Inflation has not only impacted the price of food and gas but the also the cost of recruiting nurses. Almost all sourcing tools used to recruit nurses have gone up by large amounts resulting is very high recruitment costs. Despite sourcing tools going up by large amounts there are many ways to source nurses at absolutely no costs.
The following article will explain how to recruit nurses for free and explain these free nurse sourcing techniques.
Source in your ATS/CRM
Many healthcare systems have ATS or CRM systems containing many past candidates who have applied for their jobs. In some cases, for large healthcare systems there could be ten of thousands of nurses in there ATS or CRM systems.
To find these past candidates it is a must you learn how to mine your ATS and CRM systems looking for nurse talent. Most ATS and CRM systems run similarly in terms of how to find talent such as the following ways:
- Look up old nurse reqs
A very simple way to find nurse talent is simply look at old reqs and look to find nurses to contact. As these nurses already know your brand a simple email and call can easily warm them up into nurse applicants.
- Use Boolean techniques to look up nurse talent
Depending on the CRM or ATS system you have many of these systems have searchable feature where typing key words can pop up talent based on that criteria. For instance, if you simply type in RN and ICU and Orlando can return you a list of ICU nurses in Orlando Florida. Now unfortunately some ATS and CRM systems use of Boolean will be limited or require more complex Boolean strings to find nurses.
- Use of Tags
Some ATS and CRM system have a tag feature which allows you to tag candidates for future searching. For instance, if you tag the candidate under Med-Surg Nurses you can later search the tags for Med-Surg Nurses.
- Search past Pipelines
Some ATS and CRM system have a feature to move candidates into pipeline lists. These pipeline lists can then be easily found when searching for candidates. For example, you can create a PCU nurse pipeline list in your ATS or CRM and then months down the road search this list to recruit PCU nurse nurses.
Ask for referrals
Another free source to recruit nurses is to ask candidates for referrals. In your course of speaking with nurses and develop a positive relationship do not be afraid to ask them for referrals of candidates. Many people like to help their friends and some nurses will refer you to their nurse friends.
Post Job for free on Indeed
Indeed, allows most health systems to post jobs for free on top of their paid features. These jobs will not be the top of Indeed’s search engine compared to paid ads but none the less will get you nurses at no cost.
For this to be effective you must ensure you use good SEO in your job postings to get more attention on your job posts.
Post Jobs for free on LinkedIn
Just like Indeed, LinkedIn allows some health systems to post for free but usually at a more limited basis. This free feature should be used as it could gain you nurses you might not have other wise found. Again, this feature will cost you nothing.
Asking for free trials on new Sourcing tools
Many new nurse sourcing tools such as new job board need to convince new customers of the validity of their new products. To encourage new customers many will give you free use of these products to test how effective they are at recruiting nurses. Again, at no cost these tools might gain you nurse candidates you otherwise would not have found.
Do Boolean searches on the Web
This technique is where you use different keyword combinations on the web to pull you information about nurses on the web. After finding the nurses you find their email and phone and cold call them getting them interested in your open roles.
This is a very complex advanced technique and will be a later article I will write about in the future. Also, this technique should only be used if you have the time as it is very time consuming. The good news although time consuming the technique will cost you nothing in terms of recruiting nurses.
With cost of sourcing tools rising health systems need alternative ways to cut talent acquisition budgets. The above article if followed can give you great advice on how to recruit nurses for free and save your talent acquisition budget.
