Hiring managers in the nursing field don’t have the luxury of resting on their laurels.

To find and hire top talent in such an ultra-competitive industry, they must employ unconventional recruitment strategies that are highly effective, or else they’ll lose out to other healthcare organizations.

Why is the situation so cutthroat? Nursing hiring managers face many challenges, including a shrinking talent pool, the demand for highly specialized skills, and intense competition for top candidates.

As a result, traditional nurse recruitment methods often fall short, requiring talent management teams to adopt innovative and non-standard approaches.

Below, we discuss what it takes to run a successful nurse recruitment program in 2024 and provide seven of our favorite creative nurse recruitment strategies. By exploring and implementing such methods, recruiting specialists in healthcare facilities can meet their staffing needs, improve patient care, and stay ahead in the ever-dynamic healthcare industry.   

Biggest Challenges Of Recruiting And Hiring Nurses

Recruiting nurses isn’t for the faint of heart. Hiring managers and nurse practitioner recruitment firms must overcome several obstacles, including those outlined below:

1. Growing Demand for Skilled Nurses

As the population ages and healthcare demands rise, the need for experienced and qualified nurses intensifies. Baby boomers are at the age where they need increased medical care, creating a surge in demand for nurses that has outpaced the supply. 

As people live longer, they also tend to live with more chronic illnesses that require medical intervention.

In addition to this increased demand, nurses today must possess specialized knowledge and skills to keep up with technological and medical advancements, further narrowing the pool of qualified candidates. 

2. Acute Shortage of Qualified Nurses

There are simply not enough nurses to go around right now, leaving healthcare organizations to fight fiercely to fill their openings. Why aren’t there enough nurses? There are several reasons, as seen below:

• An aging workforce nearing retirement
• Insufficient enrollment in nursing schools
• High turnover rates due to job stress and burnout
• Geographic disparities that leave certain areas underserved

Many nurses are reaching retirement age. In fact, more than one million nurses are expected to retire over the next 10 to 15 years. This exodus of aging nurses is creating a significant gap in the workforce, leading to an urgent need for new nurses to fill their roles.

Compounding this problem is a decline in enrollment in nursing schools. According to the American Association of Colleges of Nursing (AACN), the number of students enrolled in entry-level baccalaureate nursing programs fell by 1.4% in 2022. This was on the heels of 20 years of enrollment growth. 

Making matters worse, nursing schools have turned away thousands of interested nurse candidates because of facility shortages. 

3. High Turnover Due to Stress and Burnout

HR managers must also often contend with a vicious cycle of staffing instability and resource strain due to high turnover. Long shifts, frequently overnight, and the emotional turmoil inherent to nursing can lead to chronic absenteeism, reduced productivity, and, ultimately, burnout.

This constant churn means staffing teams must continually recruit, onboard, and train new employees, taking time and resources away from other critical functions. High turnover rates also translate into more reliance on temporary and less experienced nurses, potentially compromising patient care.

Given all these headwinds, hiring managers, sometimes in partnership with healthcare recruitment firms, must adopt creative nurse recruitment strategies and offer competitive compensation packages to meet their staffing needs and overcome the current nursing shortage.

Key Considerations Of A Successful Recruitment Program

The good news is there are ways to come out ahead of other healthcare facilities and snag the best nursing candidates for your own. First, it’s critical to establish an effective recruitment process that possesses these key attributes

Measurable Outcomes

A successful recruitment program must have clearly defined, measurable outcomes. This involves setting quantifiable goals, such as:

• A specific number of hires per quarter
• A specific time-to-fill metric
• A specific target retention rate

Next, it’s critical to monitor these metrics using analytics tools. The right tracking setup will also enable you to identify trends and make data-driven decisions.

Finally, regularly reviewing and adjusting your nursing recruitment strategies based on these insights will help you continually improve and remain aligned with organizational goals.

Cost-Effectiveness

Attracting top talent can get expensive, but staying within budget is necessary. To balance this, your recruiting team should develop a deep understanding of its cost-per-hire and return on investment (ROI) for different recruitment channels. Then it can allocate resources more effectively by focusing on the most cost-efficient and high-yield recruitment strategies.

Leveraging digital platforms and social media can reduce costs compared to traditional methods. Investing in employee referral programs and internal promotions can also be cost-effective ways to source potential candidates.

Finally, ensuring that your recruitment processes are efficient and streamlined can help minimize costs. ‍

Personalized Candidate Experience 

In such a competitive job market, providing a personalized and engaging candidate experience can help your healthcare organization stand out. To achieve this, offer:

• A modern job description
• Tailored communications
• Flexible interview schedules
• A transparent hiring process

Customized recruitment strategies also include recognizing and addressing individual career aspirations and offering pathways for professional development. This approach not only attracts high-quality candidates but also helps cultivate a positive employer brand image and improves long-term retention.

By integrating these key considerations—measurable outcomes, cost-effectiveness, and personalization—your healthcare organization can build a robust recruitment framework that attracts and retains top nursing talent.

7 Cutting-Edge Ways To Recruit New Nurses More Effectively In 2024

Staffing coordinators in the nursing field must be proactive and innovative, thinking outside the box to find and land qualified candidates. Below, we’ve listed several non-traditional recruitment methods to spark your imagination and get you started.

1. Attract Candidates Using Social Media

Take advantage of the power of the internet to attract talent. Invite prospective nurses into a dynamic narrative of daily work life through live streams and interactive Q&A sessions on platforms like TikTok and Instagram. 

By showcasing real experiences and firsthand insights from nurses themselves, you can provide a glimpse into the profession’s challenges and rewards. This strategy engages a younger, tech-savvy audience and humanizes the role. It can build a genuine connection that resonates more deeply than standard recruitment pitches.

2. Implement Internal Referral Bonuses

Another interesting idea is to link successful referrals to compensation bonuses or personalized rewards, such as career advancement opportunities or recognition. The benefits of this approach are three-fold: you’ll potentially identify new nursing candidates, increase employee engagement, and promote a supportive, community-driven workplace culture.

Unlike conventional recruitment tactics, which often rely on external outreach and advertising, internal referral programs leverage the networks of current staff. Who better to advocate for your healthcare facility than existing employees, right? 

Plus, these personal endorsements streamline the hiring process by enabling your team to tap into trusted relationships. This is a great way to attract skilled and motivated candidates who share your organization’s values while rewarding your existing employees.

3. Offer Nursing Scholarship Programs

Strategically partner with local educational institutions to offer scholarships to nursing students in exchange for a commitment to join your organization upon graduation. There are many benefits to doing this:

• First and foremost, it enables you to secure a pipeline of talented nurses
• It’s an investment in the education of future healthcare professionals
• It strengthens the employer’s bond with the community
• It addresses nursing shortages by directly supporting local students

Providing nursing scholarships proactively cultivates long-term relationships with students, increasing their loyalty to your organization from the outset. 

‍4. Develop a Virtual Reality Experience

Advanced technologies like artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning (ML), and virtual reality (VR) have infiltrated all aspects of our lives, including the tools recruiters use when they’re hiring nurses. 

A HIPAA-approved immersive VR platform allows aspiring nurses to digitally shadow real practitioners across various departments. This innovative tool provides a realistic view of the work environment and daily tasks, boosting engagement and interest among candidates.

Another benefit of using this cutting-edge approach is that it mitigates the logistical challenges associated with most traditional job shadowing programs, making it easier for interested candidates to preview what the role entails without having to be at the facility in person.

VR experiences are a scalable and impactful recruiting solution that bridge geographical locations.

5. Produce a Nurse Career Blog with Guest Posts

Most people spend a lot of time online these days reading. Reach these folks by creating a blog dedicated to nursing. Showcase day-to-day nursing experiences, career advice, and professional development opportunities through the voices of current nurses. 

Aim to provide authentic, relatable content that highlights the unique aspects of working at your organization. Feature interesting guest posts and strive to develop a dynamic online community. Doing so will attract just the kind of candidates you’d want to hire.

If you do it right, your career blog will offer ongoing, rich insights into the nursing profession and your workplace culture, serving as a compelling way to attract passionate and informed nursing candidates.

‍6. Run a Nurse Spotlight Series on Billboards

Another distinctive and powerful recruitment strategy involves featuring individual nurses with their stories on local billboards and transit ads in target demographic areas. Doing so will raise awareness of your medical facility, in addition to celebrating the vital contributions of nurses within the community.

A high-visibility recruitment campaign like this will benefit your organization in two ways. First, it will attract potential recruits by showcasing relatable and inspiring role models. Second, recognizing your existing staff will make them feel proud and invigorated.

Leaning into the power of personal narratives is a surefire way to help your organization stand out as a supportive workplace for nursing professionals.

7. Create a Promotional Video 

Finally, producing a promotional video that walks through your organization’s onboarding process can also be a useful recruiting tool. In it, highlight the strengths and unique aspects of your new employee onboarding process so candidates know what to expect if they apply to one of your job openings.

Distribute this video through targeted ads on platforms like LinkedIn to reach a professional audience seeking career opportunities. 

Visual storytelling is an effective method of building trust and excitement. This innovative strategy will make the onboarding experience real and relatable for potential candidates.

Outsmart the Competition with Innovative Recruitment Strategies

In this post-pandemic world where nurses are retiring in droves and there aren’t enough new ones to replace them, hiring managers who work for healthcare facilities must go above and beyond to score highly qualified candidates. If they don’t, they’ll end up with mediocre patient care and overworked nurses who are stretched too thin.

Fortunately, there are lots of ways to stand out amid the sea of competition. Adopting creative recruitment strategies can help you identify and attract those aspiring nurses who aren’t actively visiting the regular job boards.

So, don’t give up hope! Implementing unique recruiting methods and partnering with an experienced healthcare talent acquisition firm like MSH will help you quickly staff your nursing team with dedicated and compassionate workers. Discover how MSH can connect you with top-tier nursing talent today.