When a healthcare position has been open for months, it is easy to blame the market. Sometimes that is exactly right. There are specialties and locations where the available candidate pool really is small, and no recruiting strategy is going to create experienced people who are not there.
But I think employers sometimes reach that conclusion too quickly.
A Harris Poll survey released last week found that 59 percent of healthcare employees surveyed across all age groups expect to look for another role during the next year. Employers estimated that only 39 percent of their workforce would. That is a fairly significant difference between how many healthcare professionals say they are open to something new and how much movement employers think is coming.
We see this in recruiting because many of the people we contact already have jobs and are not actively applying anywhere. That does not mean they will not listen. The right opportunity can get their attention, and what happens after that conversation can tell an employer quite a bit about why a position is difficult to fill.
If we repeatedly hear that compensation is below the market, the problem may not be candidate supply. The same is true when qualified people lose interest after learning about the schedule, commute or onsite requirements. We also see employers narrow their own candidate pool with requirements that sound reasonable individually but become very restrictive when combined.
The hiring process can create another problem. An employer can spend weeks finding someone who is difficult to reach and then lose that person because too much time passes between interviews. Asking the recruiting team for more candidates does not solve what happened to the qualified people who were already interested.
One of the most useful things a recruiter can provide is the feedback coming directly from the market. Candidates who are not actively looking tend to be fairly candid about why they would or would not consider an opportunity. When enough qualified people start saying the same thing, employers should pay attention.
That does not mean changing a position every time someone says no. Compensation budgets are real, schedules have to support the operation, and some jobs genuinely require specific experience or an onsite presence. But an employer should know whether it is having trouble finding qualified people or finding qualified people who do not want the job being offered.
At AlediumHR, understanding why a healthcare search becomes difficult is an important part of the recruiting process. The number of people sourced and resumes submitted tells only part of the story. We also want to know where candidates are losing interest and what we keep hearing from the people we approach.
There are genuine healthcare talent shortages, and some positions are going to remain difficult to fill. But before assuming that is why a particular job has been open for months, I would look closely at what qualified candidates have already been saying.
Sometimes the candidates really are not there. Other times they are there, but the job is giving them too many reasons to stay where they are.