Check out our own Sue Forster, on The IVY Podcast with host Jahn Karsybaev. Sue shares insight into how to find the perfect healthcare executive.

Practical Recommendations for Finding a Perfect Healthcare Executive with Sue Forster from The Healthcare Initiative

Sue rejoined The Healthcare Initiative in 2019 after leading the Executive Talent Acquisition Center of Excellence for a $4.8 billion health system (a CHI MBO) where she was responsible for executive talent acquisition for 17 hospitals, medical groups, health systems, and network affiliates. With over a decade of healthcare executive talent acquisition within a large system transforming the landscape of healthcare, she brings her leading-edge industry expertise and passion to deliver a proven process that can identify; attract; evaluate for skills, emotional intelligence, and cultural alignment; and land the top talent clients are seeking to engage to lead the tsunami of change health system leaders face today in the world of complex, matrixed environments to build alignment, standardization, eliminate silos, increase consumer/employee engagement, reduce costs, and provide new models of care.

Sue has impacted and helped advance the careers of over 1,500 director and c-suite healthcare executives across the healthcare continuum. In addition to healthcare, her business acumen includes over 30 years of experience in healthcare, high tech, consumer products, and financial services with small, medium, large and international organizations (as a consultant and direct leader).

@Ivypodcasts #ivypodcast #THIcareers #MRInetwork

Healthcare Industry Clients looking for leaders with organizational excellence?

Healthcare candidates searching for the right role to advance their career.

When is the Best Time to Hire?

One of the most common stressors for companies is knowing when to hire. Many build out hiring plans for the next year in late Q3 or Q4 while they’re deep in budgeting mode, and start hiring in Q1 when bonuses have been paid out vacation time has been used, and top talent is willing to make a move.

But attaching seasonality to the decision can be a major roadblock to finding the best talent for your team — especially if it means waiting until you desperately need to fill a position before starting the process.

Apply a Hum/Sing/Shout Approach
I’ve talked at length about how to implement a hum/sing/shout approach for your branding efforts — but the same framework works for hiring. Here’s how it works:

1. Hum: Keep the underlying rhythm of your employer branding at work at all times to ensure that your opportunities remain front of mind for top talent in your industry niche.
2. Sing: About 60-90 days out from when you actually need to have your new employee on board, get a little bit louder — not just about the open position, but about what it’s like to work for your company.
3. Shout: Within a 45-60 day window it’s time to shout about the position itself and the underlying opportunities associated with joining your company.

How to Build Your Hum
Most likely you already know how to focus your strategy to sing, or even shout, when a specific role is open and a hire needs to happen. But the best people — those you really want to attract to your company — are rarely seeking a new position actively, so no matter how loud you’re singing and shouting, they won’t hear you. Developing a strong hiring brand narrative in the public domain, with a heavy humming chorus, ensures that you’re always “on” from a talent attraction standpoint, and allows you to build recognition among top talent long before there’s a specific role in question.

People follow the brands that they feel they can connect with emotionally and learn from — and there’s a ton you can do in your “hum” phase to position yourself as a value-add in their feeds. For instance, professionals are always curious about topics and trends relevant to their industry or careers. By sharing meaningful insights, they’re likely to stumble upon you and begin following you for your analysis and perspective, without even thinking about a career transition. Then, as you continue sharing helpful and interesting information with them, their trust in your company grows long before you ever connect with them directly.

As you start to build your hum, focus on the four pillars of an effective corporate content strategy:

Market: Gretzky famously reminded us to “skate where the puck is going.” As people consider the next step in their careers, they want to ensure they’re placing their bets on a market that’s ripe with opportunity — where the trends are heading, not where they’ve already been. Talk about why your space will see success long into the future in order to build their confidence.

Product: Once you’ve established your market’s value, explain how your specific products or services align with that opportunity. The goal here is to highlight why your organization in particular is an exciting one to join.

Leadership: You are most influenced by the people you hang around with every day. Candidates know this and are becoming increasingly focused on opportunities where they know they’ll learn from a strong leadership team. Take the time to highlight the expertise at the helm of your brand so that they understand their development opportunities.

Mission: Your team doesn’t show up every day because of the product or service you provide, but rather because of the underlying problem they care about solving and the opportunities they’re excited to create. Communicate this North Star externally to illustrate to prospective candidates what could be motivating them every day.

By the time you move to the sing and shout portions of your strategy when you have a role to advertise, potential candidates are primed to pay attention. They already have a clear idea of who they can become when they work for your organization. And that’s what people really want: the chance to evolve and be part of something meaningful.

Take Timing Out of It
You should always be looking for talent, not just when you need it. Otherwise, you will only be getting the people who happen to be available during that very specific window — and they may not be the best people for your team.

Applying the hum/sing/shout approach gets you out of the seasonality trend that decades of hiring managers have established. Instead, you develop a bench strength mindset that encourages you to constantly be networking, connecting, and sharing the vision of your organization. By learning how to hum, you can add depth to your existing team and find the best people to grow your organization, regardless of when you hire them.

Healthcare Industry Clients looking for leaders with organizational excellence?

Healthcare candidates searching for the right role to advance their career.

There comes a time in almost everyone’s life when one decides to change positions. This could come out of necessity or pure dissatisfaction with one’s current role. Finding the right healthcare recruiter can be instrumental in helping you find a new opportunity.

Most people reach out to their network in healthcare for referrals and then call multiple recruiters hoping that something will fall into place. Sometimes you can get lucky and things work out. Most recruiters will ask you to send a resume and state that they will call you when something comes up. Or worse yet, they don’t call you back at all and you are left to wonder “Did my phone battery die? I still haven’t gotten a call back”. Neither situation is ideal.

Finding a healthcare recruiter should be a two-way street. Your goals should be to find a recruiter who wants to dig deeper into what you are looking for in your next move. Someone who will understand your motivation. Things like “I want my career growth”, “I got my Masters”, “I want to live in a new location”, “I want to be appreciated”, etc. All of this requires a little preparation on your part.

Second, make sure you think about your experience and that you can concisely discuss and explain your responsibilities and accomplishments.

Third, know what you want in your next position. Be able to discuss the types of positions and facilities you would like to target for possible new employment. In other words, help the recruiter understand the following:

1. Title and responsibilities
2. How you are qualified for a different or next-level position
3. What you feel you can bring to the position
4. How your current background has helped prepare you
5. What you would like a potential employer to know about you

By concentrating on the above points with a healthcare recruiter, you are helping them compose a compelling story which in turn will help them engage with a potential new system or facility on your behalf and so begins the journey towards a new position.

By taking some time to prepare, you will increase the likelihood of attracting the right recruiter. Most healthcare recruiters will engage immediately in a conversation if you present yourself in a way that demonstrates your knowledge in the industry and your ability to do well in front of a client. Which will make the journey worthwhile.

So, if you find yourself either wanting or needing a new position, stop for a second and do a little prep work. It will yield great results!

4 Ways to Update Your Hiring Strategy This Year

The new World of Work has compelled companies to take a fresh look at the way they do just about everything. And in the course of making necessary adjustments, they’ve come away with insights that will prevail well after the crisis has passed. From how they schedule meetings and manage teams to how they fill open positions and promote their culture, they are adjusting to the demands of the hybrid workforce.

“Remote working on a large scale and the evolving hybrid workplace are uncharted territory for most companies,” says Bert Miller, President and CEO of MRI. “But we are already seeing signs that business leaders are learning from the experience and pivoting in the direction of strategies that will successfully move them forward.”

Miller outlines four-way leaders can optimize their talent attraction and retention strategies for the new World of Work:

Clarify Job Descriptions
Job seekers are looking for security and safety, which often translates into work-from-home opportunities. “When you’re writing a job spec now,” says Miller, “the scope of telecommuting should be clearly outlined. Whether you’re looking for people to fill remote, hybrid, or in-office roles, be clear from the first touchpoint. Communicate expectations for the position and outline what you’re doing to keep your team safe and supported. You’ll build trust in the company and increase the likelihood that strong candidates follow through with the entire recruitment process.”

Update Priority Skill Sets
Recruiters and hiring managers are already closely monitoring the traits in employees that will determine long-term hybrid success — but those key traits are shifting as the World of Work moves increasingly online. “You need people who can communicate well and maintain a team approach even when they’re not able to be together in a communal setting,” explains Miller. Remote working requires discipline and a proactive, self-motivated approach — something all workers don’t necessarily possess. When reviewing candidate resumes, Miller suggests that it can be helpful to determine if candidates have worked remotely in the past, perhaps on interim assignments, and how successful they were in those situations.

Implement Digital Hiring Practices
As companies look to fill open positions, recruiters and hiring managers are turning to digital hiring tools to make the most effective decisions, including programs used to facilitate pre-hire assignments and virtual interviews. “Digital, remote-ready recruitment and candidate screening tools were in use before the pandemic, but now they can help you even more effectively seek out and engage talent,” says Miller. “Properly applied, they can also cut down on time-to-hire and encourage enduring employee satisfaction.” He points out that digital hiring and remote work eliminate geographic restrictions, giving companies access to a larger and more diverse talent pool than ever before.

Identify Reskilling Opportunities
The pandemic has accelerated the need for employees to undergo reskilling in order to meet the demands of our new World of Work. “It’s up to leaders to help their hybrid employees adopt the technologies they need to drive productivity by prioritizing their reskilling efforts,” says Miller. These may include company-wide training sessions on specific tools, individually selected courses, or one-on-one mentoring. There’s an added responsibility for managers to pay close attention to how their people are faring, including from a professional development standpoint, and to anticipate their needs before problems arise.

Flexibility and resilience are paramount in adapting to change. The companies that not only adapt to the new World of Work but also learn from it and improve upon their old ways of doing things are the ones that will survive, prosper, and grow.

Healthcare Industry Clients looking for leaders with organizational excellence?

Healthcare candidates searching for the right role to advance their career.