If you hire for your healthcare organization, you know how important highly qualified emergency medicine physicians are for your emergency department, especially now when physician shortages mean doctors have a wide array of options to choose from. As you try to improve your recruitment efforts and appeal to top candidates, review the four top tips emergency medicine physician recruiters follow when finding doctors.
1. Take Time to Understand What Emergency Physicians Want
The best emergency medicine physician recruiters start by understanding what emergency physicians are looking for in open positions. When you’re looking for emergency physicians, remember that they’re used to a fast-paced environment. As a result, they often prefer emergency physician recruiters who are honest and direct about the job being offered. Typically, they’ll want to immediately know all about the job’s requirements and how much they’ll get paid for performing it.
Alongside wanting an honest and straightforward explanation of the job you’re offering, emergency physicians are trained to gather and react to actionable information quickly. While pleasantries are still important, it’s best to provide them with useful, specific information about the position so they can take action on it. If you can’t clearly communicate the job requirements, pay, or any other information they might want, the physician will likely move on to another facility that can answer their questions faster and more clearly.
2. Research Compensation in Your Area and Showcase Your Pay and Benefits
Many emergency physicians have thousands of dollars in student debt, and an organization that doesn’t pay them what they’re worth will likely lose out on top candidates. Physician shortages also make the hiring process even more competitive, meaning emergency physicians may have multiple offers. Before you begin recruiting physicians, research how much other healthcare organizations are paying emergency physicians and the various benefits they offer them.
Once you’ve done your research, you’ll likely want to adjust your pay to meet or exceed the compensation packages offered by organizations in your area. Since emergency physicians often prefer straightforward communication that gets to the point quickly, your offer should be just as clear. However, though simple compensation packages are often preferred, remaining open to creative compensation packages can also attract candidates. Besides pay, you’ll need to revamp your benefits packages and showcase them to candidates to further separate your organization from the competition.
3. Highlight Work/Life Balance Opportunities
While higher compensation is usually a priority for candidates, many emergency physicians also want to work for an ED that prioritizes work-life balance. Emergency physicians have one of the toughest jobs in healthcare, and burnout can occur if they’re not provided enough opportunities to better balance their time at home and in the emergency department.
A healthcare organization can make their openings more attractive by offering flexibility in call schedules and scheduling. Alongside highlighting any flexibility to scheduling and work hours, you might provide mental health support, sabbaticals, and generous paid time off while also highlighting other work-life balance initiatives at your company. Many physicians will also have creative ideas about improving their work-life balance and scheduling, so being open to implementing their ideas can be a major draw for candidates.
4. Diversify Your Recruitment Channels
If you’re only advertising on a couple of platforms, you’re likely not reaching many qualified candidates. Instead of limiting yourself to only using online job boards like LinkedIn or Indeed, you’ll want to start using social media platforms and targeted advertising to attract physicians. Many healthcare organizations also advertise at physician networking events and conferences, as well as medical associations’ websites. By diversifying your recruitment channels, your healthcare organization will gain more name recognition and appeal to more candidates.
Besides advertising your open positions on new channels, you may want to work with an emergency medicine physician recruiter at a facility staffing agency. These types of recruiters often maintain relationships with emergency physicians and can quickly find qualified candidates that fit your compensation offerings, workplace culture, and scheduling needs. They can also lighten your HR team’s workload by assisting with contract, credentialing, and onboarding processes.
Partner With OnCall Solutions for Your Emergency Medicine Physician Recruitment Needs
At OnCall Solutions, our emergency medicine physician recruiters can help you find the right physicians for your organization. As a medical staffing agency with a wide network of emergency physicians, we streamline the hiring process and make finding candidates who meet your needs easy. Our local focus ensures we can find qualified physicians fast, and it makes it possible for us to eliminate or significantly reduce travel costs associated with hiring locum tenens or permanent emergency physicians. We also can assist with onboarding, contracts, and medical credentialing.
Learn more about our medical facility staffing solutions today. If you have any questions or want to know more about how our emergency physician recruiters can serve you, please contact us.
