HealthCare Voice

Your Online Persona: Make It Work for You

IMPORTANT NOTE:  HealthCare Voice, John Self's  healthcare blog, HAS MOVED to the web site, JohnGSelf.Com. The blog will run on the web and here  for a couple of weeks and then the content will be exclusively on www.johngself.com/HealthCare Voice. 

_________

In healthcare administration as in any modern business, the constant siren song of the smartphone, texts, e-mails and social media leave executives with more demands on their time than ever before.

Sure, accessibility and open communication foster an executive’s “open-door policy,” but spending your day plugged in online leaves little time for productivity. On the other hand, refusing to jump on the technology bandwagon can quickly make you a dinosaur, and unless you’re ready to retire, that’s not good for your career.

Take, for example, social media, such as You Tube, Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook. The up-and-coming generation is deeply involved in the online world, and they may one day be your bosses. To connect with them, it’s important to understand these technologies and be part of that world.

But, proceed with caution when cultivating an online persona, as it’s easy to cause lasting damage to your career. Here are a few tips:

• Have a vision for what you want from your online network. Do you want to maintain contacts in your industry for future career opportunities? Do you want to use your network for sharing what you’ve learned with others? Do you want a group of peers you can bounce ideas off of from time to time?
• Keep your online network manageable. The effectiveness of your network is not based on size, it’s about how you actively use it. If you have more people in your online network than you have time to interact with, your group is probably too large. It doesn’t do you any good to have 5,000 people in your LinkedIn network if 4,500 of those people can’t help you in your career. Cull your list to those who share your interests and who you wish to know well. If there are people in your network who aren’t responding to you, delete them.
• If you want to have a network that can help you, offer to help others. Doing so nurtures your network, so that the people in it will be there for you when you need them.
• Use social media to promote yourself and your career. For example, if your Facebook posts have value to up-and-coming executives, you position yourself as a subject matter expert and thought leader.
• What you put out on the Internet may come back to haunt you. Never post anything, anywhere that you wouldn’t want a potential employer to see.
• Never forget who is watching. For example, if you want to change jobs and suddenly get active on LinkedIn, you’re broadcasting to everyone in your network – including your boss who “friended” you months ago – that you’re ready for a career move.

One of the benefits of having an active online professional life is that recruiters and executive search firms will be able to easily locate you when opportunities arise. But not every “recruiter” uses social media responsibly. Some contingency recruiters – and unsavory characters posing as recruiters – figure that if they blanket the Internet with enough messages, eventually they’ll get a response from someone. These are the ones who flood message boards or spam your inbox with details of potential job opportunities. More than likely, responding to them is a waste of your time.

Healthcare organizations don’t want their executive jobs posted anywhere and everywhere – they expect their executive search firms to treat their jobs confidentially and to do the footwork in person. So, the Internet may be a good place for legitimate recruiters to learn about you and establish initial contact, but if a recruiter is really interested in reaching you, he or she will try to contact you offline.

If you’re not sure exactly what your Internet persona is saying about you, find out. Google yourself, and be sure that the information you find represents you accurately and professionally.

© 2012 John Gregory Self

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

Seed Newsvine 

Twitter Is Not A Social Disease...

TYLER, Texas (March 28, 2009) -- I am back in Tyler at the weekend house. Two weekends in a row. That is a non-holiday record for me. It is cold today but we have a nice fire in the fireplace and some good music from iTunes. Just think, yesterday I was lamenting the end of winter in Texas and kidding my colleagues in Buffalo, NY. They are, no doubt, enjoying some satisfaction.

On Friday I met with a new networking group that my partner, Gary Pfleiger, is helping to put together. Actually it is more than networking. We are focusing on aggregating intelligence that will facilitate client acquisition. Joining us was PerotSystems networking ace, Bethany Williams, Kurt Young of engineering giant Walter P Moore, Wayne O'Neill, a consultant who specializes in this new field of expertise, as well as Marc Leediker and Jan Blackmon of the architectural firm Rees. It was a fascinating session.

On Wednesday night I returned from the ACHE Congress in Chicago where I spoke at three sessions. During my drive this morning from Dallas to Tyler, my experiences in Chicago, together with my networking session on Thursday morning, caused me to revisit some earlier thoughts I have had on the social networking phenomena. Social networking is sweeping the nation, from college campuses to the halls of staid law firms. That there are valuable business applications for these networks is an important heads up for CEOs, marketing executives, recruiters and those executives who find themselves in the job market.

Over the next three to five years, we will see exponential growth in the numbers of professionals who use online networking sites – Linked In, Facebook, Plaxo, – as well as platforms we have not even considered. These sites will dramatically change the way we relate with clients, colleagues and, in our case, the candidates we recruit.

In addition to authoring this blog and serving as Chairman and Founder of JohnMarch Partners, an innovative international search consultancy based in Dallas, Texas I also write tweets for Twitter and update my Facebook and Plaxo networking sites. Yesterday, business leaders thought a tweet was something impolite best avoided in public. Facebook and similar sites were dismissed as a college craze that would never amount to much.

Twitter serves as an instant blog that is limited to 140 characters. You learn to be brief! I encourage you to visit Twitter and become a member. You can get up to the minute information on searches that we are leading – from Hawaii to Abu Dhabi. When I add a “tweet” – the new word for a message -- it automatically updates on this blog. You can also follow me on Twitter at http://twitter.com/Self_JohnMarch.

Just as social networking platforms are becoming significant drivers for how we form, expand, and sustain our contact relationships, my professional world – executive search – is in the early stages of transformation. The current economic downturn is prompting some larger traditional firms who have not changed much over the past 30 years, to relook at their business model. But these social networking platforms will also play an important role in forcing the white shoe firms to relook at how they act and communicate. Right now they smile knowingly but most think this is just a fad that will pass - that participating will only diminish their brand.

Transformation of the existing executive search business model is inevitable. To ignore that fact, and the emergence of social networking sites, would be a mistake.

Currently, this transformation is being led by small boutique consultancies like JohnMarch. From the way candidates are screened and the depth of the background and reference inquiries, to the use of video summaries of our final interviews with recommended candidates to assist clients in determining which candidates to invite for a site interview, we, as executive recruiters, are looking at ways to enhance value and manage costs and delivery. JohnMarch became the leader of this innovation 15 years ago when the firm was launched. Today we are continually searching for ways to improve process and enhance value. Twitter and other sites will play a key role.

This is a great time to be in healthcare and the executive search business. There are enormous threats. There is chaos. There is opportunity.

My goal is to collaborate with my network to take advantage of the opportunity. But, creativity is not an endeavor best performed in a silo. So please share your thoughts with me.

John G. Self is Chairman and Senior Client Advisor of JohnMarch Partners. He is a
Co-Founder of the Firm. A former investigative reporter and crime writer with more than 30-years of leadership experience in public relations, national marketing and business development and as Chief Executive Officer of hospitals, and consulting firms, Mr. Self is highly regarded for his keen insight into business culture and the types of leaders who will succeed. You can contact Mr. Self at 214.220.1234 or [email protected].