Recruiters and the Recruitment Process - An Insight to Healthcare Recruitment

(Phone call to an imaging professional about an employment opportunity)

"Hi Mr. Anderson, this is John Doe from XYZ Radiology recruitment. How are you today!"

Click!

"Hello, hello? Mr. Anderson?" .... "Ouch!"

(End of phone call)

Hi everyone! Thanks for checking out this blog. I am glad that I got your attention and I am also glad that quite possibly, I may grab your attention just enough so that you read further. Have I got it? Good! This blog is going to focus on recruiters. The good, the bad, the ugly, and also all the important information that you will take with you the next time that recruiter calls you, which will probably be tomorrow or sometime next week.

In this blog I am going to focus on a lot, but not all at once, so don't worry. The goal of this is to inform you about recruiters. The roles they play; the companies that they work for; what locations they recruit for; the different types of recruitment; the processes of these different types of recruitment; the new avenues that recruiters are taking to go out and find the best talent; and a bunch of other really usefully boring topics that you are going to love to read! I will try to make this as light and entertaining as possible, but if I start to bore you, this blog may become a valuable sleep aid to get you to bed at night. :)

The very end of this blog is going to also discuss the important guidelines that you should think about when working with a recruiter because even though you may have that little inclination that recruiters don't add value, you will find out that they actually do. Which is going to land you that next dream job. Trust me!

Ok, first off. I would like to say that this is an open blog. PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE feel free to comment, continue discussion, and even tell me I am wrong. I will let you know right now that I am not claiming to be a 20 year veteran of recruitment, but I have worked for about 5 years focusing on radiology recruitment and I have come to understand the frustration that many imaging professionals have with recruiters. With the knowledge that I bring, hopefully this will help you in deciding if the recruiter that you have is good, or if using a recruiter is beneficial in your job search.

Definition of a Recruiter

So what are recruiters? Well Wikipedia defines a recruiter as: "Someone engaging in recruitment, which is the solicitation of individuals to fill jobs or positions within any group, such as a corporation or sports team. Recruiters can be divided into two groups; those working internally for one organization, and those working for multiple clients in a third-party broker relationship, sometimes called headhunters or agency recruiters."

Good old wikipedia. Hey if it's on the internet, it has to be true, right? Well after doing this for a while now, I know that recruiters are more than just what Wiki says. I also sometimes get that negative vibe about what recruiters do and what attitudes there are with recruiters.

Used Car Salespeople?

The quote form the top of this blog is what recruiters run into every day (or some variation). I often get the feeling that recruiters have become some sort of used car salesperson. Someone that is slimy and untrustworthy. It happens in all areas and in all industries. From manufacturing, to high level sales executives, the misconceptions and beliefs are pretty common. "oh, recruiters are only interested in the money." "Recruiters are a waste of time" "They never get back to you" ...Etc. etc.

A lot of this negative insight on recruiters comes from the misunderstanding of a recruiter's role and why things don't work out sometimes.

So why work with them? Well working with a good recruiter can add a great deal of value when trying to find a new employment opportunity. To make this brief, I will bullet point many of the reasons why. Please feel free to comment on all of these and add your own too!

• Great recruiters will be able to find you the hidden opportunities that you are not going to see online and in traditional advertising.

• Great recruiters will be able to effectively market you to both existing clients, and new clients who may have a need for your skill.

• They most often work directly with the hiring managers and get your resume right in front of them instead of channeling through several people before getting to the hiring manager.

• They have in depth experience and knowledge of the local market and can give you great insight into pay ranges, employment needs, even tell you who and who not to work for. (trust me, I know plenty of facilities that I would NOT recommend people to work for.)

• During the whole search and placement process, recruiters should be able to give you sound advice on interview preparation, resume critiquing, and professional presentation of you and your resume. Heck, they may even walk you into the face to face interview with their clients!

• They have resources at hand to help you find all the other things you may be looking for when job searching like schooling info, apartment and housing information, cost of living information, and plenty of other resources to help you in your search.

There are pitfalls too of working with recruiters. These pitfalls can be both in and out of the recruiters control, which I will discuss more throughout this blog, but will site a few right now.

• Bad recruiters. Some recruiters are just not meant to recruit. They may have just started their career in recruiting and lack the experience it takes; or they may just not be good at it. This industry is fairly easy to get into and there are not many roadblocks that get in the way when starting up a recruitment firm.

• Some hospitals and healthcare systems just don't utilize recruitment firms. They see it as too much of a cost for them or they may have built up their own in house recruitment team that focuses mainly on recruitment. They may be bound by corporate red tape, or they may already have enough recruiters that they work with and don't need to hear from anyone else.

• Motivation of the recruiter. I'm not saying that recruiters are lazy here, what I am saying is that sometimes a recruiter may have a list of great radiology professionals, but you are not at the very top of their list. Although they are trying to find you a job, they have someone else that they are searching for that is a super star thoroughbred champion that every employer wants. So naturally, the recruiter is going to focus on placing this person first. This does happen a lot, and you should be aware of where you are on their list.

• The role of the recruiter may be a lot different than you think. When you think recruiter, or at least when I do, you think of a really energetic, almost geeky person that is making calls, networking with professionals, and scouring the earth for your next job. Well, unfortunately, some recruiters roles are just to find candidates for a particular job. Once they do, your resume is handed off to an "account representative" who submits your resume to the active client which the recruitment firm has an existing business relationship with. It's something that you might want to look out for, and I will discuss this more later because this is an important process to understand.

• They do not have the resources available to effectively search for new opportunities for you. Your recruiter may be really good, and can get the attention of hiring managers. But there are resources out there that may just be out of reach for some recruiters. These things can include; the cost involved to use resources; limits due to geographical areas; liability limits with certain types of recruitment; the size of the firm (or lack of size); etc.

Again, there are many more pros and cons of recruiters, which we will discuss throughout the course of this blog.

Recruiters are a great source for finding new employment. In the next "episode" of this blog, I will cover in more detail the recruiter and recruitment firms that they work for. We will start to really dive deep into the various roles of recruitment, the various types of recruitment firms, and identify the motivators that are involved in this profession. So please, stay tuned and be active in this discussion. I will respond to any questions or insights that you have throughout this blog. Hey, maybe we can even get into some heated discussion. Create some drama, so to speak. If you have any good horror stories, please feel free to share!

Matthew Lauderbaugh