US healthcare organisationsorganizations are battling a myriad of nursing resource challenges: high staff turnover rates; retiring nurses; high levels of burnout – the list is extensive.
According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ Employment Projections 2016-2026, “Registered nursing (RN) is listed among the top occupations in terms of job growth through 2026. The workforce is expected to grow from 2.9 million in 2016 to 3.4 million in 2026 – signalling an increase of 438,100 or 15%.” The Bureau also projects the need for an additional 203,700 new registered nurses each year through 2026 to fill newly-created positions and to replace retiring nurses.
McKinsey research suggests the adoption of technology including Artificial Intelligence (AI) is on the rise. In 2018, 47% of respondents said their companies had embedded at least one AI capability in their business process, compared with 20% of respondents who said their companies were using AI in a core part of their business or at scale in 2017.
With the need to recruit nurses in US hospitals growing at an accelerated rate, hiring teams need to stay ahead of the curve. Here’s how technology can add value at every stage of the recruitment journey.
Understanding the talent funnel
A talent funnel illustrates the stages of recruiting employees – to attract, engage, assess, nurture, invite and convert candidates. Considering this six-stage process helps organisationsorganizations create strategies and workflows to fill roles and close knowledge and skill gaps. Leveraging technology at each step can free up recruiters to spend more time focusing on overarching strategic goals.
Attract: attracting key potential candidates to your organisationorganization through recruitment marketing and strong employee value propositions.
This stage of the talent funnel is about attracting potential candidates who will be exposed to your employer brand through your recruitment marketing and employee value propositions. Your employer brand is what sets your organisationorganization apart from the rest. In a healthcare context, it answers the question: what does it mean to work at your hospital?
Every great employer brand is underpinned by a strong Employee Value Proposition (EVP). An EVP is unique to your organisationorganization’s culture and articulating this requires you to consider what makes your company culture and employee offerings attractive to current and future team members.
At this stage, it’s important to position your organisationorganization as an employer of choice. Nursing candidates will be scouring multiple platforms to understand the culture of your organisationorganization including:
- external job advertisements
- careers sites
- social media channels
- reviews from past and current employees
To attract the best people, it pays to provide an accurate and consistent message at each touchpoint.
Engage: engaging potential talent so they want more information and to commence building a relationship with you.
Once nursing candidates are familiar with your brand, they’re ready to start assessing your organisationorganization as a potential future employer. Make it easy for candidates to learn about your culture. It’s important to ensure your website and careers site stand out against a competitor’s – and at the very least, is easy to navigate. It’s equally imperative to include targeted messaging to capture strong candidates. Here’s a scenario: a nursing candidate sees a job advertisement that links through to your organisationorganization’s careers site. At this stage, they may or may not apply for a role. This is a golden opportunity to remarket to the candidate who could be an employee further down the track. Remarketing is a digital marketing tactic that serves targeted messages to people who have visited or taken action on your website. Remarketing tactics can include:
- offering candidates the opportunity to sign up for your organisationorganization’s e-newsletter
- enabling candidates to submit an Expression of Interest form
It’s important for organisationsorganizations to have a number of remarketing strategies in their arsenal to continue engaging active and passive candidates.
Assess: company and potential talent move into more serious consideration of the opportunities they can pursue together.
At this stage, both parties are interested in pursuing the relationship further. Candidates are comparing your organisationorganization to a competitor’s offerings and deciding which best aligns with their desires and values.
OrganisationsOrganizations are qualifying candidates to ascertain whether there’s a role for them. Here’s where AI can step in and start conversations with candidates. An example of this type of technology is XOR’s chatbot, which helps automate cold outreach. XOR chatbot recruiting assistants engage with candidates to answer questions and reduce manual processes. The chatbot recruiting assistants ask targeted pre-screening questions including:
- Are you legally authorisedauthorized to work in the U.S.?
- How many years of experience do you have?
Credit: https://www.xor.ai/chatbot-features
Artificial Intelligence can play a crucial role in reducing bias in recruitment processes – adding more diversity to the candidate mix. Using AI to assist in hiring for diversity strengthens an organisationorganization’s employer brand, making it more attractive to potential candidates.
Forward-thinking organisationsorganizations can turn to technology to improve diversity. PredictiveHire’s AI technology does this by conducting the first round of candidate screening based on survey responses and predictive modelling – bypassing attributes like gender, race and age.
It’s imperative to deliver a great candidate experience across all platforms, including social media. According to a Clutch survey, nearly 15% of jobseekers use social media in their job search. CRM systems have built-in capabilities to connect with candidates on Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter. Some organisationsorganizations go a step further and allow candidates to populate job application forms from social media or upload their CVs from the cloud on a mobile device. This stage is all about fostering a positive candidate experience – and meeting candidates on the channels they’re already using on a daily basis.
Nurture: nurturing relationships that have been created through earlier stages to keep the candidate engaged and well-positioned when a role comes up.
Having great connections is only valuable if they’re nurtured. An effective approach is building talent pools of strong candidates – and keeping them warm and engaged. These talent pools are made up of pre-qualified candidates and ‘silver medalists’, so hiring managers can find talent for roles when needed.
Communicating with people in talent pools doesn’t need to be tied down to manual processes. Hiring teams can automate sending emails and updates. Social media can also be used to nurture candidates. LinkedIn and Facebook empower recruiters to target candidates who have previously engaged with their brand. This presents an invaluable opportunity to invite candidates to visit your careers page. If a candidate navigates to your careers page and shows interest, chatbot recruiting assistants can step in and help with the job search.
Credit: https://www.xor.ai/chatbot-features
Invite: confirming that the candidate is suitable for a role and inviting them to an interview.
With the heavy lifting done at earlier stages of the journey, a suitable role has been identified for the candidate. They meet all of the key criteria and are invited to attend an interview. Arriving at this stage doesn’t mean communicating your employer brand or providing a great candidate experience can take a break. It’s just as important to provide a seamless and hassle-free process: including the interview process and the interview itself. Hiring teams can take back hours in their day – and lean on automated interview scheduling to arrange interview times, send reminders and reschedule interviews.
Convert: completing the recruitment and onboarding process to hire your new talent.
Through rounds of interviews, the candidate has demonstrated they’re the right person for the job and been offered a role. Once they’ve accepted your offer, the onboarding process can be kickstarted automatically. When a candidate accepts a job offer on PageUp, they immediately have access to their initial onboarding tasks – from compliance, to providing essential details about equipment and watching videos to immerse them in your culture. Providing a great onboarding experience makes new hires feel supported and helps reinforce their decision to work with you.
Technology has opened up new avenues for organisationsorganizations to build high-touch, automated candidate pipelines. When used as part of an overall talent management strategy, technology can empower hiring teams to make more data-informed decisions, streamline manual tasks and engage candidates at every step of the recruitment journey.
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