Recruiting Top Talent at Children's
from The Children's Hospital (TCH) News, September 2006
It’s no secret that The Children’s Hospital is one of the top ten children’s hospitals in the country. The secret in maintaining Children’s level of success is recruiting and retaining the top talent.
Randy Williams, director of staffing, and the Human Resources team at Children’s understand the importance of recruiting the best people for the job, which is why recruitment is a high-priority for them.
“To hire top talent, we must actively recruit,” Williams said. “Instead of 80 percent of job candidates finding us as they have in the past, we want to find them.”
HR is fine-tuning their recruitment process, building on Children’s stellar reputation and outstanding achievements.
As part of this transformation to make Children’s even more successful, the staffing team is spending more time with their “customers,” Children’s managers and prospective candidates.
Currently, this is on a select basis only, but it is expected to expand once the recruiting system is automated in 2007. Staffing is moving in the direction of screening job candidates, and presenting the top candidates to the hiring manager.
“By spending more time with managers, we can understand their needs and bring in individuals who will help them be more successful,” Williams said.
To increase overall cost efficiency and recruiting effectiveness, job openings at Children’s now will be strategically posted on MedHunters.com and Monster.com, and niche websites for hard-to-fill positions.
“We also are automating our process so that we can decrease the number of days a job is open and send offers out faster,” Williams said. “These changes will reduce the amount of manual labor for our staff, a major obstacle for us in the past.”
The desired result of these changes is an increase in customer satisfaction, a 2007 strategic initiative, measured by Press Ganey scores.
Currently, first year attrition rate at Children’s is 18 percent. “If we screen people correctly and set expectations for the job, then people will know what to expect and attrition rates should decrease,” Williams said.
Since Jan. 1 of this year, 420 people have been hired at Children’s. “We are fortunate enough to work at a place where everyone wants to work,” Williams said.
The fact that Children’s is moving to a new state-of-the-art facility will no doubt enhance the desirability to work for Children’s.
“The new hospital, with its new amenities,is a huge selling point for us,” he said. “So many people want to be a part of the monumental move.”
The overall goal is to recruit the best of the best – because just as employees want to work for the best company, children deserve, and parents expect, the best care.
