Success is rarely serendipitous, but rather, a careful strategy of baby steps to reach that shining goal. In recruitment, it’s no different. Whether you’re looking to hire 1 or 21 new physicians, it takes a lot of hard work on the front end, detailing a series of well-orchestrated undertakings, to achieve success. And people are looking to hire!

According to a Merritt Hawkins 2003 survey mailed to 3,000 hospital CEOs nationwide, 60 percent of the 280 respondents said recruitment was one of their top two strategic priorities. In fact, it’s not uncommon today for in-house recruiters to need to fill 25 or more physician slots a year.

A well-planned recruitment strategy can help you streamline the process, find the right candidates for the job, and make the most of your budget dollars.

Only the Beginning

The uninitiated might think Recruitment Planning 101 begins and ends with the medical staff development plan. Deciding on the number of physicians your hospital or practice needs in order to serve your community is an important goal, but really just the pencil point on the project. The real effort involves lettering a to-do list—your recruitment plan—with tactical strategies to find and hire the right physician. A good recruitment plan is a critical management tool to ensure that the resources, both human and monetary, are available to fulfill your goal.

11 Tactical Areas

Consider planning your recruitment effort, for each position, around the following key areas: market analysis, collateral materials development, recruitment team orientation, sourcing, telephone interview participation, references/credentials verification, site visit involvement, contract negotiation management, practice development, and retention strategies.

Your recruitment plan should assign dollars, deadlines and accountability for each task. The tougher the search—for a high-end specialist or a second-language physician, for example—the more resources typically needed. If you tally your dollars and they exceed your budget, you’ll need to renegotiate funds, adjust your strategy, or both.

Outlining tactics by specialty rather than by position can also work if you have multiple positions open in the same specialty area in your market. However, as you get to the telephone interviews, site visits and implementing the latter stages of the recruitment process, the people involved and the accountabilities outlined might change by position. But the plan helps you to outline and consider areas of economy in some of the sourcing tactics, such as direct mail and advertising, and in collateral materials like ads and brochures.

Buy-In is Critical

Once your plan is on paper and you’ve fleshed out the details, you’ll want to review the accountabilities and timeline with your recruitment team to be sure you have their buy-in and support. Include marketing communications, physician leadership, practice operations and finance in the approval cycle.

Keep ‘Em Here

No recruitment plan is complete without a retention strategy. One person needs to step up as mentor and coordinate a retention plan, with help from colleagues, to ensure that the candidate does well and feels successful. Without specific accountabilities assigned post contract signature and physician arrival, issues and concerns can easily fall through the cracks and remain unaddressed.

Allison McCarthy is Managing Consultant with Corporate Health Group - Northeast, a national healthcare consulting firm, and is based in Massachusetts. For additional information, please call 1-866-315-7774 or contact us via the Web.

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