10 Nursing Recruitment Strategies to Help You Secure the Top Talent

September 19, 2024 —— Read time: 7 min

As the Baby Boomer generation heads towards retirement, the demand for skilled nursing staff is skyrocketing. An estimated one million nurses will retire by the end of the decade, and that same aging generation will increase demand in the healthcare field. Meanwhile, the state of healthcare during and post-pandemic has driven many nurses to consider quitting the profession altogether.

These statistics mean that healthcare recruiters are going to face ever-increasing struggles to fill their open nursing positions. Therefore, it's important that talent acquisition leaders find ways to help their staff attract and retain nurses.

Here are the 10 most important nursing recruitment strategies to not only help you fill roles, but also ensure that you secure the best candidates available.

1. Support Work-Life Balance

Nurses are vital for keeping the healthcare industry running, but nurses are also human beings. Most people want to feel like they have a chance for a life outside of the workplace.

One method that several hospitals have adopted to address this is flexible scheduling. Some nurses may like having 5 8-hour days, while others might prefer 4 10-hour days and still others might like rotating 12-hour shifts. Having room for flexibility may encourage more staff in your direction.

Of course, different healthcare organizations have different requirements. Try speaking with your current nursing staff about policies they'd like to adopt—after all, they're your best source of information about what would draw nurses in.

If flexible scheduling doesn't make sense for your organization, consider offering generous PTO. Nurses appreciate seeing that you support the fact that they also have a life outside the office or hospital.

2. Create a Welcoming and Supportive Environment

Have you ever walked into someplace for a job interview, looked at the faces of a few workers there, and immediately knew you'd never take a job there? If your current nursing staff isn't happy, it will definitely drive candidates away.

Many employers think about their workplace environment in terms of retention, but not only can a miserable environment drive candidates away, a positive environment can be used to draw them in.

Create video testimonials of nurses who are happy in their jobs. These can be distributed on social media and placed on your career page to encourage more nurses to apply. These same happy nurses can also become ambassadors for your workplace. You can send them out to career events at nursing colleges or conventions and provide them as resources for potential applicants to ask about their experience working at your location.

3. Ensure Compensation is Competitive

Whether or not a nurse's primary motivation for being a nurse is to help people, they still need to pay their bills. In a recent study, 59% of healthcare workers who changed jobs cited pay as a motivating factor. This makes pay the number one factor motivating job changes in the industry.

The pandemic sent the economy into a crazy tailspin that we've yet to recover from. Furthermore, some recruiters are responsible for recruiting for a variety of locations, each with a different cost of living. Both of these facts mean that it's vital to have up-to-date market research data available. With the right tool on hand (such as hireEZ's Insights tool), your TA team can ensure that the salary for your nursing position is competitive.

4. Integrate Updated Technology

New medical technology is constantly being introduced that makes nurses' jobs more efficient. It's likely that you're using at least some of them—not a lot of purely paper patient records anymore—but it's always good to investigate new options as they come out. Electronic medical management systems (EMMS) can reduce time spent and potential errors administering medications. Portable diagnostic devices and telehealth technology can help nurses bring the tools to the patient rather than vice-versa.

No one wants to stay two hours past their scheduled shift to finish paperwork. By integrating updated technology, you can help nurses move from patient to patient more efficiently and further support their work-life balance.

5. Show your Values and Culture

Some nurses appreciate knowing that your company values and culture align with their own. While your nursing candidate should be able to see your positive culture reflected in your other employees, it's often also good to present the positive values you are fostering as well.

Emphasize communication and collaboration. Make your commitment to quality nursing clear. Most importantly, establish that you have a hard line against bullying in the workplace. Many nurses change jobs to escape a toxic workplace. If you make it clear that bullying and harassment aren't tolerated at your workplace, you might gain more talented nurses on your staff.

6. Prioritize Workplace Safety

Emotional abuse isn't the only threat to a nurse's well-being; there are physical threats as well. Of course, on-the-job safety training for all healthcare staff should be thorough—dealing with bloodborne pathogens, avoiding accidental needle pokes, etc. But there's one more area of concern for a nurse's safety, and that's not having enough security on site.

It's not always clear whether a patient or their family will become violent, and it's imperative that you have enough security staff and measures in place to protect the nursing staff who are usually the victims of such abuse. Establishing that your office or hospital is as safe as possible can help persuade nurses to join your staff.

7. Connect with Nursing Schools

With so many nurses on the verge of retirement or burnout, it's usually necessary to turn some attention to the up-and-comers. Generate a good repertoire with the nearby nursing schools—both the upcoming graduates and the staff. This will put your company's name at the top of the minds of the students when it's time to apply to jobs, and may just ensure that the best of the graduating class gets sent your way.

8. Seek Out “Passive” Talent

Sometimes, the best candidates for your open role aren't actively putting out applications. Maybe it's because they're content where they are, or they're simply too busy to put out “feelers” for a new position. That doesn't mean they won't be persuaded to move to your company if you can offer better benefits.

If you sometimes experience poor luck with your inbound nurse recruiting strategy, it couldn't hurt to incorporate sourcing into your workflow. With the right platforms, adding sourcing to your recruiting strategy can actually make your workflow lighter, not heavier.

9. Embrace Professional Development

Many nurses want to continue to learn and grow their role—especially those who have just graduated from nursing school. Maybe they want to add a nursing specialization, become a nurse practitioner, or just know that there's room for advancement at your organization. If you make it clear that you offer professional development, a clear line for advancement, and flexibility to work around continuing education, you'll turn more interviewees into employees.

10. Be Open to New Ideas

Some nursing candidates have innovative ideas they want to employ. Others may have proven methods that worked at their last company, and they'd like to bring them to your organization as well. If you make it clear in the interview process that your company is open to new ideas, you may have better luck securing talent.

If you embrace these 10 nursing recruitment strategies, you're likely to experience more success when filling vacancies. Of course, time to fill is still going to be extended if your TA team is using outdated, manual recruitment tools. Fortunately, healthcare recruiting has never been easier for those using hireEZ.

Our platform offers several filters—some specific to the healthcare industry—that let you filter your ATS applicants and sourcing candidates. Utilize market data from our Insights tab, and make your TA team more efficient at filling roles with data from our reports. We even offer outreach tools, career pages, and more to help you recruit nurses faster and easier than ever.

Book a demo today to learn more.

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