Resources
Healthcare Library
Geisinger's Successful Recruiting On The Web
by Elaine Tomaschik
GEISINGER HEALTH SYSTEM
Marketing Liaison Coordinator
Professional Staffing Department
As a physician recruitment Marketing Liaison Coordinator for Geisinger Health System headquartered in Danville, PA, I have a great job. Working for a large, non-profit hospital system that serves more than two million people in 38 of the state’s 67 counties, I'm partially responsible for bringing the most talented medical specialists to our charming rural community. Our flagship facility, Geisinger Medical Center, is a 548-bed academic healthcare center and the region’s only Level I trauma center. It also houses one of the largest not-for-profit multi-specialty group practices in the country with more than 500,000 outpatient visits each year.
As I said, it’s a great job, but it does have its challenges - as in, we're rural. Yes, we are lovely, quaint and peaceful, and that simply means "the big city" we are not. However, we're most accessible, located just off Interstate 80 and only three hours from New York City, Philadelphia, Baltimore and Washington, D.C. That's a very nice hub to be in.
One of the ultimate challenges is convincing people that this is not an 'uncool' place to live, and by many standards it's actually one of the best. We're a sizable health care system tucked away in the kind of settings that you read about in books. As for the other half of the tribulation, finding and reaching qualified candidates is one thing; 'matching' them to our environment and style of multispecialty academic practice is another. That part, of course, is largely up to the professional staff recruiters and physician search directors. My real, personal challenge lies in the fact that, after a new position has been identified and approved, the process starts with me. If I don't place the right ad in the right medium at the right time, and continue to monitor placement and response, we might as well close our doors because no one will come ringing our bell.
Recently, I saw a brief news item on a national survey on "Recruiting Trends in the Healthcare Profession" conducted by Wirthlin Worldwide. The survey results were both shocking and strangely familiar, as they seemed to mirror both my experiences and frustrations in identifying and recruiting specialized healthcare professionals, as well as the concerns of the staff recruiters in my department.
The survey found that 82% of healthcare organizations report a labor shortage and are actively soliciting applicants. This is certainly true of Geisinger. But among qualified applicants, 54% reported they would use the Internet to find a job, while only 26% of healthcare employers actually include Internet recruiting in their current budgets.
The survey also revealed similar discrepancies concerning the perceived value of job web sites. Whereas just 17% of employers surveyed post openings on job web sites, 46% of healthcare professionals indicate they use job sites to look for new positions. A similar gap exists concerning the use of corporate websites for recruitment purposes. While 63% of healthcare employers have a corporate website, more than one third (36%) are not using it for recruitment purposes. Yet, most healthcare professionals (65%) report they go to company websites when searching for a new job. Geisinger's web site, www.geisinger.org, has been displaying our professional and non-professional opportunities since its inception, and with much positive feedback.
If only to demonstrate that the problem of "different platforms" is not exclusively an IT problem, the survey found that there are similar discrepancies with traditional, offline recruitment tactics. Whereas only 22% of employers use trade journals to advertise job openings, 56% of healthcare professionals said they check trade journals when seeking a new job. Among the other findings of Wirthlin Worldwide’s survey:
- 38% of healthcare professionals surveyed indicated interest in finding new positions
- Registered nurses are in high demand, sought by 62% of employers, followed by radiology technicians (15%), physical therapists (12%) and physicians (10%)
- 53% of nurses surveyed indicated interest in seeking a new job
- The three most important considerations for healthcare professionals seeking a change are: better pay (67%), better work environment (45%), and better benefits (42%)
- These national statistics prompted a re-evaluation of my department’s recruiting practices, not only the eventual re-allocation of advertising resources, but also an examination of my own reluctance to use all available tools to solve HR challenges.
I truly feel that nothing can be overlooked. Traditional specialty print journals will never go away; medicine is very traditional, and that's not necessarily a bad thing. However, to rely on just one form of advertising for recruitment purposes is foolhardy. Our needs are very diverse and in keeping with our custom of excellence in health care, we want to target the sometimes obscure, hard-to-reach professionals that are a cut above the rest.
In this age of advanced technology in all sectors it makes no sense to bypass Internet exposure for any reason. So far, you most definitely get a 'bigger bang for your buck' on the Internet compared to the price of journal ads. And you also get that 'instant gratification' factor that we all love.
For those of us who work in healthcare and its allied services, Information Technology is an inescapable fact of our daily lives. We all use it. Be it a stand alone system, intranet or the Internet, we are all recording, collecting and distributing vital information among our peers. Yet despite my routine use of these technologies, I have to admit I initially had my reservations regarding online sourcing among our staff. The reasons were various: 'hard copy' mentality is hard to die; some staff just don't like the Internet ~ there are complaints about 'too much' out there and it being too tedious to separate the 'wheat from the chaff'. Looking back, I realize I did not appreciate how sophisticated the CV search engines had become, nor how many viable candidates were already online, just waiting for our phone calls. Simply educating the naysayers has made a tremendous difference.
This is not to suggest that I am exclusively committed to online sourcing. Rather, guided by hard national statistics, our department is re-allocating our recruitment dollars to include it, so we can address the largest number of qualified candidates. The downside of journal recruitment is that many of them require four to six weeks lead-time to secure placement in print. I still tend to use professional journals and trade publications as frequently as we had in the past. However, to fill more immediate and difficult needs, I take advantage of all the specialized options offered by sophisticated web sites. These sites have the ability to do timely postings (same day in many cases) giving us a jump start. They also contain CV databases that identify candidates quickly, giving us more time for the interview process itself, while allowing us to find the right mix of talents and temperament. And the tried and true direct mail campaign remains one of our steadfast means of communication. I personally like receiving a traditional letter in the mail!
Again, my job is challenging and rewarding. I feel a deep responsibility to the staff recruiters, our department director, and the entire health system. If our ads don't get placed when and where they should, we won't generate the candidates we need to establish a viable pool of primary care physicians, specialists, mid level providers and executives to feed our growing, superior health care system. This is of substantial importance to me on two levels: first, it's my job, and second, I live in a community where I've personally benefited from the superb health care within this atmosphere. Sitting on both sides of the fence provides a very valuable illustration. I'm proud to work for a health care system that has been named in the top 100 hospitals in the nation on more than one occasion, top 100 hospitals for stroke, and that has many of its doctors consistently listed in Best Physicians in America. You just have to do right by a system like that.
Finally, this national survey on the bottlenecks in healthcare recruiting encouraged me to see the Internet not as an accoutrement of my routine work, but as a practical tool I can turn to when I need it. And I strongly feel that future surveys taken in this millennium will reflect the percentage of Internet recruitment utilization and strategy steadily on the rise.