Workforce challenges remain the top concern for hospital CEOs.
Many continue to navigate clinician shortages, as well as high turnover rates and burnout.
Using the same old approaches to find talent and fill jobs won't work. To learn more about creative, effective recruitment and hiring strategies that leverage technology, Becker's Hospital Review recently spoke with David Ellis, Head of Healthcare Sales, North America, for LinkedIn.
Mr. Ellis described the powerful role that technology — in particular, the LinkedIn platform — is playing in helping healthcare organizations find the talent they need.
Demand for clinical roles remains extremely high
Hospital CEOs and healthcare talent acquisition leaders are acutely aware of pressing shortages for physicians and nurses. This trend is evident in hiring activity on LinkedIn, where six of the 10 jobs showing the fastest growth in demand are healthcare roles; registered nurse is the third most in-demand job on LinkedIn. Further, LinkedIn has seen the number of jobs posted for front-line roles like nurses nearly double compared to two years ago.
More than 4 million talent professionals actively use LinkedIn to find and hire talent. But healthcare talent acquisition leaders may not realize the size, strength and level of activity and engagement of healthcare professionals on the LinkedIn platform.
Consider the following:
- Nearly 8 million U.S. healthcare professionals are on LinkedIn, including more than 5.3 million clinical professionals, which has increased by 30% over the past five years.
- Many of these healthcare professionals come to LinkedIn looking for their next opportunity. In fact, today in the U.S., two nurses apply for a job every minute on LinkedIn.
- Use of LinkedIn's "open to work" feature — which job seekers can use to privately signal to recruiters that they are open to new opportunities — has increased more than 200% among nursing talent.
- Compared to a year ago, the monthly engagement on LinkedIn of clinical talent has increased by 60% and conversations about healthcare on LinkedIn have risen by 30%.
Healthcare recruiters need to go where the talent is
"In the face of significant workforce shortages and a highly competitive industry, healthcare organizations need to think beyond job boards to fill their open roles with qualified talent," Mr. Ellis said. "To hire great people efficiently, healthcare recruiters need a proactive approach to hiring, so they can get their jobs in front of the right people and source exactly who they need from a larger, diversified talent pool."
As Mr. Ellis put it: Recruiters need to meet talent where they are, and healthcare talent is on LinkedIn.
In addition to leveraging LinkedIn to find talent for specific positions, healthcare organizations are also taking advantage of the platform to build their brand. During and after the COVID-19 pandemic, employer branding has become even more important in offering talent a compelling case to join the organization and stay. For healthcare, this is a particularly critical strategy as healthcare professionals are actively seeking information about prospective employers.
In fact, LinkedIn's own data shows that clinical talent who changed jobs in the last year were interacting with their future employer on LinkedIn an average of 29 times, beginning approximately six months before their hire date. These interactions include viewing an organization's jobs and career page and following the company on LinkedIn to understand how their values and interests align.
LinkedIn's insights and tools help healthcare organizations engage qualified talent at scale
Insights from more than 1 billion professionals on LinkedIn help to power LinkedIn's hiring solutions, which provide targeted search and outreach capabilities to help healthcare organizations find and engage qualified talent at scale.
LinkedIn Recruiter, an AI-assisted recruiting tool, helps recruiters quickly identify the most qualified candidates. Combining generative AI with LinkedIn's unique insights of more than 1 billion professionals, 65 million companies and 40,000 skills on the platform, Recruiter helps organizations find that short list of qualified candidates — faster.
And through LinkedIn Jobs, hiring professionals can post open roles targeting healthcare professionals based on a variety of criteria, including location, specialty, licenses and schedule preference." We recently added healthcare-specific job posting criteria to make finding the right clinical talent easier than ever," Mr. Ellis said.
Hospitals and health systems are seeing strong results with LinkedIn tools
LinkedIn's holistic hiring solutions, from recruiting to learning offerings, have helped more than 1,600 U.S. healthcare organizations attract top talent while also improving brand awareness.
Irving, Texas-based CHRISTUS Health is one such example. Chief Talent Officer Ron Croy wanted to establish CHRISTUS Health as an employer of choice among healthcare professionals. He turned to LinkedIn to more effectively engage and source prospective employees, especially nurses.
On CHRISTUS Health's LinkedIn Career Page, Mr. Croy's team curated content geared toward nurses. Team members also began sourcing talent using LinkedIn's hiring tools. The results were strong and included a six-fold increase in candidate leads, a 10% improvement in InMail response rates and increased brand awareness, demonstrated through a five-fold increase in applications submitted per month and double the number of followers on the CHRISTUS Health LinkedIn Career page.
Amid persistent shortages of clinical workers, healthcare recruiters are under pressure to build their employer brand and fill open clinical positions. Meanwhile, clinical talent is increasingly using LinkedIn to search for future opportunities. "LinkedIn brings together talent and opportunity at scale in a way that no one else can," Mr. Ellis said.
Mr. Ellis encouraged healthcare professionals who haven't visited LinkedIn in a while to check it out and join the array of healthcare conversations taking place. For talent acquisition leaders in healthcare, Mr. Ellis suggested learning more about how healthcare organizations are using LinkedIn to hire qualified professionals.