Come for an Interview Visit and Miss Everything worth Seeing

Want a sure fire way to assure your hospital will take 4-6 months to fill your most important physician openings, close less than 50% of visiting candidates, waste half of your onsite visits, miss out on the better candidates, and have a poor retention rate? Keep ignoring the Internet in your recruiting, and wait for the onsite interview visit when you give (unprepared) candidate prospects your primary recruiting pitch, where they will merely drive past the important things at your hospital and in your service area – essentially missing almost everything, including your unique story.

The onsite visit separates spouses. Due to time, money, and logistical limitations, the candidate will interview with a handful of their principal peers, and possibly no staff members. The spouse tours the real estate market and the community. Still today, real estate agents are principal “salesmen” for the area – they speak in “cliché bombs” (“Our community is a great place to raise a family,” etc. etc.) which sound the same as the other communities and don’t serve to distinguish you from the 7-8 other places jobseeker prospects are considering. Generally, there is merely a “drive by” schools, downtown, and businesses and stores and event centers, with no time to go into them to talk to residents or community leaders, to learn “the real story” from local residents and what makes your unique thumbprint. They never step foot in a local museum or speak to a true historian of the area. There is almost never a serious discussion with the director of the economic board for the county. There is almost no contact with anyone in the community except an old board member – at best there is a “dinner” with pleasantries exchanged but no “real talk” among people going through the motions. The onsite visit does not include extended family members, children, parents and colleagues – all people who influence the decision but they remain “blind” to the employer and the area.

The onsite interview visit can also be problematic – bad weather, key people can miss appointments, and there can be mixed messages delivered by those people whom the prospect meets.

• For physician jobseekers considering million dollar careers who will drive multi millions to their hospitals and other physicians, and nurse candidates for that matter, they really don’t visit the hospital entirely on an interview visit – there is often no time to take a thorough tour of the hospital campus to see the ancillary facilities and programs that contribute to the hospital’s current and long-term focus. And they simply do not have time to learn the story of the service area they are considering – they fail to learn the area’s history and don’t get a good view of its future. On the site visit, they miss almost everything and will forget 50% of what they experienced in 2 days.

And with all these logistical issues and costs and onsite visits which really don’t work, less than 5% of jobseekers who are exposed to your job postings will actually make this costly, wasteful trip. What about the other 95%? Also, how many candidates are you missing?

If you were a jobseeker, how would you feel about a 2 day interview in the pouring rain, where you don’t see the entire hospital, two of the four principals you where scheduled to meet were 30 minutes late for one hour interviews, you meet few employees, meet no future neighbors, learn nothing of the town's history or economy in order to understand where it is heading, and you were given the primary sales pitch on the community by a realtor?

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If you truly want to recruit the best professionals and maximize your time and budget you must master the Internet because that’s where your targets have moved.

• In an environment where there is no professional selling, time limits, and costs which promote shortcuts, where candidates are looking at multiple options and they are given an expensive superficial site visit and largely left up to their own resources to “sell themselves,” it’s no wonder the results of recruiting seem arbitrary.

Online Job Tour has evolved into a compelling tool that is better and more comprehensive than the real onsite visit in multiple beneficial and important ways. It is mistake-free, it is on 24/7, it offsets the limitations of recruiters with no professional sales experience, negates any lack of Internet acumen, maximizes the employer’s interest in maximizing the sale, all the jobseeker’s family and friends can experience it, and perhaps best of all, it saves time for everyone, leading to faster decisions. Jobseekers become truly interested, “pre-sold” candidates who come to Interview with complete knowledge and comfort on the trip, when they leave they refer to Online Job Tour many times, and this leads to the position getting filled faster.

Our clients are experiencing 75-80% closing records among visiting candidates who are pre-qualified using their Online Job Tour. While we have been test marketing for 4 years, retention among our clients who have placed candidates following our protocol and use of Online Job Tour is double the traditional community hospitals.

• The key to these phenomenal differences is in fully educating and pre-qualifying jobseekers before any substantive time is spent dealing with them – this cannot be effectively done without Online Job Tour.

Take time to review our website to learn more and read our client testimonials.

To contact me directly, email me at carlbrickman@yahoo.com. I am also on Facebook. Learn more about my work at http://www.onlinejobtour.com/

Shazam and Apple’s iPhone: Your smart phone – probably the iPhone, will soon talk to you – it will likely converse with you - in 5 years or less.

While just 11-13% of cell phone users have a Smart (Internet capable) phone, this micro technical device will change the world like broadband access did. I’m not kidding. 3G networks of smart phones – soon to be 4G, offer close-to-broadband access to the Internet. In the future, our computers will be mobile and we will carry them with us like our wallets – and the smart phone is a window to that life. Remember when cameras were still film and cell phones (in the US) didn’t have a camera? That was just 10 years ago…. While service providers T-Mobile, Sprint, Verizon (Blackberry) and others offer smart phones, and the Blackberry smart phones actually out sold it by a nose in 2008, the iPhone transcends them all. Most of my friends who own a Blackberry tell me it’s because it’s paid for by their companies.

If you are a medical recruiter (my area of knowledge) or a recruiter of higher end professional jobseekers, I promise you that a much larger percentage of your target market of new graduates, advanced practitioners, and physicians have a smart phone.

• My studies now show that top-shelf jobseekers today prefer that you text them through your recruiting protocol.

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The iphone is not just a smart phone but an iconic tool that you will agree is the most unbelievable communication and Internet tool you have ever used when (this is my blog, so I am insisting) you get one – in many ways it is already better than your desk or laptop.

It’s about the iphone’s applications – or “Apps”: Applications are “tools” and games you can download – some for free and others for a cost, into the hard drive of the iphone. The App market and makers of Apps, are exploding. From applications such as AAA, which allow you to, at the touch of a button see where all the AAA discounts for your membership are in your vicinity (in concert with your location as the iphone has a GPS system), to Airfare – a free App that checks every single airfare and provides the lowest prices – from the regional carriers to the majors for your date and destination. Bible verses, games of all sorts, such as a “Labyrinth,” which actually moves a ball/marble through a maze as you balance the phone and negotiate a maze. The endless application list is actually in a library on the iphone itself, which is continually updated – all you do is hit an icon and it reveals an “App store.”

I watch (commercial-free) podcasts of TV shows, and I have last year’s National Championship College Football game loaded on my iphone – when I’m feeling blue I can watch Tebow and the Gators (I paid for this podcast). I have an extensive library of music, and if I had more time, I could download feature films – and sync everything with my computer – which doesn’t have to be a Mac.

How awesome is an iphone? Take this example:
I was listing to the radio in my car with my fiancé and a really good song came on the radio which has a very catchy beat to it – I thought it would be one I might like to buy (on my iphone, of course, which is also an ipod, btw). My fiancé, who also owns an iphone, opened an App called Shazam, and pressed a button on the iphone screen – the App first literally listed to the song, and within a minute, identified it, and then the App offered that I could watch the video for the song (for free) or it could be purchased for 99 cents. Remarkable. Thalia learned of the App when she was at City Walk in Orlando and one of her friends used the app by opening it while a song was being played on the PA system.

Within 5 years, you will be driving down the street and your smart phone will beep because you have it on “Real Estate” mode – likely an App, because you are shopping for a house and one that meets multiple parameters and your price range is in the area. When a camera you are looking at drops below a price range, an App will alert you and show you which stores in the area offer it, or when an online store does - you may want to scratch this example because your smart phone will likely have a camera as good as any soon. For Job Searching, this will also happen - and we released a prototype called Online Job Tour Micro in the fall of 2006 in anticipation of this.

Your smart phone – probably the iPhone, will soon talk to you – it will likely converse with you. All this will happen in 5 years or less.

Sure, the persnickety among us have complaints about the iphone –

• There is only a proprietary video player which allows for viewing of only UTUBE videos.
• There is no cut & paste application (yet)
• The keyboard is clumsy and it takes me 2X as long to send texts.

I'm excited to learn of the new iphones, which are now up to 32G vs. my now obsolete 8G iphone - and whether these shortcomings have been addressed.

For hard-core texters who use their smart phones to text as email replacements or for email, you can see why Blackberry still competes with the iphone in unit sales – but all the genius and imagination is in the iphone. Take longer to text or make your texts short. But Blackberry’s are not the future.

Get an iphone. It will change your life for the better. It will promote dreaming. It will inspire you. And don’t forget, soon it will be talking to you.

To contact me directly, email me at carlbrickman@yahoo.com. I am also on Facebook. Learn more about my work at www.onlinejobtour.com

Inconvenient Candidate Interview Trips – their (hidden) costs, and the most important cost factor in recruiting: Pre-qualifying your prospects

Inconvenient Candidate Interview Trips – their (hidden) costs, and the most important cost factor in recruiting: Pre-qualifying your prospects.

• If an employer is considering our product, Online Job Tour, for their recruiting, perhaps a great way to appreciate it is to take a trip on an airplane. ‘Been on one lately?

Gone forever are the days of airplane travel being glamorous – today’s planes like (full) buses, and the “ordeal” of checking bags after packing, making arrangements for one’s home, the uncomfortable flights, etc., make the entire experience of interviewing for a career inconvenient at best. If your job targets/candidates are physicians – young or old, then I assure you they look at entire travel and interview trip as a “necessary evil” of looking for a job. But this entry is not about the psychology or the angst candidates feel during multiple interviews and site visits to prospective employees – but the practical/logistical problems employers face, and the immense costs regarding the interview trips themselves.

The cost of the onsite interview for one candidate is pretty easy to calculate – the price of airfare (for the candidate and spouse), car rental, the nice (it better be a nice one) hotel, and the meals. What are not easy to calculate are the seemingly endless hours to prepare for them, the people involved at the employer who must be pulled from their jobs (so they cannot produce) or something else they would prefer to be doing (few people like to sell or recruit – and few physicians involved in the recruiting process of physician candidate don’t love it, and certainly aren’t making any money don’t it either).

• There as many as 10 employees or physicians in hospital physician recruiting who are pulled away from productivity during every single candidate interview visit – plus more community people/board members, etc.

So it can be rather crushing when an interview visit is cancelled, bad weather ruins the site visit, or worse, upon stepping off the plane the candidate looks around and decides before their first meeting they aren’t interested – this happens a lot more than you think (I used to be a recruiter and 2 of 5 physician candidates – that’s 40%, told me that within the first few hours of their trip they made a decision about a second visit).

And from my unscientific survey of 10-12 CEOs, they believe that from the moment a physician learns about a career opening and the time they make a “decision of authentic serious interest in the position” takes 3-5 months (and often multiple trips) – it’s a grueling process.

Two studies by major organizations who know a lot about the subject, claim hospitals lose $100,000 for every month a position is unfilled.

• This is certain in physician recruiting – there is a ton of waste. That means there is a ton of lost money.

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I just returned from a production trip to a new client in South Carolina and had my typical great but bruising time – I run ragged during these trips trying to get as much footage as I can, and there are so many pick ups and new things I find and want to feature after already overstuffing my itinerary.

By far, the worst part of the trip, as always, was the flight and the accommodations/hotels – and this is typical of the potential logistical problems that exist during traditional interview visits (which Online Job Tour is designed to emulate and in many ways be better than).

My flight last Tuesday was on Delta from Tampa through Atlanta with a connection to Florence, SC. (Mistake #1, says my mom, a corporate travel agent, was not booking a non-stop flight, but then I would have to go to Charlotte and have a much longer drive to the client - logistics).

Due to bad weather throughout the Southeast, and because every flight on the eastern seaboard seems to go through it, Atlanta’s control tower decided to delay my flight – which was at the gate (with me on the plane already), for 1 hour.

After the captain broke the news, I was on the smart phone to Delta re-booking on another flight out of Tampa to Atlanta – which I was able to get, but I would miss my connector and need to get a later flight to Florence. After booking the flight and getting off the plane (my luggage would stay on and actually make my connection), I was rescheduling every meeting I had that day but my last one, which I was eventually late to. The entire day was basically shot – because of thunderstorms – impossible to plan for.

Now – imagine I was a candidate for an important career position at your business – from a CRNA to a Cardiothoracic surgeon – less being purchased a first class ticket (sorry CRNAs, only docs for that perk), if the interview was going to be that day, overnight, and then the next day, virtually half of the interview itinerary was ruined – all the planning by the recruiter, all the folks – physicians and others, who planned to meet the candidate – the time missed and wasted for the initial interview visit – pretty much a goner. Because of thunderstorms.

Stress. People scrambling to try to make the best of the interview, or worse, canceling it to start over – all while the unfilled job remains unfilled.

• How much money do thunderstorms actually cost employers for their recruiting?

Fortunately for me, I was able to reshuffle my first day pretty easy and there wasn’t any damage done, as I would be at my client for an entire week.

To keep this blog entry short, let me just say that if the rain would have continued, imagine driving through a community and merely peering out windows – driving past stores, businesses, schools, and missing the people and their stories.

• And rain simply delays everything. Aren’t people always coming into meetings from out of a rainstorm and saying, “Sorry I’m late.”?

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Here’s my conclusion based on 9 years of recruiting medical professionals and then dealing with my clients and prospects with my company:

Pre-qualifying the physician is the single biggest factor in the economy of recruiting. “Closing” is important to get deals done, but let me say this – if you close an unqualified professional on a good deal and financial package alone, they ain’t stayin’. If that new employee and their family aren’t fully knowledgeable on the employer and the service area, then “retention” becomes an issue – and that’s another subject altogether that haunts many hospitals and employers in other industries who relocate employees to them.

Online Job Tour works because before the candidate even decides to pursue the job, they get a comprehensive “visit experience” which promotes among many benefits a better education and knowledge of the employer and life in its area – candidates come “pre-sold” to interviews instead of nervous, anxious and unprepared – to say nothing of the competitive benefits as jobseekers such as doctors generally consider 6-10 options.

• Online Job Tour, while providing a better visit experience from the comfort of a computer screen viewed in the candidate’s home or office, requires no flight or interview visit, and no thunderstorms.

Imagine candidates arriving excited to meet you having already “met” you. Imagine when they arrive and the weather is awful and they exclaim, “No problem – we already visited your area using your Online Job Tour – and the weather was great online!” Better yet, imagine candidates offering to accept your open jobs without a site visit – our clients are experiencing that, which is both a symbol of our culture change as well as the effectiveness of our product.

Based on the empirical numbers – Online Job Tour can wipe away the 40% of candidates who otherwise arrive and become uninterested within a couple hours. It has already proven to shorten the time window to fill positions from 3-5 months to 2-3 months. Online Job Tour eliminates the problems (and costs) of thunderstorms.

Or after calculating the hard dollar costs of your interview expenses and recruiting and figuring all the folks involved and what they could have otherwise been doing, if these additional lost dollars don’t convince you Online Job Tour is a no-brainer investment, what may convince you simply getting on an airplane.

To contact me directly, email me at carlbrickman@yahoo.com. I am also on Facebook. Learn more about my work at http://www.onlinejobtour.com/