Optimizing healthcare talent acquisition: A guide to recruitment process outsourcing in healthcare
Among the many challenges hospitals and other healthcare providers face today, employee burnout, complex hiring needs, and low retention rates are frequently cited as top issues.
Research conducted during the COVID-19 epidemic showed that 49.9% of both clinical and non-clinical staff experienced burnout. A study from 2023 revealed that 60% of all healthcare support workers wanted to leave their jobs in the near future. Experts predict these issues will persist, and workforce shortages in the healthcare industry may reach 3.2 million workers by 2026 in the United States alone.
To combat problems in healthcare staffing, organizations in this vital sector are increasingly turning to recruitment process outsourcing (RPO) solutions. Maxima Consulting’s experience shows that outsourcing the sourcing and recruiting processes to a trusted third-party vendor is not only a survival tactic but also comes with a number of strategic advantages for everyone involved.
By reading this article, you will learn how institutions in health care can leverage RPO partnerships to expand their access to vast talent pools, introduce new technologies in the hiring process, and reduce talent acquisition costs.
Key takeaways
Recruitment Process Outsourcing (RPO) in health care is a cost-effective way of expanding the available talent pool and approaching high-quality candidates quickly.
By leveraging RPO, healthcare organizations address the industry’s top workforce issues, such as increased turnover rates and the rising demand for specialized roles.
Companies that specialize in healthcare recruitment services understand the importance of meeting various compliance requirements during the recruiting process.
Other benefits of utilizing RPO to fulfill your company’s healthcare staffing needs include effortless adoption of state-of-the-art IT tools like AI and data analytics, enhanced candidate experience, streamlined recruiting processes, and professional support for your employer branding activities.
Three benefits of recruitment process outsourcing healthcare institutions appreciate the most
As healthcare staffing becomes an increasingly competitive field, hospitals and other healthcare facilities need to optimize their recruitment strategies to engage, attract, and retain the right candidates.
Recruitment process outsourcing (RPO) is a solution that not only effectively combats workforce shortages but also drastically improves the quality of potential candidates while ensuring the cost-effectiveness of your healthcare staffing efforts.
1. The cost-effective nature of RPO services
Recruitment process outsourcing is an effective way to optimize many aspects of healthcare recruiting strategies. By attracting talent in multiple locations, leveraging IT solutions to screen candidates quickly, and employing proactive talent acquisition tactics, a specialized third-party healthcare recruiter effectively reduces both time-to-hire and cost-per-hire.
Moreover, expert recruitment process outsourcing providers connect your hiring managers only to qualified candidates with a proven track record and all the right skills, reducing their involvement to a necessary minimum. To improve employee retention, external recruiters take advantage of introductory interviews and assess if prospective candidates are a good cultural fit for your institution.
Limiting the time your current employees spend meeting the candidates and reducing the risk of a bad hire will drive the costs further down.
2. Enhanced hiring quality with expert healthcare recruiters
Companies specialized in healthcare recruiting employ industry-specific medical recruitment strategies to craft every job offer carefully, engage passive candidates, attract a diverse workforce, ensure cultural fit, and establish a consistent talent pipeline for the foreseeable future.
An expert medical recruiter has a deep understanding of what makes healthcare jobs unique. They use this knowledge to identify and approach the best candidates. Thanks to exceptional communication skills, they can assess how a potential hire fits within your organization.
By leveraging personal experience and advanced IT solutions, they can also suggest what job boards to use, what job title is more attractive, what constitutes a competitive salary in a physician recruitment process, and how to attract and retain other healthcare workers. This expertise enables specialized healthcare recruiters to effectively convince job seekers to apply for positions at your facility.
3. Accessing the global pool of best talent
Recruitment process outsourcing allows healthcare organizations to access a global talent pool and look for new employees beyond their geographical location. Expanding healthcare recruitment efforts to multiple locations not only broadens the number of qualified candidates but can also reduce the overall hiring cost in positions that allow for remote work, as offshore experts often expect lesser financial incentives than their colleagues from the Global North (outsourcing to India is a great example).
While software engineers responsible for building custom automation and managing internal e-health systems can perform skillfully from a distant location, remote work is simply not an option for a chief nursing officer, an x-ray technician, or many other healthcare workers employed at hospitals.
Depending on your unique requirements, an RPO provider can propose a number of healthcare recruitment strategies to enable attracting and hiring global talent anyway. By implementing sound relocation policies, crafting a compelling job offer, leveraging digital platforms, and utilizing inclusive recruitment strategies, a diverse, international pool of quality candidates becomes available regardless of job title.
Moreover, when working closely with your human resources department, RPO providers can use a global delivery model to facilitate reaching your diversity, equity, and inclusion goals and strengthen your employer branding efforts.
RPO solutions are easily tailored to healthcare staffing needs
Maxima Consulting offers a wide range of workforce solutions to clients in various industries, including banking and finance, third-party logistics, telecommunications, and the health industry.
Our skilled consultants know what challenges a healthcare organization may face, but they still start every project by thoroughly researching the client’s unique market position and requirements. All our services, including RPO, are always influenced by these individual characteristics.
Addressing high turnover rates
From day one, our recruiters reduce the risk of a bad hire by prioritizing the candidate’s cultural fit and assessing their motivation. In coordination with human resources, our consultants support setting up a comprehensive onboarding process, improving organizational communication, developing career development plans, and introducing recognition systems to facilitate employee engagement and avoid burnout.
Finding the right candidates for specialized roles
Entrusting all recruitment activities to a third-party talent acquisition team results in a streamlined hiring process, where initial sourcing and introductory meetings are conducted solely by the recruiting partner to lessen the strain on hiring managers and provide clients only with the best candidates.
Complying with relevant regulations
With years of experience supporting the workforce and technology needs of clients from multiple regulation-heavy industries, Maxima Consulting experts are well-equipped to responsibly manage legal requirements, conduct license verification, and ensure compliance with all applicable regulations.
Protecting healthcare organizations
It’s also worth mentioning that in all types of outsourcing, the client company is usually protected by a service-level agreement (SLA) that clearly defines the vendor’s obligations and contains penalties for failing to fulfill the contract.
Top methods RPO providers use to optimize talent acquisition with technology
Today, technology trends impact all industries - healthcare organizations are no exception. Innovations like EHR systems, telemedicine platforms, patient self-service apps, and therapeutic wearables all depend on IT innovations such as automation, big data analytics, artificial intelligence, and cloud computing.
It shouldn’t be a surprise that IT solutions can also be leveraged to optimize the talent acquisition process in healthcare. Below, you will find three examples of tech solutions your RPO partner can suggest to use.
Screen candidates with artificial intelligence
AI solutions can be used to automate resume analysis, arrange professional experiences, skills, and additional information like hobbies into tables, and compare job requirements with candidate qualifications, resulting in improved efficiency, time savings for recruiters, and a more streamlined talent acquisition process.
Leverage data analytics to make more informed decisions
Data is a powerful tool in the hands of a skilled analyst. An expert can convert raw data that many organizations already possess into actionable insights that can be used to streamline the recruitment process and identify unusual hiring opportunities.
Data analytics can also be used to determine the best places to advertise healthcare jobs and to reduce turnover rates by examining candidate profiles in search of risk factors.
However, it is essential to note that data security is a serious issue in all industries, and medical data is very sensitive, so it must be proactively protected.
Improve communication with digital platforms
Digital platforms promote effective communication in recruitment by ensuring transparent and instantaneous interaction with candidates across multiple available channels. They can also streamline administrative processes and facilitate collaboration between an RPO provider and client, resulting in significant time savings and increased productivity.
Maxima Consulting integrates various digital communication platforms in healthcare recruitment to engage candidates where they are, expedite the interview cycle, and keep our clients in the loop without the need for constant meetings.
Benefits of utilizing managed IT services in the healthcare industry
As mentioned above, new technologies provide medical institutions with countless opportunities for improvement, not only in healthcare recruiting but also in patient care.
Some examples of successful IT solutions in health care include:
1. Electronic health record systems (EHRs). EHRs enable authorized users to access patient medical records instantly and facilitate making informed decisions quickly. Despite obvious benefits, such systems demand complex access management policies to remain secure and efficient.
2. Telemedicine applications. Remote care apps allow medical staff to offer remote advice to elderly, immobilized, and otherwise disadvantaged patients. Research suggests that online interventions are an effective form of improving patient’s well-being with mental health therapy, especially for symptoms of anxiety and depression. Similarly to all other web-based solutions, remote care apps require expert IT maintenance and support services.
3. Therapeutic wearables. The rapidly evolving category of smart medical devices enhances the recovery process for injured patients by providing their physicians with reliable and accurate data. However, all sensitive data must be securely handled to ensure patient confidentiality and properly analyzed to provide practical insights.
Modern technologies mean new challenges that require novel solutions
Despite their evident usefulness, tech innovations present real challenges for healthcare organizations and necessitate involving in-demand IT experts to customize, modernize, and maintain IT solutions. No wonder many organizations outsource tech functions to external providers, such as Maxima Consulting.
Our company provides expert-level managed IT services for companies in various industries, including healthcare, pharma, and life sciences organizations. Working with our expert technology consultants in fields of software development, quality assurance, cybersecurity, support and maintenance, automation, and infrastructure enables healthcare organizations to reap the benefits of having a dedicated information technology team without the need for costly recruitment processes and direct employment.
We deliver our managed services in a variety of models to accommodate markets’ evolving needs. From staff augmentation through onshore, nearshore offshore, and hybrid outsourcing to contract-to-hire and build-operate transfer delivery methods, we make sure our clients’ technology needs are adequately accommodated.
Regardless of the partnership model, our reliable consultants utilize an assortment of digital tools to facilitate transparent communication and rapid delivery to continuously exceed clients’ expectations.
The impact of RPO on employer branding in the healthcare industry
A strong employer brand can be a tremendous advantage in recruitment efforts across all industries.
Healthcare organizations willing to invest in building a positive image as an employer attract top talent more easily, ensure any new employee quickly finds themselves part of the team, and enjoy improved retention rates.
Promoting your company culture
A reliable recruitment process outsourcing partner will emphasize the importance of your company culture during all steps of the recruitment process to attract potential candidates aligned with your ethics and ideals.
From posts on social media platforms that promote the organizational values to assessing the candidate’s cultural fit during the initial interview, RPO recruiters make sure to connect you with people who fit your company.
As a result, you reduce the risk of a bad hire, improve retention, and boost employee engagement.
Encouraging career development for existing and new employees
High-performing and ambitious candidates in the healthcare industry will take more interest in your institution’s career opportunities if they are informed about the professional development possibilities your employees enjoy. A dependable RPO partner will support you in outlining potential career advancement plans and career paths.
Furthermore, even a simple campaign promoting the company’s growth paths can positively impact all employees’ morale and make them more engaged in activities connected to employer branding. The benefits of an engaged workforce include building brand image through organic social media posts, willingness to represent the company in career fairs, improved internal communication, and increased job satisfaction.
How do RPO providers address top challenges in healthcare recruitment?
RPO providers are usually experienced in tackling some of the most important healthcare recruitment challenges, including legal compliance, the importance of ethical recruitment, and diversity objectives.
Legal requirements and certifications
Delegating the recruiting process to an external vendor means that the chosen partner company becomes accountable for complying with all regulations that apply in the healthcare industry. It also makes the service provider solely responsible for ensuring selected candidates possess legal status and necessary certifications to work in a particular job.
Your RPO provider will conduct necessary background checks and verify the healthcare professionals’ licenses even before you meet them. Maxima Consulting’s workforce services include legal expertise, establishing subsidiaries as needed, and recruiting candidates in a legally compliant way.
To protect client organizations, most service-level agreements (SLAs) obligate outsourcing companies to comply with relevant legal requirements in healthcare by asserting penalties for any neglect on the RPO provider’s side.
Ethical recruitment and diversity goals
The importance of ethics in the recruitment process in the healthcare sector is vital for upholding the institution’s public image and patient trust. Medical recruiters can’t settle on simply complying with relevant laws but must show a proactive attitude in ensuring fair treatment in contracting, transparent and clear communication, and honoring commitments.
Moreover, they have to adhere to diversity, equity, and inclusion best practices and work toward building a diverse workforce of the future. A solid RPO provider will always put extra effort into preserving the integrity of the healthcare facility they represent.
Streamlined and efficient interview process
Sourcing, screening, and conducting first interviews takes a lot of time. By working with an RPO provider, healthcare organizations improve the efficiency of the entire interview process. An optimized interview process decreases time-to-hire, enhances the candidate experience, and reduces the risk of hiring the wrong person.
During the interview stage, recruiters assess the candidates’ skills, qualifications, and suitability for both the role and the organization. RPO providers streamline this process for healthcare organizations by conducting introductory meetings and connecting clients’ hiring managers only with the most promising candidates.
To do that, the recruitment team focuses not only on certifications and experience but also on soft skills and team compatibility. RPO providers analyze each candidate by examining the language they use and their active listening skills and ask questions to test their problem-solving capabilities.
Should your organization utilize RPO solutions?
From cost-effectiveness through access to global talent pools to leveraging specialized recruiters, recruitment process outsourcing (RPO) offers numerous benefits to healthcare organizations.
By working with an experienced workforce solutions provider like Maxima Consulting, medical institutions increase their chances of success in navigating the unique challenges of healthcare recruitment.
Click here to explore our clients’ success stories and learn more about our expertise in business, healthcare, and technology.
Overall, RPO solutions streamline their hiring processes and facilitate building a strong employer brand that attracts the best talent in the industry. However, no solution is one-size-fits-all.
Contact us today and schedule a quick meeting with our expert workforce consultant, who will guide you through the intricacies of healthcare recruitment and tailor a solution made specifically to overcome your unique set of challenges.
