By Allison McCarthy, MBA
Many called them cursed. The Boston Red Sox hadn’t won a World Series for 86 years. But the 2004 team finally did it. That season, it wasn’t about a single player providing the edge. It was the synchronization of all the players that delivered the prize. With every team member knowing when to make their critical moves, the team’s performance was the best displayed in several decades.
The same can be said about the engagement of the internal team in physician recruitment. Synchronization is vital to attract desired physician prospects. Where there is internal synergy, the candidates sense both the compelling “need” for their services as well as the organization’s “readiness” to support their new practice.
Solid internal engagement around physician recruitment happens through three key elements.
1. Understanding priorities and purpose
During the recruitment process, candidates want to be exposed to as many organizational representatives as possible. This helps recruits to “test” the organization’s real desire to have them join the organization. They look for message uniformity around need, offerings, clinical support and hospital/physician relationships. To ensure your representatives demonstrate this consistency, they need to first understand why you’ve decided to recruit for this position.
“Organizational energy increases when the forward momentum of energizers exceeds the negative effects of the energy sappers.”
– David Cottrell Monday Morning Motivation
People support what they help create. The greater the involvement in priority-setting, the more commitment will be given to the mission. Starting with the medical staff development plan and continuing through annual recruitment planning decisions, gathering input from the medical staff, operations, marketing and the community establishes buy-in and support of the effort. With that in place, participants will bring more energy and personal testimony to candidate conversation.
2. Open and consistent communication
It’s a common situation. We ask a medical staff member to participate in a recruitment site visit and you hear “I didn’t know we were recruiting for that specialty/position/practice.” Despite having shared this information before, the reaction could make one think you were keeping it a secret. A onetime communication doesn’t do the job. It takes several messages conveyed using various tools and techniques to ensure it resonates.
As an in-house physician recruiter, my former CEO took advantage of every medical staff or management meeting, internal communication channel, community report and other information sharing vehicle to talk about physician recruitment goals, their purpose and their expected payoff. My responsibility was to supply him with progress reports, talking points and answers to commonly asked questions so he was always prepared – even if the opportunity was unexpected and last minute.
3. Clarity of roles
A recruitment team provides physician candidates with the broadest perspective possible. This has two benefits: 1) It reassures the candidate that the opportunity is “real,” and 2) It helps to build internal agreement around candidate selection.
But just asking a physician to participate in a recruitment interview is not enough. They need to understand “why” they are participating. Are they being asked to consider the recruit as a practice colleague, referral source, physician leader or maybe even a fellow “new recruit”? Clarifying their role helps to “frame” the conversation for the candidate as needed and intended.
Internal engagement, or the lack thereof, can make or break a physician recruitment effort. With so many opportunities available, physician candidates look for reasons to remove an opportunity from serious consideration. There are sound reasons for being turned down but internal stakeholder inconsistencies shouldn’t be one of them. It takes work but the right level of preparedness and synergy helps to ensure that candidates feel right about the organization and your practice offering.