Real relationships, not online connections, build true professional networks

Some of the top recruiters start 10-20
quality relationships per week.

I am in the IT and Healthcare IT recruiting and staffing business. I am also a self-admitted technology maven and admirer. So when I ran across a blog regarding LinkedIn's affect on the recruiting industry, I felt compelled to expand on the subject further. While Navid Sabetian says that LinkedIn's bubble will burst and briefly, in closing, that one needs to cultivate relationships with top line candidates and build them over the years; with all respect to Mr. Sabetian, I think both points are obvious.

Here is the bigger picture:

Yes, Facebook will have a billion users soon enough, which equates to a ridiculous amount of influence.  LinkedIn is probably the largest network of potential candidates and recruiters on the planet right now.  There are the 'old' job board standards (Monster, Careerbuilder, Dice, etc…), Google+, and 'who knows what else' emerging that I haven’t yet fully experienced.

 

There is no silver bullet: Meaning, there is no next or current 'big thing' that is the source to go to find the best candidates for all the open jobs out there.  This new market for talent is not about finding a single, or even two or three sources to find people.  It is about creating a network of real people, across all the relevant channels available to you.  It’s not about how many connections you have on LinkedIn or Facebook, but about how many people in your specialty areas with whom you are able to create some form of human interaction.

In fact, some of the best sourcing around is still done the old fashioned way; through direct, in-person communication. The internet has a host of tools for finding qualified candidates on paper (or on your monitor if you've gone paperless); however, it doesn't replace the legwork of striking up a conversation and getting to know them.

Sabetian claims to have a professional network with 16,000 direct connections with another 12,000 waiting in the wings, with whom he cannot interact due to a glitch on LinkedIn. It raises the question of how one would interact with the first 16,000. In one work year, assuming no vacation or holidays, you would have to interact with 61 people per day. Is it doable? Yes. Is it realistic each contact will be a good connection and suitable for an ongoing relationship? No. Some of the best recruiters make 50 to 100 contacts and start building 10-20 solid relationships a week with candidates.    

To me, as a few of the blog comments also eluded to, it seems that LinkedIn will likely become less effective as recruiters start to use connections as a database. The relevance you can have to one another on a human level in a sea of 28,000 connections seems to be very low for both sides; rendering the service less valuable to both parties. It brought to mind Malcom Gladwell's idea in The Tipping Point that we, as humans, cannot maintain more than 150 real social relationships with others at one time.

In fact, I think it is why I am of the opinion that LinkedInitself is having trouble remaining relevant to users today.

Is the idea of having a professional network with thousands of connections compelling? Certainly it is. But only if you maintain contact with your network, remain relevant its members, and interact with them on a regular basis. Otherwise it's just an overinflated database; not a true network.

Even with all the technologies and social 'networks' available, the basics of recruiting haven’t changed; or maybe they did for a while and now they have come full circle. The only difference is that now, we have more sophisticated tools to make the job of finding real people to develop real relationships with easier. 

I haven’t been in the industry long enough to know how things were done pre-Internet circa 1995, but I do know there couldn’t have been any option other than building a real contact network.  It must be much easier now to find the people to build that same network today; but people are still people and they want good jobs, with good companies where they feel valued; and they want the same when being wooed for a position.

All of the perks that many companies are starting to offer (benefits, higher than average pay, flex-time, daycare, healthcare, free lunches, etc.) to make happy workers cannot replace investment in relationships with those employees. We'll explore this idea further next week.

Good recruitment firms and recruiters become an extension of their clients' business and are often the first point of contact a candidate has with an employer; making relationship building with both even more critical.

Josh Kaplan writes on various subjects including management, information technology breakthroughs, healthcare IT recruitment and innovations, big data, IT staffing and recruitment, and technical news and trends. 

Novocain Immunity and Meaningful Use: How prepared are patients and practitioners for 2014?

Can Meaningful Use eliminate the pain red tape causes?

If you talk to anyone in the medical community and say the words 'meaningful use,' chances are any clinician or physician will understand what you mean. What about patients? This is probably going to be the biggest change in the way doctors and patients interact on every level yet, if one were to coin the phrase 'meaningful use' in general public; the response would likely be something akin to a deer caught in the headlights.

Simply put, Meaningful Use is very important yet, no one knows about it.

The fact is that most patients have no idea that the days of going to this specialist and signing a release of these records to that other specialist and back on to your general practitioner are numbered. They have no idea that secure, instant messaging with your doctor, all of your doctors for that matter, is right around the corner. Meaningful Use Stage 2 goes into full effect in 2014.

I have a feeling some practitioners and HCO's would like to keep it that way. Because Meaningful Use is more patient focused and keeping them satisfied as a consumer is more important; practitioners without a good 'bedside manner' will have to develop one quickly.

You see, Meaningful Use completely revamps the way doctors and patients will communicate. On many levels, it makes physicians more accountable for getting the whole story and getting it right the first or second time. It all but eliminates the 'take two aspirin' syndrome when a patient comes in and hands over health records that clinically spell out what they often cannot verbalize. It allows for instant communication and eliminates the need for countless (and billable) follow up visits due to incomplete paperwork.

In other words, Meaningful Use will make healthcare more efficient for everybody, but only if doctors and HCO's are on board.

So where does Novocain immunity fit into all of this?

Upon joining Talascend, I relocated to Maryland: New doctors, new dentists, new everything. Shortly after moving and during a routine checkup, I found I needed a filling. There's only one small problem: I am immune to Novocain in regular, recommended doses. My old dentist knew how to keep my mouth numb. My new dentist didn't believe me. Three shots later and only about a 15 minute window to work with, she was a believer. The third shot wore off in the last 5 minutes and they couldn't give me more, so I had to deal with the pain while we were wrapping up.

Why bring it up? The whole conversation and disbelief would have been avoided if meaningful use were in full force. If I could have instantly requested my dental records from my old dentist in Upstate New York, not only would my new dentist have learned I wasn't full of hot air, but that my old dentist has figured out a way to keep my mouth numb so that work could be completed without rushing. Because of current HIPAA laws, I had to fill out paperwork; in person; in Upstate New York, to get my old dentist to share the process with my new one. Not even a phone call is considered legal without a signed document.

This plays out in nearly every medical office that has not participated in the first stage of Meaningful Use. There is so much waste to be eliminated through implementation. Doctors have instant access and can see more patients, or, spend more time with patients during a day. They can order a prescription for you right from their smart phone. Patients get the benefit of clarity when talking in a clinical setting. They also have something to back up their claims when going into a new physician's office right then and there: not while waiting for their paperwork to arrive.

As a Healthcare IT staffing professional, I know one thing is for certain: There will be a big rush in the next two years for HIT talent in order to become Meaningful Use compliant. Then again, it could go 'bust' because of lack of buy-in from physicians and HCO's; but I wouldn't count on it.

What do you think?

Talent Shortage in Healthcare IT: Three real-world solutions to solving the problem.

How do you find and retain top HIT talent?

There are countless stories about the current HIT skills shortage crisis, not only in informatics, but in other specialized areas of IT as well. I’ve written a few of them myself.

We’ve seen informatics baccalaureate programs pop up to help meet the expected demand. There’s only one problem: How will the healthcare industry get 50,000 new workers through a four-year program, in a partial-handful of schools, in the next two years, to address the incentivized program needs of HCOs in time for meaningful use, ICD-10, and HITECH?

The short answer is that they won’t. Besides, HCOs want experienced technical clinicians, not grads they have to train on their systems, their culture, and at their expense.

Many resourcing professionals and healthcare industry experts talk about what HCOs need to do to recruit, hire and retain top talent. My company is not immune to engaging in such activity.

I think we all know there is a fight for the top talent in HIT. I think we’re all aware of what we need to do to get the best of the best: Higher pay than the competition, an engaging work environment, a culture where life/work balance is actually balanced, great benefits, continuing education, and interesting projects. My staff and I are in the trenches every day fighting the battle. I am likely not telling any CMIOs or private practices anything they don’t already know; at least the ones who are actively involved in getting ready for the changes.

Here’s what I don’t understand: No one is taking steps to address the shortage; not the HCOs, not the doctors, not the technical resourcing industry. The only solution I’ve seen is to grant more H1B Visas.

Here are three ways I think we can address the shortage quickly and domestically (or at least more quickly than waiting for those four-year grads to come and save us.)

1. Train experienced HIT professionals in clinical skills and terms they need to know now. That’s right I brought up the ‘T’ word. Just as C# developers are a good fit for mobile apps work, there are plenty of hard working, talented HIT professionals out there right now that can do 90% of what any HCO might need them to do from a technical standpoint. They have not gone to medical school. They know the language of healthcare IT already. They need clinical training. Community colleges offer training in nursing and other specialized healthcare fields.
   
   How about a curriculum to help get this crowd to a comfort level your HCO is comfortable with? Which person would you rather have running your critical projects; a four-year graduate or a seasoned manager with the added clinical knowledge? This idea brings me to my next point.


2. HCOs need to partner with educators to develop curricula. Plain and simple; educators will never know what HCOs want employees to know unless HCOs tell them. Colleges can guess using job descriptions and industry trends. Unless HCOs provide educators with exact specifications they want IT staff to know, they’re still likely going to see candidates that can give them only 95% of what they want and need. My recommendation is for HCOs to reach out to local colleges to see if they might be of assistance in developing an informatics curriculum for experienced professionals.


3. Treat the entire HIT staff currently employed with respect and offer incentives to stay. I know as a staffing professional this one makes my job harder if the first two solutions fall on deaf ears. If you treat your employees and contingent workforce as if they are gold rather than hired hands who you’ll lose to attrition, assimilate them into the culture of your HCO, and make them a true part of the healthcare process; you will find that not only do they want to stay, they’ll want to help improve the organization. Training, top benefits, challenging projects and work/life balance for your entire HIT staff, not just top recruits, will pay great dividends down the road.

In times like these, it’s hard to turn around without another story popping up about a skills shortage in any industry, let alone the highly specialized HIT and informatics realm. It’s even harder to find someone willing to offer up solutions.

These are mine.

I’d love to hear your ideas and solutions.