How Important is Recruiting in Healthcare?

Medical professionall tapping onto a tablet

Apple is among the largest corporations in the world. It has approximately 66,000 employees and most recently had 1900 open positions. Mass General Hospital is one of the top hospitals in the nation with approximately 26,000 employees, and recently had about 950 open positions. While the numbers represent some interesting possibilities for analysis and calculation, this is where I think the starkest difference exists.

If Apple doesn’t fill its openings in a timely fashion then the consequences are that maybe the next release of the MacBook gets delayed. Or perhaps you wait a little longer for your next iPhone or the stock price sheds some value. All important things I’m sure. However, any delay in filling Mass General’s open requisitions might mean your important surgery gets delayed. Or, it might take longer to respond to a patient’s call button, or your wait in the ER or your ability to get admitted is unusually long. Lives and well being are affected and sometimes with critical consequences.

Healthcare organizations touted the importance of their people and profess the mantra of patient centered care. Yet what investment are they making in finding and hiring the best people to provide that care?

Consider that in most cases, Talent Acquisition is a subset of HR. Why is the head of Talent Acquisition an executive level position reporting directly into organizational leadership. Recruiters are often HR people at the lowest rung in the hierarchy trying to work their way up to HR Generalist. Truth be told, recruiting is a sales and marketing function more closely aligned with the Marketing Department.

To be most effective, remain relevant and provide the best possible candidate experience, Talent Acquisition requires professional recruiters equipped with the best automation tools in the industry.

As organizations move toward all encompassing HCM solutions in the cloud, often times the weakest module is the recruiting module which relies on the passive recruitment model which then relies principally on applicants. A suite solution often dismisses calls from Talent Acquisition for a robust best of breed platform, thereby hampering their ability to meet their mission and objectives.

A best of breed ATS platform at a minimum, will be easy to use, have an intuitive user interface,  and an integrated CRM component to enable proactive sourcing and marketing. The ability to engage both candidates and employees via social media links is critical while varied messaging, video interviewing , ease of scheduling and automated on-boarding only add to capability and efficiency. An integrated reporting engine providing for custom reporting, real time metrics and predictive analytics, provides strategic capability.

Are you really serious about your people? Don’t compromise your ability to hire the best possible people as opposed to the best available people. Make Talent Acquisition your organization’s corporate competitive advantage.

About the Author

Irv Naar is a Principal Consultant at FIND Consulting and the former VP of Talent Acquisition at UMass Memorial Health Care.

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