Standardizing the Recruitment Process for Hospitalist Programs

This workshop discussed ideas to standardize the recruitment process, ask more informative interview questions, and minimize unconscious bias to create a diverse hospitalist group. The audience was separated into three small groups: single-center academic hospitalists, multi-center hospitalists, and community hospitalists. Each group first discussed the members of a comprehensive recruitment team and how to advertise to solicit a diversity of applications appropriate for their clinical-center type. The next small group discussion focused on questions to elicit how a candidate will perform, rather than superficial demographic questions only. After each small-group discussion, there was a share-out with the larger group. Finally, the session ended with a discussion on the different types of unconscious bias and mitigation strategies for unconscious bias in hiring.  Key Takeaways A comprehensive recruitment team should include members from division leadership, clinical faculty, and business and financial staff to provide a budget. It is helpful to have someone other than the division chief take over the primary responsibility of recruitment. “Behavioral questioning” allows interviewers to ask questions that will gauge how a candidate would navigate a certain scenario and give insight into how they would perform at the job. For example, one could ask, “Tell me about a success in your past job and how you achieved it?” rather than, “What are your strengths?” Other ex...
Source: The Hospitalist - Category: Hospital Management Authors: Tags: Business of Medicine Career Employees Leadership Source Type: research