Most ophthalmic hiring fails. Searches take too long, or you endure a parade of candidates misfit to your practice. In some cases, you confront both. The point became piercingly clear to me when I was having dinner with a group of leading physicians at a recent American Academy of Ophthalmology Conference. Over coffee, they grumbled about their recruiting experiences. “I never thought it would take so long”, bemoaned a principal from a leading ophthalmic surgery center. “I thought the Internet would make it easier, not more difficult”, declared several highly successful surgeons. “My staff found our last associate on a job board. The interview went quite well and I hired him. Even though he had great surgical skills, I had to let him go after six weeks because no one could stand working with him”, complained a prominent physician who leads a growing, progressive practice. “I realized after I hired an associate that she was so fixated on making money that it dominated her every action… she just didn’t get what my practice is all about”, griped another. Sadly, I’ve witnessed similar situations hundreds of times over 25 years. It’s no surprise the question I hear most is, “Why do so many of us get such poor results after spending so much time looking?” They suffer from two problem types: internal and external. Internal problems have root causes within the practice; external problems remain those outside your control. The owner’s mindset and a weak recruiting process lead the list of internal...
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Depressed demand and soft housing prices foil lots of deals. Take the case of Retina Surgeon, Dr. Arnold Smith. A weak home-value market prevented a gifted surgical specialist from accepting Smith’s best and final employment offer. The candidate owed more on his mortgage than its market value and neither party would swallow the cash outlay required to sell the house. Both parties experienced 11th hour heartbreak. We cannot blame the market, the house or any external culprit. The recruiting process failed them. The right process with correct steps would identify any deal-killing issues up front. The story did have a happy ending. Dr. Smith asked us to re-energize his search. We mined our database and executed a campaign that addressed potential deal-killers. We filtered out mismatches early and pinpointed a short-list of matching candidates. By avoiding these last-minute surprises, Dr. Smith quickly got back on track and hired a great...
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Many practice executives hoped the Internet and social media would make employment searches easier or simpler. Not so. Experience suggests they’ve complicated the recruiting process for practices and for candidates. Every week I hear from candidates new to the job market. They declare their preference for working with a recruiter instead of posting their CV online or responding to Internet job listings. “Why not use the Internet?”, I asked a recent candidate. His answer might surprise you. “Using the Internet to apply for a position is like throwing your CV into a black hole. It goes in and nothing comes back. No feedback, no human contact. By working with a recruiter, I know my CV will get seen… and by the right type of practice for me”, he explained. Furthermore, privacy and confidentiality concerns force many would-be candidates to stay in the background. Employed, talented candidates worry about posting their resumes on line. They fear losing anonymity and confidentiality. In addition, they know that posting contact information on line will subject them to spam email and computer viruses…. an historic failing of online job boards (even those protected sites that claim to be spam free). Realize that tech-savvy candidates know how to probe Internet job postings and reverse engineer searches. That opens the potential to discovery of information about the practice… including the unflattering and false. Those inaccuracies (bad reviews, etc.) might damage your chances with a great candidate…killing a win/win opportunity. Finally, I believe it’s a mistake to limit your search exclusively to Internet job boards. They offer the illusion of productivity. Don’t confuse activity with results. If you limit your search to “typical” sources, you’ll overlook large pools of quality candidates who haven’t promoted themselves as looking for a...
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The Ten Biggest Mistakes When Recruiting a Physician Being perceived as too aggressive or not aggressive enough. Not knowing how competition in your market can affect your ability to attract good talent. Not knowing how your training, knowledge and experience can help or hurt you during (or after) the recruiting process. Will your attrition rate cost you a salary premium? How will the pool of available talent affect your negotiations (positively or negatively?) Not knowing how physician to population ratios will affect a recruit’s lifestyle and subsequent career choice…. to your advantage or detriment. Not knowing how your professional association membership can help or hurt your recruiting success. Being uncomfortable “selling” the merits of your practice, and how it can cost you that star recruit. (Knowing what to say, when to say it and when not to). Not knowing how to avoid the six hidden deal killers: test The spouse The environment (climate, population, social, cultural, etc.) Transition problems Personality mismatches Money and its distribution The spouse and money discussions Not following a systematic approach to recruiting (a...
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