Resolve to be a Pawn Star – Employer Recruiters can begin to build a hugely successful recruiting protocol by studying the shrewd negotiating skills of these owners of a highly successful Las Vegas pawn shop. I want you to quickly get past the fact that this is a pawn shop, but an extremely successful BUSINESS. And there is a very simple reason for it that experienced salespeople and sales trainers (and great recruiters) quickly recognize – the principals at the pawn shop not only win virtually every negotiation with customers who bring in their goods, but they also almost never lose. How would you like to have a simple process that cuts to the quick virtually every time with jobseeker prospects, that drastically improves your results – from closing percentage, getting the appropriate terms your employer is pressing for with the newly hired employee, and improve your retention numbers while getting a sincere “win-win” where both you and the new employee are totally satisfied? I’m going to recommend that you, in a general sense, model your recruiting approach around how these pawn shop owners negotiate so focus on how they do it.
The Advantages of the Pawn Stars: Experience: The first thing to recognize is the pawn shop owners have an incredible advantage – they negotiate dozens of deals every day vs. the person off the street who has perhaps never tried to pawn or sell anything they have owned before – this is no different than the advantage an employer-recruiter has over prospective candidates from physicians to specialty nurses. Exclusivity: The next factor is the pawn shop owners have money – in other words, they have what these people want for the goods they are pawning. Sure, we don’t know the motivations of the people – for instance, they may be desperate for cash or just curious to see what the item they have may be worth. Knowledge and Expertise: These pawn shop owners must be masters of the goods and products over which they are negotiating – because they must turn around and sell anything they buy at what they want to be a considerable profit. Much of the things people bring in, from jewelry to guns, they already know what their store’s selling price is going to be based on market conditions. The more unusual the product the better – the pawn guys will simply leverage an expert to come into the store for them in front of the customer and provide an assessment of the value of the product. The experts seem to have good Even with a starting price from which to negotiate, the pawn shop owner has the process to win the deal while promoting a deal that will either satisfy the customer or there will be no deal. This is similar to recruiting, is it not? A jobseeker will come in with an expected salary and compensation range while to employer recruiter needs to promote a win-win that first benefits the employer, or be smart enough to drop pursuit of a jobseeker with unrealistic expectations or who isn’t sincerely interested. Emotion: People buy on emotion. All good salesmen and recruiters know this. An emotional attachment to a product or a job can be used against the customer or jobseeker, respectively, just as the emotional attachment to a product by a Pawn Star or to any particular candidate by an employer, can cut into the bottom line of the businesses. To keep this blog entry more brief and focus on my orientation of developing a “process,” let’s agree for this post that because the Pawn Star and the employer-recruiter have always done this, they should have a clear advantage on this subject and have an awareness (gut . The Negotiating process: What all great sales professionals have in common, as do great recruiters, is they have a “sales process” or “presentation” which is refined and improved as they gain experience into which they incorporate their experience and exclusivity, which can turn style and recite in their sleep. While this is a multi-step thing to evaluate, you’ll be amazed how simple it is and how the pawn store owners operate so smoothly that what comes off as a normal conversation is a big victory almost every time for them, and equally importantly, the customer leaves the negotiation satisfied – a “win-win;” this is what employer-recruiters also hope to achieve, and it’s clear that an established, expert process gets to the bottom line expeditiously – which is also important as unfilled jobs cost money. The Two Negotiations – as I review these negotiations with you keep in mind that the customer is totally oblivious to almost all these factors and their brain isn’t wired to pay attention and understand they are involved in an almost totally orchestrated sales process that is a great disadvantage to them. But also understand the end result is either going to be a perceived “win-win” – the customer is not going to accept an offer they don’t want, or they will part company for the best. A) Without a third-party expert providing a price from which to start:
Pawn Star: “I’ll give you $200 for it.” (This is the lowest the Pawn Star thinks the customer may accept and he also already knows he will only pay $275 at the most, and he thinks he can resell the item for $600) Pawn Star: Long power pause…head shake no (that’s called a “take away”). Brow wiped. Stare at the merchandise. Look at the customer (all choreographed acts). Head shake again. “$275 is the best I can do.” (This is exactly what the Pawn Star hoped would be the number with anything below being “extra gravy” to his bottom line, but is also the firm amount he has concluded will be a fit number where it would be worth it to take the time to turn around and display the merchandise for sale) Special Note: The Pawn Star will never speak again after making the offer. It’s a selling tenant that “the one who speaks after the offer loses.” · Let’s say the customer does not accept this number, keeping in mind that the customer himself offered $300 – which is $25 less:
Customer: “I just can’t do it.” Usually this would not be the response because many customers who get this far do not have an absolute firm price or a need to have one. Pawn Star: “Well, if you want to spend the money to open your own pawn shop, advertise, pay the light bill, insurance for the business, and deal with all the hassles, maybe you can sell it for $275. I’m sorry, I can’t do better than that.” (This is called a “rebuttal” and the Pawn Star follows that with the close again at $275. · Let’s say the customer tries again to jiggle the price:
Customer: “Are you sure you can’t do any better?” Pawn Star: (Firmly now) “$275 is the best I can do. (This is an absolute statement made to promote the close. We really don’t know if the store owner will go higher but that’s not the point. This is the art of negotiating.) I want you to come away satisfied and come back again to me in the future. That’s the best I can do.” (Another rebuttal promoting good feelings and prospective future business, which has no value to this deal, which the Pawn Star knows, but his intention is to get leverage, and then back to his close) Customer: “Ok, I can do $275.” · It is important to also understand that the Pawn Star was operating with a large profit margin on the negotiation, so he had flexibility to make adjustments based on the variety of factors – from the customer’s knowledge of the product to any insistence on a specific price. Also remember that even if the customer turns down the final offer, if there is truly a remaining profit to be had, the Pawn Star has that 40 feet from “No” until the from door to change that “final offer.”
B) With a third-party expert’s retain price estimate:
Expert: “Considering other products like this that are in the market, the demand for it, and it’s condition, I would say the retail prince of this widget is $1,200.” Now, regardless of what price is offered, including the Pawn Star’s experience to quickly be able to discern how easily he may be able to re-sell it and previous demand for a product like this, if any – which are obvious considerations he quickly needs to incorporate, there is going to be a percentage the Pawn Star always works from for this negotiation. Let’s say it’s 40%. That would be the best he would go – that’s $480. But the Pawn Star is not going to throw the number out there because the customer may be willing to settle for less. So here’s the question:
Review: Promising that I would keep your resolution easy to follow throughout the year, these are the basic tenants I want you to come away with:
Watch the show – it’s actually the same song and dance, over and over, with the pawn store racking in money with satisfied customers leaving. The biggest thing you can learn from this is the efficiency and discipline Pawn Stars have.
· They have a specific routine. They make customers feel like it is a natural and normal process when the entire thing is choreographed without the customer knowing it. Your dealings and onsite interview visits should feel this way to your jobseeker prospects.
· Pawn Stars run the process and the negotiation; in fact, they already know the outcome of the deal – which will be terms THEY can accept, or no deal. The customer (or in our case, the jobseeker) never runs anything but are steered to choices they think they have or directions they feel they are choosing. A big criticism of employer recruiters is they allow the candidates to run things. When you start to see this happening, it’s almost a certainty that you will lose the deal or be forced into poor terms for the long run.
· Exclusivity and Firm Offers: Desperation also kills. You’ll never see emotion or desperation shown by a Pawn Star. For the employer recruiter to remember they have the desired job and stand firm in their dealings may be the most important factors – which garner first the respect from the candidate, but also a basis for credibility and real negotiating.
In the end, it is far better to know your best offer and be willing to walk away from the deal.
So for the rest of 2011, if your New Year’s Resolution isn’t doing anything for you, follow these basics and you will begin to craft an improved recruiting platform.
Remember, “Be a Pawn Star!”
The show Pawn Stars is on The History Channel and you can learn more about it and when it airs on the website http://www.history.com/shows/pawn-stars
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Wednesday, February 2, 2011
New Year's Resolution Fizzling Already? Resolve to be a Pawn Star
Sunday, December 26, 2010
Is Facebook® is Worth Pursuing for Employers’ Recruiting Efforts?
As an advocate for employers and with the orientation toward empowering their recruiting efforts, which includes maximizing the Internet, growing their skills, and limiting their requirement to outsource, a number of hospital clients have asked me over the years if they should use Facebook in their attempt to “improve recruiting.” After delving into this issue and spending a great deal of time on the social networking site in 2010, I have concluded the answer to be no - at least not for now.
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Currently, given the reasons why people access hospital web content, the far better strategy for hospitals is to improve upon their own websites (which prospective employees are certainly going to access), and focus more on better ways to reach and compete for jobseekers online while enhancing their own selling skills and recruiting and protocols.
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Given my decade-long relationships with hospital recruiting, marketing and HR personnel, those hospitals with a Facebook page likely did so due to their initial perception of it being “free.” Now they have learned it is really not free but requires someone’s time to administer it which pulls them away from other tasks they are paid to do. Hospital fan pages have few followers, their employees are reluctant to post anything on them and at the end of the day it’s a hospital – the vast majority of people visit websites of hospitals either to a) seek out specific services for themselves or family members, or b) to find a job.
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There may be some merit for Marketing purposes: From a “branding” perspective, that is, hospitals in competitive markets who are trying to compete for business, perhaps there is some merit to having a Facebook page – but that is not my niche and I am not sure what statistics are out there that may or may not show demonstrable results from having one.
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Facebook hasn’t changed much – its origins and orientation don’t “fit:” Ultimately we have to remember what Facebook was designed for and that its layout and design haven’t really changed much – it’s still a social networking site that “connects” people and offers them alternate ways to communicate and meet others (although the company’s policies promote networking only among people whom one personally already knows).
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That Facebook has hundreds of millions of users has promoted a “boom” of attempts to profit from using it. One’s ability to “generate” thousands of “friends” gives account holders a free “bulletin board” or platform from which to market a product or service, or themselves – there seems to be an ever-growing number of “life coaches” and online degrees.
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Again, although it is not my specialty, it appears that a more simple “sale” of a product, like the introduction of a new shoe by NIKE, or a new record by a recording artist – I even learned that one can buy an airline ticket on DELTA’s fan page, has merit. But for a complicated, multi-faceted career position which for jobseekers have many issues and needs, such a linear approach would not address the many outstanding questions of those engaged in a career search – especially one that requires a physician relocation of an individual (and their family, if they have one).
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Ultimately a hospital Facebook page is a site which is awkward and at best and used by hospitals to post their events (which seems redundant if they do it on their websites’ “community calendars”). Stand-alone or regional hospitals are more likely than corporations to have Facebook pages because large companies which usually have a top-down management of their affiliates requires a financial justification to assign someone to do it or pull someone from a traditional job responsibility.
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· Our work generally deals with higher end jobseekers such as physicians, who are the “revenue drivers” to hospitals; I find it hard to imagine that busy medical practitioners would use Facebook this way but go directly to specific employers with whom they are familiar are interested and access their websites directly.
· For organizations who are actually building their business around Facebook – there may be more merit in using Facebook to “recruit” and post open jobs, but even here, it seems that the company should forward them to proprietary web content that is specific to their needs.
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Internet Searches on this Subject show Employers Use Facebook to Screen jobseekers: Like doing a “social background check,” emerging on the Internet are articles which suggest or state how employers view individuals’ Facebook pages as a form of “screening” them – which I find fascinating for many reasons, but again it is not my immediate niche.
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Recruiting Services and Recruiters are on Facebook: After a decade of seeing how the recruiting industry has stayed ahead of their hospital clients by better understanding SEO strategies as well as sales and marketing to harvest candidates, the same entities are using Facebook, at least for now, to bullhorn their openings to others, no different than an “email blast.” Facebook seems like a place for them to attempt to attract the general jobseeker on Facebook and ultimately channel them to their own websites in order to “process” them – a good example of this is Career Builder www.facebook.com/CBforEmployers#!/CBforEmployers?v=wall Ultimately, it’s free advertising and a “portal” to where Career Builder wants jobseekers to go: to their website a la “bait and switch.” Given how people “network” their ways into career positions and opportunities, I can see how recruiting companies may benefit; but again, I think Facebook is a “square peg” for hospitals given the many other ways they can improve their recruiting.
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Visit www.onlinejobtour.com to learn more about me and our work.
Sunday, October 31, 2010
Raising Dreams and Lives...Together: 4/4: Teamwork
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My Four Part Series for Employer Medical Recruiters, The Final Part Four – It all comes together with Teamwork
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Employer medical recruiters and their efforts directly impact the lives of their patients and communities. It’s an incredible responsibility. Because of this, it there is a solemn and moral responsibility to be dedicated to continual improvement and professional growth. By raising the dreams of people to obtain their ideal career choice in the medical profession with your employer, your goal is also to raise the standard of care – and the lives of your patients. This series is focused on the four core components necessary for employer medical recruiters to excel and be great.
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In Part I, I made it clear that claiming “I love my employer” and your community, and showing up for work every day, and eventually filling your open jobs, is not enough! Because your work impacts lives, you owe your employer and its patients the focus on recruiting the best practitioners and not merely filling a job opening – and growing and improving in this dynamic market where there is intense competition is required, or else you are “behind” before you know it.
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Part II: This was acknowledgement that growing your marketing and selling skills and committing to being a real “sales professional” is necessary.
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In Part III I hammered you with exactly what you need to do in order to be your very best:
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You are committed to understand and then identify your “target market,” and then craft your “sales presentation.” As a sales pro you understand you are competing – you present yourself and your employer in a manner that positions you to both sell as well as outsell your competition – you are not recruiting in a vacuum. You are committed to being an expert on issues candidates need to know to promote your expertise so you are perceived as a bona fide advocate by candidates as opposed to merely an interview scheduler – a secretary can do that. You understand the importance of choreographing candidate visits (in a general sense; naturally, candidates will have different or specific needs). You need to develop a Q/A protocol that is incorporated into your position to monitor your success. All great sales pros have a sales tool – you have committed to not settling for anything but the best tool (Naturally, I recommend Online Job Tour® as the optimal approach to harnessing the Internet to achieve success).
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Before we get to Part Four – a note on acquiring/harvesting candidates. I mentioned in Part III that although this is for another blog entry, I am not a believer in the reliance on third party recruiters as the source of candidates. Employers need to understand that all jobseekers now use the Internet and there are ways to brand your employer as well as communicate with local and regional education institutions in order to obtain proprietary candidates (which are far better in most cases than those presented by contingency-based recruiters). The art of recruiting has been lost in the haste of trying to fill jobs and it can and should be focused on again – Promo Web Innovations has many solutions for our clients and is available to offer ideas to you. Nonetheless, I discuss the development of relationships with third party recruiters below.
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Now to Part Four – It all comes together with Teamwork
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Even Michael Jordan needed good teammates and everyone working together in order to win championships. Legendary basketball coach John Wooden, who won an unprecedented 10 national championships at UCLA, needed great players – and it took both years before they reached the pinnacle.
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• This is when I need to stop and remind you that greatness and the “ultimate success” will not happen overnight. Success is also elusive – your market and prospects change. But what you must have is the right motivation and mindset, developed skills, as well as tools and teamwork with others, in order to be a champion employer recruiter. At some point when you become expert, much of your work can either be put on “automatic pilot” or trained upon others.
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With our focus on your becoming a great employer recruiter, similarly, you must a good support system min the form of a staff and outside assistance – the formation of your “team,” if the budget is there, is integral to your success.
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If you are a sole recruiter (and on your own) for your employer:
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Sole employer recruiters need leverage because you are going to be so busy dealing with the logistics of communicating with candidates and your organization’s superiors. Here you need a great sales tool to “do your selling for you” and also save time if the selling tool educates, answers questions, and positions your employer to maximize your marketability and competitiveness – you have to anticipate the obvious questions and needs of your candidates and their families regarding your employer and service area.
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Again, I strongly encourage you consider our patented Online Job Tour – which is a web based system in the form of a recruitment website that does all this automatically, and our test market proves its ability to educate and compel prospective candidates while saving time and effort for both sides while helping our clients compete. Our staff is an excellent source to assist you with technical answers to your challenges up until you design proformas/offers/negotiations with physician and high end practitioners, which will likely be coordinated with your senior administrators (job offers to department directors, mid level and staff positions are often packaged by HR Directors at an employer of your size). The point here is, if your responsibility is from the point of advertising the opening through introducing a legitimate and authentically interested candidate to your employer’s key hiring personnel, then Online Job Tour can be the anchor around which your dealings with jobseekers can be coordinated along with a solidly developed recruitment protocol – which we can also assist you in crafting. For you there would be nothing better than a recruitment process that runs on optimal efficiency that you can “turnstile” easily and effectively.
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It is likely that as a sole employer recruiter you have sources from which you obtain candidates (if you are a smaller operation, then most are primary care practitioners). Due to your limited time, I appreciate your initial impulse may be to immediately turn to outside recruiting sources, but I encourage you to consider developing relationships with residency program directors in your region as well as medical academic programs, and key in on major job fair events – the former prefer to deal with you – an employer, vs. recruiters, and job fair events are great opportunities to develop and leverage relationships, talk to prospects, and get referrals. Saving the $15,000 to $30,000 “recruiter fee” would be welcomed by your employer when filling that key opening. Employers often forget to incentivize their own employees to draft prospective candidates for their open positions.
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If your employer allows for the creation/development of a recruitment team:
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Bring together different talents: Here you are a larger organization with a larger budget that includes staff, so there is the initial challenge for you to have clear responsibilities identified for your team members to promote efficiency while you can leverage what are hopefully different skills among them. For example, you may have a professional designated to deal with outside recruiting sources to help source prospective candidates as well as be responsible for your employer’s branding and proprietary recruiting efforts. You may have someone to assist you in coordinating all interview visits – a laborious task that in volume is expensive but also can be designed shrewdly to get discounts from hoteliers and other local organizations/vendors/even restaurants. Another may be a person at your employer who will work with candidates at the stage they are ready to construct offers/financial packages/incentives/benefits.
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The Selling Tools: Nonetheless, your conundrum is that jobseekers will find your job openings online – their first impression and introduction to you. And with how our culture is online and has a preference to shop there – especially the newer, younger medical jobseekers, I again recommend Online Job Tour to be your anchor tool as your first communication and continual reference point with candidates.
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• Our 2009 Survey showed our clients fill their jobs 19% faster, reduce their need for site visits by 33%, and they also reduce their use of expensive third party recruiters by 1 in 7. Among other benefits, Online Job Tour attracts the better candidates/professionals and has even served to put our hospital clients in a better negotiating position because the candidates are truly motivated and want the job vs. the employer being desperate to land them and feel the need to offer higher bonuses and guarantees.
• As an FYI, there are now studies out there which point specifically to the revenue generated by physicians and specific specialties to hospitals – your ability to fill an open physician job one month sooner can mean as much as $100,000 to your employer. So filling a key job faster with a better employee or physician can have a huge impact on your employer’s bottom line.
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Try to Curb Recruiters and their fees: And if you have a larger volume of recruiting than a 150 bed hospital or less, there should be a meaningful effort to curb third party recruiter fees, which can easily exceed $200,000 annually at your employer. I suggest learning about SEO strategies regarding marketing your openings – be on search results for Google, Yahoo and Bing for key words and phrases your target market will use when looking for jobs – Promo Web innovations has developed successful working prototypes for our clients that we can share with you. Candidates especially from contingency-based recruiters have been shopped to many places and their origins can be dubious. They are also coached in favor of the recruiter making that placement with you or anyone.
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Use the Internet Proactively: With your budget you have a great opportunity to market your employer online. There are many services out there, such as Constant Contact, which can continue dialogues with many different professionals, jobseekers – even those you do not land but may have a chance for in the future, and representatives of services. While most hospitals have a marketing department, it is usually focused on marketing the services of the hospital and there are few professional “closers” or sales pros there. Consider engaging a local PR firm to at minimum glean ideas from them as to how you can use the Internet and any other tools to grow your presence and marketability.
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Consider making vendors like recruiters feel like they are a part of your team: Because it is likely you will need to utilize vendors such as third party recruiters to source candidates, I advocate choosing professionals who demonstrate experience and an expertise that extends beyond sourcing – let’s face it, candidates pretty much come through the internet and so merely providing resumes is not an indicator of anything more than that. A vendor with prior professional selling experience who understands the art of closing a deal, and even a professional who brings skills to the table that include help with putting together offer packages can help to grow your own skills. While you generally should keep your vendors on somewhat of a need to know basis, if you have a good relationship with them and make them feel a part of your team (in a general sense), you will likely get better attention from them as well as more attention to the details of the candidates they provide.
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Your team should be a well-oiled machine where its members understand their roles, so that you can turnstile the process (at least to a reasonable degree) so that every new job opening is not “reinventing the wheel.” Those outside your inner circle (recruiters, PR groups, industry contacts, local professionals who may assist you during interviews, etc.) should be made to feel important and special to you. I am a big believer in customizing interview visits down to routes you drive them around town and people you “coincidentally” run into when out and about.
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A note about Facebook and Social Networking: Hospitals creating a Facebook page has become trendy and I am not totally convinced that the time put into it, and paying an employee to oversee a FB page, does much for recruiting. Branding itself in its service area – if there is competition, may help its business a little bit. Would employees feel obligated to post remarks on it? Probably not. What about potential problems, such as former patients posting nasty or unflattering remarks and the need to erase them, or the conundrum of leaving the posts? These things have not been though about enough; I think the fact that FB is “free” and is a social phenomenon has created this “phase.”
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• The difference with Online Job Tour, among many, with FB is that our clients have 100% control over its content and making changes to it – it cannot be compromised by outside parties.
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A note about “Retention:” I have seen some terrible figures regarding some hospital corporations and their retention numbers with physicians – some with a 50% retention rate after 36 months. With a great deal of experience and feeling as though I understand the entire recruitment spectrum and the many issues for both sides, I am convinced that the reason for poor retention among relocating medical professionals is primarily due to the hospitals focus on closing the deal and focusing on its terms and not as much focus on educating and selling their service areas and the lifestyle that relocating employees can expect – only after they relocate to the professionals learn about the communities they moved to.
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The issue is about these new employees and physicians not being fully committed to the deal – they don’t establish meaningful relationships right away and there is no connection – especially with the spouse.
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If you think about it, the hardest physicians to recruit away are those who are invested in their service areas – who have relationships, partnerships and businesses there. Our Online Job Tour has shown an incredible “transformative impact” on the recruiting process where candidates interviewing for the first time arrive with confidence and excitement vs. anxiety and unprepared – because Online Job Tour is designed to be more comprehensive than the real interview trip, which has time and money limitations, and separates spouses, among a host of other potential problems. With ultimate goal of making an ideal professional and lifestyle fit, our clients are building upon the familiarization promoted with Online Job Tour to immediately establish relationships with those community leaders featured in their Online Job Tours, as a way to start the process of getting the physicians and practitioners committed to a long term career and life with them – please contact us for more information on the work we are doing here.
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A note about Selflessness: Being a great team member or team leader means you also have a willingness to help others, cheer others on, and revel in and applaud their success. Because your job ultimately impacts lives of your patients and their families, it is important to respect all others, including your vendors, by following the “Golden Rule.” Only bad things can result when you mistreat people. I am also a believer in karma. Treat others with sincere kindness and appreciation. If you’re really good and committed, people will know and respect that you are in charge and you are important.
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Your Final Foundation Commitment:
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It’s been a long series, and I apologize for this last one being a little late – the summer and fall have been busy for me. But I am at the end of this important road with you. You are now a better recruiter for your organization.
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Your Final Commitment:.
“I understand that my work and the work of the people I include in my efforts affect lives. I will commit to seeking excellence, experience and talent to not only contribute, but make me better, when constructing a team and vendors for my purpose of being my best. I will treat others with the respect they deserve and they way I would want to be treated, in order to promote an excellent environment to exchange ideas and information, as well as to get these many influences favoring me – after all, I am in a competitive business. My commitment to being great includes how I treat and involve others in my process and thanking them when I achieve success.”
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Thank you for taking this workshop/series with me and you have my sincere best wishes as you move forward with raising lives and dreams of others. Please let me know how you are doing my contacting me through our company’s website at www.onlinejobtour.com
Saturday, July 24, 2010
My Four Part Series for Employer Medical Recruiters, Part III
My Four Part Series for Employer Medical Recruiters, “I understand that my work directly impacts the lives of people. I commit to take a silent moment of reflection on this fact before I begin work every day. I acknowledge that I am passionate about my career position and this will be my guiding motivator to continually improve – acceptance of the status quo is never acceptable because it is never an excuse for our patients and their families.” . . · You now know the difference between marketing and selling. · You now understand the competitive component – that you must not only sell candidates, but OUTSELL your competitors. · You understand that being efficient carves out tremendous waste, and actually improves your results. Your sincere commitment to be a “pro” will lead to making Foundation commitment #2: .
“I will be a real pro and have a proactive impact on my results. I am competing for candidates vs. other employers. I commit to crafting marketing ideas and a selling protocol that separate my opportunities from others while maximizing time and quality. My process will build my relationship with prospects in ‘steps’ and lead to a conclusion that is best for both sides.” . · There are the same considerations regarding your service area. How do your schools rate in your region? Are you a student of your economy and can you speak intelligently of employers, their plans, as well as government-sponsored growth initiatives? Identify pluses, like having a regional airport, country clubs, and a recreational lake – not all towns your size have these. Have you travelled to the communities of your competitors to evaluate them? · Remember that you have already made career “foundation commitments” now, and you are not a “community welcomer” who can only place a smile on your face, set up interview visits, and speak in clichés (you aren’t a waiter!), but you are committed to being a pro and a real sales professional – this is now the requirement of your position – people’s lives depend on YOU! · Preparing a “report” on your hospital and service area, and “tending to it,” are requisite to your success – because whatever tools or sales presentation you create, it will have to be one that constantly changes in order to be accurate and to keep you in command of the facts. · Eventually you will develop a list of survey questions which you will incorporate into your protocol as a Q/A piece that help you hone your presentation and skills. · Eventually you must craft a list of local professionals and people of influence to incorporate into your presentation, particularly for onsite visits with candidates and their families. Choreographing meetings and prepping these folks from all walks of life in your service area (business owners, teachers, economic development principals) to meet candidates, and practicing with them to “present” a thorough and compelling “sales presentation” while your competitors merely place physicians with a realtor who really has little command of the facts bona fide physician candidates need to know, and try to let the realtor do all the selling. . · Developing a repeatable onsite candidate visit “protocol” that you can generally repeat is essential because it allows for you to judge yourself and measure your success. A repeatable presentation that includes all of the information that jobseekers need allows you to relax and focus on relationship building rather than the “Chinese Fire Drill” of “what comes next,” and allows for improvisation with them and their families – this is advanced level sales where you are creating connections that will help separate you from competition. · Special Note: As a former tech sales professional, sales manager, and sales consultant, as well as 8 years as Founder and President of Online Job Tour®, our team is “the pioneer” regarding reaching online jobseekers and crafting an approach to maximize recruiting medical professionals. I am available to speak to groups and recruiting organizations, as well as consulting with employers to help them craft an ideal recruiting environment. Please contact me through our website at www.onlinejobtour.com . · Today the Internet is no longer something we passively read, like the newspaper on a computer screen. Instead, we now interact with it. But hospitals did not really harness the power of high speed Internet to maximize their recruiting efforts (Our company’s invention fills this void, below). . · Referenced immediately above, many local and regional healthcare recruiting directors are older and look at the Internet as a forum to observe and not participate in; in other words, they look AT the Internet like they read a newspaper. That’s not what the Internet is anymore; instead it is a place where users “interact with web content.” · This leads to their policy development and recruiting that doesn’t really “use” the Internet but merely “advertises on it,” like newspaper classifieds. · The result is the overwhelming majority of hospitals wait until candidates are onsite – after the expense has been committed for the trip, all the time is committed by many people, and regretfully, possible better matches have already been turned down, to begin their selling effort. . · Special Note: Would you like to learn more about Online Job Tour®, see some samples, and get an overview of its benefits? Please visit www.onlinejobtour.com and then give our staff a call if you still have questions. . · The employer can do a great deal more possible BEFORE any visits are planned – these trips take a lot of manpower to put together and at a great expense. And Online Job Tour can be used with ALL prospects to give everyone a very comprehensive virtual visit vs. the very few the hospital can afford to host. · Online Job Tour solves the critical sales conundrum where prospects can’t make a decision simply because they don’t have enough information; in fact, classic sales studies show that “lack of information” is a larger reason consumers don’t buy products. . Carl Brickman |
Sunday, June 13, 2010
My Four Part Series for Employer Medical Recruiters, Part II: On being a “Pro” and incorporating marketing and selling skills
. Employer medical recruiters and their efforts directly impact the lives of their patients and communities. It’s an incredible responsibility. Because of this, it there is a solemn and moral responsibility to be dedicated to continual improvement and professional growth. This four part series is focused on the four core components required for employer medical recruiters to fulfill this responsibility and excel. . In Part I, I pulled no punches regarding “commitment” to one’s position as an employer recruiter in healthcare. You get no credit for claiming to “love” your community and going to church with, and knowing people in your service area, showing up for work every day, and eventually filling open jobs. I have met hundreds of employer recruiters – all who claim these “feel good” abstract descriptions of their positions, almost as a defense for mediocre results – none of these pay any bills. More important, none are an excuse to provide a grief stricken family member of a patient just lost due to a mistake made by a practitioner. I love my spouse and my Lord – the bank to whom I owe my mortgage doesn’t give a hoot. . Here is the only characteristic I care about and on it I can take a new recruiter of any talent level and make them “elite” with their results in short order: you need to acknowledge and embrace that your work directly impacts lives because if you hold this in your heart, then it will drive you to continually push yourself by growing your knowledge and skills – necessities in this dynamic market where there is intense competition. You are never good enough, and you must improve. Welcome to “tough love” recruiting excellence. You must have this “solemn commitment [Foundation Commitment #1].” . · What is a “Pro?:” A professional employer medical recruiter is a highly motivated professional with sales and marketing skills, who uses competitive, advanced tools, and understands the entire spectrum of the recruiting process, and brings value to his position with improved outcomes. · My father, a former corporate executive, used to say a refrain many times through my upbringing which I never forgot: “There is a big difference between someone with ten years of experience and another with one year of experience for ten years in a row.” The message here is 75% of the employer medical recruiters I have met learned how to do their job in a mediocre fashion with no prior sales experience and little or no professional training – then learned their “job” and have done it for 5 and even 10 years the same way. The result is mediocrity. This happens when you have recruiters without the solid foundation commitment and with no professional sales experience or training. · It’s difficult to get any recruiter in this position to admit they need any improvement – they are caustically defensive when new ideas or tools are suggested to them. Imagine this person and that mentality recruiting YOUR physician or pediatrician for your children. . · I was once in a meeting with a hospital senior executive team and one of them said “I don’t like to sell, and physicians looking to work at our hospital, if they ask me for information I will give them what I can, but they are responsible for choosing where they want to practice. After they choose us, then my job is to work with them to make the transition.” . · The #1 mistake I see almost all hospitals make is they forget they are competing – (this is due to the fact that those dictating the policy of recruitment generally have no professional sales experience) that is, they not only have to attract and then sell jobseekers, but they must “out market” and “out sell” many other employers vying for the same professional. You must evaluate how jobs are advertised and how you are selling and closing candidates. In a competitive arena where everyone seems to be doing it the same way, your lack of originality in your tools and efforts to distinguish yourself from competitors is a sure way to have mediocre results and hire the mediocre candidates. (The “dead giveaway” that I am dealing with an untrained recruiter is when, for example, a community hospital recruiters or their CEOs break into the “Our community is great for raising a family,” and “we are close to big city amenities but away from their overcrowding,” “we have great schools,” and more nonsense. While these may be true statements, every community hospital says this, so it’s a waste of time and doesn’t help the jobseeker, who heard the same mantras from 6 other employers.
· The belief that you cannot, or you choose not to have a proactive orientation towards your job and its results, violates Foundation Commitment #1 and sets your hospital on the road to mediocrity. . · There are many approaches you can take to advertise your jobs online, during job fairs, in mailers, print advertising, in person, on the phone, or in branding efforts at your hospital in your service area, region, or even nationally. Find out what your competitors are doing. Then do it differently and with a focus on getting attention and getting the first opportunity to present your jobs vs. them. Remember there are not just a limited number of practitioners, but of them, you want to land the top 15% of them. . Carl Brickman |
