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Technology’s Impact on Healthcare Recruiting

Written by: Lisa A. Burke
Published on: Feb 24, 2020
Category:

Technology

Healthcare organizations seeking to attract the best talent in a competitive market would do well to invest in recruitment technology that can introduce efficiencies into the hiring process. In this post we will discuss specific strategies taking a full cycle recruiting approach.

Impact of Technology on Job Descriptions

  • Technology can be employed to optimize job descriptions and career pages by suggesting relevant keywords and job titles that will drive candidate traffic.
  • Technology can be utilized to ensure that the job descriptions are free from unintended bias. There are platforms that perform an analysis of the content to identify discriminatory language and suggest alternatives.
  • The purpose of the job description is to target the best qualified candidates for your organization’s healthcare roles by inserting relevant keywords and keyword phrases. Targeted job descriptions with relevant keywords engage top talent and clearly describe the needs of the roles in terms of knowledge, skills and abilities (including certifications and licensing requirements), as well as culture and work style.

Impact of Technology on Sourcing

In a competitive market, it’s critical that healthcare organizations maintain a steady pipeline of qualified talent. It can be a challenge to consistently source top talent due to the competitive nature of the market and internal time constraints.

A highly talked about technology topic among recruiting professionals is the use of Artificial Intelligence (AI) that enables candidate sourcing.

  • AI sourcing reduces bias as the algorithm is searching for data and data patterns relevant to key requirements, filtering out age, race, gender in selection.
  • A recent innovation in online recruitment is the use of behaviorally targeted job advertisements that boost traffic to postings on job boards. These ads use cookie-based algorithms to profile behaviors associated with different careers. If your organization posts a nursing role, you don’t necessarily want to review resumes of candidates across all practice areas but only those within a targeted region or specialty, etc. The algorithm thus targets a subset of candidates and presents the post only to that select group.

AI

Impact of Technology on Candidate Screening

Like sourcing, the process of candidate screening can be a time-consuming activity. Recruiters need to coordinate calls, spend up to 30 minutes on initial calls, prepare candidate bios, administer pre-employment assessments and route top candidates to hiring managers for review. To ensure recruiters are able to complete all steps in a timely manner so that candidates would have a positive experience, the screening process should be as efficient as possible.

  • AI-enabled platforms automate the resume review process which is a huge benefit for high volume of time-sensitive roles. AI software uses predictive analysis and machine learning to identify candidate fit across skills, work traits and behaviors, as well as work style.
  • AI is able to analyze candidates within the ATS to identify candidates that are successful based on performance, tenure and turnover rates. This information can then be used as a benchmarking tool when evaluating new candidates.
  • Recruiters can also utilize digital assessment to test knowledge, skills and abilities, as well as personality and use the objective results to make informed hiring decisions.

Impact of Technology on the Interview Process

It is of critical importance in the medical industry to hire quality candidates as many of these roles will involve direct patient care. Hiring the wrong candidate can impact not only the health of the patient but result in legal complications. Developing a comprehensive recruitment process that embraces technology can ensure your facility hires top talent.

  • A popular tool for many recruiters is automated interview scheduling whereby candidates are provided a calendar of recruiter availability over the next week or two and select that day and time that works best for them. 
  • Digital video interviews that are pre-recorded and viewed when it’s convenient for the recruiter. One caveat here is that the use of pre-recorded interviews can negatively impact the engagement piece of the candidate experience. Unless time is critically short, recruiters may want to reach out directly, even to conduct a 5 to 10 minute mini pre-screen to start building the relationship.
  • Chatbots that ask preliminary interview questions, such as shift preferences, licenses and/or certifications, highest degree held, years’ experience, etc. The bots can also provide information on next steps in the hiring process and may include a link to the recruiter’s calendar to schedule a phone screen.

Technology introduces many efficiencies in the recruiting process fostering improved experience for recruiters and candidates. However, technology cannot replace the human component essential in taking a 360 degree perspective when evaluating candidates or in establishing rapport and fostering candidate engagement. Perhaps the best strategy is to balance technology with a more personal touch. 

 

To reach the top medical talent via multiple touch points, contact our recruitment expert Philip Prigal today.