Talent Acquisition in the Healthcare Industry with Heather Morini at Onsight Healthcare
Heather Morini shares expert insight on sourcing high-value candidates in a competitive market.
Heather Morini is the Talent Acquisition Manager at Onsight Healthcare, a hospital staffing firm working with healthcare facilities nationwide. Heather has over a decade of HR experience, from recruiting to interviewing to placing best-in-class candidates of all levels from executives to professionals to service and trade.
In November 2021, she joined Onsight, and now oversees a team of five employees who work to fill a high volume of roles in hospitals and healthcare facilities across the country.
Checkr spoke with Heather to get her insight on:
- How talent acquisition has evolved over the last two and half years
- Successful strategies and processes to source high-value candidates
- The influence of DailyPay—an app that allows hourly employees to access funds for hours worked, before pay day
- And more!
Let’s jump into the interview!
As we ride the waves of the ongoing COVID-19 crisis, can you speak to any trends or changes you've experienced since the onset of the pandemic? How has talent acquisition evolved in the healthcare industry?
Heather Morini: Talent acquisition always comes in waves. There are slow periods, which I saw every year during the December holidays and in the spring. Before the pandemic, it wasn’t an issue. However, the pandemic hit talent acquisition professionals hard—recruitment has become a little more difficult.
We do more sourcing than we have applicants applying. That means we’re spending a lot of time in resume databases, cold calling, cold emailing, cold texting, and cold messaging on LinkedIn. We moved from having a choice in who we could hire to sourcing candidates who could be trained.
When Onsight Healthcare first started eight years ago, we partnered with hospitals and healthcare systems to source their valet employees. When the pandemic hit—we were faced with the fact that people couldn’t be in cars together, they couldn’t be in the same room together, so our company had to pivot and the operations team got together to find a new path forward.
"When it comes to determining someone’s customer service abilities and capacity for empathy—recruiters have a sixth sense—you can tell during the pre-screening phone call."
We began offering multi-service staffing, originally starting with patient screeners and greeters. Since all patients had to be screened for COVID at the door—temperature checks, questionnaires, handing out masks—we offered this service to our sites and some still maintain these roles. We also added environmental services to address the need for hospitals and healthcare facilities to increase cleaning measures. While many businesses shut down, hospitals couldn’t close—and every area had to be cleaned regularly, so we began sourcing for those roles as well.
Today, it’s still difficult. There is an increase of people who aren’t working by choice. It’s definitely not an employer’s world—the candidates have the choice.
I read on the Onsight Healthcare website, “Healthcare demands a high level of customer service, experience, and attention to detail.” How does that affect talent acquisition at Onsight Healthcare, how do you structure your process to source high-value candidates?
Heather Morini: If someone has customer service skills and empathy, we can train them for our positions.
When it comes to determining someone’s customer service abilities and capacity for empathy—recruiters have a sixth sense—you can tell during the pre-screening phone call. You can hear it in their voice, in their demeanor, and in their personality. After the pre-screening call with the recruiters, they will move into an interview with the hiring manager, who is usually the site manager.
If during an interview the candidate shows empathy and compassion—they’re in. Training and orientation is easy, but you can't teach empathy. You can’t teach customer service. You either have it, or you don't.
Both clinical and non-clinical healthcare workers are in high demand, what strategies or tools are key to keeping up with the rapid pace of healthcare staffing?
Heather Morini: Best in practice, best in practice, best in practice.
At Onsight, we work to fill many entry-level positions. The candidates who apply are often applying to many other jobs at the same time. We need to be best in practice and be the first to reach out and connect with them.
That also means communicating with candidates on the channels they use most—and many aren’t emailers. As the younger generation comes into the workforce, many of them are foregoing email in favor of calling and texting. Therefore, we don’t email, we’re reaching out via text or calling to ensure we can connect with talent right away.
We have to keep up with technology and what is being utilized—and it’s not email.
I recently saw that Onsight Healthcare offers a voluntary benefit of DailyPay—could you speak to the importance of that benefit to talent acquisition in the healthcare industry?
Heather Morini: DailyPay is huge. And it’s not just big in healthcare, this is true across industries.
It doesn’t matter who you are or what your hourly rate is—we have all been in a position where it’s a Wednesday, you don’t get paid until Friday, and you need money for gas or groceries or a bill. Particularly in recent months, people often times find themselves strapped for cash, waiting on a paycheck.
DailyPay makes a huge difference in people’s lives and it’s a significant selling point for us. We’ve found that CEOs at hospitals love it as a benefit for their teams, and I love it to use in recruitment. I include it in all of my job ads (in bold), and we talk about it in the interview process.
"Recruiting is selling. You have to sell your company and sell the candidate on the job. With a key differentiator like the benefit of DailyPay, that selling process becomes a lot easier."
It is a voluntary benefit at Onsight Healthcare but more than half of our 600 employees use it.
Recruiting is selling. You have to sell your company and sell the candidate on the job. With a key differentiator like the benefit of DailyPay, that selling process becomes a lot easier.
What role do background checks play in the hiring process at Onsight Healthcare?
Heather Morini: Background checks play a huge role in talent acquisition. Whether you’re a CNA or a valet, clinical or non-clinical, everyone has to have a background check because we work in the healthcare industry. Background checks are a part of the hospitals’ requirements, particularly checking the OIG. OIG is part of the background check for healthcare. We need to make sure that candidates are clear from conviction of Medicare or Medicaid fraud, patient abuse or neglect, felony convictions for other healthcare-related fraud, theft, or other financial misconduct, and felony convictions relating to unlawful manufacture, distribution, prescription, or dispensing of controlled substances.
What’s great with Checkr is that when we’re hiring a valet, we can pick the package with RMV. When we’re hiring a CNA, we can pick the healthcare package to ensure they’re certified, and we can hire a site manager and choose the general background check package.
When you walk into one of our partners’ hospitals, the average person won’t be able to tell that the valets and the patient screeners are hired by Onsight Healthcare —they all wear the hospital’s colors, the hospital's uniforms, etc, so you can’t distinguish. As part of the hospitals, we are required to run background checks on all candidates, so it plays a large role in the talent acquisition process.
Thank you for sharing these insights with us, Heather!
Heather Morini: Thanks so much!
Find more information on Heather Morini here. If you’re interested in learning about Onsight Healthcare, you can find more information on their website and here on LinkedIn.