In my many years of experience recruiting nurses I have learned what recruitment strategies are the most effective. The following are the top 10 Nurse Recruiting Strategies. These tips will be focused on the big picture strategy as apposed to sourcing techniques. If you are interested in nurse sourcing techniques check out my other articles on that topic.
- Built an expert recruitment team or hire experts
I have given many presentations and interviews and the question I am usually asked is how to recruit nurses. My answer is always to build an expert team or hire experts. Recruiting nurses has become extremely competitive and if you do not have a team that knows how to recruit nurses at the highest level you will lose out to your local competitors. You can also outsource part of your hiring process to an RPO firm if you either do not have the current expertise or do not have the bandwidth.
- Use the best sourcing tools available
The end of the day if your recruitment team does not choose the best sourcing tools on the market, they will hire less nurses. ROI of all sourcing tools must be calculated to determine cost per hire and percentage of hires coming from specific sources. A good recruitment team will be looking at these numbers constantly and adjusting tools. In addition, new tools in the market must be examined and experimented with in finding new ways to recruit nurses.
- Develop a referral network
An easy way to recruit nurses is to develop your organizations referral network. All nurses have friends that are nurses so why not ask them for referrals. For this to successful you should offer some type of cash reward to the nurses who refer their friends and get hired. Also referred nurses tend to perform well with high retention rates.
- Have a Fast-hiring process
This is one topic I have been obsessed with my whole career and have written many articles on the topic. With nurses being able to work anywhere they want; they tend to have multiple job offers. If your hiring process does not move fast, you will lose nurses to your competitors.
- Recruiters and Hiring manager must be able to sell your roles
To get nurses interested in your hospitals both recruiters and hiring managers must be able to sell potential candidates on the benefits of both the role and hospital. Remember you are not only interviewing the nurse, but they are also shopping for the right health system to work at.
- Offer sign-on bonusses in your job postings
A great incentive to use with your recruitment marketing efforts is to offer sign-on bonuses. This incentive I have seen work with many hospitals who were struggling to attract nurses.
- Hold hiring events
A classic way of hiring a large number of nurses is for a hospital is to hold a hiring event. I have personally been involved in many of these over the years from large hiring events at big city hospitals to hiring events at small country hospitals. For these events to work effectively both the logistics of the event, sourcing and marketing have to be executed effectively.
- Relocate nurses from other states
With many states of a massive supply issues of number of nurses available it is important you look access the country for nurses. To facilitate this, you much be able to offer nurses a reasonable relocation package.
- Develop an international recruitment Program
Another way to increase your potential nurses is to build an international recruitment program. For this program to work you must have access to an immigration expert internally and externally to guide your team on immigration laws. In addition, you must be able to develop international connects who can guide in your recruitment efforts in the various locations you are pulling from. Also, a neglected but important piece in international recruitment is creating a program that is can both educate and climatize nurses to the American style of nursing and culture.
- Develop your internal GN pipeline
A smart long-term recruitment strategy is to build your own nurse farm system. A very detailed GN program of training and promoting new nurses. These nurses once they develop can be able to be promoted into different units to learn new skills. An example could be a Meg-Surg nurse being promoted into units like ICU, and ER after 1 year. Instead of finding a new ICU or ER nurse a facility can grow their own talent into these roles and replace their Med-surg nurses with new grads.
