Talent Solutions: Best Practices in Talent Acquisition

Illustration: Lee Sauer

By Dave Bontempo, Director and Managing Partner, RoundTable Strategic Solutions, and
Rachael Battin, Senior Director, RoundTable Strategic Solutions

RoundTable Strategic Solutions powers MedAxiom Talent Solutions, which connects healthcare organizations with seasoned cardiovascular experts backed by the entire MedAxiom team.  

As a leader in delivering innovative staffing solutions to the healthcare industry, RoundTable Strategic Solutions shares unique perspective on workforce challenges, opportunities and trends to help MedAxiom member organizations thrive in the new normal. 

The amazing strides in talent acquisition over the last two years, many of which were to accommodate the pandemic, are likely to make a lasting impact on how we do business and find the talented individuals we need to make our organizations profitable and successful. 

Our candidates have choices about where they work and we want to encourage them to choose our organization! How can we make the talent acquisition process better, and easier, for our candidates? 

Build Strong Rapport With Candidates

• Demonstrate Interest: Be sure to show genuine interest in your candidates and their accomplishments. Be professional, yet casual; a hurried, rushed tone projects a negative image of your organization.
• Create Good First Impressions: These first phone calls/meetings leave an important impression on your candidates. Start with asking your candidate something as pleasant as “how is your day going” and let them know how much you appreciate their interest in your organization.
• Discover Motivation: Find out what their motivations are for finding a new position and point out ways your organization may be a potential fit.

Shorten the Application/Hiring Process

• Respond Quickly: Too often the resumes of qualified applicants sit on the desks of hiring managers for days, while those same qualified candidates receive and accept other job offers. In today’s culture of immediate gratification, you need to respond quickly.
• Combine Steps: Try combining steps in the interview process, like having all stakeholders in the interview process participate in one interview, or conducting initial interviews virtually.
• Use Asynchronous Interviews: While impersonal, asynchronous Interviews, where respondents can receive questions by email or video that they reply to at their convenience, can help you review candidates quickly, so you can narrow your list of potential candidates.
• Set Expectations: Communicate expectations for the next steps and the timeline for making a decision. Often candidates are lost due to a slow turnaround from the hiring manager or talent acquisition manager. Keep the candidate regularly updated on the status.

Polish Your Employer Brand

• Establish Your Direction: Ensure you have a clear mission and vision for your organization, no matter the size of your organization. This provides a decision-making framework for your organization, and it encourages ongoing evaluation and improvement.
• Foster DEIB: Promoting a positive attitude toward diversity, equity, inclusion and belonging (DEIB) sets the tone for your entire organization, which expands your talent pool by providing more talented and experienced candidates. The first steps for your organization could include creating an employee resource group or diversity task force as well as starting employee DEIB training programs.
• Recruitment Marketing: Use recruitment marketing to attract top talent. By using your employer's branding, you can market via a multitude of recruiting channels to create awareness, build followers, capture leads, encourage employee referrals and generate job applicants. For example, showcase employee success stories and their impact on patients and coworkers; unique perks and benefits offered by your organization; concrete examples of your organization’s culture and employee events; and recipients of employee awards.

Be Innovative With Talent Solutions

• Utilize Online Assessment Tools: These tools, specifically tailored for your organization, can help screen candidates to ensure they have the appropriate skills for the position.
• Capitalize on AI-Powered Technology: Augmented writing technology platforms can help improve job descriptions by suggesting words more likely to engage job seekers. Artificial intelligence (AI) can also screen thousands of resumes and help uncover a candidate's fit with your culture.
• Use Contract Workers: Have a tough position to fill? Using an interim contract employee as a bridge between full-time staff gives you the time needed to find the right FTE. Sometimes, your contract employee becomes your perfect FTE!
• Provide Mentors For New Employees: Offer new staff members a training/mentoring program to improve job success and retention.
• Invest in Succession Planning: It’s essential to maintain a pipeline of talent for your organization, internally and externally. Regardless of your organization’s size, you can use succession planning to target key positions, identify feeder positions, pinpoint potential candidates, and set up professional development for internal candidates.
• Provide a Career Path: By taking a vested interest in your employees, you’re likely to build loyalty and increase tenure among your staff. One of the best ways to do that is to structure a career path and offer the additional training and education needed to achieve this.
• Offer Remote/Hybrid Roles: Where possible, enable remote work opportunities for your staff. It can be a significant cost saving for employees and employers alike. For many candidates, it has become a deciding factor in taking a position or not.

Need to fill a key role temporarily while you find a permanent hire? Need a resource to fill today's gap and help train and onboard a future hire? MedAxiom Talent Solutions delivers interim cardiovascular experts to fill critical staffing gaps, including administrator and leadership roles. The full-service staffing solutions model ensures you have the right candidate for the right position at the right time. Learn more.