Staying Ahead of Healthcare Hires: Mercy’s Success Story

Mercy employees share the same drive: to help patients be well in mind, body, and spirit. But with millions of patients across the healthcare provider’s multi-state footprint, this critical work is not without its challenges.

Their open job opportunities have grown astronomically — up 183% from pre-pandemic levels — and as they battle increased demand, they also face three challenges impeding the entire healthcare industry:

Increased recruiter load. Like others, Mercy recruiters are carrying requisition volumes almost double their average.
Limited applicants. With competition high and pay rates competitive, fewer people are applying for full-time, onsite work — especially in rural communities.
Lengthy application processes. Most candidates in the industry simply don’t have the time or the patience to fill out a lengthy application.

Read the full case study here

The Solution

Being a Phenom customer before the pandemic hit has helped Kayla Drady, Director of Talent Acquisition Strategy and Operations at Mercy, and her team address the above challenges, and then some, using the Phenom platform:

With Phenom CRM, the team can simultaneously source external and internal leads, as well as engage (or reengage) candidates from the same system — all while hyper-personalizing the experience. Often, a candidate’s information is already in the system, so recruiters can look there first. This method leads to better cost savings in many recruitment areas.

“Reengagement through the CRM is a great avenue for finding more applicants without spending more money,” Drady said.
To address the common challenge of application length — especially across healthcare where credentialed quality candidates can’t be compromised — Drady used their Phenom Career Site, CRM, and events functionality for an effective workaround. By creating a quick-apply form as an event within the CRM and hosting the content on a landing page, candidates can now apply in 30 seconds instead of 30 minutes. After the form lands in the CRM, candidates are prescreened and added to a contact list for follow up.
With Phenom SMS, recruiters can communicate with multiple candidates simultaneously, automate personalized messages, and instantly get important questions answered. Drady says this is a massive improvement from their previous process, which involved 15-minute phone calls per candidate.
Meanwhile, the Phenom Chatbot automates additional conversations, schedules interviews, and answers FAQs to reduce administrative tasks.

“We used to take five days to schedule an interview. Now, it only takes a minute,” Drady marveled.
Finally, with Phenom Referrals, the team is able to leverage the same approach to increase quality candidate leads from employees, while Phenom University Recruiting helps secure early talent from virtual or on-site campus events.

The Results

By streamlining and simplifying their hiring process with Phenom, Mercy has filled thousands of open roles that previously sat vacant.

Despite higher req loads and hires, the big win is that Mercy’s time to fill hasn’t increased. In fact, they’re beating the industry average by up to 20 days. “The market is more competitive, and demand is increasing. The fact that we haven’t seen our time to fill increase right now is a win,” explained Drady.

With Phenom’s recruiter automation, Mercy recruiters are spending less time on the phone juggling screening and scheduling and more time moving candidates forward in the hiring process — all within minutes.

“We want to treat our candidates to the same white-glove experience as our patients,” she said. “Phenom keeps us on the forefront of innovation so we don’t have to sacrifice quality for quantity.”

Read Mercy’s full case study or book a demo of our platform to see how you can increase hires with Phenom.

Jenn Thomas