Healthcare faces a devastating workforce crisis, with the US projected to face a shortage of nearly 100,000 critical healthcare workers by 2028. With 57 percent of healthcare leaders reporting increased time-to-hire in 2024 and recruitment inefficiencies plaguing 44 percent of organizations through untrained interviewers, the pressure to hire quickly reaches unprecedented levels. Only 17 percent of candidates trust employers to communicate honestly about their brand, creating a trust gap that compounds recruitment challenges and demands strategic solutions that integrate speed with authentic employer branding
Faced with this pressure, healthcare organizations often treat efficiency and employer branding as competing priorities, believing that speed comes at the expense of candidate experience. In this interview for RPOA's Talent Leader Council, RPOA CEO Lamees Abourahma sits down with Hilary Jarman, Vice President of Employer Brand Strategy at Hueman, to explore how healthcare organizations can maintain hiring velocity while delivering values-based candidate experiences. Below appears an edited version of their conversation.
Major takeaways for HR and TA Leaders:
Speed + Brand Work Together:
- Efficient processes that respect candidates' time actually demonstrate your organizational values and strengthen your employer brand.
Honesty Beats Marketing:
- With only 17 percent of candidates trusting employers, actual storytelling about real strengths and weaknesses outperforms polished but disconnected messaging.
Technology Enhances, Not Replaces:
- Use AI to help recruiters excel at relationship-building, while preserving human connection—you cannot automate empathy.
Reframing Speed vs. Brand as a False Choice
While healthcare organizations traditionally view recruitment efficiency and employer branding as opposing forces, with $262,300 in annual savings per 1 percent improvement in RN retention, this either-or mentality may cost organizations significant financial opportunities. The discussion examines how these elements can work in synergy.
RPOA: How can organizations maintain hiring speed while still delivering a branded and values-based candidate experience?
Jarman: Efficiency and employer branding constitute two sides of the same coin. When you have an efficient process, it benefits everyone involved, specifically the candidates. And that, to me, reflects your core values.
The branding piece can bring speed to hiring. I generally think that Employer Branding works most effectively at the very top of the funnel, specifically in terms of candidate awareness, and also lower down the funnel, right before hire, when the recruiter engages and sells the employer's story.
Using Employer Branding to Signal Care and Support
In an era where 77 percent of candidates consider company culture before applying and emotional exhaustion runs high among healthcare workers, the question becomes how to make employer branding authentically communicate care and support in ways that resonate with frontline workers. Healthcare organizations must navigate the reality that only 17 percent of candidates believe employers communicate their brand honestly.
Q: In this kind of environment, how can Employer Branding be used, not just to attract talent, but to signal a culture of care and support?
Jarman: Reality always comes out. And especially because there are so many locations for employees to leave employee-specific reviews, if there is a dichotomy or a conflict between what an employer says about themselves and what people actually say, candidates are immediately going to pick up on that.
The most critical thing requires understanding who you exist as an employer, what you offer, and what your strengths and weaknesses encompass. Companies that effectively activate their EVP (Employee Value Proposition) can improve healthcare employee retention by up to 69 percent.
Reaching and Engaging Frontline Healthcare Workers
Healthcare's frontline workers spend their days on their feet, often working non-traditional hours that make them difficult to reach through standard recruiting tactics. As 93 percent of healthcare organizations invest in hiring technology and AI recruitment, research has doubled between 2020 and 2023, creating an opportunity to meet these workers where and when they're available.
Q: Can you speak about what branding or process strategies work best to reach and engage these frontline candidates?
Jarman: I would argue that healthcare frontline workers are still in the traditional locations. They just may be there at non-traditional times. If you are an RN and you work the night shift, and you're working really unusual times, you can now, like, engage with a recruiter at 2 am when you get off your shift.
We use AI to help our recruiters be more excellent. Do you have the right technology that integrates with job boards, has a broad reach, and offers an easy conversion point? Do candidates find you easily? Do you have a compelling story?
Keeping Technology-Enhanced Recruitment Human
As recruitment technology becomes more sophisticated and prevalent, healthcare organizations face the critical challenge of leveraging AI and automation to enhance efficiency while preserving the human touch that healthcare workers, in particular, value.
Q: How do you keep that experience feeling human and personalized?
Jarman: What makes an experience feel human means that you treat them like a human. We give candidates the option to opt out of any AI-like engagement, and then the recruiter calls them up and they have person-to-person discussions.
You cannot automate empathy or human connection. If a company thinks, 'We'll just have AI handle all of that,’ I think that's a big loss. When you apply for a job, do they ask you to upload your resume and then manually enter every step of your resume into the application process? Stop wasting my time, right?
Employing RPO Partnership for Integrated Solutions
For healthcare organizations overwhelmed by the complexity of modern recruitment challenges, ranging from financial pressures to staffing shortages and technology integration, the question arises whether to develop internal capabilities or partner with external experts who can provide comprehensive solutions.
Q: Help us understand how an RPO provider for healthcare organizations can assist with the challenge of recruiting and hiring in the healthcare sector.
Jarman: An RPO organization truly functions as a group of experts. An RPO partner can alleviate a lot of that burden of strategy and execution. Our Hueman recruiters serve as branded representatives of our partners, embodying the story every day.
Hueman recruiters speak with confidence. They tell a unique story. They truly embody that employee experience. As part of our implementation, we have developed new hire and internal transition processes documentation that outlines the nuances of each of our partners.
The Integration Imperative
As healthcare organizations implement multiple strategies to address recruitment challenges, understanding how efficiency and employer branding work together rather than in isolation becomes the final strategic piece.
Q: Is there anything we missed regarding the topic of balancing hiring efficiency and employer branding for healthcare organizations that you'd like to add?
Jarman: Employer branding and operational efficiencies really should be more integrated than organizations often consider. When people are working toward a similar goal, they understand the steps required to achieve it.
The grease makes the machine work more smoothly because everybody buys into the same storyline. When you can truly embody the employee experience and articulate it consistently, it does add a level of operational effectiveness
While healthcare organizations traditionally view recruitment efficiency and employer branding as opposing forces, with $262,300 in annual savings per 1 percent improvement in RN retention, this either-or mentality may cost organizations significant financial opportunities. The discussion examines how these elements can work in synergy.
For more insights from other Talent Leader Council contributors, check out our TA Leader Council on the RPO Voice blog, which features interviews with top talent acquisition experts.
