7 Tactics you Need to Know When Recruiting Mental Health Professionals

Behavioral healthcare organizations, alongside the rest of the health care industry, are struggling to find and keep skilled staff members. The rising healthcare staff shortage and skyrocketing turnover rates are affecting employers, their existing staff, and their clients. In the state of Massachusetts, there are 2,454 jobs listed seeking mental health clinicians.

Partner the growing mental health crisis with a truly unprecedented labor shortage, and we get to this burning question: How are we recruiting mental health professionals in this climate?

When you and your competition are posting the same positions, are on the same job boards, and are offering similar hiring bonuses, the key to attracting top mental health professionals lies in the candidate experience.

Here are seven of the top talent recruitment tricks we like to follow when you need an added boost to your hiring efforts:

1. Make the Call

Working professionals’ inboxes and DM’s are overflowing with messages from recruiters. Everyone is fighting tooth and nail over the same talent, making it impossible to stand out amidst the overwhelming stream of pleas in response to a profile. If you go the extra step and take the initiative to make a phone call and connect with them as a person, you’re already ahead of your competition.

2. Double Down on Candidate Communication

A one-and-done cold call will not cut it here. These candidates are burnt out on the surface-level conversation and impersonal offers. Even when you’re managing high-volume hiring, make an effort to follow up with your candidates and truly understand their job seeker motivation. This might seem like a small thing, but this showcase of effort will go a long way in building trust when recruiting mental health professionals.

3. Default to Transparency

As if it needs to be said, mental health pros can usually spot a farce from a mile away. Transparency in the form of the good, the bad, and even the ugly is absolutely critical in recruiting therapists and the like. This honesty also ensures a better quality candidate for the role you’re filling because they know what to expect upfront. If you sugarcoat it, you’re contributing to your 90-day attrition rate in the worst way.

4. Know Your Differentiators

What sets your company apart from the competition aside from what the candidate sees upfront? How’s your mentorship program or your company culture? Student loan forgiveness options or continuing education stipend? If you’re unsure what to highlight, ask current employees which benefits matter most to them. Those same benefits will likely appeal to prospective hires, so don’t forget to capitalize on them.

5. Simplify the Application Process

Stop losing out on top talent because your application process feels too much like doing your taxes. The hiring market is still moving at lightning speed, and if you’re not making the offer quickly, you’re almost certainly losing out to those that are. Speed up the process by eliminating unnecessary hurdles, and you’ll notice that you’ll cut your time to hire in the process.

6. Nail the Onboarding

There’s nothing worse for a new employee than experiencing a quick hire and a sluggish onboarding process. This is especially true when recruiting mental health professionals due to the particularly high demand. Have your strategy in place to ensure their success from day one, and they’ll be mentally prepared to succeed from the start.

Nowadays, many organizations are embracing a paperless onboarding process since it enables you to begin the onboarding experience before they even step into the role. With countless options for digital paperwork, eSignatures, and virtual walkthroughs, you can complete your most boring and tedious aspects (like reviewing the handbook, signing forms, and setting up direct deposit. Ensure success before their first day, so your new hire has a more enjoyable experience.

7. Continue the Relationship

Mental Health professionals are absolutely the client to follow up with. Once you have placed a candidate, check in on them regularly from the first week, week 6, and again around 3 months. This not only helps build trust with the candidate but also bolsters the likelihood that they’ll stick with the position instead of jumping ship for a better offer.

BONUS: Technology on your Side

Hiring in this market is tricky enough, but hiring a niche group like mental health professionals requires a unique set of resources.

The PREDICTIVEHR approach to RPO significantly increases the number of qualified hires while decreasing expenses and lowering the time it takes to fill open positions—saving hiring managers hours each day and getting right-fit candidates into your organization. Trust an RPO with dedicated behavioral health subject matter experts to understand your industry needs.

Get started with your free demo today.

Think Outside of LinkedIn: Start Recruiting on TikTok and Instagram

We don’t need to tell you how strange the last few years have been for talent acquisition strategy. However, we feel compelled to tell you that your competition has started recruiting on Instagram and TikTok. Feel behind in that avenue? Here’s everything you need to catch up on.

What the Heck Is TikTok?

You’ve likely heard of TikTok, but you’re not alone if you still don’t know what it is (or how it may help you with recruiting). The gist is that TikTok is a social media app that allows users to create short-form videos. Users add effects, filters, splice videos together, add digital backgrounds, etc. Videos cumulate on your feed, presented to users based on their interaction with media over time, so the app can predict what videos users will watch and enjoy. TikTok features everything from dance videos, pranks, inspirational videos, tutorials, or lipsync videos for comical purposes.

TikTok features a little something for everyone, which is likely why it became the most downloaded app worldwide in 2020. The app currently boasts more than 1 billion users worldwide. 78% of users are under the age of 39, which encompasses Millennials and Gen Z, who are rapidly becoming the largest demographic in the workforce.

Read More: Talent Attraction Rules Have Changed, Are Your Recruiters Keeping Up?

So, Why Instagram?

Instagram could be more familiar to you, but we’ll provide the recap anyways. Instagram is an app specifically for photo sharing, but has also veered into video sharing and “reels” in response to TikTok’s popularity. Here are the quick facts on why it’s worth your while to start recruiting on Instagram:

  • Facebook bought out Instagram in 2012.
  • The app has about 2 billion users as of 2022.
  • This arm of the Facebook “metaverse” earns about $1 billion annually for the company.
  • 64% of Instagrammers are under 34 years.
  • User spend about on average 28 minutes per day on the app.
  • Instagram has 58%  more engagement than Facebook.

Read More: 5 Tips For Improving Your High Volume Staffing Strategy

How to Use Social Media for Recruiting

It’s obvious TikTok and Instagram are where the workforce’s largest demographic is spending their time, so it should come as no surprise that recruiters and enterprises alike are utilizing this space to get in front of the right candidates.  Even with those telling stats, these social media sites can seem like an intimidating and foreign outlet to start reaching candidates. Here are a few ways to get started:

1. Propel Recruiter Engagement

Not only is there already a presence of recruiters posting great content for others to view, but they’re also resonating with users. Encourage your recruiters to create and engage with other content, especially when they’re focused on candidates for entry-level roles. They don’t have to know how to use every effect imaginable to create engaging content. All they need is a camera and their expertise. Share it with some specific hashtags, and you’re all set.

2. Repost Employee Content

If your recruiters are already active on TikTok, get with your marketing team and create a company page. Once the company page is up and running, it’ll be easy to connect, engage with, and help promote your employee’s content. Get even more reach out of it by creating a company hashtag and if it catches on, you’ll have other people in the industry posting right alongside you.

Instagram may feel less intimidating because your profile allows you to post photos instead of just videos. But a fair warning — reels are generating far more attention in the algorithm than photos these days.

Read More: Predictive Analytics Partnered with Recruiting Equals Unstoppable Hiring

3. Start your own Hashtag Challenge

One of the more popular trends on TikTok and Instagram is to create a hashtag challenge to encourage people to create content. This could be a dance challenge, a “put a finger down if you have done this…” challenge, or any activity that other people can easily participate in using either a hashtag or audio you’ve created.

This option is a fun way to get your employees involved by asking for participation and posting it on their own page. The more people participate, the more reach you get because they share it with their whole network. Alternatively, you can also take advantage of each app’s paid ad options to boost your video to increase visibility. Whichever method you choose, be sure you keep your target audience in mind and consider the best options to get your content in front of them.

4. Leverage Advertising for Reach

Similar to the “boost” option on a post, you can utilize social media platforms to create branded recruitment ads to increase visibility for your business. Both apps allow you to customize campaign objectives, create custom audiences, and measure the results of the ads.

The greatest advantage of recruiting on Instagram and TikTok is that both apps allow you to target users based on recent engagement in specific content categories. If you’re looking to target teachers, you focus on those who engaged with education-based content. If you’re targeting the mothers who have left the workforce in droves after the pandemic, you can focus on parenting-based content. This opens a new avenue beyond what may be available on traditional platforms.

5. Leverage influencer status.

“Influencers” are people who have reached measurable popularity on a social media platform and are now providing advertisements for companies, usually for a fee.

Companies utilize influencers by either finding someone whose personal brand aligns closely with their own or encouraging their employees to become ambassadors for the company. There are several examples of either employee or brand accounts becoming influencers in their own right by posting relevant, engaging content.

If you have an employee (or an excellent marketing department) who can create authentic content outside the norm for corporate accounts, you can successfully begin recruiting on Instagram and TikTok.

Don’t expect to go viral overnight, but this type of content creation always seems intimidating until you get started. Recruiting on Instagram and TikTok is a wide-open market, and the talent acquisition pros that can embrace this unique opportunity will reap the benefits.

For more trends and tips in Talent Acquisition visit PREDICTIVEHR.com.

Top Recruiting Changes in Q2: Are You Keeping Up?

The second quarter of 2022 is already showing promise. The hiring market looks optimistic, and organizations are revitalizing their recruitment efforts to effectively bounce back from the turbulence of the last two years- and they’re doing it with the help of predictive analytics.

Unfortunately, the challenges of yesterday haven’t resolved themselves overnight. The struggle to find and retain top talent is still an uphill battle and shouldn’t be taken lightly. The upside is that the agitation to the market in recent years has uncovered several new recruiting techniques that have proven beneficial to our industry. We’ve rounded up a few top trends you’ll do well to address in Q2.

The Candidate is Still King

Recruiters and enterprises directly are paying close attention to what job seekers (and current employees) want in a role. As the market continues to lean heavily in favor of talent, those with open positions are at the mercy of what candidates are seeking. What is that exactly?

Flexible Work Options

Remote work offerings are still top of mind as candidates express the growing need for flexibility. 22% of job seekers have declined a job offer due to a lack of WFH options, and recent research by FlexJobs shows that more than 50 percent of men and 60 percent of women will quit their jobs if they aren’t offered a remote work option.

Expanded Benefits

Likely in response to the battle for top talent on top of a global pandemic, many companies have added to their employee offering in areas such as mental health services, flex scheduling, and paid family leave. In fact, 88 percent of HR leaders have added new perks to their benefits packages since the start of the pandemic. As the fight for talent continues, this trend doesn’t appear to be slowing down anytime soon.

Strides in Pay Transparency

Findings from Beqom noted that when employees perceive a pay gap, regardless of whether the pay gap actually exists, it results in a 16% decrease in intent to stay. Given that information, it’s no surprise that transparent communication has become such a hot topic of conversation.

While this may look different for every organization, the goal of pay transparency is ultimately the same: Give workers an understanding of why they’re paid what they are — and what they need to do to reach the next tier on the pay scale.

Proactively Engaging Prospective Candidates with Predictive Analytics

Previously reserved for recruiting executive-level candidates, recruiters are now taking this approach down to even the entry-level positions. Companies have noticed the ineffectiveness of passive recruiting strategies in recent years. Unfortunately, that has been widely attributed to the widening labor skills gap.

Engaging candidates early allows them to build a relationship with you, so they’re more likely to seek you out for employment opportunities before your competition. This trend will continue to increase in popularity, especially as the available talent pool catches up with the demand for skilled labor.

Use of Advance Screening Tools

Evaluation tools have been around for decades; however, reviewing resumes and conducting interviews have held their place as the most common screening methods for some time. While there’s certainly a place for these techniques, they fail to provide quantifiable insight into the candidates’ skills and abilities.

As human judgment comes up short, recruiters are turning to tech to fill the gaps. From predictive analytics and modeling to skill tests and behavioral assessments, Talent Acquisition pros are using the latest technology to seek out the best candidates for their unique roles. Recruiting and hiring will only continue in this data-driven revolution. Companies who leverage predictive analytics, reduce their workloads on human resources, and leverage that data effectively will make significant headway in the quarter ahead.

While businesses will face plenty of uncertainty in 2022, these recruiting trends will help them hire the right people for the right opportunities and at the right time. By focusing on candidate priorities, proactive engagement, and implementing the right tech, companies are working hard to gain and retain a competent workforce in the face of a general talent shortage.

PREDICTIVEHR offers the latest in data-driven technology to ease your hiring woes in 2022. Act now and retain the top talent you need today. Click here to get started.

Recruitment Process Outsourcing with the PREDICTIVEHR Difference

Now more than ever, it’s critical for employers to keep their pipeline full of qualified talent. When there’s a talent shortage and your team is stretched — leaning on your talent pipeline can help keep the process going.

Recruitment Process Outsourcing (RPO) solutions are an effective way to find top talent that matches organizational culture and values–without sacrificing the candidate’s experience. Here’s what an RPO can do for your business.

Why An RPO

The recruiting environment is complex and with the labor market stretched, how do you find the right employees? To succeed in Talent Acquisition right now, industry professionals need to be on top of the latest tech to uncover potential candidates, while also nurturing their candidates in the pipeline, and being hyper-aware of their hiring manager’s needs. Individually, these tasks feel like a full-time job; balancing all three is a recipe for burnout.

RPO providers thrive in navigating these tumultuous hiring environments. PREDICTIVEHR employs a team of subject matter experts, current with the latest recruiting tech, and have the reach to meet hiring demands. Our team doesn’t rely on the various job posting boards for candidates but instead use our own technology platform to help us meet your hiring demands. All of these responsibilities come together with Talent Acquisition at their core. When you work with PREDICTIVEHR, we augment your team to release pressure.

An RPO can bring multiple benefits to an organization, including managing hiring fluctuations, improving your employer brand,  reducing recruiting costs and dependency on staff, as well as reducing time-to-fill. A dedicated RPO simplifies the hiring process, allowing your team flexibility and enhancing your candidate experience for a cost even cheaper than a contingency or agency. An RPO is a service on a switch; you call on us when you need us and we leave when you don’t.

The best part? You own the talent pipeline and you keep it when we leave.

A Perfect Fit for Your Organization

Historically, RPOs have been a cost-effective option for larger enterprises needing high-volume hiring. More recently, RPOs are trickling down to smaller and middle-market domains as a strategic, flexible, Talent Acquisition solution with many benefits.

While navigating a tight labor market, smaller organizations have the added challenge of managing multiple hats. Many human resource professionals balance employee relations, training, payroll, compensation, and benefits, all on top of hiring and recruiting.

Recruiting process outsourcing is perfect for any enterprise dealing with fluctuating number of hires throughout the year, as opposed to bringing on a permanent member of staff for a momentary influx in demand. Moreover, RPOs bring scalability to the process and variability to costs. They’re often structured based on hiring needs instead of a base figure.

The PREDICTIVEHR difference

To improve your sourcing methods, hiring, and retention strategies for your top candidates, you need support that truly understands your business and hiring objectives. PREDICTIVEHR goes above and beyond to help you analyze the parts of your recruiting programs and processes that need a bit of a push. Still, we never lose sight of our shared goal — getting the right people into your organization quickly.

We guarantee our hires and provide a completely customized retention plan guarantee to ensure success. PREDICTIVEHR is a true recruitment partner, and that’s never been more important than it is today. Short-term or long-term, PREDICTIVEHR helps get the employees you need to achieve all your Talent Acquisition goals.

To get a full view of what PREDICTIVEHR can do for your enterprise, schedule a complimentary demo today.

4 Ways an RPO Can Kickstart Your Recruiting Strategy

What’s an RPO?

Recruiting Process Outsourcing (or an RPO) is a dedicated hiring resource that works only when you need them to.

Need the assistance? Turn the service on. Fully staffed? Shut the service off!

Keep your existing team intact and supplement without disruption. This unique service is growing in popularity mostly for its flexibility and cost savings. You pay for the time you need, nothing more. It’s as simple as that.

PREDICTIVEHR Recruitment Process Outsourcing (RPO) is an outsourced solution perfect for companies who need assistance with hiring but don’t want to disrupt their current team or budget.

As this recruiting method increases in favor, we’re illustrating four ways your business would benefit from RPO service through PREDICTIVEHR.

1. You get the best fit every time.

RPOs encourage sourcing from all possible resources to procure great talent. They source candidates through employee referral programs, company career sites, and harvest them manually using industry best practices.

PREDICTIVEHR’s bespoke RPO strategy can solve diversity, scalability, cost, quality, and other recruiting challenges many businesses face today. We don’t just fill open positions; we utilize predictive analytics to help you find the perfect fit for your company culture and anticipated growth.

2. Retain your candidate ownership.

An RPO doesn’t “own” the candidates they present. Whether they came into your pipeline through an employee referral or were sourced directly by us, your candidates are yours. That means even after we leave, that pipeline is yours.

At PREDICTIVEHR, we work in the mindset that our relationships with clients are a long-term, strategic partnership. That remains true whether you utilize us for a quarter, or for years to come. We approach our work with accountability to secure a consistent, quality talent pipeline.

3. Full service recruiting from start to finish.

PREDICTIVEHR is your partner from start to finish, providing support every step of the way. We’ll help you find the best candidates and make sure they are successfully onboarded into your company.

  • We write job descriptions that attract the right candidates and the top talent in your industry.
  • We provide candidate screening to ensure a fit in company culture and team environment.
  • Our strategy improves hiring manager satisfaction as well as candidate experience to increase your employer branding.

With our cutting-edge technology and helpful staff, you can’t go wrong with PREDICTIVEHR.

4. Pay only for the time you need, nothing more.

When all is said and done, the total cost of an RPO ends up being 60% to 75% less than what an agency charges. Tired of the hassle and expense of hiring a new employee? Allow us:

PREDICTIVEHR The Other Guys
Avg. 8-10 hires per quarter for SaaS clients No guarantees
$1,000,000 salary minimum 20% per hire
$60,000 per quarter per resource Over $200,000
Your company owns the talent pipeline Process is opaque

Recruitment is an ‘easy’ tough business.  We are subject matter experts who come in and help only when you need us to.

  • We sign nondisclosures to secure your confidential data,
  • We integrate into your process and work in your systems.
  • We build healthy talent pipelines YOU own, even after we leave.
  • We step aside when you no longer need us.

Let PREDICTIVEHR help you find the perfect candidate for your company – quickly, easily, and without any disruption to your normal workflow.

Selecting the Right RPO

A great RPO understands the importance of finding the right fit for both the employer and employee. Finding the right fit for your company is essential, so we take our time to get to know you and your business. We acknowledge your deepest concerns and work alongside hiring managers and key stakeholders to ensure:

  • Seamless Integration: We understand your systems and technology stack
  • Ownership of the Pipeline: Our process is open and transparent to your team
  • Transparent, Scalable Pricing: We can work within your timeline and budget
  • Expert Recruiters: We place a qualified subject matter expert within your organization

PREDICTIVEHR is here to help. Feel confident you’re making the best decision for your company with customized RPO Solutions built for your business.

Contact us today to get started!

5 Tips for Improving Your High Volume Staffing Strategy

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, hourly workers make up about 60% of the total U.S. workforce. That’s nearly 82 million people, and in today’s new “gig economy” that number is rapidly increasing. However, you’ll be surprised to hear that most employers don’t have an adequate staffing strategy, or any strategy at all, for hourly and high-volume staffing.

Here are 5 tips for developing and improving your high-volume staffing strategy:

  • Leverage the Right Technology
  • Improve Your Candidate Engagement
  • Keep Quality in Mind
  • Consider Leveraging an RPO Partner
  • Track Key Performance Indicators (KPIs)

There are some misconceptions when it comes to the hourly employee. A hiring manager might think, “they’re all replaceable” or “I can hire anyone off the street.”

Even if those things were true, the truth is hourly employee turnover rate is estimated to be 3.5 times higher than full-time workers. Without a strategy to increase retention and make employee replacement more efficient, the cost of turnover will start to eat away at your bottom line. 

Let’s look more closely at those 5 tips to improving your high-volume staffing strategy:

#1 | Leverage the Right Technology

In today’s fast-paced environment, you can no longer get by without the right technology to propel you forward. For high-volume staffing, this means a candidate management platform that can:

  • track stages of the hiring pipeline
  • automate elements of the selection process
  • short-list candidates for hiring managers

There are various tools on the market that also provide pre-employment assessments or “job matching” technology that could be useful, depending on your need.

#2 | Improve Your Candidate Engagement

Technology is not only helpful for automating tasks, it’s also being used to build up and nurture relationships with candidates over time. Some candidates may not be the right fit for a role you have right now, but they might be in the future. Keeping in touch with them increases the chance they’ll turn to your company for employment first.

#3 | Keep Quality in Mind

Although you need to hire a large number of people, and at times it may feel like your company is a revolving door, you shouldn’t throw quality completely to the wayside. In fact, screening for transferable skills such as active learning or communication should be at the forefront of your interview process.

Specific hard skills can always be taught. However, these types of soft skills are invaluable. An optimized recruitment process will help you screen for the right skills to spot qualified candidates faster and weed out the less-qualified ones.

#4 | Consider Leveraging an RPO Partner

A recruitment processing outsourcing (RPO) partner can help plan and execute your talent strategy in an efficient and cost-effective manner. It’s particularly useful during last-minute and urgent hiring needs.

In addition to scalability and cost savings, an RPO partner will be your eyes and ears on the job market. They monitor trends and collect market intel that can help inform your overall strategy and influence important decisions.

#5 | Track Key Performance Indicators

Key performance indicators (KPIs) are critical indicators of progress that keep your organization focused on operational improvement. Based on what your business goals are, you’ll choose which KPIs make sense to track and analyze.

In this case, knowing how long each stage of your recruitment and high-volume hiring process takes will help see where there are bottlenecks and where to make improvements. The “time-to-hire” metric is a big one to track, as it’s directly linked to cost. The longer you take to hire, the more it’s going to cost.

High-volume recruiting doesn’t have to feel like a never-ending chore. If you have the right tools and strategy in place it can be a quite pleasant experience for both candidates and employers.