Recruiting doctors to your practice can be challenging. Some practices hire professional firms while others have an in-house process. To improve your chances of getting the best candidates, we’ve compiled some of the best advice from professional physician recruiters.
Patrick Moore, President and Director of Client Development at Smart Physician Recruiting shared this advice:
Active Physician Recruiting vs Passive Physician Recruiting
Physician recruiters need to take a focus on active recruiting rather than passive recruiting. Too often recruiters wait for calls or responses to come to them on candidates viewing their opportunities online or in a publication. Most future candidates are right in front of recruiters noses. They should be seeking existing physicians from within their network and asking them on a bi-yearly basis for any referrals or contacts of potential candidates.
Leverage Connections
Leverage all your contacts or connections at your disposal. When a recruiter interviews prospective candidates for the open positions you should get references of those candidates to use for future mining purposes. Just because you didn’t hire a prospective candidate doesn’t mean they don’t possess perhaps a diamond in their network to hire for your current or future need.
Stay Focused
Get your recruiters doing what they should be doing. That’s sourcing and recruiting candidates. Do not have your recruiters doing admin work or public relations work. They should not be showing around candidates on interviews or attending departmental meetings. Save that type of work for a recruitment director or Talent Director who can funnel the needs of the program to the recruiters.
Neal Fenster, President/CEO, Enterprise Medical Recruiting shared the top tips from his team of recruiters:
Design an Efficient Physician Recruiting Process
Creating an efficient recruiting process from the initial screening of a candidate to delivering and negotiating the contract is incredibly important. Many good candidates are lost because the recruiting process isn’t organized.
Communicate Their Way
Many physicians now prefer text messaging to calling or emailing. You’re more likely to get a faster response through text.
Keep Communication Brief
Make sure your messages are to the point and make an impact. State the most pertinent information in your messages and always request a response back from the candidate.
One Voicemail Isn’t Enough
so it’s important to reach candidates at various times (before work, lunch hour, after work).
Make Lots of Introductions
Everyone likes to work with people they like. The more potential co-workers a candidate meets the better. This gives both parties an opportunity to get to know each other.
After working at a practice with a very successful in-house recruiting process, I’ll add these to the list:
Support Existing Physicians
Your existing physicians can be some of your best referral sources. Their medical schools, their residency programs, specialty programs, etc. It’s no surprise that “would you recommend working at this company to a friend” is one of the most common questions to gauge employee engagement. If you don’t know how your physicians would answer this question, now might be the time to ask.
Show Candidates You’re Committed to Their Success
Every physician views success differently. Some might be fresh out of residency and worry about paying back student loans while providing for a family. Others might be seeking the prestige of a leadership position or opportunities to be featured for their sub-specialty. Find out what success means to the candidate and discuss how you plan on helping them achieve it.
About the Author
Brian Dooley is a healthcare marketing expert and the founder of Independence Digital, a marketing agency that connects patients to medical providers. He was previously the Director of Marketing and Customer Care for one of the largest urology practices in the nation. Specialties include increasing patient volume, profitability, and positioning medical providers as best-in-class.