A NEW FOCUS: Executive Recruiting, Talent Acquisition & Career Management

When I began this blog some 149 posts ago, I wrote about recruiting, leadership, healthcare reform, career management, politics of healthcare, quality and patient safety, etc.  Virtually everything that touched healthcare and captured my attention made it into this blog. As a former newspaper writer, I have thoroughly enjoyed getting back into the routine of writing, and in learning about how to blog.  It has certainly helped me sharpen my focus on a range of issues.

While I enjoy the writing, and the critical process it takes to produce a blog, I am not doing this to perfect my writing skills.  I am looking for engagement.  Over time I noticed that the posts drawing the most attention and comment were not on the politics of healthcare reform, or even the substance of the legislation. Nor did readers seem too interested in thinking about what the healthcare delivery system of the future would look like.   Rather, people responded to things that mattered to them personally -- career management, how to develop and sustain networking relationships to enhance their job search, and how to be more effective in telephone and face-to-face interviews.  Hospital Chief Executives and their human relations executives were more interested in how they could reduce the costs of acquiring the talent and be more effective. 

This makes sense.  We have entered a new economy, one that will be characterized not by big growth bubbles that generate heady financial times with low unemployment and accelerating consumption that seem to bring out the worst in us, but a resetting or our economy with new expectations regarding pay, benefits and time/life balance.  We are in the midst of a resizing.  Given our national debt and the war on terror, all things economic may not return to the “old” normal for another 10 years or so.  With Medicare moving to become the big driver of our national debt, hospitals must develop a laser focus on costs.  

Human capital, the biggest portion of a hospital's expense budget and the single most important contributor to an organization's net worth, is now more important than technology. This will profoundly change the way we approach recruitment and how we manage our talent.  For healthcare workers, career management and job searching skills will be more important as health systems resize to reduce costs.

As I thought about those issues over the weekend, I realized that while I had written numerous blogs on executive recruiting, talent acquisition and management as well as career management, there is much more to cover and there is a great interest in these subjects.

I encourage you to submit your suggestions for blogs as well as your questions on everything from recruiting strategies to resume construction, how to prepare for interviews and how to make each new hire a valued and productive asset sooner rather than later.  

If you want to email me, write to: [email protected].  Or you can post a comment or question at this site. 

 © John G. Self, 2010

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Comments

[John Self]

Great idea. As you know, I base my Firm's candidate screening on the Topgrading(c) system. I will prepare a blog on this for next week.

Thanks for the suggestion.

[Josh]

John,

I think it would be beneficial to help us in the field prepare to interview someone we want to hire. What type of questions should we ask, what type of responses should we be looking for the candidate to provide us, etc.

Thanks for the blog and I agree with your self assessment on those that capture more interest.

Josh