Few healthcare professionals are online and even fewer are on LinkedIn, so how are you supposed to find them?
In our recent webinar, “Advanced Sourcing for Healthcare Professionals,” Brain Gain Recruiting’s Chief Sourcer, Irina Shamaeva, shares expert tips on using free online resources to find healthcare talent.
How do you source hard-to-fill healthcare roles without paid tools?
Irina workshopped a search for a board-certified physician located near Palm Beach, Florida with experience treating complex illness.
Irina ran the LinkedIn search string below, but it only yielded a handful of profiles:
- (NOT chief NOT director NOT pediatrician NOT pediatric NOT Gynecologist NOT OB/gyn NOT orthopedic NOT surgeon) (anti-aging OR alternative OR pain OR regenerative OR functional OR auto immune OR lime OR mold OR emergency OR er OR covid OR complex OR pacu OR neurologic OR ptsd OR anesthesiologist)
- Title = (doctor OR md OR physician OR anesthesiologist) (NOT director NOT manager)
The lack of aligned profiles on LinkedIn led her to extract information from different public databases:
- US State License Registries
- Board and other certifications (24 different boards)
- National Provider Identifier (NPI) Database
- Doximity, Healthgrades, ZocDoc (utilize a Google X-ray search to avoid paying a subscription fee)
- Online directories, insurance sites
- Large hospital sites (use Google maps to search by location)
- License verification
Using free tools to source hard-to-find healthcare talent is possible, but it requires a lot of time, effort, and technical know-how. Many databases are specialized to certain types of professionals and are also location specific, so the information you can find will differ across states.
Once you identify potential candidates, finding accurate contact information adds an additional layer of complexity. Since multiple databases contain partial professional data, Irina suggests cross-referencing sources to improve accuracy.
How does SeekOut Recruit solve the challenge of finding specialized healthcare talent?
SeekOut Recruit helps thousands of organizations build a talent pipeline across passive, current, and past applicants. This year, SeekOut launched a specialized talent pool for the healthcare domain.
SeekOut added a new talent pool that aggregates the sources Irina shared, including a database of licensed medical professionals with an NPI number, accounting for 90% of doctors in the United States.
John Tippett, SeekOut Co-founder and Head of Product, showed attendees the benefits SeekOut Recruit offers when compared to manual online sourcing and how SeekOut’s done the hard work of pulling together disparate data sources.
John’s search in SeekOut used the same criteria Irina searched for (i.e., anesthesiology, emergency room, or pain management medical specialties and West Palm Beach as a location) and returned 2,200 profiles. Over 1,200 of the returned profiles didn’t have a LinkedIn profile, but SeekOut’s contact information and messaging features provide ways to reach these candidates.
In addition to finding physicians and pharmacists in SeekOut’s healthcare solution, there is also a talent pool of registered nurses in more than 45 US states and additional territories. SeekOut Insights provides additional talent pool data and information to better inform hiring strategies.
With more than 90 nursing Power Filters, you can run complex queries easily to find nursing talent with the specialties and experience you’re looking for. Some SeekOut clients send physical mail to candidates, so we’ve built in the ability to send letters to candidates to increase engagement, says John.
If you don’t have the time to do all the manual work yourself, SeekOut provides a more efficient process so your talent team can focus more time on candidate experience.
Want to learn more?
We’re grateful for Irina’s technical expertise and masterclass in finding healthcare talent with publicly available sources. If you want to catch the entire conversation, watch the on-demand webinar.
If you’re looking for a people-first sourcing tool that can help you optimize efficiency, request a live demo with one of our experts and see for yourself how SeekOut can give you a competitive advantage in identifying and engaging healthcare talent.
Frequently Asked Questions
What are the biggest challenges in healthcare recruiting?
Healthcare recruiting faces acute talent shortages, high turnover (especially in nursing), license and credential verification requirements, geographic constraints, and intense competition. AI tools help by dramatically expanding the searchable candidate pool.
How does SeekOut help recruit healthcare professionals?
SeekOut's database includes healthcare professionals with license data, certifications, specialties, and clinical experience. AI matching goes beyond job titles to understand clinical skills, making it easier to find qualified nurses, physicians, and allied health professionals.
What sourcing strategies work for nursing recruitment?
Effective nursing recruitment combines AI-powered sourcing across multiple databases, passive candidate outreach, talent pipeline building for future needs, and competitive intelligence on compensation. SeekOut helps identify nurses by specialty, certification, and location.
