Case Study – Littleton Regional Healthcare

Littleton Regional Healthcare (LRH) is an independent, community-based, non-profit, 25-bed Critical Access Hospital in the White Mountains of Northern New Hampshire. Founded in 1907, LRH serves communities throughout the North Country of New Hampshire and Northeast Kingdom of Vermont with a full spectrum of healthcare services. Today, LRH employs more than 500 clinical and non-clinical staff to further its mission to provide quality, compassionate, and accessible healthcare in a manner that brings value to all.

Recruiting Challenges

Recruiters in the healthcare industry often have their work cut out for them. Research suggests hospital roles may take up to 250 days to fill, while the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) estimates that Health Services has one of the lowest fill rates (0.5, meaning half of open positions are filled) of any industry. Further, a shortage of healthcare workers in the U.S. is complicating the hiring situation. After 18 months, LRH was unable to fill its Director of Perioperative Services opening through a retained search model. A highly specialized position, the Director of Perioperative Services coordinates and supervises all aspects of clinical operations of the Operating Room (OR), Same Day Surgery, Post Anesthesia Care Unit (PACU), OR Scheduling, and Central Sterile departments.

For the Director of Perioperative Services role, LRH required a candidate with very specific attributes, including a Registered Nurse (RN) license valid in New Hampshire or a compact state, a bachelor’s degree (master’s degree preferred), five years of direct clinical experience in an operating room, management experience in perioperative service lines, and strong leadership skills.

Solutions

LRH decided to try posting its hard-to-fill positions, including the Director of Perioperative Services role, on iHire, an industry-focused recruitment platform with 57 talent communities, including iHireNursing, iHireMedTechs, iHireHealthcareAdministration, and iHireTherapy. LRH began using iHire’s flexible, subscription-based job postings called Job Slots. With a 25-Slot package, LRH could advertise multiple jobs at once and swap jobs in and out as it filled positions.

In addition, LRH’s jobs were shared with matching candidates through branded job alert emails and promoted on the organization’s company profile. The profile showcases LRH’s culture, benefits, and designation as an iHire Choice Employer (an employer that pledges to treat job seekers well through fair hiring practices, fast application processes, and candidate communication). LRH also leveraged iHire’s candidate management tools to track and organize applicants throughout the recruitment process, tagging candidates to indicate their status such as “interviewing” or “disqualified.” LRH’s HR team especially liked that it could save applicants in a “pipelined” folder, keeping them top of mind to fill future roles.

Additionally, the organization purchased a Resume Search subscription to proactively source passive candidates from iHire’s database of 3.7 million resumes.

Results

Two days after posting its Director of Perioperative Services ad on iHireHealthCareAdministration, LRH received one application. However, that candidate was highly qualified for the role, and LRH quickly engaged with him. LRH contacted him the day he applied, conducted two interviews (including one on site while the candidate was living in another state), and made an offer he accepted – all within two weeks.

LRH continues to lean on iHire and its industry-focused, quality-over-quantity approach to talent acquisition to find career-driven applicants for hard-to- fill roles. Since hiring its Director of Perioperative Services, LRH has hired a Physical Therapist – another position it struggled to fill. In fact, the Physical Therapist position had been open for six months, and a qualified candidate applied within a day after the job was posted on iHireTherapy.

LRH’s HR team has been impressed not only by the quality of the candidates they received through iHire, but also by the candidates’ engagement throughout the hiring process. Looking forward, LRH plans to expand its partnership with iHire by entering an annual contract and anticipates using the platform to its full potential.

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