This year, I have partnered with Rebecca McNeil from HealthcareSource to co-host Just-in-Time Educational segments!  We plan on tackling topics that are relevant to the challenges recruiters face!

Check out the podcast we did with Miranda Maynard of EMH Healthcare regarding the Top 5 Recruitment trends of 2012.

We also had fun creating a short video on Avoiding Recruiters Rut.

I tell you, I have been practicing what I preach in this video since the beginning of the New Year and…it has helped be more productive, focused and fulfilled every day!

I hope you are having a Perfect Day!

• Advocate Health Care – Oak Brook, IL
• Spectrum Health – Grand Rapids, MI
• Memorial Health System – Springfield, IL
• EMH Healthcare – Elyria, OH
• Community Blood Center/Community Tissue Services – Dayton, OH
• Fairfield Medical Center – Lancaster, OH

These 6 organizations represent the very top performers in our 2011 Healthcare Recruitment Metrics Benchmark Study which included data from over 80 participants.

Our rigorous qualification criteria included:

• Performing within the top 75th percentile in key areas including productivity, responsiveness and efficiency
• Demonstrated ability to quantify cost savings and ROI to key stakeholders
• Demonstrated evidence of streamlining HR/recruitment processes to reduce Time-to-Fill and improve quality of service!

It is also important to note that all of these organizations embarked on a Lean Transformation Journey to achieve these results.  These six organizations had the dedication (and stamina!) to develop continuous improvement initiatives to achieve superior overall performance with respect to productivity, responsiveness and process efficiency! 

Now more than ever, it is critical that healthcare recruitment organizations objectively quantify how they are streamlining processes to reduce costs, improve patient safety and reduce patient errors!

We are hard at work collecting 2011 performance data for our 2012 Elite Honor Roll! 

If you are interested, please contact us.

Significant benefits of this annual program include:

• Participation in our annual Healthcare Recruitment Metrics Benchmark Study
• In-Depth analysis of your performance against your peers
• Exclusive access to all Community Members – to network and share unbiased advice
• Best practice advice from our LEAN consultants
• Training discounts on our Recruiter Academy Certified Education Program
• Access to all of LEAN’s thought leadership, case studies, educational webinars, Recruiter Academy Resource Center, and weekly educational blog.

For more information about how you can become a Community Member please contact Catherine Kendall.

The key areas of focus in our Healthcare Recruitment Metrics Benchmark Study include:

Staffing Process Efficiency

• Utilize a data driven staffing optimization model to define the right organizational structure and resources necessary to meet hiring objectives
• Quantify the reallocation of resources dedicated to processing unqualified applicants to develop proactive sourcing strategies

Responsiveness

• Percent of current positions open over 60 days
• Percent of positions filled in less/more than 60 days
• Time-to-fill for positions filled in less/more than 60 days

Productivity

• Including a key performance indicator to understand if your staff is productive compared to your peers.

Cost of Vacancy

• Calculate the cost associated with positions remaining vacant and filled by agency or overtime personnel
• Quantify the ROI of reducing Time-to-fill
• Develop a business case for maintaining or adding recruitment resources to reduce overall costs

To learn more about how to participate in this important benchmark study please contact Catherine Kendall.

The first step in the exercise is to identify unrealistic expectations.  Outlined below are a few of the expectations the students have discussed. 

Sound familiar? !

Whenever I facilitate this exercise, I am reminded how much time, effort and energy is wasted when we are not able to overcome (or more importantly – avoid) these unrealistic expectations.  

If you do not consult your managers and educate them on why these are unrealistic (and set realistic service level agreements) . . . your job becomes TWICE AS HARD!

Elite Recruiters are skilled at avoiding and/or overcoming these unrealistic expectations.

If some of these apply to you (see below), I would recommend that you dedicate some time to develop rebuttals to the ones that cause you the most pain . 

I plan on providing rebuttals to common unrealistic expectations in the near future!  So please shoot me an email of other expectations not listed below that you might be experiencing, and any special rebuttals you may use to overcome some of the ones outlined below!

I hope you are having a Perfect Day! 

_________________________________________________________________________

Unrealistic Expectations from Hiring Managers

ASAP To fill:

• That we will have qualified candidates the day we post the job!
• Wanting a new position filled yesterday.
• Hire a hard to fill job in less than 2 weeks.
• Want position filled ASAP but they don’t make room on their calendar for interviews.
• Wanting to offer a position on Thursday or Friday and have the applicant start on Monday.

You work on MY schedule!

• Wanting you to drop everything for their phone call or email…constant communication. 
• If you are on the phone making an offer you can’t answer their phone call.

I follow my own process!

• Expecting a high quality hire with a poorly defined job (requirements/qualifications).
• Hire someone prior to credentialing being complete because they need someone to start now!
• Give me the information to schedule interviews in the afternoon for the applicants to interview the next morning.
• After I’ve sent over 15 qualified applications and the position has been placed on hold, the manager wants you to repost the job so 1 person can apply.
• Find me a candidate for this position, but you can’t post the job or tell anyone that we actually have an opening.
• Wanting applicants to interview with 10 + executives and have it scheduled in 2 days.
• Not really knowing what they’re looking for but expecting us to fill the job-they will just know when it ‘feels’ right…

Candidate experience/compensation issues:

• I want someone who has the most experience, education, skills – but I don’t want to pay them that much money.
• Wanting the best qualified candidate, yesterday, and they don’t want to pay them their market value!

Other unrealistic demands!

• Oh by the way, I have a preferred candidate I forgot to tell you about, after you’ve screened 100 candidates.
• Changing their mind about which specific position they want offered to a candidate after the offer is already made!
• Being responsible for coordinating a large group to interview one person….along with travel time, hotels, airline, etc.

As most of you know, I am a huge fan of Brian Tracy.  I thought his post called “The Golden Hour” worth sharing as we head into the new year. 

I know when I practice the rules outlined during The Golden Hour as part of my Perfect Day Routine, I am happier AND more productive.

Speaking of being productive . . . we are excited about some of our upcoming events during January including: 

• January 19th – Empowering Recruiters to Present A Business Case to the C-Suite – REGISTER NOW
• January 19th – Release of our 2011 Benchmark Recruitment Metrics Benchmark Study – REGISTER NOW
• January 19th – Announcement of the 7 Recruitment Organizations that qualified for our ‘Elite’ Honor Roll! REGISTER NOW

I hope you have a great start to the New Year!

David Szary

Studies indicate that the best time to connect with passive candidates is during the holidays and into January.  
 
Why?

• Most are reflecting on the past year, the new year — and they are vulnerable to “listen” to new opportunities
• Let’s face it — work slows down and they have more time to take a call, meet for a cup of coffee, or sit down and talk!
• Many will know their ‘fate’ with respect to a year-end bonus. They will know what it is and when it will be paid out.  If they are not happy, they will start a job search so they are prepared to leave once they have received it.

Now this doesn’t mean they will LEAVE their company and start with a new organization during this time. Rather, it presents a great opportunity to connect with top talent and start a positive dialog about your organization and their future goals.  

As discussed in a recent blog most corporations struggle filling approximately 25% of their openings (average TTF for those positions – 113 days!)

Why?

• Requisition management issues (common triggers – managers not engaged, position goes on hold but still being counted, sourcing req’s tainting data, etc.)
• Sourcing issue (recruiters not spending the time and/or don’t have the expertise to recruit passive, top talent)

CALL TO ACTION!

If you are not taking advantage of this GREAT TIME to recruit top talent for your difficult to fill positions, we recommend:

• Dedicating the time to do it! Maybe have fun with a sourcing blitz contest with your team? 
• Outsourcing it! If you don’t have time to do it (or it is not your cup of tea).

There are quality firms out there that will identify and recruit top talent from your competition for half the cost of recruitment agencies. I will shamelessly plug our sister firm – The RIO Group.  I have seen time and time again how they have deployed targeted recruitment strategies to fill difficult positions and/or develop talent pipelines and your database of talented professionals.

THE TIME IS NOW!

I would recommend running a sixty day report and identifying those positions that are critical to your organization and . . . devise a plan to source for them over the next 45 days.  From experience, it could be the best solution you can implement to start the New Year off right!

John Sullivan recently published an article “Top 10 Dumbest things Recruiters do….!”

The results further confirmed what we have been preaching for years!

Specifically –it is not ONE thing that Elite recruiters do differently, rather . . . it is that they do everything 10%+ better!

It is ‘technique vs. task.’ 

Let’s face it – We all play the same game and do the same tasks. We perform intake sessions with managers, source/interview candidates, manage the hiring process, deliver offers, etc. 

It is those that master the art of each task (IE – proper technique) that are ‘Elite’.  Those that work on their technique rather than just ‘check the box’ and say – - I did the task.

• Ask employees for referrals – CHECK
• Do an intake session and post position – CHECK
• Qualify candidate compensation/career motives – CHECK

But did you do a good job and execute each task flawlessly?

Bottom Line – I find the majority of recruiters do not work at their craft and keep doing dumb things!

Why? Because:

• They already think they know it all.
• They don’t really care to get better.
• They are looking for the ‘silver bullet’ piece of technology or tool to solve their problems that never materialize.
• It is hard work! 

I love two quotes by Brian Tracy:

“Good habits are hard to create and easy to live with”

“Bad habits are easy to create but hard to live with”

As we roar into 2012, are you ready to ‘self-reflect’ and . . . stop doing dumb things ?

Are you Ready to create some new good habits?

We have created a Recruiter Competency/Skill Self-Assessment Tool to help you baseline your current performance and develop strategies to improve.

We have had over 2500 recruiters participate nationally!  It is free and . . . we will send you your results (compared to industry averages) once you have completed it! 

I hope you have a Perfect Day and Mr. Sullivan’s survey results (and this blog) inspire you to become an ‘Elite Recruiter’!

Learn what Henry Ford Health System did to improve recruiting performance.

Two weeks ago, Barb Matti, Director of Employment for Henry Ford Health System, facilitated a webinar regarding their recruitment organization’s “Lean, Transformation Journey”.

It was our most well attended webinar of the season with over 450 attendees! Because of time, we could not answer all the questions from interested participants.

Barb was gracious to answer the questions outlined below.

If you want to view the webinar – click here

I hope you’re having a Perfect Day!

It sounds like it was a mix of strategies to achieve your successes (new ATS, jobs2web and LEAN initiative)…but would you say was the biggest single contributor to the success thus far?

It really was a package deal. Doing the LEAN hiring process improvements without the new ATS and advanced Sourcing technology would not have worked. I would recommend you start with the LEAN review which helps identify the problem areas and things like technology will quickly service as contributors to success as well!

Was there a consultant who you worked with during this initiative?

We did look at metrics and staffing resource planning development with David Szary from LEAN Human Capital when we implemented the organizational model. The ATS and new hiring process implementations were all done in-house. David also helped with providing information on what other companies may/may not be doing as we were benchmarking along the way.

What do your Sourcing Specialists do if their job family is light on requisitions?

They assist the Talent Selection Specialist with screening and phone interviewing. They will also help with other job families and continue efforts on building networks for their own assigned areas. They help support the interview blitz days in partnership with the TSS and Hiring Managers.

I know you routed fewer candidates to the hiring manager. But did recruiting end up screening fewer candidates as well? If so, how did you do that?

Yes. Talent Selection became more intentional on what and where they were posting. Having a focused posting strategy defined by an intake with the hiring manager is critical. We also built more robust screening questions in the ATS to help identify and screen out anyone who we do not think is best qualified – meeting both requirements and preferences as defined by the conversation during the intake.

Do you have service level agreements around the availability of hiring managers for interviews?

We have an SLA with hiring managers – however, shared accountability is a challenge that will never go away and the culture has not adapted to this practice consistently. Regular communication is the key and that starts with a clear well defined intake session so expectations are set from the beginning.

Is the On-Boarding Agent the main (only) contact for the candidate? How does the process work from the candidate’s standpoint?

The On-Boarding Agent is the only contact from the point of offer to start. Once the offer is accepted, the On-Boarding Agent contacts the candidate and they are given clear direction on what will be taking place and what is needed from them as it relates to pre-employment screening, background checks, benefits information, orientation enrollment, etc. The candidate meets with the On-Boarding Agent before they start to take care of things like the I9.

Did the Recruiters find the job more interesting when you removed some tasks (onboarding, sourcing, etc.)?

Yes, specifically this freed the Talent Selection team up to be more of a strategic partner to their managers and provide a higher touch candidate experience.

How is the Sourcer’s performance evaluated? What metrics do you track for them?

This has been a work in progress. We use source tracking, the number of resumes routed to Talent Selection, quality of candidate survey feedback, and social networking utilization. We are currently working with our ATS vendor to try and define a sourcing scorecard to follow candidates they have sourced through the workflow and link them to interviews/hires.

How does your requisition approval process work? Do you have any challenges with it?

Requisition approval is done through the ATS. This was one of the biggest challenges before we implemented the new system. We have multiple BUs with different approval committees. However, we were able to identify a process and it is automated. The automation helped to minimize the number of days jobs were sitting with managers because the approval flow is all real-time and can be viewed by the submitting manager and Talent Selection so we can see what is pending approval.

How do you separate sourcing req’s from EEO tracking obligations?

Applicants who apply to the Sourcing reqs are also subject to the EEO tracking requirements. We have a process in which the applicants from the sourcing reqs are eventually linked to an active req.

Do you survey hiring managers regarding quality of hire after 45 days (IE – 6 months, 1 year)?

We do not currently but plan to add a 6 month time frame next year.

In your model, who schedules the candidate interview with the hiring manager? Who makes the offers?

The managers schedule their interviews and in most cases TS makes the offer.

How do you function with such a small # of Sourcers considering all the different talent pipelines that need to be developed in healthcare?

We tweaked the model over the last two years and don’t feel this is small. We have the right mix to support the different needs of our organization. You have to define what Sourcing is and which job families really need sourcing and that becomes the focus of the job. Sourcers are not assigned to all jobs.

At what point do the Sourcers hand the candidate off to the Talent Specialist? Do the Sourcers make offers?

Sourcing will do the initial outreach to pre-screen and will do phone interviews. Once a candidate is pre-qualified, they are routed to the TS through the ATS. Sourcers are not involved in the offer process.

I have been knee deep in analysis of recruitment metrics/organizational performance as we finalize our 2011 Recruitment Benchmark Study this month. 

While our client’s Voice of the Customer studies continue to suggest that responsiveness/speed (AKA –time to fill) is very important to hiring managers, most organizations still struggle with:

• Identifying the root cause issues impacting TTF
• Develop solutions to reduce it

In a recent post – Overall Average Time to Fill Metrics – Does it Really Capture what is going on?, we shared that while overall TTF was 47 days across over 75 organizations:

• The % of positions filled in less than 60 days:  74%
• Ave TTF for positions filled in less than 60 days:  24 days
• The % of positions filled in 60 days or more:  26%
• Ave TTF for positions filled in 60 days or more:  115 days

Think about that!  While we fill 3 out of 4 positions very quickly (24 days), 1 out of 4 positions takes an average of 115 days to fill! 

Investigating further, we found that these are also the positions that are:

• Most critical to the organization!
• Have the highest Cost of Vacancy
• Impact customer, patient satisfaction the most
• Very difficult to find candidates for (high demand/low supply)

With that said. . . to reduce overall TTF. . . the focus should clearly be on reducing TTF for those positions trending 115 days to fill! 

So what are the solutions?

Working with our clients, solutions usually were found in three categories:

1. Data integrity – Common issues: TTF data was just inaccurate. Req’s that should have been closed were still open, positions that were on hold were still open.  Recruiters were not using ATS status codes correctly.  Not consistently tracking TTF the same (some recruiters tracking from Req Posted versus Intake Session with Manager). 
2. Requisition Management – Common issues: Recruiters not developing Service Level Agreements with managers to reduce wait time. Infrequent communication rhythm with hiring managers that have positions trending over 45 days (red zone). Positions on hold. Lack of Manager engagement.
3. Sourcing Top Candidates – Common issues: Not dedicating enough time to sourcing quality candidates.  Lack of expertise/skills to proactively source passive/quality candidates.

Working with our clients on these issues, we have seen phenomenal results in a short period of time.

If you would like to discuss solutions to reducing your TTF please contact us!