How I recruited 200 Nurses in only 120 Days

Background 

Anyone who works in healthcare is well aware of the shortage of nurses in the United States. According to leading consulting company Mckinsey & Company “by 2025, we estimate the United States may have a gap of between 200,000 to 450,000 nurses available for direct patient care, equating to a 10 to 20 percent gap.” https://www.mckinsey.com/industries/healthcare-systems-and-services/our-insights/assessing-the-lingering-impact-of-covid-19-on-the-nursing-workforce

As the above stats point out many Health systems struggle to keep open with lack of nurses. This resulted in a very large Southeast Health system contacting me to help them fill their massive need for nurses. For this 1 client I did many recruitment projects and initiatives, the biggest being a massive project of hiring 200 nurses in only 120 days for one of their biggest regions. This following case study will explain in detail how I was successfully able to hire 200 nurses in only 120 days.

Planning Stage 

As the leader tasked with hiring 200 RN’s in only 120 days, I cannot take full credit for this herculean sized project. It took a huge effort and teamwork of many different stakeholders’ cooperation for the project to work. Below is a list of the stakeholders I worked with to ensure the project would be a success. 

1. C-suite of the 7 participating hospitals

The more critical group to ensure the project would be a success was the C-suite of the hospital system There was some pre-buy in as these executives had heard I had already hired 100 nurses in 100 days for another division within their health system. There were still doubts that we could almost double the results. Also, if it would be a worthwhile investment in terms of ROI for such a huge recruitment project. To get the buy-in of the executives I presented a detailed plan on how it would be possible to achieve the goal of hiring 200 nurses in 120 days, which the C-suite agreed to. That strategy included the following: 

1. I explained in detail how with sound sourcing and a fast-hiring process they would meet their much-needed recruitment goals. 
2. I also suggested during this meeting to offer relocation dollars of 10K, & sign-on bonuses for certain roles to qualified nurses of between 5K-10K. I explained how this strategy would attract nurses outside of our locations and across the US. 
3. Getting pre-approval to make offers same day hiring manager were interested in the interviewing nurses 

4. The focus would be on the following Nurse roles: Med Surg, ER, ICU, CIVCU, L&D, PEDS, PCU, & OR

2. Nurse Manager & Nurse Directors 

For this key step it was explained in much detail to CNO’s, Nurse manager and Director in the region that they would need to hire fast. It was explained that longer decisions to hire could result in nurses taking offers from other hospitals. For this strategy the following recommendations were made and agreed upon by nurse leadership. 

1. I asked that instead of sharing profiles with the hiring managers first recruiters would be able to book interviews on the nurse’s leaders’ calendars at pre-arranged times. It was calculated that this step alone would save at least 3-5 business days in the hiring process.
2. All hiring managers/stakeholders would be present for the interview so there would be only 1 set of interviews on 1 day. This was estimated to have saved 5-10 business days in the hiring process.
3. If the stakeholders liked the RN, they interviewed they would send the same day back to the recruiter recommendations for an offer. It was calculated that this step alone would save at least 1-3 business days in the hiring process.

In total these recommendations cut between 9 to 18 business days from the hiring process and resulted in losing less candidates in the hiring process. 

3. Talent Acquisition (Recruiting) team

The recruitment team for this project had to also work fast like nurse leadership with very strict SLA’s which included the following agreed upon recommendations:

1. The Recruitment team within 24 hours after receiving a sourced candidate from the sourcing team would schedule an interview on the hiring manager calendar. This was estimated to have saved 1-3 business days in the hiring process.
2. The same day the recruitment team got notification to make an offer from the hiring manager that they would deliver that offer to the nurse that was chosen for the role. This was estimated to have saved 1-3 business days in the hiring process.

In total these recommendations cut between 2 to 6 business days from the hiring process and resulted in losing less candidates in the hiring process. 

4. My Sourcing Team 

My team, the sourcing team, was tasked with direct sourcing nurses both locally and across the US. It was calculated that in order to hire 200 Nurses we would need to do the following ratios.  

1. Contacting 8800 nurses at a 10% interest rate would give us 880 interested nurses to interview.
2. Of the 880 nurses interviewed we would have a 50% rate of quality candidates which would give us 440 Nurses.
3. Of the 440 nurses that would get interviewed we predicted 50% would get offers leaving us with 220 RN’s.
4. We predicted that if we had a 90% closing rate on nurses, we would end up with 200 nurses. 

The Sourcing team used the following key sourcing tools and techniques in order to contact 8800 nurses.

1. Call past nurse candidates in our CRM 
2. Data Mine on sourcing tools such as Indeed, LinkedIn 
3. Paid Posting on key site such as Indeed, LinkedIn, Ziprecruiter 
4. Call leads provided by the recruitment marketing team

Results 

The results of the massive nurse hiring incentive was we successfully hired 200 Nurses in only 120 days.