Season 1, Episode 4: Susan Burke – TA Team Development

Susan Burke discusses strategies for developing high-performing talent acquisition teams. She emphasizes leadership, collaboration, and continuous learning as pillars of team success.

Transcript

Angela Pointer 0:14

Welcone to the Hiring Scope podcast from the National Association for Healthcare Recruitment. Where we explore the latest trends, insights, and strategies in the ever changing world of healthcare hiring. I am your host and Angela Pointer and each episode we'll dive deep into the challenges and opportunities facing recruiters, hiring managers, and healthcare professionals alike. Whether you're looking to attract top talent, navigating industry changes, or building a strong workforce, you're in the right place. Today I am so excited to talk with Susan Burke, Vice President of Talent Acquisition at Peace Health So hi, Susan, welcome.

Susan Burke 0:42

Hello, Angela. Thank you.

Angela Pointer 0:43

All right. So to kick us off here, can you tell us a little bit about your current organization and your role?

Susan Burke 0:50

Sure, you bet. So I currently work for a large healthcare organization, well, maybe mid-skill healthcare organization named Peace Health that is based on the West Coast. We have about 16,000 caregivers that work for us across three states, and it's a full healthcare system. So nine hospitals plus all of our clinics and all of the supporting functions that help build a healthcare system.

Angela Pointer 1:10

Awesome. I'm just curious. I think I know the dance. So what are those three states?

Susan Burke 1:14

It's Oregon, Washington, and Alaska.

Angela Pointer 1:17

Awesome. Got it. Thank you so much. Also, and now we know a little bit about your organization and your role. I'm very curious to hear the Susan story, your journey. I know you've had quite a fascinating journey leading from agency recruiting to now leading a TA, leading TA in a major health system. Can you walk us through your path?

Susan Burke 1:37

So you're right. It's been quite the journey, 28 plus years and counting. And I often will tell people that if you get into recruiting, which most of us don't choose to, somehow we fall into recruiting and you love it, you stay in it for 28 plus years. And if you don't, then you pretty quickly find something else to do. So clearly I must love talent acquisition after all of these years. But you're right. I've worked in a lot of different spaces. So I did start my career on the agency side. I started actually working an agency focused on placing HR professionals and then shifted into telecommunications and then into financial software development professionals, you name it, with that particular agency. And I pretty quickly realized that while agency was interesting and a great way to get some good experience, I really wanted to work in-house and be an in-house recruitment. So I had an opportunity to go work for a startup software development company and I jumped at the chance. And so I had the opportunity to really work on software developers, which was um new and you know, cutting edge type stuff they were doing then. Since then, I worked in the companies in a wide variety of industries. So, you know, I mentioned financial services. I've also worked in electric utilities and green energy, and then now for the last 10 years or so in healthcare. Uh, as I mentioned, they do lead a pretty good sized team. Uh, this is my second uh full-time role in healthcare, uh, formerly with Providence, now of course with Peace Health. And uh, and I would tell you, I think the keys to the ability to grow into a vice president role like this, or to grow your career as a whole, depending on you know where you want to go, is to be really open to feedback. So especially feedback that maybe was surprising to me or maybe I didn't agree with, uh I really took the time to analyze that and decide if that's something that maybe I should take to heart and make some changes. And I was always willing to make those changes. Another thing I would say is just taking on work that I didn't always feel qualified to do. Sometimes my leaders would give me projects that I wasn't quite sure I could do, but they believed in me too, and I gave it my all, and I was always going to make sure that that was successful no matter what. And then lastly, which I know we're gonna talk about a lot today, is just really committing to lifelong learning, that there is always something to learn and there is always someone to learn from. So there are always people who have probably better answers to things than you might ever have.

Angela Pointer 3:45

You said a mouthful, those are some great there. Open to feedback, taking on work you're not necessarily don't feel that you're qualified for, and then being a lifelong learner. So um one thing is kind of off script, but made me think about something when you were talking about being open to feedback. So this, you know, thinking about maybe some things that you you've received um over the time. Is there anything that you have changed or made adjusted in your practice or as a leader as it relates to feedback that you've received?

Susan Burke 4:16

Yeah, I would say lots of things. Early on in my career, I think I was always really eager and I like to ask a lot of questions. And one of my leaders at one point told me that my questioning style seemed almost adversarial. Like I was asking questions in a way that maybe I didn't agree with whatever direction we were going. And that was really important for me to say, okay, I need to probably rethink that and maybe reframe how I do that. And that really has shaped a lot of how I ask those questions and how I gather uh information from people. Later on in my career, I've had leaders that have told me that I never met a priority that I didn't like, which was code for Susan, you have to learn to say no once in a while and you can't do it all, um, which I absolutely think is true about me. More recently, I've been told that I am fearless and that I'm always willing to take on uh whatever the new challenge might be, that I'm willing to try new things and then course correct as we go along. I take that as really positive, but then there are also times where I feel like, yeah, you need to take a step back and maybe do a little more discernment before jumping into something. So I would say I have had a lot of very candid feedback throughout the years and I've always really taken that to heart. And I'm sure there were things people would tell me too that I just didn't agree with. Um, you can tell I talk really fast. I have a very difficult time slowing myself down, I think probably about as fast as I talk, if not more. And I've always been tempted to tell people, well, they just need to listen faster, but that's not how it works. So I do try to temper that and tone it down a little bit, but that is one that I just really struggle with and don't quite know how to manage to change. So maybe it's a good thing. It shows I have passion, right?

Angela Pointer 5:49

Yes, absolutely. You definitely have passion. Thank you for being so to share that, which I also think is a good quality as well as your um coaching and helping people. So that's wonderful. So let's kind of take a deep dive because our topic today is talking about developing talent within TA. So we'll talk dive into a couple of um or a few different aspects of this. We'll start with kind of learning and upskilling. So, what are some of the most important learning programs or resources you've introduced to help your TA team grow?

Susan Burke 6:21

Yeah, that's a really great question. I would say, of course, the number one obviously is NAHCR. So, of course, having a healthcare-specific organization for recruitment has been an absolute asset for all of us. And so we do have pretty much anyone on our team who wants a membership in NAHCR has the ability to do that. We've also participated in our local chapter membership. We learn a lot from them. And then, of course, there are a lot of great things on the website. We often send folks to the national conferences. In fact, I myself get to attend this year. So we do the national conferences as well. And then if there are things that people want to specifically learn, so on my team, we are responsible for physician recruitment as well. And so uh there is an organization out there that is specifically geared towards physician and provider recruitment. So we go to their conferences, we network with other folks, we do national membership for them too. In fact, they also have a foundations class and physician recruitment. So for those out there that are thinking, oh, I might want to learn more, there is a really inexpensive course that's out there for terminology or understanding what's important in physician recruitment. Um, we also have some uh certified programs that we use through one of the national organizations. So we've done some certified recruiter, certified sourcer, certified onboarder. And now my team is actually going through their certified leader program as a leadership team as well. Um, we use their community function as well. So lots and lots of resources out there. I think one of the things and great things about healthcare is that we all want to share what we know because I think we all believe that if we can help one another, then all boats rise and we will all be able to be better off. And so there are a lot of those great resources that are out there that really focus on networking and sharing ideas. And then in our team, a couple of years ago, we started talking about 212 degrees. If you're not familiar with that concept, it is that at 212 degrees is when water boils. At 211, nothing happens. At 212, water boils. And then the water that is boiling creates steam. Steam powers the locomotive, and then of course, you can move things all over the country. And so the goal here is to talk about what one thing can you do differently? What one degree can you do today that makes the all the difference uh longer term? And then as part of that, we incorporated Steve Siebold's 177 Mental Toughness Secrets of the World Class. So that's a great book if you want to get your hands on it. I absolutely love that book because it really focuses on resilience. And we all know that being a recruiter requires resilience. So whether it is the requisition that has taken forever to fill, the candidate that you cannot find, all the work that you do takes resilience on a day-to-day basis. So I highly recommend that for people. And then one of the other really good keys for us is that we've been using internal resources to help us to build business acumen. So we have our monthly meetings, we've been inviting internal guest speakers to talk to us about how healthcare functions. So, especially the finances. A lot of people don't really understand how a healthcare system works, especially one that is not for profit like we are. How do you how do you build sustainability in a healthcare system like ours? Um, talking about our direction or connecting us back to our mission or understanding our benefits so you can better explain them to a candidate. All of those are things that we've been using internal resources to really help us with. And then lastly, I would just call out site visits. So our entire team works remote for the most part. And so we've encouraged them to go visit our hospitals, visit our clinics, you know, be in the office a couple of times a year to be together, do all of those things that really help you to build that business acumen around our own organization. And frankly, uh, as a recruiter, give you the opportunity to share your personal story. So when you say, come to work for Peace Health, this is what I think is so great. Here's my experience, you have that opportunity to build some of those experiences by doing those site visits. So all of those things I think are impactful, some probably more important than others to certain people. But we do try to take the approach that we have lots of different opportunities for them to learn and grow to be better recruiters and you know, better humans, I would say overall.

Angela Pointer 10:12

That's great. Susan, you are dropping some great nuggets here. I'm actually, for those of you that are listening, definitely be taking note. These are some great things as far as some resources and programs. And as much as I would love to, I have a follow-up, but I want to, we have some wonderful content that I want to be sure we get through. So I'm gonna hold and maybe Zittle Peace will come up in some other things. Now we'll talk a little bit about career pathing and internal mobility. I think that's something that's very important. I will just add that I have heard someone say this in the TA space, and since we're in healthcare, people, it has been said that talent acquisition is like the med surge of nursing, of HR. So it's like everybody's got to start off in med surge. That's what some people say about nursing. So sometimes the thought is, oh, you start out in HR in talent acquisition. That's why I think it's important to kind of talk about career path and internal mobility. So, how do you support career pathing within the TA function or even within HR for that matter? Um, are there clear growth tracks for recruiters at PFO?

Susan Burke 11:15

Yeah, that's a really good question. And and you know, I mentioned earlier that I think sometimes recruiting is the career that you choose, but you're right, sometimes it's not. And sometimes you do grow into other areas of HR, you have aspirations in other areas of HR. Then our own talent acquisition team, last year we did a thorough analysis of the different levels that we had at that point and really thinking about competencies and expectations for each role. So, how do you differentiate, for example, a more junior recruiter from a more senior? Do they have different work? Do they have uh different accountabilities? Do we have different expectations of them? And as it turns out, the answer to that was yes. So we now have a full career ladder here at Peace Health. So you can grow from a coordinator position into a specialist level role. That's kind of our more entry-level. Um, you could move into a recruiter position from there. You could get into talent pool development, which is basically our sourcing and workforce development group. You could move into our contingent staffing team. You could get uh better at marketing and do some of the marketing strategy type work. You could move into physician and clinician recruitment or executive recruitment, or if you want to become a TA leader and eventually move into my job. So we really created that career path to allow us to be able to say to our team, you don't have to leave TA at Peace Health to be able to grow. And of course, there's more to it than that. You know, you involve people in projects and programs and give them all sorts of opportunities to be able to develop their skills. All of that is really important too. So then, as I mentioned, we did a thorough analysis of our competencies and expectations for each role. And what that does is allow us to then say to someone, hey, I know that you're in a specialist role and you think you're ready for a recruiter job. We're not so sure. Here's why. Here are the things that you can work on, and here's how we're going to work on those things together. So it gives us that competency development opportunity for those folks. And then we took it one step further. And based on our competencies and expectations, we took a look at all of our client assignments and all of our requisition loads and made some determinations about how many specialist level positions we felt we needed and how many recruiter level positions. And we reorganized the team. And at that point, as it turned out, it gave us the opportunity to promote some of our specialists into recruiter roles at that point. So at this point, we know that now we have the right mix of team members to support the work right now, and then we have to continue that analysis. So we all know markets change, uh, work changes, workloads change, client assignments change. So it's kind of a constant process for us to be able to evaluate that. But it does give us both the ability to have that career ladder and then also to really help our team members grow within that career ladder.

Angela Pointer 13:46

Wonderful. That's good to see that there's growth and there's a clear path there. You mentioned something about feedback earlier. So that kind of ties right into this next step. Talking about performance and feedback. So, how do you balance performance metrics with developmental feedback? What does healthy feedback culture look like in your team?

Susan Burke 14:08

Yeah, those are all great questions too. I mean, numbers are important. What you measure, you can change. And at the same time, numbers don't always tell you the full story. So it is a balance between some of those numbers and metrics, you know, thinking about time to fill. Right now, we're really focused on reducing the number of candidates that are stuck in the process more than 21 days as an example. So we have things we really focus in on as a team. Last year, we also implemented voice of the customer surveys. So we are surveying hiring managers, hired candidates, and non-hired candidates. For the hiring managers and hired candidates, those can be filtered down by recruiter. So it now gives them some really specific feedback on how they're doing in the eyes of our candidates and our hiring managers. Again, it's one piece of the process. So this is meant to be a tool in the toolbox. It's not punitive. It's an opportunity to just gather some additional insightful information that helps us learn and grow. It also sometimes helps validate how the recruiters are feeling, like, hey, I think I'm doing really well. Oh, yeah, your clients say that too. Or hey, I think I'm doing really well. The client feedback doesn't quite say that. How can we help you with that? So it gives us one more data point for us. And of course, you know, we're we're managing all of our regular metrics as well. But our goal here is to allow for a culture that allows for constant learning. So when mistakes are made, because they happen, let's be real, we're not perfect, no one is. You incorrectly calculate an offer, you give somebody some inaccurate information. We really work to figure out what happened, how did that happen, learn from those mistakes, and then help people to not feel like they're being embarrassed or they're being punished, but instead to really encourage sharing amongst the team and that high degree of trust and vulnerability. Frankly, that's the only way you can really learn and grow. And I'll be honest, sometimes there are things in my career that were probably mistakes, but I grew the most from those mistakes. So really encouraging that learning mentality and that ability for us to be able to receive that feedback and uh and do so in a way that is very respectful and allows you to really grow and learn in this organization.

Angela Pointer 16:07

That's great. That's very powerful on feedback. Are there any non-traditional ways that you've helped the team to grow beyond training and performance reviews?

Susan Burke 16:18

Yeah, I think this is a challenging one for me. The biggest challenge that we have right now when working in a remote environment is most of us who grew in recruiting before that grew by overhearing conversations in the cubicle next to us or the desk next to us. And so I overheard early in my career, one of the recruiters I worked with was amazing at telling someone they didn't give the get the job and giving some actual feedback as to why they didn't get the job. And I often heard them push back on her and no, that's not true, or no, that's inaccurate, or you should reconsider me. And the very next day, call her back and say, I'm so grateful for you sharing that feedback with me because I didn't know and now I know I can show up differently in an interview. So I really learned just by overhearing those conversations. We don't have that ability in a very remote environment right now. So what we've been working to do is to try to knowledge share in team meetings, to have, you know, some of our team members we know are doing things really well, share some of those, giving opportunities for people to listen in on other people's phone interviews. We've got open chats amongst our team members to encourage them to ask questions or share tidbits or say, hey, I've never seen this before. What would you do with this? And then as a part of that, relationship building is also critical. So we bring the team together at least once a year in person to see each other kind of face to face. My rule of thumb is I only bring them in person if we actually have a reason to. Relationship building is one of those, but usually we have something we're working on that is better done in person. And then because relationship building is so critical, a lot of our teams do kind of some small team events during that. So they've gone out in smaller groups doing things like escape rooms or bowling or even axe throwing. However, you got to get that out. So, really, that relationship building has been important in helping them grow too, because it helps them to be more comfortable when asking those questions or reaching out to a colleague to say, I don't know what to do in this situation. What would you do? So it really has been about trying to help find ways that if you can't learn by overhearing something, are there other ways to learn from your colleagues?

Angela Pointer 18:14

And you're right, this is a whole different world now, even though there are some organizations that are coming back in office a little bit more, but for the most part, we're the remote world is where we are at this point. So that's really good. This kind of brings us to kind of culture and engagement. And you talked on that a little bit. How do you keep the team motivated and connected to the mission, especially in this high volume, high pressure period, everything with what have you done for me lately? So yeah, talk about how do you keep the team motivated and connected to vision.

Susan Burke 18:46

I mentioned when you asked me about feedback earlier, that I am one of those people who is not fearful to just try something new. And I've told my team the positive thing about that is sometimes we do something because I've heard it sounds really cool. Let's go try this, and it works really well. And sometimes it doesn't. So the example I gave you earlier of the 212 degrees and some of that, yeah, that was great, but we didn't really stick to it as much to say, well, what is that 1% thing we're going to do? And then I read a book called The Four Disciplines of Execution around setting a team wildly important goal, which the key to that is as a leader, I cannot set that goal for them. That has to come from the team. And then each person has only one wildly important goal that supports whatever that broader team goal is. At that point, we weren't really doing voice of the customer surveys. And so we came up with an idea around improving communication between all the HR teams, which funny enough became the HR wildly important goal. And so we were like, well, that's cool, but it didn't really motivate us as much. And then more recently, because we now have voice of the customer surveys, we uh decided we wanted to increase our hiring manager scores by 5% from the first survey, and we did. So that's become more of the mantra is can we get around something that has a metric to it? But more recently, we had an all-team meeting and we decided to have some fun with it. So we had a gaming theme around leveling up. So we told the team, we know you're doing great work. We also know we have some opportunities to be even better. So it's all about always leveling up, always getting better. What I didn't realize was how strongly felt that level up message was going to be. And some of this is right place, right time because of where the team is together. But now I hear it in almost every meeting. Well, we were working on this because we're working to level up. Well, we leveled up here. I mean, I hear this all the time. So it's become kind of this team mantra that we are amazing as we are and we can continue to get better every single day. So I think that's super exciting to see how well that took off. We also have elite recruiter awards we've been recognized for. So we're always encouraging them for that. And then I think just the really big thing for us is that culture of gratitude and recognition that we are constantly sending thank you notes. We're always thinking about how they're recognized for all the great work they do every day. I think a lot of times in recruiting, we feel like we only get negative feedback. And so then it's kind of the well, no news is good news. No, that's not true. The news needs to be positive. So we're always celebrating that. And we do celebrate National Healthcare Recruitment Recognition Day in June every year. We make a big deal about it for our team, but it really is about those daily gratitudes and making sure they realize how much we appreciate them.

Angela Pointer 21:17

Yeah, that's amazing. I'm glad you mentioned that because particularly with National Healthcare Recruitment Recognition Day, I'm always big on that as well because we should definitely celebrate. Uh, we have one more question. So this is now futuristically thinking. What emerging skills do you think TA professionals will need in the next three to five years? So this there's okay, crystal ball here. Um, how are you preparing your team for that future? What we think that future is going to be.

Susan Burke 21:46

Yeah, that's a really great question. And I think it's hard to narrow it down to probably just one thing. I think from my perspective, it's really about the consulting skills. So you hear all the time people talking about the use of AI and gee, how can I reduce my phone interviews by just Using AI for that. We've gone more to kind of that personal touch, but in order to really think about how you as a talent acquisition professional add value, it's about the consulting skills. It's about thinking about how things you notice in the market might impact your employer, how things you notice in the market might impact you. One of the things we're really thinking about right now is how do we find creative ways to address our workforce needs? So we all know we work in healthcare. National talent shortages are the daily headline. That's what you hear all the time. So, how do we find ways to either reduce those shortages or utilize talent in different ways? And so we're having conversations with our leadership about not only how do we use our full-time caregivers, maybe in a different way, how do we meet the workforce where they are, how do we then maybe supplement with on-demand clinical workers who don't currently work for us? How do we get into our international hiring market for nurses and maybe others? Where do we use contingent workers when it makes sense? What is that as a part of our strategy? Which we're looking at our workforce, partnering with local programs to increase their cohort sizes, all of those are things that we're really thinking about because we're thinking about total workforce solutions. And I think no matter what role you're in today, if you are an entry-level recruiter and you're recruiting for environmental services, you've got to be thinking about how's the market impacting this? What's my employer value proposition? What can I say to the hiring leader that will help them to hire the next person that I think is fabulous? So I think all of those things, thinking about your consulting skills, how to think more strategically, all of those things are pretty critical as we move forward. For me, I would say, you know, networking with your healthcare colleagues, learning from others in HR, all of those are things that will help you to expand your consulting skills. And as I mentioned earlier, business acumen all day long, because then when your leader says something, you go, Oh, aha, I know about that. I've heard about this in the market, and I can contribute some value here. Have you thought about X, Y, and Z ideas? So those are kind of what's on my mind right now is just really the consulting skills, and that's how we add value. And frankly, we keep our roles. There you go.

Angela Pointer 23:57

That's good. And I would totally agree with you on consulting skills because definitely moving away from just transactional filler, you know, here's a red filler, and we're beyond it. We're not just order takers. I say this all the time. We're not just order takers and rent fillers. But yeah, you're absolutely right with consulting and those consulting skills. That was key. That was awesome. This was wonderful, Susan. I've enjoyed talking with you. We could probably talk on and on. And hands down, that wraps up this episode of the Hiring Scope Podcast from the National Association for Healthcare Recruitment. Thank you for joining me, Angela Pointer, as we tackle the evolving landscape of healthcare hiring. If you enjoyed today's conversation, don't forget to subscribe, leave a review, and share it with your network. Or check us out at NAHCR.com for more content. Until next time, keep pushing the boundaries of what's possible in healthcare recruitment.