Season Finale: Recruitment Process Building & Improvement

Patrick Kelly closes out Season 1 with a deep dive into building and refining recruitment processes. He’ll also introduce the new co-host for Season 2 and preview what’s ahead.

Transcript

Angela Pointer 0:00

Welcome 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'm your host, 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, navigate industry changes, or build a stronger workforce, you're in the right place. Today I'm excited to talk with Patrick Kelly, Director of Talent Acquisition, Onboarding, and Credentialing. That's a very long title, at Healing Partners on the topic of recruitment process building and improvement. Welcome, Patrick.

Patrick Kelly 0:43

Thank you for having me. I'm excited to be here and explain my long title to you.

Angela Pointer 0:47

Thank you. So before we dive in, of course, I know you, but tell our listeners who are who is Patrick Kelly? Tell us about your current role and organization.

Patrick Kelly 0:57

So uh currently I'm at uh Healing Partners, which is a not nationwide, but we are moving towards that way. Uh wound care company, and I lead the talent acquisition, onboarding, and credentialing process for our APP hires and all other uh roles that we have here at Healing Partners. And I have a background of 15 years of healthcare and tech recruitment and uh excited to share what I know with you.

Angela Pointer 1:20

Awesome. So you did say you've got 15 years in healthcare recruitment.

Patrick Kelly 1:24

15 plus. I like to round down now.

Angela Pointer 1:28

Round down, yeah. I know I always kind of tease. I've been a nurse for X number of years, and I always just say, well, I started when I was two. So I'm curious to hear how did you get into healthcare recruitment?

Patrick Kelly 1:38

I got in the way a lot of people get in who get into recruitment. I did not know what I wanted to do after I graduated with a business degree, and I took a job at a healthcare staffing company and worked there for approximately nine years, doing everything from working in the office and staffing RNs, LPNs, and CNAs to uh leading their uh nationwide team to recruit all internal positions and just kind of fell in love with giving getting people jobs and uh kind of changing lives if we can and uh working through all the cool problems that come up in hiring.

Angela Pointer 2:13

That's cool. Yeah, I know a lot of people. I was just talking to someone um earlier today saying that has a son that's going into re recruiting in that same way, just like you're starting. So thanks for sharing that. So we're gonna dive into developing or establishing a strong recruitment process. So let's start with the basics. Patrick, what are what would you say are kind of key pillars to building a strong healthcare recruitment process?

Patrick Kelly 2:36

I mean, that's a great question. And I think it's one that's always redefining itself uh as we go and we move. But I think you kind of you can align yourself with the company goals when you're creating your recruitment process. I mean, you have to know what those are, or your process is never going to be effective in the eyes of uh leadership. You really also want to keep your stakeholders in mind. So you really want to understand, you know, what your candidates are going through as part of your hiring process, what your hiring managers are going through, what your recruiters are going through, and work on all of those so that you can make uh an efficient process that helps them all achieve what they are looking to get out of the process. And then third, I've always been one to really harp on scalability. You really, because your process is going to change, but you don't want a change to break your process. You want a change to, you know, improve your process and not have to restart over. So making sure it's a scalable process and that's one that you can build upon and or remove things from as easy as you can without creating the inevitable issues that people can get around change.

Angela Pointer 3:37

Yeah, that's that's good. Good nuggets there. So let's talk a little bit about sourcing, because that is a good part of the a part of the recruitment process, particularly in the beginning. So, how would you or do you integrate sourcing into a successful recruitment process?

Patrick Kelly 3:53

It's kind of one of the tougher, strangely, the tougher challenges in healthcare hiring is recruiting, is getting sourcing into the mix. A lot of teams are building out sourcing teams specifically, and sometimes the sourcing team and the recruitment team maybe aren't aligned on what their goals are. So the first thing I would say is I always go back to align those teams on the goals, encourage uh a shared goal between the two teams. Currently, we have a very small sourcing contingent of one person, so it's a little easier for us at our current at my current company, but we've had larger ones at other companies I've worked at, and you really have to make sure that there is a partnership between the two teams, because strangely, sometimes, you know, source candidates from a sourcer don't get as picked up as quickly as a candidate that reaches out directly to the recruiter. You know, could be for good reasons, could be for bad reasons, you never know. But you really have to kind of come up with an alignment on those. And then, you know, also bringing in unique areas that you can have both team members work on. I find like community programs are a good way to, you know, help bridge the gap between the sourcing team and the uh recruiters because everyone loves to go to an event and you know, everyone loves to be involved with the community program. Here at um one that we use at Healing Partners is MSEP. We're big with the military spouses employment program, and uh both our recruiter and our sourcer uh love working with that community. And it's kind of bridged the gap of, you know, I'm providing great candidates, but I'm also we're doing this together, we're working on this together towards the shared goal of hiring quality candidates.

Angela Pointer 5:21

That's good. I just had a mental picture when you were talking about the teams being aligning. I think in my brain, hashtag one team, you know, we're all on the same team. So that's good to share there.

Patrick Kelly 5:31

So hashtag you and I are both familiar with from our past.

Angela Pointer 5:34

Yes, hashtag oneDream. Yes, absolutely. So one common challenge in healthcare recruitment, I'm sure we we both know, is balancing speed with quality. So I'd love for you to talk a little bit about how organizations can ensure efficiency without compromising on hiring quote unquote the right people.

Patrick Kelly 5:56

Yep. I mean, the first place you start that is you need to define what a quality candidate is. I've been at multiple organizations and every organization defines quality in a different way. It's sometimes it's down to even the departmental goal of what quality is. So you really want to work with your team on being able to define quality and overall what a quality candidate looks like and putting those quality metrics in play. I know that uh most people don't talk about metrics when they're talking about process, but it's a how you can kind of prove your ROI on your process. So you really want to work on it. And quality is one of those ones that can be subjective, so it can be a little tougher to define, but you want to make uh the business, a company as a whole, define that and agree on that. And then I would say from there, it's really eliminating redundancies in processes that really make it efficient. Where can you take things out that are maybe multiple steps? Where can you uh automate actions that may be time killers? So, like scheduling feedback and notes and getting the candidate the most up-to-date point of where they are in the process. Those things can can make processes pretty inefficient, but luckily there's a lot of ways to one, automate those, but also still have a human touch to it so that you can really make a streamlined process that's pretty efficient. But again, if you're looking at quality at the end of the day, you really need to define it and you need to score the candidate. I I hate the word score when it comes to candidates, but you really need to like see how your candidate pool is aligning with that definition of quality.

Angela Pointer 7:23

Yeah, that makes sense. Let's kind of touch on the role of the recruiter. And so, how can a recruiter be a part of building a great recruitment process? How can they build do their work better?

Patrick Kelly 7:35

I mean, the most simple way to do that is bring up all suggestions on how to make it better. Uh nine times out of ten, you know, people who are leading the programs and doing those, they aren't involved in the day-to-day parts of the process sometimes when you're helping define the recruitment process. I myself carry a couple positions here and there, but I am not in it every day. So I really rely on their feedback. So bring up suggestions to make it better. Ask why it's working the way it's working. Research too as well. Research on, you know, what uh what do efficiencies look like in recruitment processes and see if there's anything you can bring to your organizations on that. And then honestly, some ones that are a little outside the box that I like to do, and I think some of our uh listeners out there may agree with, like, test as a candidate, as a recruiter. You should test your application process. You should maybe go through your onboarding process, or if you're a new hire coming into an organization who's a recruiter, like write down the areas that went amazing in the areas that you may maybe foresee some things that you bringing from your other places that can make it better. And you know, map out the process as well. When you first, when you're in your learning phase at a new company, map it out, map it out based on what all your teammates are saying so that sometimes the process on paper isn't always the process being followed. And, you know, sometimes you just need to push those suggestions forward to change it and make it better. And then, you know, just ask for feedback. Feedback from new hires, feedback from candidates. How did you enjoy the process? Is there anything we can do better? I mean, that should be part of every recruiter's repertoire when they're hiring people is you know, seeing how they liked it, seeing what worked well.

Angela Pointer 9:05

Feedback is a gift, isn't it?

Patrick Kelly 9:07

It is, it is.

Angela Pointer 9:08

Let's talk a little bit because I know a good bit about your background, and now you're in the world of advanced practice recruitment. Um, so I am curious from your perspective to hear what are some things that are similar to quote unquote you know, day-to-day talent acquisition or general TA? And then what are some things that are different with APP or advanced practice recruitment?

Patrick Kelly 9:29

Yeah, that is a great question. I would honestly say one of the main differences, and it's not the difference for everyone. So I know some people feel this out there, is it is a small candidate pool. We're oh last year I think there was only uh 68,000 nurse practitioners and only uh I think 17,000 graduating was the statistic I had. So it it's a smaller geographical pool, it's a smaller pool, and they all have specialties. So just like when you start to get into more advanced regular nursing, like everyone starts to specialize. So, you know, depending on what you are hiring for, you could be dealing with a very limited candidate pool. And you know, it's how to how to entice, how to get them interested in what you're doing. And really, it also becomes more about how they're allowed to practice uh medicine too as well. So from our perspective, when we're screening people, we're looking for people who are looking to fit into our evidence-based practice and how they can help grow wound care specifically and come up with new wound care treatments and advancements to help our patients out in the areas uh that we service, which are long-term care facilities, which don't always have uh evidence-based medicine going on. So it is kind of a an interesting, interesting problem to solve from our perspective as a recruitment team because we have to find people who align with the quality we're trying to have our providers provide and the and finding those providers who can do that. So uh and then otherwise, I think you're dealing with uh highly educated people who have very little time. Uh not to say that nurses don't have very little time, they certainly don't have time either, and they have a small candidate pool as well. But you're starting to get to uh people who maybe are seeing, you know, 15 patients a day and have 15 minutes to talk with you uh over a lunch break, and you need to be on your game to, you know, if you need more time with them, you need to be able to, you know, work it so that you can help them become part of the process if that's what they're looking for. So you really, from a recruitment perspective, you have to really know how to get your information across in a very compact way to uh advanced practice professionals so they can figure out is this the right thing for me? Do I want to put more time that I probably don't already have into a hiring process?

Angela Pointer 11:41

So Yeah, that that's true. Those are good nuggets. And I think there's like you said, there's there's differences, but there's also those similarities as well. So thanks for come kind of comparing and contrasting there. We talked a little bit already on the topic of onboarding or pre-boarding, as maybe some people call it today. I'm curious to hear what are your some best practices for onboarding new healthcare professionals effectively and also in a way that impacts long-term retention.

Patrick Kelly 12:08

Yes, great question. I have a very soft spot for onboarding. I've led a lot of onboarding teams. And, you know, I think it can be, you know, anywhere can be a make or break for a candidate, but when you're getting in the onboarding process, they're a new hire. You really want them to come in with the most information possible. So one of the areas that, you know, it seems like it might be a little bit more work, but it is actually a uh a time saver in the long run is educating them early on the process and as much as possible. Uh healthcare professionals, we have a lot of credentials. We have a lot of things needed for the position. There's a lot of education documents, there's a lot of other documents we need to pull, healthcare uh records too, as well, immunizations. When you they have a lot to do to become part of your organization. So, really educating them, giving them due dates and expectations on when things are due and what they're due so they can prepare themselves because they may have to take a day off to go get something done, or they may have to go into occupational health and spend you know half a morning there when you know they may not have the time. So, and they could push their start date, and you don't want anyone to have a start date pushed. And then really, I think some of the things I've kind of seen as an interesting caveat to where things are going in onboarding, a lot of companies are moving to more of these, you know, online checklists, and I think they're good to keep you organized. But uh, I the more human you make the onboarding process is actually where you really get that longevity of person one. You'd say you don't want someone showing up on their first day, you know, maybe sour because they've just spent a whole week running around from place to place, gathering documents for you and getting everything you need so they can walk in the door. I honestly, our team does a video call with every oncoming uh nurse practitioner to introduce themselves, give the whole list of contacts, show them how to navigate the portal. We take the extra time because that extra hour really shows people having less issues throughout the process, even though they are doing a lot of their things online and a lot of it's automated for them.

Angela Pointer 14:10

So yeah, that's good. I like that a bit of more of a human touch, especially in the the world of AI and and lack of human touch. Uh yeah.

Patrick Kelly 14:19

I mean use the use all the technology to automate things and make things easier, but don't forget that these are people who have lives that we're dealing with who, you know, are coming into your organization and want to come in excited, not like they felt like they've been pulled through a ringer.

Angela Pointer 14:33

Right. Yeah, the last thing you need is a frustrated new hire. Absolutely.

Patrick Kelly 14:36

No, that does not does not equal longevity usually.

Angela Pointer 14:39

No, it doesn't. That is not. That is not. So you kind of touched on this a little bit because I wanted to kind of look ahead, so to speak. You know, no one knows the future fully, but what trends do you see shaping the future of healthcare recruitment and onboarding?

Patrick Kelly 14:53

I mean, really, it's kind of what it's always been a little bit, but it's it's now progressing at very fast speed. It's technology. Technology is allowing us to automate tasks that took us, you know, a day to, you know, a day to do for some of our recruiters. Down and now we're taking it down to minutes. Some items that we use here are we do use some AI for note taking so the recruiters don't have to like rewrite all their notes, or they don't have to be like typing when they're talking to their people. They can actually be listening and having a conversation and then take five minutes to run through the notes as they come back and do a quick edit and send them out to the hiring manager so they have them. Also, scheduling has become so much easier with being able to book time on people's calendars and doing it from text messages and things along those lines so that you know you're not, you know, the back and forth of, oh, when do you have available? This is when I have available, type of uh things that go on in recruitment. So really taking a lot of those administrative stop gaps and making them a little more easier and accessible for uh teams to move their process to more hiring efficiency and faster. I would also say knowledge, really. I think we're having a recruitment. I mean, I've been in recruitment for a long time, and I feel like we're seeing people who are coming in fresh and more knowledgeable about ways to do things. They've lived lives with more efficiencies than maybe some of us who are a little bit older and who remember picking up the phone and uh, you know, uh going through the phone book and calling a number and whatever else we had to do to get someone into the phone book?

Angela Pointer 16:26

What's a phone book, Patrick?

Patrick Kelly 16:28

I know, I know. I just dated myself poorly, but uh I can honestly say the first agency I worked at, we did have one. But they're they're coming in with ideas on how to make things quicker. So, you know, uh capturing that knowledge too as well and efficiently, and they're used to tracking things. So I think I think a lot of it is you know, going to grow processes, actually more slim down processes and show us where uh where they're being efficient, where they're not.

Angela Pointer 16:54

So we've talked about some really cool things on this topic of recruitment process. So before we wrap up, I uh know we talked about a lot, but is there anything else you want to add that we haven't touched on yet?

Patrick Kelly 17:06

I would just say that, you know, um process doesn't always sound fun. Maybe there's some of us uh crazy people out there like myself who really love process and and getting in there and you know digging them apart. But uh as a recruiter, always always ask why. Why do we do this? Because one, the worst thing happens is you learn why and why we do it in a certain way, and it's the way we need to do it for compliance reasons. And two, you may hit upon something that could save your company time and money in hiring. So, you know, always ask why.

Angela Pointer 17:35

That's good. Always ask why. That's a good way to end here. So that wraps up actually this season of season one of the hiring scope podcast from the National Association for Healthcare Recruitment. Thank you for joining me, Angela Pointer. And I'm happy to announce that for season two, our very own Patrick Kelly, who we've just spoken with, is going to be my co-host. I'm really excited about that, and we look forward to continuing the conversation tackling 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. You can also check us out at nahcr.com for more content. Until next season, keep pushing the boundaries of what's possible in healthcare recruitment.

Patrick Kelly 18:23

Looking forward to being on season two.