Building a Healthcare Talent Pool: 5 Tips for Facilities

Searching for the right candidate to join your healthcare organization can be a taxing and resource-intensive process, especially in an industry where turnover rates are monumentally high. With nursing shortages continuing to affect facilities nationwide, building a strong talent pool is an essential way to get ahead of gaps in staffing.

If your facility is struggling to find qualified staff, it may be time to enhance your recruitment strategy. We’ll provide essential tips on how to build a strong network of candidates that you can engage with for your current and future staffing needs.

What Is a Talent Pool?

A talent pool is an organized database of potential candidates that recruiters can contact to fill job openings. These candidates have typically either expressed prior interest in joining a facility, been referred by current employees, or formerly worked at a facility in different roles. Details such as a candidate’s contact information, skillset, and resume — in addition to a list of job roles they could be a good fit for — are kept on file.

Why Should Facilities Maintain a Database of Candidates?

So, how exactly does this help healthcare facilities? To give a simplified example, consider an instance where a nurse on the floor suddenly decides to quit. Instead of scrambling to post a job description or interview random candidates, a recruiter can simply refer to their database and email newly graduated nurses who have been referred by other staff.

Effective talent pool management is important because it can facilitate the hiring process in several ways. By having a list of contacts your recruiters can readily reach out to, you can:

• Fill open positions more quickly and efficiently.
• Select from a pool of high quality, vetted candidates.
• More accurately match candidates with jobs that fit their skillset.
• Foster relationships to support long-term employment.

5 Tips for Building a Healthcare Talent Pool

Now that we’ve gone over the importance of building a pool of candidates, here are some tips you can follow to expand your database.

1. Engage With Local Colleges and Universities

Partnering with local colleges and universities is a great way to build a network of future nurses who may want to work at your facility after graduation. A nursing student’s first exposure to the hospital is often through their clinical rotations during school. If they have a good experience, they may choose to stay at the facilities hosting their rotations when it’s time to job hunt.

Build these partnerships by offering to hold clinical rotations and preceptorships at your facility. Also, remember that this also doesn’t have to be limited to associate’s and bachelor’s programs. You can also create preceptorships for graduate nursing programs, forging relationships with future advanced practice nurses.

2. Build Your Pool Both Internally and Externally

In a versatile profession like nursing, it’s also important to foster the growth of your current staff who may be seeking upward mobility in their careers. For instance, many nursing assistants have longer-term goals of becoming a nurse. This means that your current nursing assistants are essentially an internal pool of talent that could fill future LPN or RN openings at your facility.

Consider these incentives to motivate your staff to build their careers at your facility:

• Award scholarships to staff seeking higher education, contingent on their return.
• Provide facility-run certification courses or workshops for skill-building.
• Create nursing development programs, such as a clinical ladder.

3. Optimize Your Recruitment Marketing Strategy

Marketing isn’t just for attracting patients — it’s also an important way to showcase why healthcare professionals should work at your organization. To build a strong talent pool, jobs should also be marketed through diverse channels. Ensure you’re reaching an array of potential candidates using these strategies:

• Create a sign-up board for interested candidates to submit their information for future openings at your facility.
• Utilize social media, such as LinkedIn, to spread your job postings and sign-up board.
• Post informative blogs or articles that include links to your sign-up board.

4. Stay in Touch With Candidates and Former Staff

Sometimes, you may encounter a strong candidate but it’s simply not the right time for them to join your organization. They may be finishing up school, or there may not be a job opening that aligns with their specific qualifications. It’s important to not rule these candidates out. Instead, stay in touch with them in case the right opportunity comes around at the right time.

Additionally, maintain contact with former staff who could potentially return in the future. If you’ve maintained a positive relationship with nurses who’ve left for graduate school, they may want to return to your facility as a nurse practitioner or manager. Similarly, contract or travel nurses who’ve temporarily worked at your facility could be seeking full-time employment down the road.

5. Create an Employee Referral Program

Employee referrals are an effective way to build a pool of talent that’s vetted by staff you trust. Also, any of your nurses who may have been preceptors or clinical instructors for students likely already have a strong list of potential candidates in mind. The following tactics can help you incentivize your staff to make referrals as part of an employee referral program:

• Provide monetary bonuses for staff who make successful referrals.
• Create a point-based system that staff can use to exchange for a prize.
• Recognize staff who have made successful referrals in newsletters or staff meetings.

Looking to Build a More Stable Workforce?

Beyond using a talent pool to recruit qualified candidates, it’s also important to strengthen the long-term stability of your workforce. Reach out to IntelyCare today to discover the wide range of staffing solutions we have to offer.