Trends Shaping the Future

Five major trends will affect the workforce in the future.
1.) Growing shortage of skilled workers
2.) Rise of the Millennials*
3.) Rise of the temp worker
4.) Evolving role of virtual employees
5.) Globalization of labor market

* Those born between 1980 & 2000.

Recruiting in Today’s Economic Climate

Finding management personnel today can be a very daunting task for a practice owner. A management search is a time consuming endeavor and one that often is better left to a recruiter as most of the best people are not currently seeking a new job so neither your print or internet ads will attract those candidates. You may receive a good response but I have found that they are generally not the right candidates. Recruiters can search for and find those people not currently seeking a new position – with the skill set and experience to become an integral part of your team.

Hiring the Best

Even with more people out of work the last couple of years, enticing skilled professionals with higher levels of experience and credentials is harder. Even after finding these elusive potential candidates, convincing them to make a move can be difficult. Your total package must be very enticing. How do you provide that type of a package? Let’s evaluate what you offer – Make three lists – 1) what you currently offer; 2) what the candidate is currently receiving; 3) what the top competitors offer. Which package is the best? Which one would win you over?
Let’s analyze your lists now. Where are your weak points? What are you offering that no one else is? Does your strong points out weigh your weak points? Talk with your owners and recruiting team to find out how you can strengthen your benefit package to attract the talent you need.
Try to add at least one benefit that your competitors don’t offer. Different employees want different benefits – can you offer extra vacation days, more CE, or a bonus program? According to all the polls about what employees want – hgiher salaries are not first on the list. Review those list and see what you can add.

Who Used Recruiters Last Year?

It is a proven fact that good employees have the greatest effect on your practice’s success. Poor hiring means practice owners end up absorbing extensive rehiring costs. A good recruiter can help the practice hire the right person and depending on services available, help with directing training and offer on-going support to help with transiation.

I would like to know how many practices used recruiters last year and to what effect as well as what positions they used the recruiter to fill.

I look forward to hearing back from you.

Happy New Year!

Benefits for Employees – Sweeten the Offer

Even in today’s market place, you need to have a good benefit plan in order to secure the top candidates. Just because there are more people in the candidate pool, doesn’t mean they are the right people. And, we are still competing for the top candidates. With candidates more nervous about selling a home and relocating, good benefits are as important as ever.

Top four? Medical plan; Paid time off, 401K, and of course, pet health care.

Remember, there are new rules for medical plan deduction, so talk to your CPA. Also, remember to review your pet health plan to be certain you are in compliance with tax regulations.

IPhone

I figured out how to blog from my iPhone! Maybe I can actually keep up with this now! Stay tuned.

Reference Checking

When I check references, I always go a step further. Not only do I talk to all the people on the candidate’s reference list, I also call every employer and talk to them about the candidate – even if they are NOT on the reference list. I want to verify employment as well as see what kind of reference they will give the candidate. It is surprising what information you can find out. I will not, however, call a current employer without the candidate’s permission. If they have not yet given notice you stand the risk of creating an issue where none existed prior.

How do you check references and verify employment? Do you prefer email, phone, texting or a combination of the three?

I look forward to your comments.

How Do You Measure Up?

What happens when you make an offer to your desired candidate? Is he excited and delighted with the salary and benefits offered?

Or are you hearing back from candidates with questions about negotiating the salary?

Even in today’s economy, candidates do not want to change jobs without an increase in pay and benefits. They still want to leverage their skills and experience into a better living for themselves.

How do you solve these conflicts? It really begins with doing your homework before setting salaries and determining benefits. This is an exercise that should be done at the beginning of every year, minimally, and the adjusted as necessary based on market information. Besides researching salary information based on industry standards, target benefits that match the employees you are recruiting and pick perks that will generate interest and excitement in your target market.

The first step would be to analyze your own company’s track record. Evaluate your best employees. If your team members are happy and your team has longevity at your practice, don’t mess with success. Offer new employees salaries and benefits comparable with what you are currently paying.

Make certain the jobs and candidates match closely though. Compare like candidates based on experience, skill set and education so that you are matching apples to apples.

If longevity is an issue at your practice, find out if salary is the issue. Mark Opperman, CVPM from VMC, Inc. in CO advocates exit interviews for all employees leaving your practice – even if they are terminated. If salary is the primary reason for leaving, go back to step one and re-evaluate your salary structure. Compared to the high cost of turnover (that will be the subject of another blog post, soon), increased salaries can be cost effective. You will have to evaluate salaries of current employees also. You do not want to affect morale when a long term valued employee discovers a new hire is earning the same as or higher than they are.

One of the best places to start is with industry associations – salary and benefit standards can be found from the Veterinary Hospital Manager Association and the American Animal Hospital Association. If you belong to a state or local management association you can do a formal or informal salary research project.

If you have a relationship with an industry recruiter, they can be a great source of salary and benefit standards.

A practice manager contacted me this morning and mentioned that she has an interview scheduled with one of our candidates soon. Her fear is that she won’t be able to match salary demands. Remember that salary is usually not the only thing a candidate will look at when considering a job offer. Don’t forget to discuss benefits, flexible schedule, paid time off, bonus programs and continuing education.  These additional benefits can help if you don’t have the budget for a higher salary. You will attract better candidates when you consider all of these options and have done your homework before you make an offer.

Let’s talk about how you structure your offers to potential employees that want higher salaries than you currently offer.

Rededication – again!

I am going to try to rededicate myself to writing in the blog at least once a week. Hopefully, if I am more active those of you out there recruiting will find time to start and continue a dialogue with me and others about recruiting.

All of us know that the success of recruiting depends on finding the right candidates and matching them to the right practice or job. The problem is that even today with the high numbers of unemployed – those candidates can still be hard to find.

It seems that qualified people are still difficult to find. There just doesn’t seem to be enough of them to go around. It is still not as easy as posting a job ad on-line or in various classified print media outlets – it still takes a dedicated effort to fill an open position.

You would think that this year it would be easy to find those qualified candidates, make an offer, and getting your new employee started. It simply isn’t the case. As a recruiter, you are competing with other practices as well as other recruiters. Recruiting firms seem to know the best methods and they are able to do the job all day long, where often practice managers, administrators and owners have a million other tasks calling for their attention.

Not only are you competing against recruiters, you are also competing against bigger hospitals that may be offering better benefits and salaries than you can budget for, especially today!

Want more to worry about? Even if you find the perfect person for your open position, other practices will continually try to hire away your stars!

So what is the good news about recruiting? I hope to be able to share ideas about how to locate and seduce and hire the best and brightest for your team. We hope to hear from you too about what your successful strategies are for long term success. Let’s discuss not only recruiting those high caliber candidates but then how do we keep them happy and motivated – even when others are trying to woo them.

Let’s talk . . .

Mailing Lists

Let’s talk about mailing lists . . . . who among you use them and what are your results.