Every year tens of thousands of physicians and advanced practice providers are hired for direct patient care, administration and academic positions in the US. The majority of these providers are hired in the first half of the calendar year, following the pattern of the end of summer start date.
What can your organization do to be in the best position possible to compete with everyone else? How and when do you find the best talent available? The hiring cycle for a physician is typically 4 to 12 months, and longer for primary care physicians. APPs have a shorter cycle, often weeks to a few months. What is the best time to start? The answer is always NOW. And always! Actually, yesterday is even better, but let’s get your team working together now to make every day count!
Quarter 3/Quarter 4
- Write your job description/position profile.
- Identify the strengths and weaknesses of your position – maximize your strengths and fix your weaknesses if you can. If you cannot fix the problems, then develop a strategy to minimize the impact on your new provider hires. Be honest with yourself and candidates!
- Determine the characteristics you will be seeking in a candidate and identify ways to drill down to those specific traits.
- Create your recruitment team and assign roles, choosing people who bring enthusiasm and clarity to job of recruiting. Rehearse how you will sell your organization to incoming candidates.
- Place your ads, network with your colleagues and hire the best sourcers you can find!
Quarter 4/ Quarter 1
- Develop an evaluation system to review CV’s and Resumes objectively – be sure you are comparing apples to apples.
- Set clear criteria for which candidates move forward with screening interviews, virtual interviews and finally site visits.
- Determine the roles of your recruitment team – get into the weeds! Know who will set expectations, who will conduct references, who will give the tours. The most common reason providers leave a job is unkept promises or misunderstood expectations – be clear from the start of the process what the benchmarks are, how much time off is expected, who shares duties, who does not. Learn what is important to each candidate – and work to provide a quality job offer.
- Plan a great visit – time for your organization to showcase its strengths and time for you to get to know the candidate.
- Conduct meaningful reference checks – talk to the references, don’t just send a form.
- Debrief your team and your candidate. Learn what went well in the process, and what did not. Fix the problems.
- Be ready to make an offer – have your letter of intent or a sample contract ready.
- Designate someone to review the contract, point by point.
- Allow time for questions and negotiations.
Quarter 1/ Quarter 2
- Continue with contract negotiations, everyone wants to feel like a winner.
- Celebrate your successful hire!
- Retention program officially begins here.
- Assign an ambassador from your group- another physician or provider to act as a point of contact, assisting in the onboarding process and becoming the face your new hire will see when he/she starts work.
Quarter 3 or Start Date
- Continue with monthly contact until start date, monthly contact after start date for first 90 days, then at 180 days, 270 days and one year anniversary.
- Your new hire is now one year in and may be an appropriate ambassador for incoming candidates.
Provider recruitment is too important to be left to happenstance. Your organization should keep recruitment top of mind always – develop your candidate queue, nurture your leads, develop leads for the future. Create a short and long term plan to keep your provider base strong today and tomorrow. Your patients and your bottom line will both thank you.