Navigating the Chaotic Health Care Job Market
By Richard Yadon
Today's health care job market is in chaos. Just go to Google and search for health care jobs and you'll get 139 million results. It includes everything from big job boards, niche job boards, company postings, large recruiting firms, small recruiting firms, big hospitals, little clinics, etc. How do people who are very busy and very focused on patient care make sense of this? At the very least it will take a great deal of time and difficulty.
There are more openings for health care professionals in the U.S. than there are qualified people to fill them. This trend is expected to continue at least until 2020. It would seem that with all that opportunity finding a job would be easy. It is easy if all you want is a job. My experience shows, however, that most professionals are looking for a new challenge, the right fit, and a more balanced lifestyle. One approach is to click through all 139 million links in Google. Another way would be to fling your resume or CV out to as many employers as you can reach. Still another approach is to answer classified want ads in your newspaper. Each of these approaches has two things in common - they take a lot of time and they aren't very effective. To successfully navigate the health care job market, use the following principles throughout your search.
Target Employers
You're not going to work for just anyone, so decide early in your search who you will work for. Use resources like Hoovers.com, Forbes.com, Industry Associations, and directories to find information about companies. Professional networking sites like LinkedIn can help you find people who work at those companies. Often they are willing to give you information about what it is like to work there. Bottom-line, don't just answer job advertisements. Be specific about to whom you will sell your time and skill.
Understand Your Product
You are used to providing care to patients. Maybe your role is to keep the organization running effectively and well managed. Chances are your training and experience has not been in self-promotion. Yet that is exactly what a successful job search is all about. You are the product you are selling. That product must be distinguishable from others. The key is that the distinction must be relative to the needs of prospective employer. You have to find the person who will make the hiring decision and learn what is important to them.
Also, your resume is your brochure. It has about 10 seconds to capture your future employer's attention. If it is not presented in an impacting way, it will be tossed like yesterday's junk mail. Know what you are selling and sell it in a way that makes them feel they can't live without you.
Be Proactive
The phrase 'proactive job searching' confuses a lot of people. Proactive job searching is not posting a resume and waiting for a response, reading the Sunday want ads and faxing off a CV, asking friends about openings at their employer, or posting your resume on various job boards. Activities like these are important in a job search, but it is not proactive job searching.
People engaged in a proactive job search can be described as contacting, mailing, calling, and networking engines. If you want to be proactive don't just send a resume, call the hiring decision maker and introduce yourself, find out about their needs, construct a resume that attacks those needs, have it delivered to their hands, send a thank-you note for their consideration, call in a few days and ask for an interview, do complete research before the interview, ask lots of questions during the interview, ask for the job at the end of the interview, follow-up after the interview - and do this as often during the day as you can. That is proactive job searching.
Why don't more health care professionals proactively search? Quite simply they don't have the time or they don't have the skills or resources. That is why the next principle becomes so important.
Get Help
There are two sources of help in a successful job search - personal help and professional help.
Personal help comes in the form of friends, family, and professional networks. Normally these people are eager to help you. They know you and want to see you succeed. If you are well networked, professional colleagues may be able to get you introduced to decision makers at some of your targeted companies. The extended "legwork" of these personal contacts will take some of the burden off your shoulders. Just let them know you are beginning a job search and could use their help. There is downside to all this personal activity. There is a real danger that your confidentiality could be compromised by well intended folks. If you cast too wide a net, the word could get back to the wrong people. When enlisting help from personal sources, be sure to stress confidentiality.
Professional help comes in the form of recruiting organizations. There are essentially two types - client focused and candidate focused. Client focused recruiters tend to concentrate on filling open positions from the companies they contract with. Candidate focused recruiters tend to focus more on developing job seekers and proactively marketing them to clients. In the health care job market you want the candidate focused recruiter. Be sure to take the time to understand your career history, goals, and the specifics of your desired position. They should update you at least weekly during your job search. Candidate focused recruiters will do the work of visiting job boards, confidentially submitting your resume to trusted sources, arranging interviews, developing interview strategies with you, and helping in the transition from one job to the other.
The most successful job searches utilize both personal and professional help.
Chaos rules in the health care market place. There is also opportunity if you know how to find it. When you begin your job search use the principles of targeting your ideal employers, promoting yourself, being very proactive, and getting good help. In doing so, you'll have a more successful, effective, and enjoyable job search experience.
Richard Yadon is President, CEO, and Founder of Health Career Professionals, an executive search and employee development firm for health care professionals. He contributes articles to online publications, is a guest expert in the JobLounge blog, and speaks about career change, employee motivation, leadership, and management.
