By David Clark and Thomas Spindler, Vice Presidents, HealthSearch Partners
It’s a jungle out there when it comes to the human resources challenges healthcare organizations are facing these days. As reimbursement shrinks and the population ages and gets sicker, the skill set for healthcare leaders is rapidly evolving to focus on doing more with less while achieving improved outcomes and efficiencies.
The approach to recruiting top talent has expanded thanks to evolving technology. Yesterday’s want ads are today’s social posts.
Maybe you’re a CEO who needs to recruit a new C-suite executive. Or maybe you’re the chair of the board’s executive search committee. You may be tempted to jump on the social media job posting bandwagon and your HR staff may be recommending this tactic. But, before you go down this path, you should ask yourself some key questions:
1. Will posting the position on social media attract the “right” candidate to your organization?
Using a broad approach that reaches a vast audience to find a specific executive may not produce the results you want. While millions of job seekers use social media every week, this tactic may not be targeting the specific healthcare executive segment you want to reach. You know the skills and qualifications you want in a new C-suite member, so doesn’t a more focused, tailored approach to search make sense?
2. How crucial is this new executive to your success and that of your team and your organization?
If finding the executive that’s the right fit for your team, your culture, and your organization, is non-negotiable, then being deliberate and purposeful about the search means investing in more than a social post. To gain the greatest value for the time and money you will spend on the search, you need the expertise, experience, and insight of an objective outside resource.
3. What’s the bandwidth of your internal resources – human and financial – to handle the search?
While social media and other do-it-yourself approaches may be appealing, reviewing hundreds of applications, conducting preliminary screenings, scheduling interviews, selecting the finalists and hosting them for on-site interviews are time intensive and costly. Do you have the manpower and budget to pursue this approach?
4. Social media postings reach those who are currently looking. What about reaching those who aren’t?
Networking remains the number one way that candidates eventually connect with their next employer. This means a vast majority of executives may not be actively looking for a new position (regularly checking social media postings) but are open to hearing about new opportunities from someone in their network.
5. How can you leverage networking and peer-to-peer communication to supercharge the search for your new executive?
While posting a position on social media remains a popular way to begin searching for talent, many healthcare executives are finding other tools in their search toolbox to be of greater value. Engaging an executive search firm has emerged as a proven approach that meets all the demands a search may entail.
What Is Executive Search?
Executive search firms work with companies to help them identify and recruit primarily mid-level and executive talent for the C-suite. When an organization engages a search firm to help them find the “right” executive, the search firm brings its expertise, experience and specialized resources, including its extensive pool of potential candidates, to the table.
Which Executive Search Firm Should You Engage?
Executive search firms come in all shapes and sizes. Each offers its own take on what is a mostly standardized process. The search business is all about relationships and your relationship with the search firm will be critical to the success of the search and to your overall satisfaction with the search process, the search firm, and the final candidate.
Key Differentiators May Help You Decide
HealthSearch Partners is a great example of an executive search firm with a difference. Founded in 2017 by veterans of the healthcare executive search business, HealthSearch Partners is nationally recognized for our highly personalized, results driven approach. Our founders had their own successful search firms. Over the years they discovered how an engaged, collaborative, consultative approach could deliver exceptional results. Building on this insight, HealthSearch Partners was formed, combining the strengths of each firm to deliver a search experience unlike any clients and candidates had known before. We call it the HealthSearch Partners difference.
We are deliberate about the way we approach executive search and work with our clients. Our key differentiators paint the picture of our search process:
- We specialize in working with mission-driven organizations
- We provide highly personalized service. Clients work with senior consultants from start to finish – we don’t handoff the search to a junior staff member.
- We emphasize fit, making sure the candidate is right for the board, the organization, and the culture.
- Because we are not a monster-sized executive search firm, we can offer a broader pool of potential candidates. We don’t have a large percentage of candidates who are “off limits” because of work we’ve done or are doing with other clients.
- We believe diversity produces better results for the client organization and for the selected candidate.
