Home health recruitment remains an uphill battle for many agencies. Demand for home health workers, including HHAs, CNAs, RNs, and LPNs, continues to grow as more Americans choose to age in place and recover from serious illnesses or injuries in their own homes. Besides the increased patient load, the ongoing nursing shortage may soon become worse.
In a recent survey, 43% of nurses in all major nursing disciplines across the country said they were considering leaving the healthcare profession in 2021. Also, many home health workers are older and nearing retirement, further adding to the nursing shortage.
Attracting talented, millennial nurses to the field to keep up with demand requires home health hiring managers to be more proactive and digitally savvy. Consistently short-staffed home health agencies should turn to these four recruitment tactics to attract more candidates, especially among the younger generation.
Social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter attract a massive number of users, making them a great place for home health recruitment. Most major social media platforms have advanced targeting capabilities built-in that help you target the right candidates and drive more traffic to your job listings. Home health hiring managers can complement their traditional recruitment tactics with social marketing while also growing their network of active and passive job seekers. Passive job seekers often forward job listings they’re not interested in pursuing to their connections who might be, letting you reach even more people.
Besides advertising strategies to source job candidates, social media marketing also allows you to promote an employer branding strategy and send your brand message across numerous platforms. Generating and sharing content that builds brand awareness helps support your targeted sourcing efforts. Sharing interesting content that highlights what makes your company unique also creates an enticing picture of what it would be like working with you. Some examples of good social media content are employee video testimonials, “day-in-the-life” takeovers by an employee, and department photos. Use your content to define your employee value proposition to further attract top job applicants.
People have become more engaged over text than email. Home health hiring managers who embrace this trend enjoy a convenient way to impart job information in a concise way and easily engage candidates. You may discover you get faster responses by texting job candidates than you do when emailing or calling them. If you quickly reply to candidates’ responses, it makes a good impression and you keep the recruitment process moving forward. However, you’ll diminish your company’s reputation if you send numerous unsolicited text messages to potential job candidates. Send a single well-crafted text with a call to action and if you don’t receive a response, move on to other candidates.
Reduce the noise of unqualified or irrelevant employment applications with advanced matching technology. Companies like Vivian Health are making it easier to find and engage with the right candidates by increasing transparency in the healthcare job market. Vivian matches employers with job candidates who meet their selection criteria and helps candidates find organizations that best fit their requirements. Employers and candidates enjoy job position and salary transparency to appropriately set expectations and prevent friction during the hiring process.
Schedule a demo to learn how Vivian Health can help you meet your hiring goals.