There are various fields and positions within the healthcare industry, as well as a constant cycle of change. The changes occur within system processes, procedures, policies and technology, often changing the way we work and our workforce models. As a healthcare recruiter, it’s critical to stay current with the field and industry changes to ensure optimal chances of hiring top-notch candidates for your departments. A couple relativity simple ways to stay current in industry and field news are through rounding, reading and shadowing.
1. Define a Scheduled Time For Your Rounding Session. If you don’t already have a rounding schedule with your hiring managers, you should! Rounding sessions are pre-planned meetings. where a set of questions asked of the recruiters and then discussion from that point about upcoming changes that will impact staffing. I’ve tried impromptu rounding sessions, however defining a meeting time schedule with your hiring managers is the most effective. The commitment to meeting every quarter will ensure the meeting occurs, and more importantly, the communication occurs. Rounding is a simple, fairly quick and highly effective process to keep the lines of collaboration and communication open.
2. Ensure the industry content you select to read is valuable and reliable. Reading is another simple and excellent way to stay current in the field and industry news. This method also offers a great deal of flexibility, because you can read this information at any time of day. Start with industry and field related societies, associations and affiliated organizations. Follow well-respected bloggers in the subject matter of interest, or Google the topic to find industry and field trending news. I suggest building this into your rounding scheduled. A great process is to read the information prior to your rounding session. This will impress your hiring manager and help lead a meaningful dialogue.
3. Shadowing is another method to learn about the positions in a detailed and realistic way. While this is a more time demanding method, it does offer the recruiter first hand knowledge of the position they are recruiting for. Shadow positions as they become available or complete a mini-shadow session of the entire department. The significance of changes to the positions involved will determine your time frequency of shadowing.
In a perfect world, a recruiter would round with leaders daily, attend conferences and seminars regarding the fields for which they recruit and directly shadow every position but we are living in a fast-paced, minute-to-minute work world. The simple methods above will ensure the best possible chances of continuing an open line of communication between the recruiter and hiring manager to guarantee the recruiters are adding as much value as possible to the recruitment and selection process.
Bonnie Ungaro is a corporate recruiter for Centegra Health System. You can connect with her on Twitter @bonnieungaro and @centegracareers.
Through SmartRecruiters hiring platform you can post jobs to healthcare specific niche job boards, such as AbsolutleyHealthCare, AllHealthCare Jobs, and HealthCareJobsite, as well as, connect to recruiting agencies with expertise in the healthcare field, such as Kelly Services.
For information on how SmartRecruiters can help you hire HealthCare Professionals, email John@SmartRecruiters.com.
