Stuck candidates: Qualified mid-funnel applicants lost in the healthcare HR recruiting pipeline

Focusing on ‘stuck candidates’ helped this healthcare system uncover qualified candidates overlooked by automation, streamlined recruiting, improved CX, and saved HR time and budget

The talent shortage in healthcare is real, yet there are internal processes that compound the issue. That’s according to a recent webinar, which was CLE-accredited, by the American Society for Health Care Human Resources Administration (ASHHRA).

The CLE eligible webinar featured Mary Warwick, MSHR, who is a director of talent acquisition for Community Health System. The webinar was hosted by Matt Rimer, the co-founder and chief operating officer at RogueHire. 

Community Health is a non-profit provider that operates four hospitals in Central Valley, California. It cut its time-to-fill provider positions by 47 days in just 12 months by focusing on ‘stuck candidates’ in their recruiting pipeline. 

Focusing on ‘stuck candidates’ reduces time-to-fill 

Time-to-fill is a key metric in healthcare talent acquisition. Industry benchmarks show it takes about three months to fill a provider vacancy at a median cost of roughly $16,000 per search. Vacant positions lead to lost billings and revenue leakage. 

Mary and her team cut time-to-fill by focusing on “stuck candidates.” A stuck candidate is a person who applied to an open job requisition, but no action has been taken for an extended period of time. These applications are ‘stuck’ in the middle of the recruiting funnel. 

An analysis of recruiting data found 42% of the applicants to open positions at Community Health hadn’t moved a step in 21 days or more. Today, Mary says her organization has that percentage down to a range of roughly 5-10%. 

To put it another way, Community Health was unknowingly exacerbating the talent shortage that’s affecting everyone. The prolonged process risked losing qualified candidates to competitors. 

It also left those applicants feeling like the overall experience was poor. Our research suggests that nearly half of healthcare providers (45%) will decline a job offer if the recruiting experience is poor.  

How to solve the ‘stuck candidate’ challenge

The stuck candidate problem is effectively an unforced error that is entirely fixable. This webinar provided actionable advice that any healthcare human resources (HR) or recruiting team can remediate. We’ve highlighted some of the recommendations below.

1. Start with a ‘middle funnel’ data analysis

Many of the classic HR metrics – turnover, vacancy and time-to-fill focus on the top of the funnel or the bottom of the funnel. Community Health examined applicants and data at the middle of their recruiting funnel. They discovered candidates were stuck with long wait times, where their applications didn’t move.  

Along with an undesirable recruiting experience for candidates, this means these requisitions are consuming recruiting time and budget that would be better spent on higher-priority hires. If a candidate hasn’t moved forward (or out) in three weeks or more, then the position can’t possibly be a business priority. 

2. Use the data to gain leadership buy-in

Mary took the data she discovered to the hospital’s leadership. Her leadership could easily see the problem. In her case, there were dozens of candidates sitting in the recruiting queue without action. 

She mapped the impact of stuck candidates to the resulting cost to the business. This caused the president to remark, if the posted requisitions aren’t being filled, then we should close them. 

That’s a key point because it wasn’t her conclusion, or the HR department’s conclusion; it was the leadership’s conclusion. Community Health’s recruiting team gained instant credibility and buy-in. 

3. Develop an organizational policy for stuck candidates

Armed with leadership buy-in, Community Health did a full audit across all its requisitions and grouped them by business area. Initially, they were closing requests that had been open for 120 days. Over time, they whittled that deadline down to 30 days. If a candidate was stuck in a queue for 30 days, the company would close the requisition. 

Hiring managers quickly got the message. If a requisition was closed, they’d have to start from scratch to request a new one. That meant starting the business case, justifying the new position all over again. As Peter Drucker’s time-tested advice suggests, what gets measured gets managed. 

4. Implement supporting tools and processes

Mary and her team also implemented ‘stuck candidate widgets.’ These are widgets that the recruiting team would have on their computer desktop and put data at their fingertips.  The widgets would aggregate data on the requisitions each recruiter was focused on filling. 

It would show stuck candidates at 15 and 30 days and identify their status in the hiring process. For example, it would show candidates who had been submitted and whether or not they had been through a phone screen or interview. 

She would roll the data up and provide a summary report to the executive team. It’s sent out by email every Monday. This ensured the policy had continued support. 

5. ‘Rediscovery of qualified candidates in the system

With some initial success in hand, Community Health began to analyze other possible impacts. In one case, they found 200 nurses who had been rejected automatically. Those nurse applicants hadn’t been interviewed by a hiring manager. The question was – why?

There could be many possible reasons, but this exercise prompted the organization to do two things. First, they “cleaned up” their rejection criteria. Second, they re-focused some of the recruiting team on the “rediscovery” of candidates they already had in their system. The recruiting team could engage those candidates and see if there was another match in the organization. 

This produced immediate results. The focus on re-discovery enabled one recruiter to fill “177 attributable hires in a single month.” 

It also freed up part of the marketing budget. Instead of pouring money into building a pipeline of candidates at the top of the funnel, they reprogrammed it to focus on the more challenging job requisitions. 

That’s a sound business practice, too. Matt, the webinar host, had noted that a good rule of thumb is to allocate 80% of that budget toward the top 10-20% of the hardest-to-fill roles.

Community Health also found cost savings in reducing the number of “travelers.” Those are candidates who travel for interviews, where the expenses are paid for by the hiring organization. At one point, they discovered they had between 600 and 800 candidates traveling for interviews. It was excessive. Today, they’ve reduced that to just 40. 

Improving the candidate experience

The focus on ‘stuck candidates’ had reduced Community Health’s time-to-fill for new requisitions. Moreover, it dramatically improved the overall candidate experience. 

They know this because they routinely survey applicants – whether hired or not – at the conclusion. The goal is to understand that candidate’s to apply for another job in the future based on that experience. 

Before implementing the focus on stuck candidates, around 35% of applicants said they’d never apply for a position with Community Health. That shrank the potential pool of candidates available to the organization. After implementing the program, they’ve cut that number by more than half. It’s just 14% today.  

“I believe we can win 80% of candidates over competitors if we deliver a better experience,” Mary said. It just goes to show the powerful effect that delivering a good experience for job candidates can have on the organization.

The full webinar can be found on the ASHHRA website – One KPI to Rule Them All: How Community Health System Cut Time-to-Fill by 47 Days in 12 Months. 

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