Tag Archives: Healthcare Staffing

Continually Recruiting: Attracting the Best Healthcare Candidates

 

Continually Recruiting:

How to Attract the Best Healthcare Candidates in Houston

 

The best recruiters know that finding the perfect person for a job starts well in advance of a position opening up. Employers who recruit top talent are constantly recruiting, through marketing themselves and upping their desirability as a place to work.

healthcare recruiting

Even in a job market experiencing as much growth as that of the Houston healthcare industry, if you aren’t continually recruiting you won’t be able to hire the best person for the job. Here’s how to create a recruiting strategy that is constantly drawing from a talented candidate pool:

1. Market Yourself as an Employer

During the hiring process candidates are not only trying to impress you as their employer; but you should seek to impress them as well. Multiple employers seek after the best of the best candidates and you need to have a competitive edge in order to get their attention.

What does this look like? To start with, your website is one of the most effective marketing tools in your arsenal. Make the most of it by having a way for potential employees to submit their resumes online, along with a running list of current job openings. Additionally, your website should make it clear why a talented candidate would want to work there. Job perks, company achievements, and positive reviews can all be subtly marketed to catch the eyes of candidates.

2. Test the Waters

Practice makes perfect – and this is true when it comes to recruiting. How do you know if a job posting will speak to the right type of person for a job? Or if the best candidates are even clicking on your job listings? One way is to test the waters of your pool of applicants. Trying out job postings with different key words or perspectives can help you mine valuable insight into the healthcare job seeker market for when you do need a new employee.

What if you aren’t hiring right now? Even if you don’t need a new employee at this moment, you can still post jobs and follow up with candidates. You never know what will happen: people quit, people get fired, and testing the waters could reel in an applicant that’s a perfect fit.

 3. Keep in Touch with Applicants

Following up with applicants is a good policy to have as a recruiter, and candidates will take notice. Thanking candidates for their application, and letting them know in a timely fashion if you’ve chosen to go with someone else will be appreciated by those applying.

How does this pay off? Healthcare job applicants who you don’t hire may be right for a position in the future or are potential customers – and keeping in touch with them is one way to leave a positive impression.

 

These success of these 3 recruiting strategies lies in their ability to draw candidates 365 days a year. Continuous recruiting attracts the best candidates by getting a leg up on your competition, preparing for unexpected job vacancies, and not losing out on someone who could be perfect for your company.

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What am I Paying a Staffing Company to do?

When you have a need for a qualified candidate to fill a position, you may begin to consider using a staffing company to help you fill your job openings. Hiring a new employee requires a lot of work and labor costs. You may spend hours going through hundreds of resumes and cover letters and that is just the time spent before actually setting up interviews.

If you decided to use a staffing company, they take care of most of this work for you. Staffing companies provide a large variety of services which ultimately lead to reducing your workload and time for finding the right person for the job.

First, a staffing company is able to locate employees for a variety of job openings including temporary workers and permanently placed workers.  A staffing company collects a variety of resumes from employees looking for work, sorts through their qualifications to find where they would be the best fit and matches their job experience, job preference, and personality with your company’s needs.

If you are just looking for some temporary help, a staffing company can also provide you qualified employees to help with your short term staffing needs. In this case, the employee is employed by the staffing company and sent to you for a short amount of time and your company is saved the hassle of filling out tax forms, employment paperwork, and the overall cost to the company is greatly reduced.

A multitude of work goes into sending qualified people to interview with the company for placement. In a sense, you are paying a staffing company to weed out those who are not qualified and who may not exactly fit your community’s culture. Staffing companies interview prospective talented individuals to match them up with your needs as an employer and use your specifications and qualifications to cut down on the time you spend with prospective employees that may not be at all qualified. A staffing company specializes in people and maintains a data base of individuals who are suited for very specific work environments.

A staffing company can potentially reduce the amount of time spent finding the right employee down from weeks to just days. Hire Priority specialized in finding talented people for the healthcare and apartment industries. Their database of qualified people is very specific and can fill the void in the work place very quickly! So the next time you find yourself needing new apartment office or maintenance staff, Hire Priority can find you the perfectly qualified candidate for your apartment community.

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The Houston Recruiting Industry Loses a Legend

“Ann was the best healthcare recruiter in Houston, Texas for the good part of thirty years,” says James Lenhardt, CEO of Hire Priority Staffing and former colleague of Ann Haubegger. Ann passed away Thursday, October 11, 2012 due to complications from lung cancer.

For the four decades that Ann worked in the Houston recruiting industry she was admired by clients and co-workers alike for her dedication and success. Ann “tried to get into the heart and soul of her clients,” says Vaughn Adams, close friend and former colleague of Ann’s. After sharing an office and friendship for thirty years, Adams remarks that she saw Ann do everything she could for people, which contributed to her accomplishments as a healthcare recruiter. She embodied all the characteristics of a successful recruiter: strong relationships with clients, a clear understanding of recruiting fundamentals, a good listener, and passionate about her work.

Today, “if there’s a doctor’s office or clinic in Houston, there’s a good chance Ann had an impact there,” says Lenhardt.  Ann was not only the best healthcare industry recruiter in Houston; she was one of the top ten recruiters in the Houston market for over twenty consecutive years. The Houston Business Journal listed Hire Priority (formerly Harrison Personnel) as one of their top 25 Recruiting Companies—and Ann was the most successful of their talented recruiters.

Ann’s legacy will live on in the recruiters that learned from her and the thousands of clients and candidates that had the pleasure to work with her. “There aren’t many recruiters today like her,” says Laura Hudson, a former recruit of Ann’s at Texas Surgical, “she was special”.

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Hello Hire Priority: How to have a Successful Transition

Hello Hire Priority,

Q:  Dear Hire Priority,

I’m an apartment industry professional with seven years experience as an on-site property manager. My company is great, but offers no room for growth.  I would like to be in a regional management position in the next three to five years.  How should I handle this transition or should I even consider looking for another apartment job?  – CHRIS

A:  Hi Chris!

We look at five different key things when considering a move:  Growth, Quality of Company or Supervisor, Compensation, Location and Specific Responsibilities.  In our experience, its important to factor in all five when considering your transition.

I’m glad to hear your company is great.  My guess is that they are satisfying all or most of the other key things to consider when transitioning.  Since you like your company, the first place to start looking for growth is with them. Have you asked what their plans are for growth?  Its possible they are planning to expand, but haven’t passed their plans on to you.  Have you expressed your desire to advance to your direct supervisor? It could be that your boss is planning to leave or that he or she knows how you can advance within the company.

If you find that staying with your company is not an option, then here are the next steps:

  • Clarify your vision:  what type of product are you wanting to manage (fee, owner-managed, etc)?, are you willing to relocate?, Are you willing to take another managers position with more opportunity for growth?, are you willing to take a regional position with a challenged company or portfolio, are you willing to take less money for the opportunity?
  • Network:  contact people you trust that will help key an eye out for you or be able to put you in front of hiring authorities, contact a recruiting company, contact hiring authorities directly on Linked-In, and watch the job listings on-line.
  • Guerrilla Network:  Brainstorm with your current trust group to find out where they have hiring authority contacts and get their contact info. You will contact them and use your friends name.
  • Before contacting any hiring authority, make sure you know your accomplishments without having to look them up.  You may only have a minute or two to speak with someone, so you will need to be ready to share your successes.  A few things that sell well are NOI, Revenue or Occupancy Growth over a specific period of time (ie. increased occupancy from 87% to 95% over the last 16 months).

I’ve seen the most success come to those candidates that take a very active and aggressive approach.  This means being clear on what you want and doing whatever it takes to get in front of the hiring authority for which you want to work.

Keep an eye on the Hire Priority blog for more articles on how to find apartment jobs.

All the best to you.

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Hiring for the Apartment Industry? Rewriting the Interview!

Hiring for the Apartment Industry?  Rewriting the Interview!

How would you describe your ideal job?
What are your strengths and weaknesses?
Where do you see yourself five years from now?
What can you tell me about our company?

If you have experience as a hiring authority, or, for that matter, if you have ever interviewed for a job, these questions will sound painfully familiar. They are part of the traditional litany of interview questions lobbed at almost every job candidate. Those questions, along with another 50 or so standard questions, can give you a decent picture of what kind of employee the candidate will make. But is that all you need?

This is my second decade in the recruiting industry, and I have had the opportunity to work with hundreds of hiring authorities and job seekers. A recruiting firm has a unique role in the interview process. Since we work with both parties, it allows us to provide and educate both so that the desired result is achieved and the right candidate matches up with the right employer. It is our job to help the hiring authority find the best fit for her company and make sure that she is evaluating the candidate effectively. This article will discuss what the right interview questions are and why it’s so important to ask them.

What are the right questions?

It is important to understand everything you can about how the candidate will perform her job in your office. You want to understand her career goals, and you want to make sure that your working relationship can be mutually beneficial. However, in the rush to complete an interview, other useful information that can help you make an even more informed hiring decision is often left undiscovered.

What is remarkable is that the most important things to learn about a potential employee are also the most obvious ones and those that are frequently neglected in a basic interview. They are:
Does the candidate know what she is expected to do?
• Does she know what it takes to meet these expectations?
• Can she do the job well?
• Can she do the job quickly and efficiently?
• Can she see how her role fits into the larger picture of office performance?
Your goal is to create a robust working office environment – one where talent and efficiency work together to improve your bottom line. How your employees perform their jobs and how they make your office operate better should be the focus of your interview.

How do you ask the right questions?

If you’re not accustomed to asking for this kind of detail in an interview, it may feel more like you’re administering a test rather than having a cordial chat, but it doesn’t need to. To ease the process, you should come to the interview prepared with a clearly enumerated list of job requirements and a list of tasks your candidate will be expected to perform daily or frequently.

Take time to go through your specific expectations.
Even if it’s the smallest task, let the candidate know what’s expected of her. Make sure you’re on exactly the same page before you continue.

Ask if the candidate has performed the task in another office environment.
Have the candidate walk you through the task and ask if she has ever improved efficiency, streamlined a process or automated any of the tasks she will be expected to do. Ask if she has been in an office where someone else has done so.

Ask the candidate to think about specific challenges that she might encounter on a daily basis.
Don’t be afraid to ask for concrete examples. If you have some of your own examples prepared, you may be able to prompt your candidate to think of some others on her own. Ask how she might overcome these challenges and what the results might be. Remember, you are looking for how this one specific candidate is going to perform her job and how she will make your company better because of it.

Why is this process so important?

It is difficult to locate, entice and hire talented people. The process is tedious and loaded with pitfalls, the supply of good candidates is short, and unless your hiring for a large company with a dedicated recruiter, hiring is probably not your only job.

In spite of the inherent difficulty, your interview process should not just fall to simple routine. Even for the least critical of your office jobs, you should take the time to find the most talented person you can find for the following reasons:

• The difference between an average candidate and a top-notch candidate can mean thousands of dollars. For example, the extra time you spend looking for a cheerful, productive receptionist that your clients enjoy talking to, should be worth it in the long run.

• No matter how strong your team is already, the addition of another strong person should make it even stronger. When your office works better, your bottom line looks better.

• If your team knows that you’re always looking for the best employees, then you are making the point that you want the best from them at all times.

The interview is an important process, and it deserves to be elevated above the choreographed dance it has become. While it is nice to know how your candidate answers routine questions – like, “What are your strengths and weaknesses?” and “Do you prefer working alone or in teams?” – remember that what you are really looking for is, “Can you do the job, and can you do it well?”

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