bit more attractive. One of the means of doing this is to increase the attractiveness of your vacancies by offering pathways of real career development. In practice, this means convincing candidates that the jobs you are offering will help the candidate advance with their career, moving on to better paying and more skilled roles. If you can successfully do this, it is a win-win situation. It means a developing workforce for you as recruits develop their skills; for the recruits, it means a real professional future at your institution.
An Important Point
There is though one thing that you want to avoid when you are trying to become more competitive in the recruitment market. This is the lowering of your standards and the hiring of less skilled recruits just because you need them. Even if a potential recruit meets the requirements on paper, you will still want to interview them and ensure they are correct for the job. If you become desperate, this can mean that you simply accept whoever comes along. This is no way to long term success.
Career Development in Recruitment
So, how does a commitment to career development actually manifest when you move to recruit? The truth is that it can manifest differently at different stages of the recruitment process. Here’s how to advertise your commitment to career development at each stage:
Job Postings
When you post on health job boards, your job posting should highlight your commitment to career development straight away. There are several career development tools, such as tuition reimbursement or the promise of promotion. These should be clearly listed at the top of the posting. This is how you will catch the eye of potential recruits.
Interviewing
When you get to the interview stage of the recruitment process, you also want to make sure that you advertise your commitment to career development here as well. We all know the classic interview question: “Where do you see yourself in five years?” When you interview, this should be more than a formal cliché. You should make it clear in the interview that wherever the candidates see themselves in five years, it can be accommodated at your institution. Candidates want to know your institution is investing for the long term.
Career Development as a Retention Tool
A final point to stress is that a commitment to career development does not stop once you have secured a new recruit. Employees can always leave and go elsewhere. Accordingly, it should be clear to those working at your institution that there is indeed a future for them there and that their next step up will not be to go somewhere else. A good tip is to specifically target those recruits who are at greatest risk of flight and then do what you can to retain them.
Career development is all about committing to the future. Do it right and your recruit’s future will secure your future too.
