How to Find Licensed Practical Nurses (LPNs)

Most of the time, employers post a general LPN job description to job sites and mention a few standard benefits. This won't work with LPN jobs, which are highly competitive. Your hiring strategy should be to sell the job to LPNs.

Find out what LPNs in your area would love about the job and reflect that in your job posting. Can you, for example, offer:

• Collaborative and supportive work environment?
• Clearly defined LPN duties and responsibilities?
• No chronic overtime hours?
• Guaranteed rotational weekends, nights, and public holidays off?
• A competitive benefits package?
• Staff safety with 24-hour security?

You'll want to start by posting your LPN job to general sites. A great place to start is Indeed because it is free and attracts large amounts of general traffic.

Make sure your job posting is picked up by Google for Jobs, which allows your posting to be seen in search results. This can greatly increase the number of job seekers who see your job.

You can get it to appear in Google's search results by using a service that creates properly formatted and automated job pages, or by having someone format it on your website.

If you still aren't having any success, you'll want to consider job posting sites specific to nursing jobs. Some of these sites allow you to post LPN job listings for free, while others require payment.

Sites dedicated to recruiting nurses will help you source licensed practical nurses who are more likely to meet the more formal LPN job requirements.

Applicants often overlook requirements and apply anyway. Find those who qualify by sending out a short email that asks a few basic screening questions, such as:

• How long have you worked as an LPN?
• Where have you worked as an LPN?
• Were any actions ever taken against your license?
• Are you available to work nights, weekends, and public holidays?

This way, they cannot ignore your questions. If you're worried that your LPN applicants may not respond to emails, you may want to try assigning someone to make short phone calls to ask your LPN screening questions.

In-person interviews are time-consuming. You can schedule short phone interviews instead, and quickly learn which LPN candidates are the best to continue learning about.

Example questions:

• When does your LPN license expire?
• Why did you leave your last LPN job?
• What are your salary and benefits expectations?
• When are you available to work shifts?
• When would you be able to start?
• What made you interested in this particular job?

Review the screening questions during these interviews to see if their answers remain consistent. Also, check that their salary and benefits expectations align with what you are able to offer, and don't neglect to find out why they left their previous LPN job.

If they left their previous job because of issues that you know will be present at the job you're offering, for example, having to work night shifts, it immediately disqualifies the candidate from your hiring process. The same applies if they have a salary expectation that you cannot meet, or if they cannot start working for you within a reasonable time.

At this point, you've got nearly all the information you need to decide if a candidate will make a good LPN. An in-person interview will give you additional insight as to whether your top candidates continue to create a favorable impression, for example, if they act in a professional manner and whether they are punctual.

Example questions:

• Can you explain how your experience helps you manage challenging patients?
• How would you respond to a patient who is displaying signs of severe emotional distress?
• What would you do if family members instruct you to give a patient more pain medication?
• What advice would you give new LPNs on their first day of work?

You don't want to go through the whole hiring process only to find out the nurse is in fact not a licensed practical nurse, which would disqualify them as suitable LPN candidates.

You'll also want to verify whether disciplinary action was ever taken against an LPN's license. Both license status and actions taken against licenses are publicly available on Nursys.com and the state database for nurse licensure.

Check both of these now, even if the candidate claims to have a nursing license without any disciplinary actions being lodged against them. While you can request that LPNs provide evidence, you may risk losing their interest by asking them to spend the money and time getting it. It's usually better to do that research yourself.

Once you've found an LPN who matches your requirements, you'll want to prevent them from pursuing other options, so do not delay offering them the job.

This is often best done in an informal call, followed by an emailed job offer letter that provides the job description, salary, and benefits.