The Cardinal Sins of Recruiting

(Read time: 5-10 minutes)

Three years and one day ago, I walked through the door of an unassuming office suite in Rancho Cordova to begin my first day of work as a physician recruiter. I had never worked in a white-collar sales environment prior, nor did I possess much medical knowledge beyond what I had learned during my time as a personal trainer. Little did I know, the chaotic world I had entered would prove to be one of the most fulfilling and challenging opportunities I have ever committed myself to.

Throughout my time working for MDstaffers, I have been blessed and fortunate enough to have made a substantial difference in the lives of many. I’ve successfully placed nearly 40 MDs/DOs/APPs in short- or long-term locum assignments, 25 in permanent positions (of which more than 80 percent remain to this day), umpteen enrollments for our Expert Witness panel (MDexperts.org/), and have been lucky enough to provide consultation to more than 500 additional MDs/DOs/APPs at length regarding their careers, their passions, and their needs (in and outside of the clinic/hospital). I’ve called more than 30,000 phone numbers in attempts to help or locate people in need, and I’ve pecked out in excess of 40,000 emails for the same purpose.

Spelling out these metrics is not some thin attempt at braggadocio (obviously, I should have done WAY more!), but rather an attempt to provide a baseline credibility to my forthcoming writing. I joined MDstaffers while it was a four-person operation in a small corner office, barely scratching at a million-dollar annual billing. I’ve had the absolute pleasure of watching our staff grow more than 600 percent, our revenue skyrocket well over 1200 percent, and our functional office space nearly quadruple. All-in-all, I feel overwhelmingly honored to be able to say that I am a contributing member of this family. Every day I walk into our office and find a deeper appreciation for my role in this machine, and a greater respect for those that we help.

But that’s enough about me. This isn’t an autobiography, this is a rulebook.

Anybody that has spent more than a few days in a recruiter’s chair understands that every day is truly a new experience. Each day presents its own set of difficulties, rigors, and lessons that we can choose to absorb or ignore. I’ve established my personal brand as a recruiter by focusing on constant growth, unbreakable focus on my client’s needs/wants, and a relentless stubbornness when it counts most.

I’d like to take the next few minutes to share what are, in my opinion, six of the most vital principles a recruiter can internalize. I could surely write 10 more articles with additional principles (and just might), but for now we will focus on these.

This is the all-seasons playbook; these principles and policies will never go out of style and will serve to inform (or remind) you why it is we do what we do.

1.      You are never too busy for cold lead generation.

Let’s be honest: cold-calling is the lifeblood of sales. This is true today, has always been true, and will continue to be true long after anybody reading this retires from life. While recruiting tools and resources exist more abundantly than ever, they are still just that: tools. When your fingers hit the keypad, rubber hits road. It won’t always feel like you’re killing it, and you may genuinely have more pressing tasks to get to. The exception to this rule is when you are dealing with:

A.     An emergency involving a working candidate

OR

B.     An emergency involving a soon-to-be working/interviewing candidate

Beyond these specific instances, I challenge you to identify one thing we do as recruiters that cannot wait until 1-5pm. Being busy is great, don’t get me wrong. What I’m saying is that as professional plate-spinners, it becomes necessary to decide which plate goes up first. If you prioritize the wrong things (i.e., submissions, contract review, etc.), you will come up short to the results party every single time. There exists a time and place for every little thing we do, it just so happens that the time for cold generation ALWAYS comes first. If you have an interview to debrief, a contract to negotiate, a follow-up, etc., then simply schedule those things outside of your dedicated generation period. There is a reason this rule is the first: order of operations matter.

Which leads me to my next point…

2.      There is always time, you just need to find it.

Around our office, we have a fun little game that nobody knows they are playing called: “Who Can Pretend They Are the Busiest”. I see it every single day without fail: a recruiter finds themselves bogged down by “urgent” emails, inbound calls, personal and cyclical follow-ups, 3 submissions that needed to go out yesterday, an interview debrief, and a letter of intent that your candidate just WON’T SIGN! *long sigh*

Look, I get it. I do understand that we juggle an overwhelming amount of business at times. Its not rare to be caught at the end of your day with three hours’ worth of work left undone. For this exact reason, I added rule #2. If you find yourself needing more hours in your day, it likely has less to do with the time allotted to you, and more to do with the way you distribute energy. We discuss time management like a religious verse, but why don’t we discuss energy management?

Time management implies that one may alter the nature of time, itself; as if somehow you can pull more time out of thin air. What I refer to as energy management, is what I believe was originally intended by the phrase. Energy management is about prioritizing your schedule by importance and urgency as opposed to “time-blocking”. Time-blocking is helpful, but it allows for margins of error in assuming you won’t work over time or finish a task sooner than predicted. I prefer to organize an agenda based on event-occurrence or specific action. If I finish 100 calls in 2.5 hours instead of 3, I need to know that I’m not just sitting around wasting the perceived “extra time” until lunch. Rather, plan your day in terms of what you are actually doing with your time, and never let another spare minute go to waste.

*PS, have the next number ready to dial when you hang up after leaving your voice mail. You’d be amazed what this does for flow maintenance and focus. Seriously.*

Speaking of time management…

3.      You are not a night club bouncer: talk to any and all potential clients because you never know who is connected with whom.

Here is another pet peeve of mine (that I have been guilty of as well)…

Typical Recruiter: “UGH, I don’t want to waste my time talking to this person”

Me: *Face meets palm*

I cannot tell you (literally, too many to keep track of) the sheer volume of referrals I’ve received from people who I expected NOTHING from and didn’t even get the chance to submit or find a job. One particular instance that comes to mind is when I spoke with a physician working in the prison system here in California, who promptly referred me to four other physicians in need after a short conversation. This conversation (simply discussing what options we had for him and providing insight into the current market), sparked over a year of full-time locum billing, and three other physicians that I remain in contact with to this day. The moral of the story is that you just never know. Don’t EVER assume that a person will not provide value to you tomorrow, just because you were the one providing value today. Relationship-building is a fluid and dynamic process that must not be approached with a dismissive perspective. You never know who is down on their luck today, that may be a CMO at UCSF next month. Any person that decides to spend their highly-valuable and limited time on this planet seeking YOUR expertise, is worth your time. Period.

While we’re talking about talking…

4.      Beware the “pivot-and-push” method.

In keeping with my staunch commitment to blunt verbiage: STOP HURLING ANYBODY WITH A PULSE AT ANY JOB OPENING FOR WHICH THEY ARE TECHNICALLY QUALIFIED.

Please don’t get it twisted: there is nothing wrong with informing a candidate that you don’t know the answer to something, but your HR/Med Director contact might. There’s no shame in pivoting when you are backed into a corner and have reached the limitations of your knowledge. I have no qualms with a genuine inquiry about a candidate that truly might be a great fit for the job in question.

HOWEVER…

What I see more often is a terrible misuse of this otherwise helpful technique. A pivot is like a defensive technique in judo, not a weapon to be used on the offensive. As a rule of thumb, your candidate control should be strong enough that your people are asking YOU what the next step is and how to move forward. This isn’t always the case, especially with those passive candidates that you have no option but to compete for attention with 20 other recruiters. Despite a prospect’s relative prestige or otherwise, a good recruiter makes a commitment to themselves to never allow the quality of their product to dip below a defined threshold. A poor submission costs client energy/manpower/capital, recruiting firm energy/manpower/capital/reputation, recruiter energy/manpower/reputation, and candidate energy/manpower/patience. Not to mention the opportunity cost of clogging up the pipeline when an actual prospect is awaiting feedback (and subsequently accepts the other job offer because yours took too long).

I could go on and on about this (obviously). But the focus of this article is to say: please do your job right. Vet your candidates and only submit the ones that YOU would want to see if you were the client. Chances are if you wouldn’t want them as your doctor, neither will others.

This segues into…

5.      Define your brand: do not compromise your vision to engage defensively with a prospect.

This is a multi-faceted topic like the previous, but we will focus on one aspect for today. In branding yourself, you must always remember to maintain resolve and poise. This is especially important when dealing with a first-time customer or negotiating a contract.

Has this ever happened to you?

Recruiter: “Hi Dr. Krishna, would you consider a job in Atlantis?”

Dr. Krishna: “Uhm, I don’t DO locums, remove me from your list”

Recruiter: “This isn’t a locum…”

Dr. Krishna: “I don’t care, take me off your list”

Recruiter: “This isn’t a list…”

Dr. Krishna: “REMOVE ME FROM YOUR LIST”

Recruiter: *hellfire and fury*

I’ll bet Dr. Krishna’s next paycheck you have experienced something vaguely similar. This is a generic example, but I’m sure we can all picture a random cold-call going awry and leaving us feeling upset or dismissed. It is surely an understandable sentiment. Sometimes we are holding jobs in our pockets that would sell themselves, should the right person just give us two minutes to explain. They are quite literally shutting the door on a million-dollar annual value at times, and it can be deeply frustrating.

Here’s the deal: it is NEVER the responsibility of the sell-ee to be sold by the sell-er. No person is under any obligation to listen to any pitch by any other person for any reason at any given time. My point is that one must earn the privilege to connect with a busy professional, not feel entitled to it. If you catch them at a bad time, try again. If they say no or “STOP” or tell you to drive into oncoming traffic, brush it off. You don’t know these people and they don’t know you. The second you start taking business personally, you sign up for a level of emotional investment that simply isn’t sustainable. I’ve placed a doctor after they rejected me several times… and for that exact same job! Don’t draw rash conclusions based on limited empirical evidence. Trust the process, be persistent, and give it time. Don’t hate the player, hate the game. Ideally, hate neither.

That being said…

6.      Never underestimate the credibility you gain with someone by standing your ground in a rational way.

I’d like to close out this article with a challenge: the next chance you receive to deliver bad news or escalate to a higher-up, deliver that news.

Most days, we come across a candidate who wants ~$20k more than the client’s range allows. Or perhaps they want a 4x8 schedule when the whole point of the opening is to find a M-F worker. The list goes on, but the point remains: recruiting and negotiating are two halves of the same coin. If we recall the “pivot-and-push” method mentioned in rule #4, this is a prime example of the misuse I criticized. Rather than holding ground and entering the negotiation, a recruiter will opt to harass account management into accepting an anemic margin, beg a client to make an exception, i.e. not doing your job. This is textbook anti-confrontational behavior and will condemn you to the deepest circle of recruiting hell.

There exists a substantial difference in the results of those who exude desperation versus those who speak from a place of strength and stability. I’ve found that in the fight against the fear of conflict, information and experience are the best shield and sword around. My suggestion for anybody trying to become a stronger negotiator is to dive into as many difficult situations as you can, as early as possible. What you will find is that there is seldom a thing in this world that makes a doctor happier than learning something new and being proven wrong in a way that they respect and agree with. Medical professionals LOVE to learn and grow more than anything else but after being in the game so long, they begin to feel a degree of omnipotence due to experience. You would too. Understanding this, you must be prepared to hold your groun as needed, to paint an accurate expectation of our mutual industry. After all, physicians/APPs train to become experts at medicine, not business and staffing. That’s our gig. And if you’re good enough, your expertise will be sought after. Imagine that.

If you’re still reading this, congratulations! You either have too much time on your hands and should make more calls, or you may have actually benefitted from my writing.

Joking aside, I feel truly blessed to be where I am in the industry and can only imagine what lies in wait through the next three years. I truly hope that somebody out there takes some value from this to supplement their recruiting skills.

Please feel free to leave comments/concerns/disagreements/discussion below, I’d love to hear about your thoughts and experiences. Similarly, if this was helpful to you, let me know! I may be only 3 years into my recruiting career and possess a limited perspective in this business at this time, but we’re doing something right over here, and I’d love to continue creating content if you find it helpful.

For MDs/DOs/NPs/PAs that are curious about our options, let’s talk.

(916)-330-4119 // [email protected]

Thank you for your time and happy recruiting!