Unlimited MedSearch News

 

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Specializing in the Placement of Healthcare Professionals into Full-Time
Permanent Positions Across the USA

 

 

The Future Is Now!


It’s no secret that the United States has a nursing shortage, one that promises to grow to alarming proportions. Too many nurses are retiring, and too few are entering the profession. To compound the problem, within the next 5 to 10 years, over 76 million Baby Boomers are scheduled to retire from the workforce, with only about 44 million Generation X'ers available to pick up the slack. The nursing workforce under the age of 30 makes up only 12% of the present work force. This will soon place unprecedented demands for services on a health system that is already stretched thin.

Added to this, nursing colleges and universities nationwide are struggling to find the educators needed because of salary restraints and MSN requirements. Therefore there are not enough new people entering nursing as a profession to meet the rising demand for nursing care.

HealthCare Systems are already reporting the need for several additional Nurses and Allied Health Professionals and dedicating themselves to the challenges ahead.   Action is needed NOW to prevent a drain of your professionals in the years ahead.  Being ready with a logical, defined, and cost effective recruitment program is critical.

With all of this in mind, Unlimited Nurse Search and its Allied Health division, Unlimited MedSearch (UNS) has developed several different solutions in order to partner with our clients to help you solve YOUR nursing shortage before it is too late.  Graduate Nurses and Allied Health Professionals are a definite part of the solution. Graduates from the Class of 2007 will be at the front end of the shortage and will be planting the seeds about the benefits of working at your facility to create a pipeline that will be essential to future recruitment efforts.

UNS is consulting with a few select facilities nationwide. We are partnering with these facilities to develop strategies that involve changing the culture of recruiting in order to maintain a constant flow of full time, permanent healthcare personnel to their facility. Our program consists of dealing with the upper level executives to implement recruiting structure changes in which HR fills the role of assisting placements.

We have been recruiting and visiting with prospective candidates onsite for the last 18 years and have an extensive referral network through North America from which to source candidates.

Other long-term strategies include bringing people in from other countries. The immigration process can take up to two years. NOW is the time to secure these experienced international nurses in order to have replacement RN's ready to take the place of the RN's who will be retiring over the next few years.

Why consider the UNS recruiting model??

We will customize a personal plan for your facility or regional operation to adapt to your needs. This program will provide sustained growth in your recruiting numbers and multiple pipelines in which to attract top talent that continue on for years to come.

  •        Healthcare recruiting and strategy is at least 10-20 years behind the top corporate companies and how they acquire top professionals. It is time for Change!!!

  •     Cost effectiveness - Our program is built to save you money. The new work force is seeking employers that provide strong teaching culture. The more you train your professionals the longer you will retain them.  Burnout, lack of training, and stress in any workplace are the quickest ways to have talent leave.  We are committed to creating a solid long term recruiting and planning strategy that gives one a foundation in which to grow. One major area that we work on is to eliminate the overtime, temp, and traveler costs and replace them with fulltime employees.

  •        Quality talent provides energy and competence that infiltrates the whole organization. Hospitals that implement change now and create strong, positive work environments that are well staffed were people are not overworked and burned out will not suffer a nursing shortage at their facility when the impending crisis hits.

  •        Top people attract and keep quality talent with them.  You cannot retain people in negative understaffed work environments.

  •        Our strategy allows Managers and Directors to put their time into patients and staff. We cannot ask people that work 60-70 hours a week to spend another 10 hours weekly to screen resumes and spend time interviewing.  Our model allows for better time management and focus on patients, training, and retention.

Don't lose your biggest future asset, your healthcare professionals, to your competitors. 
THE FUTURE IS NOW! 

Contact Nadia Gruzd, CEO at 1 800 903-8533 or John Yenney, VP at 1 888 672-5996 and talk to us about developing a program that fits your needs, recruitment goals, and objectives.

 

How To Help Your Grad Nurses Through Their First Days On The Job


Many new graduate nurses will soon be beginning their new careers with you. Many of them will have relocated from a different state or country so that they can work for you.

Several new grads are paired with preceptors or mentors but these people are not the only ones responsible for your new nurses growth and development. It takes a village to raise a child and it takes a team of experienced medical professionals to nurture a new graduate RN.

You have an opportunity to mold these people and contribute to the future of the nursing profession in a positive and proactive way. Nurture, support, and teach — New grad nurses are essential to our "healthy" future.

Welcome them into the profession with open arms and open hearts.

Here are some suggestions as to how to help your new grad RN’s through their first days on the job.

Make a point of introducing yourself. Welcome your new grad RN’s to the unit and create an environment where they are comfortable to ask questions so they can learn and grow.

Introduce them to the staff on the unit. A warm initial greeting goes a long way toward making someone feel welcome and part of the team.

Invite a new graduate to have lunch with you. Learn more about your new coworker and share a little about yourself. This will make them feel welcome and that you actually care about them and in doing so it will create an atmosphere of respect and understanding.

Share a few memories of your own first day out of university and on a job in the “real world”. This will enforce the point that everyone has to start somewhere, even someone as experienced as you.

If you belong to your state nursing association or a related professional group, invite a new grad to come to a meeting with you as a guest. Introduce him or her to officers and other members and convey what you get out of membership. Encourage the new graduate to join, and facilitate the process by supplying an application form. Support a new graduate’s professional development.

When the opportunity presents itself, fill a new graduate in on all the unwritten rules of the unit and the facility — all those little things that only come with experience that you wish someone had told you when you first got started. Sometimes this information is as valuable as developing clinical skills and learning where all the supplies are.

Occasionally offer assistance before being asked. Perhaps stick your head in the door of a patient room and say something like, “How’s it going? Anything I can do to help?” Just making the offer can help make a new graduate feel more relaxed and confident. It also makes new graduates feel that someone is looking out for them.

Give new graduates some positive feedback, no matter how small. Say something like, “You did a good job today” or “You’re going to make a great nurse” or “You handled that situation very well.” Encouragement goes a long way toward keeping someone enthusiastic about the facility.

A warm smile even when passing your new grad in the hallway can make a positive impact and all the difference in someone’s day. Whenever appropriate, mention some tips and advice you’ve learned along the way that make your job easier. Share your wisdom and insight. Helping those less experienced than you also reminds you of how far you’ve come in your own career. There is great satisfaction and joy in passing on your knowledge to those who will follow in your footsteps.

Always do right - this will gratify some and astonish the rest.

  - Mark Twain

 

Avoid Losing Candidates In The Recruiting Process


You go to a car dealership to buy a car. The salesman acts as though he could care less whether you buy it or not. Or he says he’ll check the price and doesn’t return for what seems like hours. Chances are you would walk out of that dealership and go to their competitor to purchase your car.

The same treatment of nurses and other healthcare professionals happens consistently and often in the recruiting processes of US hospitals. They lose good candidates before they can make the job offer, and those candidates often relay their experiences to others — tainting the potential employers, says Beatrice J. Kalisch, RN, PhD, Titus distinguished professor and director on nursing business and health systems, University of Michigan School of Nursing, Ann Arbor. “Every applicant should be treated with respect. They should have their phone calls answered. They should have prompt responses to their inquiries. If you want to recruit, it’s like selling something,” she says.

This Isn’t an Isolated Problem

“Every applicant should be treated with respect. They should have their phone calls answered. They should have prompt responses to their inquiries. If you want to recruit, it’s like selling something,”

Kalisch knew, through her consulting work, that hospitals were losing perfectly good nurse candidates during the recruiting process. She conducted the study to confirm her hunch and discovered that the problem was worse than she imagined. It’s amazing — especially in light of the nursing shortage — “all the obstacles that candidates go through to get a position, and how we shoot ourselves in the foot all along the way by not doing the simple things that need to be done,” she says.

A quarter of hospitals surveyed didn’t even respond to the nurse candidates who had indicated interest in employment, and when they did respond with materials, nearly half did a “poor” job of sending letters and other collateral that were friendly and welcoming in tone. Only 58% of the employers surveyed were friendly or personable during the interview.

The three-year study, published in the September 2003 Journal of Nursing Administration, involved analyzing the recruiting processes at 122 hospitals, from 10 geographic areas, including Los Angeles, Miami, and Hartford, Conn. The hospitals included major well- known employers, as well as sleepy community hospitals.

Kalisch hired 10 professional shoppers – undercover nurses who were not job seekers but rather agreed to go through the recruiting process in a standardized way and report their findings. The nurses were solid job candidates, with either baccalaureate or associate degrees and work experience varying from newly licensed nurses to those with 21 years experience.

Each nurse would send assigned hospital employers a typed and clearly written letter of inquiry and resume.

The correspondence indicated how the nurse could be reached by phone, mail, or e-mail. If there was no response to the letter after three weeks, the nurse shopper would call the organizations’ recruiters. If there was still no response from the organizations, the shopper would continue to call the hospital every other day for two weeks.

The shoppers had to be professional and compliant. They were instructed to return recruiters’ calls within 24 hours and be available to them. The applicants responded to situations politely, no matter how they were treated, and continued to call until they received a response. They recorded their experiences along the way.

The shoppers later described the interviewers and interview experiences and told Kalisch about which hospitals they would have chosen for employment. Kalisch had warned the shoppers’ real employers that other hospitals might call for references and asked that they respond professionally (knowing this was a study).

Other findings of the study include: 16% of hospitals surveyed responded to shoppers’ introductory letters and resumes by sending applications, but no letter or note along with them. Five percent had a delayed response, with one nurse reporting that she got the response 27 days after she sent her letter. Only 5% of the hospitals sent letters asking the candidates to call them.

Seventy-seven percent of the shoppers were greeted with a department voice mail system when they called, and 83% of situations required extensive telephone tag to get through. When employers did reply, shoppers reported that 36% had a warm and welcoming tone in their letters and notes. Kalisch says hospitals should write letters calling candidates by their names, talk about the organizations in a way that sells them and customize the responses so that candidates can relate. Shoppers rated 42% of the employers as making a poor attempt at customization; only 6% were rated as excellent in that category.

The interview experience wasn’t much better. Kalisch recalls that one of the shoppers traveled from Michigan to California for an interview, and no one was there to conduct the interview when she arrived. The nurse called Kalish, and Kalish suggested that the nurse shopper, an experienced critical care nurse, page the director of critical care. “That critical care nurse was delighted to see her. There are hand-off problems — major handoff problems,” Kalisch says.

Many of the nurses reported that interviewers, called recruiters in the study, would allow interruptions during the interviews, wouldn’t make eye contact, and often used obvious canned approaches to the interviews. They often weren’t friendly, and some cut short the interviews to do something else or made candidates wait as they talked in a nearby room on the phone about such things as their plans for the weekend.

In the ratings of recruiter characteristics, shoppers said only 59% of the recruiters were informed or prepared; 57% felt they were approachable; and only 46% said the recruiters were attentive. Thirty-six percent of the hospital recruiters were rated as helpful, and 21% used a customized approach.

The good news, Kalisch says, is that hospitals that strive to perfect their recruiting process would stand out. Not only would they land more nurses, but they would also do a better job of promoting their institutions to potential candidates, who are likely to tell their colleagues and friends about their experiences.

Kalisch suggests that hospitals need to pay a lot more attention to the basics and analyze their processes in order to improve what needs fixing. They need to answer candidates' queries promptly and write letters that sell their organizations to candidates. They need to have a real person answering the telephone. “...all these little process things — there are hundreds of them, and they need to attend to all those details so that they don’t lose candidates,” she says.

One hospital’s high pay failed to overshadow its poor recruiting process. “A nurse interviewed at several of these hospitals. She chose the hospital that she thought paid the most. But it wasn’t. The one hospital that treated her poorly paid the best, but she was so put off by that hospital, she didn’t even see the fact that they would pay her more,” Kalisch says. “It’s an emotional, psychological, factual experience. You’re putting yourself on the line during an interview.”

No facility can afford to lose an potential RN who is interested in joining their team.

Call us today for your free consultation to discuss how we can assist you with your recruiting processes.
Nadia Gruzd, CEO 1 800 903-8533 or John Yenney, VP 1 888 672- 5996.

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