Matt Casey on Courting the Coveted Health Care Candidate

Courting the Coveted Health Care Candidate

What you need to know to recruit the best new graduates

“Hospitals that are winning the war for talent,” says Matt Casey, founder and CEO, CampusCareerCenter.com , “are not just sitting back and worrying about the numbers.” Rather, he says, understanding the new generation of health care talent, and seeking them out aggressively will be critical given the shortage of professionals we're now experiencing.

We met up with Matt to talk about the complexity of recruiting health care professionals in today's competitive arena, what he sees as the challenges, and the insights he's garnered from his own experience in the industry.

Q. With your recent launch of CampusRN.com, what function do you fill for health care professionals?

A. CampusRN.com enables health care employers to cost-effectively and efficiently recruit nursing/allied health talent nationwide. Employers can easily identify, contact and hire students, new grads and experienced health care talent through CandidateConnect.com, our campus recruitment platform. Candidates use CampusRN.com to research employers, apply for jobs, prepare for interviews, and find out about campus visits and job fairs in their region.

Q. What have you learned from immersing yourself in this audience niche?

A. Most people in the industry are quite familiar with the numbers and trends. They know that more than one million new and replacement nurses will be needed by 2010. The U.S. Department of Labor projects a 21 percent increase in the need for nurses nationwide from 1998 to 2008, compared with a 14 percent increase for all other occupations. So, the question becomes, what should health care recruiters do? In this environment, it is very difficult to recruit experienced nurses because not many are looking for work. And if they are, it is usually going to require overpaying them or a search agency to give them cause to leave their current employer.

Q. So, how do you avoid this conundrum in the long-term?

A. Employ the best possible recruit-and-retain strategy. Health care employers recognize they need to initiate relationships with students. Some are even beginning grassroots recruiting efforts with high school students, educating them on the benefits of a health care career. Hospitals that are winning the war for talent are not just sitting back and worrying about the numbers. They are aggressively implementing strategies to recruit and retain better than the next hospital.

Q. That is key, but to do that, you have to know what the candidate is looking for. This brings us to the joint survey we did with student nurses.

A. I was surprised to find out how much these candidates rely on the Internet with respect to the career exploration process. I expected to find that health care candidates were less inclined to really use corporate websites and job boards as their primary sources of information. On the other hand, I was not surprised to find out that they do not necessarily act right away on the information they gather. They fully expect the employer to show some initial interest through an e-mail or phone call once they have posted their profile on the site. That just comes down to the fact that these candidates know they are in demand.

Q. Give us some tips for health care employers.

A. First, it is imperative that health care recruiters focus on and understand the new generation of health care talent. These people are the future of their organizations, and with the talent shortage expected to continue for many years, employers are going to have to be as prepared as possible to attract the right people.

Second, employers need to be where the candidates are. Our data shows that more and more candidates will be using the Internet to begin their job search. The real winners will be the recruiters who can effectively combine offline and online initiatives, and use each arena to feed off the other. And, it is not enough to simply be there. Health care recruiters need to be proactive and aggressively get across why their organization is the best place for the candidate. If not, someone else will beat you to the punch.

Q. What are some specific things hospitals are offering as a way of courting these applicants?

A. Hospitals that are having success are not only being extremely proactive in targeting candidates, they are also offering compensation packages that have very attractive components for new graduates. Things such as student loan assistance, tuition reimbursement for continuing education, signing bonuses and covering relocation costs are all great ways to go the extra mile to recruit a recent graduate.

Q. What else do you see as proactive?

A. It is vital to use your current employee base to sell the virtues of the hospital. Students and new graduates can relate better to someone who has also recently graduated and is currently in a similar position to the one they would have should they decide to accept an offer. Young employees can reach out to the program they graduated from and serve as liaisons between the hospital and the school. Employees can be motivated to lend a hand through referral bonuses. Firms like Hodes have helped develop extremely successful online and offline employee referral programs.

Q. Any other strategies?

A. Developing a first-class externship program is a must. If a current student has a positive experience with the hospital while doing an externship, it is far easier to recruit that candidate over someone who has not worked at the hospital at all. One of our clients has informed us that they convert over 90 percent of nurse externs to new-graduate hires. They make sure to give the externs challenging duties while extending to get them excited about making a difference for the hospital in the future.

Q. And how does the future look to you?

A. Although the shortage projections do not look promising, it is good to see that efforts are under way on many fronts to bring more people into the nursing profession in the future. Schools are beginning to make efforts to increase capacity, and legislation has been passed allocating more resources for recruitment. Companies like Johnson & Johnson are lending support in marketing the profession through initiatives such as their Discover Nursing campaign. The Hodes campaign on 'Nursing. Our Future Depends On It' has helped as well. It will be critical that all avenues are pursued, including increasing minority recruitment efforts and trying to lure more males to the profession by reducing the perception that nursing is primarily a profession for females. I have no doubt that the health care community will rise to the occasion and meet this challenge.

Matt Casey is founder and CEO of CampusCareerCenter.com, specializing in assisting Fortune 1,000 and government agencies recruit students and new graduates for employment. He recently oversaw the launch of CampusRN.com, which brings health care employers and students and new graduates in the fields of allied health and nursing together. Matt is the former vice president of Marketing & Sales at SchoolSports Communications Network, LLC, a Boston-based sports publishing company. At SchoolSports, he supervised all advertising sales and marketing activities, and also served as a contributing writer. Matt graduated from the University of Rochester, where he majored in Political Science and played varsity baseball.