Insight Into How Your Competitors Handle Physician Screening and Site Visits

Every organization has a unique in which they recruit and retain Physician talent. This is why gaining insight into other organizations' recruitment processes can be most beneficial. Survey results from the In-House Physician Recruitment Processes Report‌ by The Association of Staff Physician Recruiters*, helps provide insight into what some of the country's healthcare recruiters are up to.

Work Focus

Not surprisingly, most recruiters are spending the majority of their time focused on Physician and not Advanced Practitioner recruitment. Due to Physician shortages, many recruiters are busy screening and filling Physician vacancies for their organizations.

Screening

When screening these candidates, many organizations have a designated team that meets with potential Physician hires. Most organizations reported that their Recruiters and Physician Leaders were most likely to be directly involved with screening Physician candidates. The criteria used to screen these potential hires were heavily weighted towards Board Certification eligibility, history of job stability, time gaps in work history and CV issues i.e. spelling or formatting*. Once candidates pass the initial screening, those who advanced to phone screening were most commonly rejected based on poor answers to red flag questions, license sanctions, and inadequate communication or social skills*.

When it comes to interviewing techniques, Behavioral-Based interviewing is most popular. This technique requires that a candidate answer a series of questions based on prior experiences handling similar issues at their workplace.

Site Visits

When a Physician candidate comes for an on-site visit, the majority meet with either a physician from the practice, recruiter, or Physician Department head. These visits flesh out details related to the organization and job, while often leaving a tour of the community to a third party.

The majority of organizations included a community tour as part of a candidate's first site visit experience. These tours are often coordinated through a local realtor that meets with the candidate providing them with information regarding area schools, housing and entertainment offerings.

Once a candidate has been selected, most offers of employment are extended within a week of the final interview. These offers are commonly presented to the candidate in the form of a written contract, but verbal offers or letters of intent are also favored by some organizations. After an offer has been extended, close to half of the organizations then run a complete background check, thereby concluding the screening process.