The State of Nursing Recruitment in 2023: Tips and Tricks for Hiring

Nursing shortage.

These two words have been a mainstay in healthcare conversations and headlines since COVID-19. In fact, with the mainstream coverage on this issue, you don’t even have to be a healthcare recruiter to know about it.

Yet, what isn’t mainstream are solutions for navigating a demanding market for registered nurses and beyond.

We’re here to change that with data on Registered Nurses from the hireEZ platform and strategies for hiring them.

But before we can treat the problem, let’s diagnose it.

The Current State of Nursing Recruitment

Open almost any article on nursing recruitment and you will read something similar to “A shortage of registered nurses is projected to spread across the country through 2030.”

At the same time, employment opportunities for nurses are projected to grow at a faster rate (9%) than all other occupations from 2016 through 2026, according to the National Library of Medicine.

Some of the contributing factors to this situation:

• The burnout healthcare professionals experienced since the pandemic and their current day-to-day responsibilities. In fact, the turnover rate for nurses can be as high as 37% based on specific locations across the U.S.
• Baby boomers aging out of the profession, nursing schools struggling to expand capacity, and the demand for nurses skyrocketing (via AACN Nursing)

Using EZ Insights data across 1.2 million registered nurses in the U.S., we also saw that 37% fewer nurses resigned in December 2022 than in the past two years. In other words, the number of nurses willing to leave their current organization seems to be decreasing.

With these challenges in mind, successfully persuading registered nurses to join your organization feels insurmountable. However, hireEZ is able to highlight some strategies for fixing that.

Better Understand the Registered Nurse Market

In the same way, a GPS gives you a lay of the land when you’re driving, healthcare recruiters need to find ways to better understand the Registered Nurse market. Some of that can be done through online research on the open web.

Other resources, like EZ Insights, can give you a clear picture of what the market looks like for a particular job title or company in one place.

Here’s our very own Solutions Consultant, Tyler Taldone, breaking down some of the information you can access on EZ Insights.

Conduct Multi-Source, Targeted Searches for Registered Nurses

There’s one thing that we’ve heard consistently over the past few years, looking for nurses in one place is not going to cut it. In fact, our healthcare customers, like VillageMD and TeamHealth, cited frustrations with places like LinkedIn when looking for talent. As many healthcare recruiters would expect, a significant amount of registered nurses don’t have profiles on LinkedIn, yet they still look for and message talent there. Instead, having access to sources where healthcare professionals can be found, including HealthGrades, NPPES NPI Registry, and other healthcare-specific platforms.

Not to mention, being able to focus further with over 750+ specializations. Here’s what a search for a Registered Nurse across hireEZ would look like:

Personalize Messaging and Use Automation to Boost Response Rates

Let’s say you’ve found Registered Nurses. Now what? Successfully engaging them is the next step. As we mentioned earlier, EZ Insights data signals that less nurses are leaving their organization than we might’ve expected. That means that persuading them to join your organization will take well-thought-out messaging.

A few things to highlight in your messaging:

• The values of your organization and what separates you from competitors

• The compensation and benefits you offer that make you desirable

• Offering a forum to hear what they need so you can provide it

• Things about their career that can be found on the open web

Setting yourself apart is critical, and sometimes the hardest step is starting. It can take anywhere from 10 to 30 minutes to craft a message. That’s where autogenerated emails can come in handy. hireEZ helps you craft the first three emails (since automated sequences boost candidate response rates for each follow-up) that you can edit and personalize further. The benefits of this are tremendous for time-saving and engagement performance improvement, as explained by Sr. Director of Customer Success and Innovation at WilsonHCG, Greg McKeown.

Nursing recruitment doesn’t have to be hard and hireEZ is dedicated to making sure of that. If you’d like to learn more about how our healthcare recruiting platform can help you hire, learn more about hireEZ today.