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The healthcare clinical job market continues to lack transparency, both on the facility and candidate side. Health systems, hospitals, and staffing agencies desire skilled candidates, but job boards lack visibility into the candidate pool. At the same time, healthcare workers want to be able to differentiate between potential employers based on salaries, culture, and benefits. To meet these demands and open opportunities, the industry requires a transformative, transparent two-sided job marketplace.
The Challenges with Healthcare Hiring
Healthcare facilities seek to fill vacant positions with qualified and experienced candidates. However, finding candidates has posed significant challenges to recruiters due to low unemployment rates and high turnover throughout the industry. Before the COVID-19 pandemic, the average unemployment rate for healthcare sector jobs was at a record low, just 1.3%. While low unemployment is good for healthcare workers, it makes it all the harder for facilities to staff up.
Meanwhile, turnover rates may be as high at 18.2% as burnout becomes one of the leading factors considered in an employee’s decision to leave their job, and 43% of nurses report that they want to leave the healthcare profession in 2021, according to a Vivian healthcare workforce survey. Nearly one-third of hospital nurses experience burnout, caused by spending too many hours at work, too much charting, and trauma from working during a pandemic, among other factors. For employees to build their careers, an increasing number have no issue leaving their current job for a better opportunity. This makes it essential for healthcare organizations to focus on employee retention programs. At the same time, healthcare employers frequently report that candidates have unrealistic salary expectations.
These factors have put significant strain on the ability to recruit and maintain quality talent. Further demonstrating this issue, the gap between available jobs and hires has been growing steadily since 2014, fueled by the demand for more healthcare workers. Healthcare facilities are finding it challenging to fill the increasing amount of vacant positions. Current recruitment methods—job boards, large-scale events—are attracting a large volume of applicants, but qualified candidates are few and far between. Staffing agencies are taking on much of the heavy lifting in sourcing, but they, too, spend more time vetting resumes than actually engaging with qualified candidates.
What are Healthcare Candidates Looking for in a Job?
Healthcare employees also face significant challenges when it comes to looking for the right job. They want to build and grow their career, which requires the right environment for them to succeed. However, nearly 49% of nurses have cited the lack of career advancement opportunities and lack of training as a challenge in their employment. Improving job training and mentorship opportunities is key to improving job performance and satisfaction. While the issue of turnover causes issues for healthcare facilities, it dramatically impacts the employees as well. Nurses are burdened with an overload of work, often exacerbated by staffing shortages that lead to burnout and turnover.
What healthcare professionals want is fairly simple. They want clear information; they can handle the good with the bad. Clinicians want pay commensurate to the value they bring, and benefits and mental health services to support them emotionally with the intensity of their job. They want to work reasonable hours, and have breaks that allow them to come back to work refreshed.
In addition, culture plays an important role in employee retention. 41% of nurses have cited poor organizational culture as an issue. Improving employee access to opportunities for innovation, autonomy in the employee’s position, and flexible work schedules can have a direct impact on the retention and recruitment of qualified candidates.
Transforming the Healthcare Job Market with Transparency
With the healthcare industry set to create 1.26 million healthcare jobs each year through 2026, now is the time to transform outdated hiring practices and introduce transparency into the healthcare job market. Employers must focus on implementing programs designed to increase recruitment and retention by providing candidates with clear expectations.
Increasing transparency within healthcare is not a new issue. Just as employees demand to have more visibility in hiring and recruitment processes, consumers also are demanding cost transparency. Unlike any other industry, it became normal practice to not understand how much healthcare services would cost. This is changing, however, as more pressure is being put on healthcare providers to provide quality and cost data in a time where healthcare spending is growing faster than the rate of inflation.
When Transparency Meets the Market
Through increased transparency in the healthcare job market, healthcare workers will have more opportunities to fill vacant positions. Vivian Health has been instrumental in this transformation to transparency.
Employers are matched with candidates that meet their selection criteria, such as years of experience, degree type, specialty, environment preferences, desired salary ranges, and more. With this ability, they can receive a list of highly targeted candidates and chat with them instantly. This eliminates the need for low-yield job boards, and reserves staffing agencies for the most high-value, urgent roles. The large pool of highly qualified candidates allows healthcare organizations to fill vacancies quickly with either short or long-term employees.
At the same time, candidates are also able to find organizations that would be the best fit for their experience, salary expectations, and cultural requirements. Candidates can view employer reviews and profiles to learn more about the employer they are applying to work for. Employers and candidates can see realistic salary estimates using the Vivian Salary Estimator, and candidates always know what a job will pay before they apply. This prevents friction during the hiring process and sets expectations properly.
Growing Total Opportunity
A transparent marketplace has additional benefits. Once time-to-hire for permanent roles is reduced from 90-120 days to 30 days, more opportunities can emerge. Consider that the Uber model not only made it easier to order a ride, the model also increased the total number of rides in the New York City market (taxi, Uber, and Lyft) from about 570,000 in February 2015 to over 950,000 in February 2020. Removing friction in the healthcare jobs marketplace can lead to a growth in the total number of permanent hires. That has compounding effects on cost savings and overtime reduction for health systems.
Through a transparent jobs marketplace, healthcare employers and candidates benefit from improved transparency. The process becomes more efficient when all parties are given the information needed to make an educated decision upfront. This transparent jobs marketplace will create more opportunities and be instrumental in filling the growing demand for skilled healthcare workers.
Learn more about the Vivian Health jobs marketplace.
