|
Unlimited MedSearch
News
|
 |
|
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.
|
Quick Links... |
|
|
Unlimited MedSearch, Inc.
12520 High Bluff Drive, Suite 250, San Diego, CA 92130 |
|
|
 |
|
