Creative Healthcare Recruiting Strategies During COVID-19

The times we’re living in (as of the summer of 2020) have been challenging, to say the least. One particularly difficult aspect of life in a pandemic is the Healthcare Industry. 

We need healthcare professionals now more than ever, but working in their field is a risk that some of them can’t afford to take.

Today, we’re going to cover some creative recruiting strategies to employ in your practice during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Remote Work

At this point, many of us have adapted to working remotely for one reason or another, so there’s no reason healthcare would be any different!

With telemedicine becoming a popular option for many practices around the country, consider implementing telehealth services in your own practice.

This provides a unique opportunity to sell a potential recruit on accepting a job offer from you, as the risk presented by working in a private practice is mitigated by the option to provide patient care remotely.

Scouting and Interviews

If you’re going to offer your services digitally, why wouldn’t you recruit the same way? With conferences and trade shows cancelled around the country, it’s going to take a different approach to reach potential applicants.

Consider updating your website to provide recruiting resources to prospects so they can get the information they would have gotten from you at different conferences right online!

Additionally, scheduling virtual interviews on video conferencing software like Zoom or Google Hangouts provide a vehicle to get more of the face-to-face experience of a traditional, in-person interview.

Site Visits

In the same way that healthcare professionals looking for jobs can’t go to recruitment fairs or conferences to network or find jobs, that means that they also might not be able to visit your practice for a tour once they apply. 

A way to get around this issue, similarly to the last section, is to provide potential applicants with the resources they need right on your website.

Whether it’s a gallery slideshow, a video, or an interactive virtual tour, creating an opportunity for potential hires to familiarize themselves with your practice without the risk of visiting in-person.

Contracts

One crucial part of hiring in the healthcare field is negotiating contracts, and being that we’re experiencing a time of economic uncertainty as a result of the pandemic, physician contracts may require more flexibility than they previously would have.

Since the country is facing physician shortages, it is many practice owners’ first priority to hire qualified practitioners as soon as possible. In order to do this, try incentivising signing on with your practice. 

Whether this is offering one-year contracts rather than three or four years, providing a signing bonus, or accommodating living expenses, adding a sweetener to your deal is going to increase your chances of signing a new contract.

Regardless of how you may have operated in the past, it is clear that the world is changing as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. This means that we must also change how we run our practices, starting at the source with recruiting.

For more information on practice management in the midst of a global pandemic, check out the 99MGMT Blog!