• Print Page
• Send to a Friend
• 
  
• 
  

By Christina Orlovsky, senior staff writer

When it comes to recruiting health care professionals, the newspaper want ads have gone the way of the dinosaur. Evidence shows that the health care industry is heading toward technology, offering a wide variety of opportunities through online job sites.

In 2005, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics projected that more than 1 million new and replacement nurses will be needed by 2014; an April 2006 report from the American Hospital Association reported that U.S. hospitals are currently in need of 118,000 nurses, resulting in an 8.5 percent national RN vacancy rate. Nearly half of hospitals also reported having greater difficulty recruiting health care professionals in 2005 than the year prior.

With so many open positions, hospitals, which traditionally advertised jobs in periodicals, have had to think outside the classifieds for ways to recruit employees. Although it took a while for the health care industry to catch on, it appears administrators are finally realizing the value of the Internet.

“Health care tends to lag about five to six years behind in adopting procedures that would help in administration—their focus is on the front line and patient care,” explained Denise Cautela, health care segment director for online career and employment resource Monster.com. “Part of it has also been a timing issue: Hospitals have had such staffing shortages that they haven’t had the time to think of tools to use to ease the administration process.”

That is, until now. Research from the top online job sites has shown a sharp increase in Internet health care recruitment over the past few years. Monster, for example, has seen its job availability for health care practitioners surge, with 10,000 to 12,000 health care employers in its database over a 12-month period. Nursing positions, said Cautela, are in the greatest supply, along with pharmacy and allied health care.

Yahoo! HotJobs, too, has seen a dramatic increase in health care job opportunities in the past year. According to HotJobs Spokesperson Lauren Meller, over the last 12 months, the site has seen a 120-percent increase in health care job postings.

“Health care ranked number two in terms of job listings last month, behind technology,” Meller said. “Twelve months ago it was the fourth most popular industry.”

Along with the rise in job opportunities for health care professionals has been an increase in the number of professionals seeking employment online. In fact, a survey of new college graduates, conducted in late 2005 by Bernard Hodes Group and CampusRN.com, found that the Internet was the primary source of job information for more than 1,200 future health care professionals; 70 percent of respondents said they used the Internet for job searches.

This finding aligns with expectations that the up-and-coming generation of nurses and health care professionals will be more computer-savvy and will rely more on technology to aid in their career enrichment.

“A few years ago, it was more difficult to get nurses to go online,” Cautela explained. “Now you see the two generations most likely to go into nursing: the younger generation, or Generation Y, and the Baby Boomers. These are also the fastest-moving groups toward the Internet.”

The proof is in the numbers: Monster’s database of online resumes in all health care disciplines has risen from 400,000 to over 6 million in the past three years. Similarly, HotJobs has seen a 30-percent increase in new health care job seekers over the last 12 months, making health care the site’s fourth fastest-growing industry in terms of job seekers. CareerBuilder, which partners with the career sites of MSN, America Online, the American Hospital Association and the National Organization of Nurse Executives, reported that it sees more than 7.5 million health care job searches each month.

The increased prevalence of online recruiting in the health care industry has benefits for both employers and employees. With such a high number of candidates in reach, hospitals have a wide pool to select from; and with information about prospective employers at their fingertips, health care job seekers are able to better prepare themselves for any open position.

“Employers can post jobs 24/7; it’s faster; it streamlines administrative work and it weeds through candidates more efficiently,” Cautela said. “And for job seekers, the benefits are endless: There’s constant access—Monster updates listings on an hourly basis; there are job agents that allow users to specify that they want to receive new job openings within a specific job location—they’ll receive alerts automatically; and the Internet is an area of automatic research. Employers can be investigated through their profiles.”

If the present situation isn’t positive enough, consider Cautela’s future prediction:

“While there are always going to be multiple mediums for job listings, data have suggested that online recruiting for health care is supposed to grow by 20 percent in 2007,” she said.

© 2006. AMN Healthcare, Inc. All Rights Reserved.