By Liza Palermo
As published in Beckers Hospital Review

Healthcare Talent Shortage Persists

The looming shortage of healthcare talent continues to plague hospitals, health systems and medical groups, as the labor market grows ever tighter. While unemployment for healthcare workers is near a 10-year low, the sector added 31,000 in the month of December 2017. The trend is expected to continue, with healthcare adding about 2.3 million new jobs from 2016 to 2026, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS). This makes healthcare the fastest growing occupation in the country, but without enough skilled people entering the workforce to fill the gap.

Why a Strong Employer Brand Matters
In an effort to more effectively compete in a fierce labor market, many healthcare organizations have turned their attention to strengthening their employer brand, and for good reason. Research shows organizations with strong employer brands attract twice the number of applicants per job compared to other companies, reports LinkedIn. They are also 40% less likely to lose new hires after the first six months, and they enjoy a 43% decrease in cost per hire.
To date, however, most employer branding efforts have focused inward to improve organizational culture and employee engagement. What most healthcare employers have yet to master is how to harness these efforts externally – leveraging employees and recruiters as ambassadors to build their employer brand among passive and active job candidates.

Getting Ahead with ‘Precision Recruiting’
Forward-thinking healthcare organizations are targeting employer branding strategies specifically on passive and active job seekers — going beyond broad-sweeping employee videos and corporate career websites to customize communications at the recruitment level, based on unique talent profiles. We call this “Precision Recruiting,” which requires content that is relevant, credible and most important, specific to each candidate audience.

As a result, four employer branding trends to watch each support healthcare organizations’ ability to become more precise in their recruiting efforts, in other words more targeted, accurate and engaging.