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The Association for Advancing Physician and Provider Recruitment (AAPPR) is redefining recruitment to retention and is the only professional organization where physician and provider recruitment leaders and others who influence recruitment, onboarding and retention can connect, learn and advance their careers.
Has anyone noticed how much higher recruiter turnover is these days? Or employee turnover in general? There are a lot of people “on the move”. Many of us are reached out to for positions weekly, and sometimes daily. We are all sought after, and we are all burned out. And who knows, the grass might be greener on the other side??
A July 27, 2021, article on LinkedIn Talent Blog stated, “New Data Shows a Soaring Demand for Recruiters and Where You Can Find More of Them”. This Blog quoted that there are 364,970 Recruiter jobs advertised on LinkedIn Worldwide. And for comparison they stated that there are 342,586 Software Engineers roles open on LinkedIn Worldwide.
Recruiters are in VERY high demand across all industries and all over the globe (not just in healthcare in the U.S.), especially since the world has seen some signs of recovery from the pandemic.
What can we, as individuals, do to keep our teams together? As we all know, strong relationships = strong results. As our friend, Philosopher Aristotle said: “the whole is greater than the sum of its parts”. As a well-oiled team we can get much more done than each of us individually.
So how can we keep each other engaged and motivated? We probably can’t stop people from leaving for large pay increases or promotions, so how can we let our teams know that we love working together and that we appreciate them?
I started sending handwritten notes to individuals on the team who I felt could use an encouraging word. And when I say team, I don’t just mean those who are in the same department as me. For me a team consists of all who work together for a common goal! I am fully aware everyone is going above and beyond, and everyone works morning, noon, and night in our industry. I want them to know they are appreciated!
I have also started picking up the phone and letting someone know they have done a great job with this hire in this very difficult market. Under “normal” circumstances I might have sent an email: “great job”. That is just too easy! In this electronic and remote day of age, we need more personal touches. Send something small for a birthday, get some people together on a video call and sing “happy birthday” together. We warn everybody before we do this that they most likely will end up with a headache, but they all absolutely love the fact that we take a few moments and celebrate their special day. Do not lose those personal connections and let’s keep supporting each other now more than ever. And when a new recruiter/sourcer/coordinator/credentialer joins your organization, be extra supportive and remember your first few weeks in a new organization. We are all in the same business; making sure our patients have world class care. Let’s do this for them; they deserve a strong team!
It’s Friday, and you have a physician who starts Monday, and the medical staff office hasn’t cleared them for a start. Meanwhile, you have a recent hire who has questions about their offer letter. Oh wait, you have to work with the department for another physician for last-minute coverage? But hang on, you also have to post the internal medicine position your leader wanted two months ago for a start date in the next three months. Then, whoops, your email just notified you that another physician resigned, and a department lead just sent you a text message saying they need an advanced practitioner partner and asking when you can meet to discuss the recruitment strategy. And the list goes on and on. Sound familiar?
As if the day-to-day challenges of recruiting talented physicians and providers weren’t enough, many of us find ourselves asking how we are going to get the job done…in a timely way, under budget, without adding resources, and delivering what seemingly becomes an all-too-often quest to help educate and realign stakeholder expectations.
From becoming and staying a destination employer to having the selectivity of candidate-of-choice, today’s recruitment environment leaves little in the way of maintaining a competitive advantage to recruit exceptional talent.
Undoubtedly, the success you encounter is not easy, and the days of advocacy for your needs are few and far between. But there are ways to stage your best advocates for success — your C-Suite and leaders. Really! Despite the unrelenting question of ‘where’s my hire?’, instilling their needed trust and support for you and your ideas requires not only your knowledge to speak their language, but to do so in a meaningful and effective way to help remove recruitment barriers and level-set expectations for an increasingly competitive market.
The art and science behind the language of the C-Suite and leaders is fueled by none other than data — and, more importantly, the interpretation/translation of that data into action. After all, data points are meaningless numbers without the understanding and recommendations of physician and provider recruitment leaders like you. Data fueling a recruitment strategy yields greater value by the C-Suite and senior leaders for a more effective and efficient approach to recruitment with greater confidence that clinical workforce growth goals can be achieved. Without data and value analysis, the risk of losing millions of dollars in lost revenue, expensive position vacancies, and perhaps costly temporary staffing resources.
For key data and strategies to help your C-Suite and leaders become recruitment advocates, please download our Creating Advocates Among C-Suite and Leadership quick guide.
Ready for more C-Suite/leader language? Be on the lookout for the next blog post, Let the Numbers do the Talking: Developing Effective Executive Dashboards to Showcase Your Success!
It has been 17 months since the COVID-19 Pandemic started, and many of us vacated our offices, never to return. Now we are embarking on the new horizon of the post-pandemic world and where we work. As we enter the fall of 2021, many organizations are making declarations around the future of one’s workplace. A silver lining for me in this is that before the COVID-19 Pandemic, my organization had little to no work-from-home opportunities. Fast forward to now, and my organization is completely on board with offering this option for applicable employees. This newfound flexibility is a welcome game-changer and something that has been a long time coming.
But these changes have not come without testing our resiliency as an industry, as many of us were forced to change how we connect and where we do our work almost overnight. A common personality trait for recruiters is extroversion. We are energized by engaging with our recruits, our stakeholders, and our colleagues. You can feel some of that energy in a virtual format, but it will never be fully recreated. One thing that cannot be recreated in a virtual world is the spontaneity of running into a hiring manager in the hallway and finally getting the answer to that email that has been sitting in their inbox. So much of our work is accomplished ad-lib.
For those of you who may not be returning to the office or for those that will be working a hybrid model of split time between the office and home. How will you continue to foster that engaged energy and impromptu collaboration? I will be working a hybrid schedule officially starting this fall. For the days I am on-site, I will ensure I walk my rounds because I never know who I might run into. For the days that I am home, I have weekly virtual calls scheduled with my colleagues. Even if we do not have agenda items to discuss, I have found these frequent check-ins helpful to feel connected.
It’s been fascinating to hear how our members have also stayed connected. I’ve had the opportunity to sit in on several AAPPR Roundtables. Through this, I learned how AAPPR members, all over the country and Canada, pivoted for continued success in their roles across the provider recruitment spectrum. One theme emerged across these conversations; no one stopped recruiting or doing the work! Rather, they modified, adjusted, and carried on. They were proving that no matter “where you work,” you can still stay connected to your mission, your candidates, and your colleagues, even in a newly modified workplace.
As a member of the AAPPR Board of Directors, it’s important for members to know that as an organization we fully support all of the regional Affiliate groups and encourage you to become involved with one closest to you. In thinking back to the whirlwind of my first year as a new physician recruiter, I had so much to learn in a short time. Nobody goes to school to be a physician recruiter. What stands out from that first year was my predecessor insisting I immediately join the regional ISPR (Illinois Staff Physician Recruiters) and national AAPPR (formerly ASPR) recruiter groups. After joining, I was quickly welcomed to the industry, provided educational resources, and mentors I could call for help. I hope you could say the same when you joined.
As a solo physician recruiter, I quickly felt a sense of security and inclusion within both organizations. AAPPR provided me with instant access to a huge volume of education, technical tools, and other recruiters. I had a place to find the answers to my questions. Yet it was my affiliate group where I distinctly remember the sense of recruiter community to be unique and memorable. I found that I could easily connect with them personally, due to our geographic familiarity and convenience of meeting together. They knew where my little town was and we often had someone in common, like the Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon. Our meetings and conferences always left me feeling understood and a part of a bigger network.
Today, as a senior recruiter, my affiliate group and AAPPR synergistically allow me to continue grow as a professional. It has provided me with the opportunity to gain leadership experience that is not always available to physician recruiters within their healthcare organization. In my 18 years as a physician recruiter, my affiliate group colleagues are the people with whom I have shared many professional challenges and successes. When I need advice, they have my back and I have theirs.
The Board and I would like to thank all of the Affiliate group leaders for their time and contributions. They appreciate members who get involved so if you haven’t already engaged with your local group – please consider reaching out.
In April, AAPPR held its annual conference virtually with over 600 members across the United States attending. Over two full days we were able to connect with one another and learn from subject matter experts on a wide variety of topics. As we settle into the summer months and ramp up our onboarding season, I am excited to implement new approaches and processes that were takeaways from our annual conference. For example, I have completely updated my recruitment to retention plan. If you’re not making consistent improvements, your recruitment practices will be out of date in no time. It is hard to articulate the true value of AAPPR’s annual conference. Sure, it is educational, and we are able to connect and learn from our peers, but in reality, it is so much more. The annual conference is hands down my favorite event that AAPPR hosts. If you are a new member or haven’t previously attended, I highly recommend that you save the date and attend next year’s conference in Chicago, April 23-27, 2022.
As a member of AAPPR, you already know that new content and programming are generated weekly. The roundtables that began during the pandemic continue to be extremely helpful and a wonderful way for members to get to know one another. As an independent director of a recruitment team, I do not have the opportunity to bounce ideas off peers. Networking and volunteering through AAPPR provide a support system for me and help me to stay up to date on trends in the industry.
Serving on the Board of Directors, I can attest that the leaders of AAPPR have been very strategic over the years to ensure long-term organizational sustainability for our members. We are so fortunate to have an industry association that supports us through relevant content and education events. The AAPPR live webinar series welcomes a number of speakers year-round to discuss trends and hot topics in recruitment. Whether you are new to the industry or a seasoned professional the webinars are a great way to keep up to date on the latest developments from sourcing through interviewing and from onboarding to retention.
Moving into fall, I am looking forward to the return of in person events at regional affiliate meetings and the opportunity to participate in face-to-face discussions with colleagues from other organizations. The mission of AAPPR is to continue to advance the physician and recruitment profession and careers of our members. With the continuing education opportunities offered to our members both in person and virtually, AAPPR remains the industry leader in physician and provider recruitment.
May is Mental Health Awareness month and for me, nothing has stood out more over the past year than how many of us struggle with our mental health and just how prevalent mental health illnesses are. I recall speaking with my therapist last summer about how, while we may not recognize it, we are all experiencing a collective trauma. Living through a pandemic – or any historic and disruptive event – fundamentally disrupts our way of life, way of thinking and sense of safety and security. Then, during the AAPPR Virtual Conference last month, speaker Dian Ginsberg made a comment that really stuck. It was the first time I had even considered it but she acknowledged that through this pandemic, while almost everything shut down, we as physician and advanced practitioner recruitment professionals never really got to stop. Whether you were furloughed, redeployed, impacted by reductions, or were still operating “business as usual” – the urgency around the work we do became so much greater!
Reflecting on that, and in watching the opening videos of conference of what “office life” looked like for us or how we coped living in a world where we could no longer operate within our norms, I found myself being grateful for the support that I found and curious about what all of you did over the past year to bring light into what for many has been a very difficult time. For me, self-care became an even higher priority – and self-care can come in many forms. What we do – and the pressure that comes with it – is not easy. We operate in environments that are often high visibility and high stress. Not only that but we are wearers of many hats and are expected to pivot on a dime at any moment depending on what meeting comes next, what candidate or leader we are talking with or what fire drill is coming at us on any given day. And that can be HARD. So hard.
About 5-6 years ago I found myself in a work situation that was incredibly toxic, to the point where it had an impact on my physical and mental health. I hit a breaking point where I had no choice but to seek help. And through that help I learned so much about myself and my mental wellbeing. I was told that I had likely been operating at an extreme level of depression and anxiety for so long that it was almost unrecognizable – because it was my normal. Years of it. It took hitting rock bottom to realize that but I am so grateful I somehow, somewhere, found the strength to reach out. It changed my life for the better – both personally and professionally. I share this because I believe it is so important to shift the stigma around mental health. And as I speak with our colleagues and we share stories I find that often we are not alone.
The opening 90 second videos from the virtual conference can be found on AAPPR’s Facebook page. There are so many great examples of what work and life has looked like for our colleagues over the past year. I would love to hear from you about how you’ve coped or taken care of yourself over the past year and I would be delighted to share some of my own stories! Watch AAPPR’s social media and Chat channels for posts where you can share stories and photos. And for now I will leave you with just a few simple examples of ways you can look after your own mental health:
Wow, what a year it has been! I don’t know about you, but I’ve experienced the full gamut of emotions over the past year – excitement, anxiety, fear, joy, (pandemic) fatigue, hope. After a year of social distancing, not seeing family and loved ones, or traveling, I am eager for the summer and the adventures and reunions that will hopefully come with it as we start to get back to “normal,” whatever that looks like moving forward. I am also very excited to be starting my term as President of the Board for AAPPR and am so, so grateful for the leadership and guidance of Lynne Peterson over the past two years. I know I speak on behalf of the entire Board when I say thank you to Lynne for all that she has done to advance our profession.
We have a lot to look forward to this year, including the launch of our new Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Committee. As a Board, the topic of diversity, equity, and inclusion is important to us. We’re committed to openness and change to ensure our organization creates and supports a space for everyone. This also means that regardless of organization type or role within our industry, I want every member to know that their voice is needed to make the work of AAPPR even better. We must become more inclusive – from membership make-up to the perspectives and experiences you bring to the table. As health care changes and evolves, so do the opportunities within our profession and the scope of how we do our work. I want AAPPR to learn, listen and lead on behalf of its members and on behalf of the advancement of our profession. We have so much to learn from each other!
Speaking of advancement, nothing elevates the position of a recruitment professional more than being informed and ready with data. This year, more than ever, participation in the Benchmark Study is critical. It’s the first year of data collection post-Covid. Data collected and reported in this year’s survey will provide unprecedented insight. The survey is open until June 1st, so act fast!
One of the things that I have always loved about our association is our membership’s natural desire to network and collaborate. I recall attending my first [ASPR] conference many years ago and being so delighted to find like-minded individuals who struggled with the same challenges that I did and celebrated every single hire with the same excitement. In a world where our ability to meet in person has been hindered, it has been the Board’s priority to invest in and maximize our ability to educate and bring together our members in a virtual space. Round tables, webinars, and happy hours have been a big hit! The CPRP certification was launched virtually – and this year, we’re looking forward to developing micro-credential educational modules to further expand the educational offerings of the association.
AAPPR is a space where we come together to share our ideas and experiences. A network of like-minded individuals who collectively drive the advancement of our profession. We are the voice for the work that we do, and our mission as a Board is to continually leverage that voice and position you, our membership, as the industry experts within your organizations. Together we are stronger!
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