It is safe to say that our lives have been disrupted by the COVID-19 pandemic.
Healthcare recruiters are just one of the countless victims impacted by the Coronavirus. The health industry has had to go through a lot of changes during the different stages of the pandemic in order to adjust to current standards and procedures. Naturally, with one side reducing employment and the other side increasing in demand, the recruitment services of the healthcare system have had to deal with a lot.
The Impact of COVID-19 on Healthcare Recruiters
Life today involves people either sitting on their couches watching TV to pass time or sitting at their computer desks working from home. If we were to rank the biggest change of this year due to the Coronavirus Pandemic, it would be the fact that millions of lives from all parts of the world have lost their jobs.
This unfortunate outcome was not at the fault of any business owner. When people are told to stay at home to prevent the virus from taking over, businesses are forced to comply with government rules. Moreover, rent and mortgages still have to be paid as these businesses also need a living. So, even with no workers, businesses had very little choice but to close down, either temporarily or permanently.
What are healthcare recruiters doing differently?
The interesting thing about what the pandemic has done is that it has caused difficulties in two levels. One is that people are choosing to stay at home and are too afraid to go outside. Meaning that fewer patients are visiting hospitals or clinics for their regular health checkups or to address their illnesses. With a fairly unknown and new virus floating around, not many people dare to leave the comforts of their homes.
Secondly, the virus has caused a huge and sudden surge of patients in certain areas. As you can figure, the regular number of staff could not meet the needs of the number of increased patients. So, more health professionals had to be hired in hospitals where high cases of COVID-19 are found. This may sound like a great thing. But, the hiring process began to be difficult, due to the pandemic continuing to spread, and as local government laws began to change.
All healthcare recruitment services had to continually adapt to these laws and change their policies to meet these safety requirements. By doing so, certain practices had to be replaced, while others no longer applied anymore. Especially now that the virus is still on the loose, healthcare recruiters are evermore evolving to better fit people’s safety needs.
What are some recruitment changes?
When making changes to the hiring process, the major factor that recruiters have to consider is the safety of their candidates. Complying with government rules is certainly a big contributor to these changes. But, a lot comes from the personal preferences of the candidates too. To the surprise of many, some of the lack of hospital staff is actually because of many workers wanting to stay at home rather than risk being exposed to the virus.
Even for a health professional, they still have to think about their safety first. Sadly, there are some cases where health professionals have been confirmed as positive with COVID-19, which led to the closing down of that department or ward. In some of these cases, whole hospitals have had to close down for quarantine. So, the risk for both health workers and everyone else involved is a big deal.
After all, if a doctor gets sick, then they wouldn’t be able to help someone else, which is critical since health workers are specifically needed nowadays. Because this is the case, recruiters carefully consider each candidate’s circumstances to determine how to hire them and keep them safe at the same time. They also have to instill confidence in the candidate so that they will choose to agree in filling the in-demand role.
The online world is a true hero during this ongoing pandemic. It has not only kept people sane, but it has also saved many businesses from going bankrupt. The health industry has been making the most of online opportunities lately, so healthcare recruiters are doing their best to be familiar with online methods to find more employees.
Doing interviews online is one that has certainly boosted health professionals’ confidence in going back to work. Recruiters are also still trying to figure out ways to better inform candidates about their specific job roles and the environment that they will work in. The major downside to not having an on-site interview is that candidates don’t get to see what the community or workplace is like physically. And, with the fear of catching the virus, not many would want to go outdoors just for a visit.
The online hiring process is quite difficult to fully achieve when first-hand on-site knowledge is important. For those who did make it through the hiring stage, the next step of getting to know the hospital’s system, which is just as difficult. When in great demand, hired candidates will have to learn everything quickly and work at a fast-pace immediately.
Conclusion
Healthcare recruiters are still experimenting with the whole virtual hiring process, so the speed of meeting certain demands is still a big challenge. There is also the fear that a second viral wave may occur, which would only worsen the state of the health sector. Singleton, who is the executive vice president of marketing and sales at Merritt Hawkins in Texas said that the demand for health workers, particularly for physicians and nurses, started slowly from week by week, then it became day by day. Now, the demand is hour by hour. So, we can only hope that recruiters will continue to persevere and that health workers will continue to meet demands.
This Article is credit to AL Gomez, founder & digital marketing specialist of Dlinkers. He has contributed to a variety of online publications including SemRush, Business.com, and Yahoo.
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