HR Trends Impacting Healthcare Recruiting Specialists

January 19, 2017 – Changes in healthcare are continuing to happen at a quickening pace, seemingly the fastest in recent history. Where the incoming Trump administration takes it is anyone’s guess. But any changes coming to the sector, good or bad, will affect the workforce and impact many businesses, including search firms, that work in the healthcare space.

Three Key Trends

One recruiting boutique specialist that serves the healthcare and life sciences field, Phillips DiPisa, has seen several key trends that are changing the way they do business.

The first is the outsourcing of management roles, particularly if they are in specialized areas where they can look to vendors or other outsourcing companies who provide better understanding and management of the services. “These people and firms bring state of the art process experience and capital, especially in areas like food service and IT, that we cannot often provide,” said a vice president of HR from a five-hospital system in New England.

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The second is the desire to consider interim management at the director level, not something readily done often in the past, but something clients with a ‘try before you buy’ mentality seem increasingly eager to explore. “Not a lot of good search firms do director level searches in the right specialty areas for us and there seem to be more bumps in the road on getting that level of leader to relocate so we are doing more of this than ever before,” said another HR head from a five-hospital system in New England.

The third is the integration of talent assessment tools into recruiting processes and decision making. “We are consistently being asked to provide services and tools to clients for behavioral-based or psychological assessments which help them make better and more cost-effective decisions,” said a vice president of human resources for a for-profit, multi-hospital health system in Pennsylvania.

An Evolution

These key changes are an evolution of traditional executive recruiting services and are not something that every search firm offers as part of their normal service package, though more recruiters are clearly considering it.

“The questions we need to ask ourselves and our clients are these: Should we consider continued specializations (of our staff) to improve recruitment on hard-to-fill or challenging roles? Should we consider recruiting for more interim management positions at either the executive or director level to fill this need? Should we engage an external partner consistently to conduct behavioral or psychological assessments or should we get trained ourselves to better provide this service?” asked Michele Hoyt, vice president at Phillips, DiPisa.

“With these rapidly paced changes happening in healthcare, we need to determine in 2017 how we can better assist key clients with these needs. Otherwise, we stand the chance of being left behind,” she said.

Contributed by Dale M. Zupsansky, Managing Editor, Hunt Scanlon Media