7 “Out-of-the-Box” Ideas for Attracting Top SLP Talent (and filling job openings)

If your organization is struggling to fill your speech-language pathologist jobs, you’re not alone.

57% of SLPs report that job openings outnumber job seekers in their area.

And 47% report that their facilities have funded positions that were still unfilled (source).

Yikes!

So what’s an employer to do?

Here are seven ideas for attracting (and retaining) top SLP talent that will increase the appeal of your job openings:

School SLP jobs can be overtaxing and stressful. And if that school is smaller, the SLP may be the only speech professional who works there, which can also make it feel isolated and lonely.

But those school placements need to be filled with highly qualified SLPs and SLPAs.

One way to offset this is to create a position that combines a school placement with a clinic or outpatient placement.

My friend Laura runs her clinic this way and it works amazingly well. All of her “combo” therapists work at least one rural school district that she has a contract with. Often, they will ride together with another therapist to these locations to make the task less lonely.

But all of her therapists also spend at least one day seeing clients in the clinic and working in the shared work space. This allows for collaboration and connection with coworkers and reduces the overload of the school setting.

Ask your applicant what their ideal schedule would be. Some will want to work during the day. Some in the evenings. Some may enjoy working from home while others will prefer a clinic or school.

Once you know an applicant’s preferences, work to craft a position that works with their schedule. The key here is to think creatively about how you can fill a need that aligns with that person’s skills and scheduling preferences.

Here are some ideas to get you going:

• Allow the therapist to work part-time from home doing teletherapy check-ins with clients
• If the therapist needs daytime hours, look for school and daycare programs that you can tap into or offer preschool social/language groups during the day
• If the therapist needs evening hours, find families of school-aged children who need additional help after school
• Consider a 3:1 schedule where the therapist does three direct weeks of service then one week “off” from direct services while they complete paperwork and admin tasks and follow up with families

Having coworkers that you can go to for help (or commiserating) can be crucial to helping a new staff member adjust.

Find ways to set up groups of peers to support each other. One idea is to create a “Work BFF Pod” that has regular meet ups, hang outs, and maybe even a chat thread.

There are a lot of ways to help your staff form bonds and support each other in ways that fall outside of the typical “Clinical Fellowship Mentoring” approach. Try some of these creative ways to support your team or ask your staff to brainstorm ways that they would like to connect with others.

SLP Assistants are becoming more common as more individuals go through these alternative certification paths. While SLPAs are not meant to replace SLPs, they can be used very effectively in partnership with SLPs to provide more children with services without burning anyone out.

Our favorite method of using SLPAs is the 1 SLP to 3 SLPAs method outlined here.

Consider other perks that you can add for your SLP team that won’t cost you a lot of additional money but will enhance their experience with your organization. A speech retreat would allow you to plan time for your speech-language pathologists to get together for some much needed relaxation, team building, and collaboration.

This doesn’t have to be expensive or fancy. You can find space at a local park or host an event at your own house. Or, you can level up and find a beautiful venue that could provide food and drinks as well.

Provide opportunities for team building through non-work related tasks but then also set aside time for sharing therapy ideas and strategies or helping each other with tough cases.

Our field covers such a vast amount of topics that it’s impossible for any one SLP to know it all. New CFYs or those doing a mid-career shift will definitely be attracted to organizations who have a built-in system for providing mentorship and support.

You can do this by pairing less experienced SLPs with a mentor from your team. Though this can sometimes cause undue burden and strain on your best SLPs.

Instead, consider choosing a pre-made mentorship program such as ours. This will provide your team with the support and mentorship they need without you having to hire an additional staff member to train and mentor less experienced SLPs. (Or take direct therapy hours away from your top SLPs to accommodate mentorship).

Click Here to Learn More about our Year-Long Mentorship Program

And here we find the real magic!

When all of the speech-language professionals on your team have a structured therapy system, they’re able to provide amazing therapy with less prep time, less stress, and more success.

Our therapy system provides resources for determining which skills to work on with a child and effective therapy plans that provide step-by-step guidance on how to remediate communication challenges.

Plus, our pre-made therapy materials provide a no-prep way to address therapy skills during the sessions. Everything is laid out using evidence-based practices while still retaining the ability to customize the therapy for each child.

Click Here to Learn More about Providing our Full Therapy System (with materials and curriculums) to your Team.