What Is a Healthcare Recruiter? Facility Guide and FAQ
Healthcare staffing shortages demand unique and creative recruitment and retention strategies. When exploring staffing solutions, facility leaders may wonder: What is a healthcare recruiter? Job descriptions can be vague, and human resource teams may not fully understand how a recruiter can benefit organizational workflow.
Healthcare recruiters find, evaluate, and hire employees for vacant positions. They help match hiring managers with qualified healthcare employees and utilize specialized tools and programs to streamline the onboarding process. In this article, we review the role of a healthcare recruiter and explore ways your facility can work with this team member to optimize employee hiring, satisfaction, and retention.
What Is a Healthcare Recruiter?
In healthcare facilities like hospitals, clinics, and nursing homes, recruiting experienced and capable staff can be challenging and time consuming. Hiring managers are often expected to both find and train new staff members and may have a difficult time juggling these duties along with other human resource department demands.
Healthcare recruiters may be brought on to assist hiring departments with employee outreach and onboarding. These team members typically have a background in clinical care or business marketing and use networking skills to attract healthcare candidates to vacant positions. They partner with health systems to hire:
- Care providers (doctors, nurses, medical assistants, therapists, dieticians, etc.)
- Healthcare executives (chief medical officer, director of nursing informatics, chief financial officer, etc.)
- Administrators (unit secretaries, patient experience representatives, billing assistants, data analysts, etc.)
Every facility is a little different. So, to fully answer prospective candidates’ question, “What is a healthcare recruiter?” responsibilities, skills, and job qualifications should be clearly outlined.
What Does a Healthcare Recruiter Do?
Healthcare recruiters help organizations find top-tier talent and are responsible for:
- Creating and publishing job postings.
- Screening and interviewing candidates.
- Connecting department hiring managers with job candidates.
- Organizing and maintaining an applicant database.
- Hosting job information sessions and visiting career fairs.
- Verifying credentials (degrees, licenses, certifications, etc.) and contacting references.
- Negotiating contracts and salaries.
It can be daunting for healthcare employees to leave a job and continue their career in a new facility. Healthcare recruiters are familiar with the wants and needs of medical professionals, and encourage employees to branch out and try something new. They understand how healthcare organizations function and have the skills and expertise needed to develop high-quality professional teams.
What Are Some Important Healthcare Recruiter Skills?
In order to successfully perform their duties, healthcare recruiters utilize the following skills:
- Strong Interprofessional Communication: It’s important for healthcare recruiters to build relationships with both current and potential employees. They’ll be responsible for finding and interviewing job applicants, and they need to be approachable and friendly to recruit the best candidates.
- Impeccable Organization and Time Management: Healthcare recruiters are often responsible for managing hundreds — if not thousands — of employees and job candidates. It’s essential that they keep detailed and organized records to ensure that important items like certificates and records aren’t misplaced.
- Attention to Detail: One major responsibility of healthcare recruiters is validating employee credentials. Healthcare recruiters need to be able to focus while performing this task, as poor oversight and clerical mistakes can lower a company’s reputation and amass hefty fines.
- Familiarity With Local Healthcare Trends: Is there a local nursing school that produces job-searching graduates every spring? Are other facilities in your area increasing their nurse salary to meet cost-of-living increases? Healthcare recruiters are aware of these industry trends and adapt recruitment strategies to connect with the current workforce.
- Determination: Recruiters regularly have to break bad news to job candidates; it’s important that they stay positive and persevere through difficult conversations to find qualified candidates.
What Job Qualifications Does a Healthcare Recruiter Need to Have?
Most facilities require healthcare recruiters to have a bachelor’s or master’s degree in healthcare administration, communications, marketing, or human resources. Often, they look to hire recruiters with at least two years of experience working in an organization with a similar number of employees. The average healthcare recruiter salary in the U.S. is between $58,000 and $88,000, depending on facility location, degree level, and years of experience.
What Is a Healthcare Recruiter’s Value to Your Organization?
Understanding the work that recruiters do helps facility leaders take the first step toward addressing staffing needs. But how exactly can this team member help organizations achieve long-term success? They do so by:
- Optimizing administrative and clinical efficiency.
- Developing campaigns to hire loyal employees.
- Tailoring recruitment strategies to meet unique facility goals.
Optimizing Administrative and Clinical Efficiency
Vacant positions are costly and inhibit safe patient care. Healthcare recruiters can save your hiring department valuable time and effort by searching for potential employees and building robust teams. Hiring a team member with specialized skills and training can reduce redundancy, improve human resource and clinical team workflows, and boost patient and staff satisfaction scores.
Developing Campaigns to Hire Loyal Employees
Many facilities don’t know how to appeal to prospective and current employees and struggle with staff retention. Healthcare recruiters put in the heavy work to create recruitment strategies that address local employee needs and wishes. Are gas prices rising? Offer public transportation discounts in your benefits package. Do new nurses struggle with student loan debt? Offer sign-on or retention bonuses to appeal to this group.
Tailoring Recruitment Strategies to Meet Unique Facility Goals
Each facility has unique goals and needs. Some organizations may need temporary staff to fill short-term gaps, while others may require permanent employees to comply with staffing ratio laws. Healthcare recruiters are able to take the time and effort required to understand organizational needs and empower teams to improve care quality.
Recruit High-Quality Nursing Professionals and Build Your Exceptional Team
Now that you can answer the question, “What is a healthcare recruiter?” you’re well on your way to finding and retaining the employees you need. Want to build your nursing team but don’t know where to begin? With our unique access to nursing professionals nationwide, we have a range of recruiting and staffing solutions to get you the staff you need, when you need them.