Physical and Occupational Therapists are in high demand. Candidate Direct aims to keep healthcare employers staffed.

With millions more Americans gaining access to healthcare, how will employers maintain adequate therapist staffing levels amid a shortage of qualified allied health professionals?

Sue Higgins, Product Development Director for Candidate Direct, suggests the first step to procuring and retaining staff is to engage a powerful web-based healthcare staffing tool.

“This way, the entire recruiting process is handled through a single source. Reporting and tracking are consistent; regulatory compliance is a snap and automated features save employers hundreds of man hours a year.”

Here’s how Candidate Direct works:

• Create an account to join the Candidate Direct Marketplace
• Jobs will be posted just to your specific selected agency pool
• Recruitment Agencies and other Candidate Direct national talent sources submit candidates for your jobs
• You select the best candidate for the job at the lowest rate
• There is no investment in hardware or software and there are no monthly fees to utilize the Candidate Direct Marketplace.

Higgins summarizes five easy ways healthcare employers can begin to streamline recruitment, saving time, money and aggravation.

1. Evaluate Existing Therapist Recruitment Strategies

Whether your facility utilizes therapy staffing agencies or handles therapist recruiting internally, web-based healthcare staffing software streamlines therapist search, application review, interviewing, hiring, and the orientation and training of candidates. This saves managers time and money.

• Automatically eliminates under-qualified candidates
• Matches posted job descriptions with candidate qualifications
• Provides for the electronic exchange of documentation
• Standardizes recruitment policies and protocols
• Enables real time overview of staffing needs

2. Develop Strategy for Therapist Recruitment Moving Forward

If existing recruitment strategies don’t include some type of recruiting or healthcare staffing software, chances are your hiring process is inefficient, cumbersome and antiquated.  Vendor management software or similar technology to organize and process submissions by therapy agencies can reduce the number of calls and emails to staffing managers by more than half. Moreover, the technology eliminates the need for the manual filing, storage and shredding of paper documents, promoting ‘Green’ initiatives internally.

3. Set Performance Benchmarks for Managers

Healthcare staffing software is only as good as the users who utilize it. Likewise, vendor management systems can only simplify tasks if software capabilities are optimized.  Healthcare recruitment software makes it easy to track the performance of staffing managers and establish benchmarks for time to fill, training and retention.  When used day in and day out, healthcare recruiting software can aid in evaluating human resource functions.

4. Implement Recruitment Strategy

Consider utilizing therapy staffing software to manage the entire therapist recruitment process – not just a part of it. Phase in a strategy that eliminates paper waste and the manual filing and faxing of documentation. Exclude the tedious review of cover letters and resumes from unqualified or under-qualified applicants. Designate a manager(s) to oversee new recruitment strategies and to ensure users are properly trained on therapist recruitment software.

5. Review Software Performance Frequently for Effectiveness

One of the biggest road blocks when implementing new technologies is failure to evaluate. It’s vital to review recruitment software performance regularly and to solicit feedback from users in order to achieve objectives outlined in recruitment strategies.

• Is the software saving man hours?
• Is it easier to recruit staff?
• Do recruitment tasks take less time?
• Have fill rates improved?
• Has patient care improved?

To learn more about Candidate Direct vendor management and healthcare staffing technologies call 800-585-1710 or click Get Started for a representative to schedule a demo.