What Your Hospital Needs to Look For When Hiring Doctors in India?

With various trends in the recruitment of doctors, it can be a challenging task to look for excellent doctors for your hospital and healthcare center. The competition among hospitals for finding and hiring reputed doctors and medical consultants gets fiercer in the wake of the pandemic. If you have been investing time and money in doctor recruitment but still not getting the desired results, find tips and insights from expert doctor recruiters in this blog.

Finding doctors for your hospital in India might have often proved to be highly challenging. Most hospitals find it equally difficult to retain doctors beyond a year. With the high rate of doctor attrition in hospitals, the search for doctors becomes an ongoing process across the year.

With more skilled doctors moving overseas for medical practice, talent availability is also becoming another major challenge. Often doctors feel that the opportunities for a better professional and personal life are fewer in India than in comparison to hospitals overseas. But that is not true in numerous cases.

One of the major hurdles is the employing hospital’s inability to communicate all the advantages, benefits, prospects, and opportunities associated with working as doctors in their organizations. Also, many hospitals report that they frequently need to replace 2% to 5% of their physician staff to avoid a bad record.

This blog offers you insights from doctor recruiters working at a successful hospital recruitment agency. The information will help you hire doctors who are not only best qualified for the positions offered but more likely to fit into your work environment, leading to less attrition.

The first checklist to prepare is about the steps you need to take before your doctor recruiter or hospital staffing agency starts the hiring process.

Steps Before Hiring Doctors

1. Create an Application Form In A Way That Data Can Be Used For Analytics and Analysis

An employment application form is a very handy way of getting information regarding the expertise of the interested candidates. With sections like prior medical experience, details about the medical practicing license, research aptitude, and conferences and workshops participated in, it can act as a checklist for your recruitment process.

Do not use a generic template for creating the application forms. Stand out from the crowd and develop a useful yet attractive format. The form should continue to help you by providing material for analysis.

2. Choose Appropriate Skills And Psychometric Assessments

Simply relying on conventional questions regarding educational qualifications and past working experience is not helpful in the medical field. A comprehensive assessment should be carried out for the doctors. Choose the interview formats for each round and the kind of screening for each interview – medical knowledge, practical experience, diagnosis, quick thinking abilities, etc.

You should also look at psychometric testing, which helps recruiters judge problem-solving skills, character, and critical thinking. A psychometric assessment could be a personality questionnaire, diagrammatic reasoning assessment, behavioral traits test for the doctors.

3. Document Everything What is Expected From The Position, And What Cannot Be Accepted

Documentation of the roles, expectations, qualifications provides a sense of direction to the recruiters. The documentation can be kept for future references if the recruitment needs to take place again.

The unacceptable traits should also be noted down to avoid hiring doctors who are sure not to fit into your workplace. For example, if you are hiring for a trauma unit, you could prepare a checklist of do’s and don’ts that help to hire managers quickly screen and filter all candidates who are not the right fit for you. The doctor recruiter can then focus their attention on the remaining candidates.

4. Decide Interview Formats Per Round

Different interview formats include individual, group, panel, technical, informational interviews. Different types of interviews need to be arranged for identifying and assessing different aspects related to successfully fulfilling the duties of the position.

Deciding and fixing Interview formats before starting the hiring process allows doctor recruiters to have clear insights into candidate search, interview management, and selection criteria.

5. Fix a Compensation Range

It is better not to stick to a single figure when deciding compensation. Decide on a range, keeping the desired salary figure as a midpoint. For example, if your hospital thinks INR 1 million is what you can pay as an annual salary, then fix a compensation range between 0.8 million INR and 1.2 million INR.

Be Careful Of These Points When Hiring Doctors

It is better to be safe than sorry when it comes to hiring doctors. Therefore, be careful with regard to the following points while hiring doctors in India. An established and competent hospital staffing agency would mark several points as red flags right from the first screening step. Find out what these points are.

1. Explanation About Employment Gaps That Lack Sense

The first thing while viewing the CV is the work experience gathered over the years. If there are frequent employment gaps of long periods, then an explanation for it should be asked.

If the candidate tries to tactfully avoid the question or has no constructive answer to justify the gap, it is better to reject the candidate at the first stage itself.

Acceptable reasons include pursuing short-term or long-term academic courses, research, medical reasons, etc.

2. Frequent Job Changes To Locations In Different Part of The Country

If you come across CVs that portray frequent job changes within a short period of time, then it reflects a lack of commitment in the workplace. If these are short-term contractual projects, then it is alright.

But crucial work positions that get changed a lot show the dissatisfaction of the doctor from work and lack of adjustment. If the job changes involve relocating to states that are distant from each other, any good hospital recruitment agency would think twice about going ahead with the candidate unless there is proof from all previous employers indicating great performance.

3. Lack of Credible Professional References

While hiring doctors, they should be in the position to provide their references and testimonials from different people. It includes positive and credible references from the executives from their previous work or hospitals. The references should be easily verifiable.

4. Inability To Answer Personal Profile Questions

The inability to answer personal profile questions can be absurd for a candidate. If a doctor recruiter finds that applicants are not aware of data they fed into their application forms and unable to answer questions related to the information they provided, it is better to avoid moving ahead with the hiring process.

For example, if you need to hire certain doctors for your rural clinics or hospital centers, and the doctor applicant has mentioned rural life experience in his application form, then he or she should be able to answer relevant questions on that subject.

5. Lack of Detailed Academic Records

Merely listing the academic degrees does not reflect upon the credibility of the doctors for hire. If a doctor applicant indicates certain certifications but cannot furnish authentic, original records of the certifications, that is definitely a red flag.

Check These Before Hiring Doctors

1) Assess Sound, Updated Knowledge Of Required Medical Fields

While hiring doctors, check their knowledge of the medical field. This goes without saying that a doctor should be able to understand questions based on the medical knowledge they claim to possess. Their sound knowledge should be assessed by conducting tests about their specialization as well as general medicine. The assessment should be framed and approved by medical experts.

2) Conduct Mock Scenarios To Assess Diagnosing Methods

To test the candidates’ application knowledge of their subject matter, mock scenarios are to be undertaken. The assessment should be made upon the diagnosing methods they apply. The mock scenarios should include simple to complex medical conditions to be diagnosed. Hire the ones who have a patient-friendly and practical approach towards providing treatment.

3) Assess Performance Through One-Day Visits

A good hospital recruitment agency will recommend hiring managers in a hospital to conduct a one-day visit before giving the offer letter. Such a visit will help in knowing if the doctor is for your hospital. To fit in the work ambiance of the hospital is a huge factor. They should be able to work as per the schedule and be able to deal with the rush. Academic knowledge and some level of experience do not prepare the doctor to deal with work practices in your hospital.

4) Assess Behavioral Traits

A doctor’s behavioral and personality traits should be assessed. Their resumes do not portray their principles and ethics. For that separate assessment should be conducted. A doctor should be patient, calm, practical, and humanistic. They should be disciplined and swift as far as decision-making is concerned. There could be qualitative tests as well to test personality traits. It can be devised with the help of a psychologist. Only the ideal candidates should be selected on that basis.

Partner With Alliance International

If you are looking for a competent hospital recruitment agency, then Alliance International is your go-to agency. We present to you the services of the most talented doctor recruiter for your hospital.

Our hospital staffing agency has been in this field for over 11 years. Hence, do not deprive yourself of expert hospital staffing solutions. Get in touch with us today. We will get back to your queries in one business day. You can be the best hospital in the region with the most advanced team of doctors with our help. Contact us without hesitation.