Ages come and pass, leaving memories that fade to legend. Legends become myth, and even myth is soon buried. In one Age, called the Age of Quality, a swift wind billowed in the cliffs of healthcare. The wind was a new beginning. It was the beginning of a new age that would change all we have ever known.
Valued-based healthcare is here, and it’s not fading away anytime soon; volume-based healthcare, however, will be soon forgotten as myth. This concept is essential to healthcare recruitment. Soon, hospitals and health systems will be reimbursed based solely on quality of care, efficiency and patient satisfaction. In response, healthcare providers and healthcare recruiters need to hire top-quality talent – individuals who are qualified, engaged and driven to help others; individuals willing to go above and beyond the call of their job description.
Drawing on experience from work in healthcare recruitment process outsourcing, Cielo recruiters, talent acquisition and management professionals crafted a comprehensive list of behavioral-based questions recruiters and human resource specialists can ask to pinpoint vital, value-focused traits during the interview process. Use these questions to determine how to adapt recruitment strategies, as well as the overall recruitment process, to find the top-quality candidates needed to succeed in healthcare.
Leadership Potential:
- Tell me about a time you noticed someone on your team who was struggling. Can you discuss the situation and how you resolved it?
- Tell me about a time you had to make a quick, difficult decision. Can you describe the situation and the results?
- Healthcare leaders are often required to take unpopular positions related to organizational issues; describe a time you were in this situation. Why did you take the unpopular stance, and what were the results?
- Describe a time you successfully demonstrated your technical knowledge; contrast this with a time when you were not able to do so. What did you do differently? Why?
- Tell me about a time you were able to create agreement and shared purpose from a scenario/situation in which all parties originally differed in opinion and/or objective?
- Give an example of a time you were successful at empowering either a colleague or a group of colleagues to accomplish a specific task.
- Discuss a time you stepped into a challenging situation, took charge, fostered collaboration and achieved quality results.
Willingness to be a Team Player:
- Discuss an instance in which you were frustrated trying to communicate with a person or group. Why? How did you go about resolving this situation?
- How have you motivated your colleagues to embrace a team mentality? Why do you feel this was important?
- Tell me about a time you worked toward a goal with a group but your team failed to meet the goal prior to deadline. What caused the failure, and what would you have done differently? Do you believe it’s possible to find success through failure?
- Tell me about a time you worked in a department that was short-staffed. How did you work with your team members to prioritize and complete the necessary work?
- What does being a ‘team player’ mean to you? Share a detailed example of how you have acted as a team player in your current or previous role and how the experience was rewarding to you professionally and personally.
- Discuss a time you were working with a manager, co-worker or client who was unsatisfied with either your performance or the performance of a group you were a part of. What did you do to remedy this issue, and what was the overall result? Could it have been avoided?
- Tell me about an instance when you played an integral role in helping a team (or work group) recover and get back on-track following unexpected challenges or issues?
Tech-Savvy-ness:
- Tell me about a time you identified an opportunity to leverage a computer program or another technology to increase either financial or operational efficiency.
- Tell me about a time you recognized you were not leveraging a technology to its fullest potential. How did you go about fixing this and building upon current performance? What was the outcome?
- How do you keep up with the latest technology in your specialty/industry and ensure your knowledge/skills remain current with the evolving landscape?
- Tell me about a time your team has been an early adopter of new technology? What led to the decision to move forward in this area?
- How do you approach or respond to new technologies that have been implemented on short notice within the work place?
- Do you adapt quickly to new technologies, or do you require extra time and attention in order to adapt? Is there an advantage to one or the other? Can you provide an example?
Ability to Think Critically:
- Tell me about a time you were part of a project for which you had a better idea or resolution than the leader of the project. How did you go about sharing that idea without undermining the leader? Can you provide specific details about the project?
- Tell me about a time you had to define a problem, collect and analyze the data, and draw a conclusion. What was the overall outcome of the project?
- Describe a situation in which you solved a complex problem with a creative, unique solution. What was the challenge, and how did you go about resolving it?
- Tell me about a time you had to quickly analyze facts, define key issues and immediately respond or develop a plan that produced quality results.
- Describe a situation in which you had to think through information that challenged your own views or beliefs. How were you able to overcome this?
These 25 questions are designed to help recruiting professionals think differently about how to evaluate potential candidates in healthcare. Understanding value-based healthcare and how it impacts healthcare talent acquisition is going to be essential in hiring the right candidates in this ever-evolving industry.