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Recruiting Dynamics Notes
Table Of Contents
CHAPTER ONE:
Understanding the medical recruiting process
Operations
Critical communication loop
Can you recruit
Personality of a recruiter
Who actually needs who?
Staying ahead of the game!
Lost coverage as a percentage to calculate
The recruiter’s daily tasks
The owner as the recruiter
Recruiting planning strategy
CHAPTER TWO:
What is your unique recruiting proposition
What is your URP
Lets define URP
Breaking down URP
CHAPTER THREE:
Advertising Recruiting Techniques
Advertising options
Advertising options
Common mistakes medical staffing recruiters do.
They were waiting! Until I go there!
How to stretch your recruiting dollars in advertising?
Factors to consider making your advertising selection
CHAPER FOUR:
Internet Recruiting techniques
Intro.
Online Job sites
Developing your model for success
Low cost online recruiting techniques
Set up a free newsletter for your success
Advertise in free/low cost classified advertising.
Classifieds
Use direct emails
Utilize ezine advertising
Build your website
How to promote your website
List of job sites.
CHAPTER FIVE
Direct mail recruiting techniques
The competition
The problem
What works?
Securing new recruits
The tactfulness of direct marketing
Standing out from the crowd!
So how do you set up effective direct mail pieces
Sample direct mailers
CHAPTER SIX:
Telephone recruiting techniques
Who are you calling?
How to best target potential recruits?
What is my objective for calling?
How to deal with objections?
Plan your call
Strategic Introductions
Strategic scripted introduction call
Define your unique recruiting proposition (URP)
Closing the deal
Recap
What impression do you want to make
Telemarketing recruiting presentation
Leaving voice messages
Telephone applicant data sheet
Weekly telephone recruiting log
Telephone recruiting sheet
Daily telephone recruiting log
CHAPER SEVEN
Job fair recruiting techniques
Take a deep breath
Specialty job fairs
Campus sponsored job fairs
General professional job fairs
If you decide to attend a job fair
Distinguish between serious applicants
Are you being judged by applicants?
Standing behind the table or booth!
Standing infront of the table or booth!
Are you approachable or not?
The power of communication
Using the database your collected.
CHAPTER EIGHT:
Word of mouth recruiting
Intro
How to create the BUZZ with WOM?
Annouce it to the world, or atleast your potential recruits!
CHAPTER NINE:
Sample forms, contracts and letters
Independent Contractro agreement
Thank you sample letter #1
Thank you sample fax
Thank you sample letter #2
Employee application
Sample Newsletter
CHAPTER ONE:
Understanding the medical recruiting process
Understanding The Medical Recruiting Process
Welcome to Medical Staffing Recruiting Training Session designed for you today’s medical staffing professional.
Your guide will be Roy Vera Author of Starting Your own Medical Staffing Agency and an experienced Medical Staffing Marketer, Business Developer and Medical staffing consultant in the United States.
The strategy and tools used to locate, contract and recruit healthcare professionals are fundamentally the same within the medical staffing industry. The differences are established within the goals for the agency, the level of commitment, the benefits the agency is prepared to offer new hires and what is the monthly quota required for growth.
Agencies goals
Level of commitment
The Benefits to new hires
Monthly quota for growth
The above is true wether you are a start-up medical staffing agency or a seasoned agency.
Because medical staffing agency work is widespread in the allied professions, it is no longer essential to educate the clinicians that this employment structure is available. The majority of clinicians upon graduating are aware that this level of work is available and therefore many in the medical field seek contract work because it helps to supplement their incomes and because they have flexible schedules.
With so many similarities among medical staffing agencies often times what sets one apart from another is within the benefits given to new hires.
The driving force behind your medical staffing agency is how you conduct recruitment. All factors being equal, recruiting is the lifeblood of your agency and can make or break any company.
The recruiting process is a juggling game between what is available and what needs to be covered. You will rarely find a perfect match when you are recruiting. Hiring clinicians is based on the need analysis of your company. Smaller companies have an easier time disseminating information to each other as the need of a potential clinician arises. Larger companies must continually update and communicate between the recruiters and business developers. This communication between departments in larger companies is more challenging than smaller agencies.
Recruiting involves knowing the terminology of the field you are recruiting in. The keywords and phrases help in many instances to find clinicians. Successful recruiters in medical staffing agencies must make it a concerted effort to dive deep into the minds of the target audience.
It is not uncommon for a potential candidate to ask you within the first three minutes of the conversation how much do you pay or what is your pay rate? Don’t be alarmed by this type of direct questioning. This is part of the recruiting process within the allied health profession. That is why it is important as a recruiter for a medical staffing agency to have the ability to make quick on the spot decisions.
Don’t exaggerate your offering and be honest when you are recruiting. You are basically a PR representative and your goal is to attract workers to your medical staffing agency. This is done by being friendly, polite and flexible with new and perspective recruits.
A recruiter must have good skills in dealing with people. If real estate is to property then medical recruiting is to people. Your ability to follow through and mean what you say will establish credibility and respect with your perspective recruits.
Don’t fake nice, don’t fake honesty, the people you are dealing with are educated and can tell when you are only trying to recruit them as a warm body. They are aware how the industry is and if they have worked with agencies in the past understand the need you have to hire them. Clinicians are aware that you need them in order to thrive in your business.
Recruiters are sales people. You are a sales person and what you are selling is not so much the recruiting process, but you are selling yourself.
Operations
You will find that the recruitment portion of your medical staffing agency is functional its own entity. Recruiting is what drives your business and many medical staffing agencies create a sub-department. Hiring a recruiter to solely focus his/her energy on recruiting.
All other departments within your medical staffing agency must work in conjunction with recruiting. Obviously if you are a one person operation keeping abreast of what is needed and who to place at any given time is easy. The logistical nightmare becomes a reality when your office has separate recruiting and business development sections. Communication is critical at this stage.
Critical Communication Loop
The feedback loop needs to be such to decrease the noise associated with communications between departments. This is critical when a recruiter hires clinicians; the recruiter must at all times have an open communication between marketing and staffing to ensure accurate placement.
The placement can be hindered if marketing is pushing for a full time Ultrasound Tech, yet the recruiter is only hiring Nurses for ER.
Smaller medical staffing agencies don’t usually encounter this problem until the firm grows to the point that the marketing and recruiting are separate.
Can You Recruit
Should you use clinicians that have no experience in recruiting to hire your staff? I found that recruiting is a learned process and can be achieved. Clinicians have an advantage that they are familiar with terminology and the industry. This works to the advantage of medical staffing agencies.
We find that many medical staffing agencies are begun by clinicians. Those clinicians are at times wearing dual hats, both as marketers and recruiters.
Experience as a clinician within the area you plan on recruiting is much more important than experience as a recruiter. It is easy to have a clinician that is a nurse, recruit a nurse to fill opposition and speak about hourly rates and expectations.
Personality of a recruiter
Clinicians need to know that the person that is interviewing them has a particular knowledge base. The knowledge base must also be coupled with a strong sense of compassion.
Recruiters are salespeople, they are the front line representatives for a staffing firm. The attractive force has certain key components to keep and sustain employees. A medical staffing recruiter must be pleasant, nice, in possession of listening skills, communicate, inspire confidence and be trustworthy.
The recruiter is often the gatekeeper that represents the company. That gatekeeper must show an openness to accept clinicians and provide a scene of continual respect for the clinicians. Nobody wants to work for a medical staffing agency that is “not very nice”
Who actually needs who?
The recruiter’s job is to inspire confidence, but that confidence must also establish a moving event for the clinicians. Clinicians are very much aware of their need and value. If you are not respectful and friendly the candidate will not call you again.
Candidates will at times play one agency against another to capture the highest pay rate. This is a common problem amongst full time medical staffing workers.
I have found that you have a better chance of hiring a clinician by providing top level quality customer service and enhanced honesty than paying an extra dollar than your competition.
Medical staffing firms tread a fine line recruiting clinicians. The line can be easily crossed when the prospect is softly guided towards your company. A company that appears desperate will exude that in the recruiting process.
Bottom line is you as a recruiter must be able to convince the candidate to work for your company.
Staying ahead of the game
Two phases in the recruitment process must always be active in order to continually fill opening.
The first phase requires a constant recruitment that places candidates today. You will have positions that need to be filled continually; actively looking for these types of candidates is part of the dynamic nature of recruiting.
The second phase is the constant proactive approach to having several candidates in the “Pipe Line” to ensure enough qualified candidates are available and being hired to fill potential shifts.
The growth of your business is dynamic, it cannot be precisely calculated and it is dependent on your ability to secure contracts and recruit. Keeping the recruiting phase active to fill positions that are not already found is a common proactive approach amongst staffing agencies.
Lost coverage as a percentage
Employees you send to assignments at any given time will call to either cancel a shift, calls due to illness, car trouble etc. The loss of coverage over a 6-month period of time can be calculated as a percentage.
Say you have 300 hours you regularly book on a weekly basis, calculating a loss of revenue at 10% due to your employees not showing up to the assignments for any of the above reasons. 10% per week times six months equals 720 missed billable hours. If you are billing at a rate of $60 per hour, you have a gross loss of $43,200. Hence, you must continually have a quota to hire 1 Full Time Employee per month. You need to make adjustments depending what position your company is in at this point. The larger your medical staffing agency, the higher the loss due to hours missed.
The recruiter’s daily tasks
You will find that if you are wearing two hats both running your medical staffing agency and recruiting, your daily tasks will be tremendously overloaded with interviews.
Prioritizing is essential given all the issues you will be dealing with on a daily basis. The convenience you offer your potential candidates generally places the burden on you to be available at their schedule.
The owner as the recruiter
Truth be told if you are starting a medical staffing agency you are the owner and recruiter, the marketer and secretary, the operations manager and business developer as well as the hr representative and scheduler as well as payroll representative.
If you are planning on hiring a recruiter, you will need to provide a salary plus commission. You can pay a recruiter between $30,000 to $45,000 with commissions based on FTE and PTE. Make sure the commission is given after the employee’s work at least two weeks.
Recruiting Planning Strategy
What is your recruiting planning strategy? Many starting a medical staffing agency do not have a viable recruiting strategy to find the qualified candidates to begin staffing contracts. Creating a recruiting strategy is fundamental and can be the difference between finding your candidates or successfully becoming a quick medical staffing flop.
Medical staffing firms enter the recruiting planning strategy with the highest goal potential. Yet, the recruits you seek are often looking for positions in unlikely places. Not all potential recruits are looking at Monster.com or in “Job Fairs”. It is also unlikely that you will find all your recruits in trade magazines or respond to an ad in a newspaper. Sometimes you will find the majority of your recruits using only one viable method described in this manual. Other times you will find that a mixture of all the strategies is needed to continually have a stream of potential recruits.
It is possible to eventually have a percentage of potential recruits finding you, but you need to give up the ideal that this form of recruiting will provide your stream of recruits to fulfil all your staffing needs. You need to have a plan set up instead that adopts a recruiting strategy that proactively finds them.
Medical staffing clinicians have many options when looking for work with a staffing firm. Recruiting Dynamics is about targeting a recruit using a strategic approach that hones in the recruiting process to individuals and then builds a friendship with them over time. The process is long lasting, slow moving yet allows to build relationships with potential and future recruits.