It’s hard to comprehend that more than 33 million jobs were lost due to COVID-19. Even looking at the economic downturn in 2008-2009, today’s numbers are at least 5x higher. It’s also the first time in years that the healthcare industry has lost jobs. To put it plainly, the healthcare market has changed.
For some insight on the new reality, Modern Hire recently hosted a webinar with a panel of healthcare TA’s experts. Here are some of the talent strategies to consider as you pivot to pandemic recovery hiring.
#1. Realign perspectives to focus on candidate evaluation. “With a flood of healthcare candidates on the market, the focus on the quality of hire becomes more important,” says Mike Hudy, Chief Science Officer at Modern Hire. “The ability to evaluate candidates becomes more important. It’s not that efficiency, candidate experience, or fairness go away, but TA teams have to be more selective now because there are so many candidates.” Teams will come to rely heavily on assessment tools that were previously just “nice to have.”
#2. Look to realign talent acquisition for changes in how care is delivered. “Care delivery has already changed, and it will be changing more,” notes Bryan Warren, President of J3Personica. “The way we staff is going to change.” TA teams have recruited for many years around specific skill sets, but now, employees also have to be effective at telehealth. Some estimates put telehealth at 30% of care delivery moving forward. No question delivering excellent patient care through a phone or video requires a different set of skills. TA teams will need to take this shift into account.
#3. Move best-fit candidates to job offers more quickly with technology. “In April, we saw a 10X increase in the use of our interviewing technology, and a 5x volume increase in our assessments, even though a lot of hiring had paused,” explains Modern Hire’s Hudy. “While some of our clients had put hiring on hold, others were facing the biggest hiring challenges of their history.”
With Hiring Blueprints, healthcare TA teams are quickly implementing end-to-end, candidate-centric hiring workflows for specific healthcare roles. Hiring Blueprints are designed to drive better hiring decisions, accelerate hiring, and increase recruiter efficiency.
#4. Take advantage of opportunities to reposition your workforce. “Early indications are that there may be a bigger pool of experienced nurses to get on board, where in the past we’ve focused on hiring graduates and training nurses,” says Heather Grier, Director TA, HCA. “Assessments will really come into play to ensure we’re hiring the best.”
#5. Look for leaders and staff who are change-ready. “The leaders who have been visible are nimble, able to be agile and quickly figure out how to mobilize teams in different ways,” notes Yon Sugiharto, Director, Yale Medicine. “Focus on what is the absolute core skill set, the values and behavior you need to grow in your staff, so they are in a ready state, and able to take on tasks they’ve never been asked to do before. Now more than ever, healthcare needs individuals who can act on their dedication to their organization beyond the box of their job description.”
Talent acquisition professionals have not generally been known as the early adopters in their organizations, but in recent weeks, TA has had to make transitions quickly out of necessity, and many of done it very well.
As the expert panelists noted, they’re seeing new ways of accomplishing tasks and new patterns of behavior they thought were still years away. Let’s leverage the positive energy in healthcare recruiting and take advantage of the tools and practices that are working to align hiring processes and candidate experiences to what’s possible in the post-pandemic world.