The healthcare executive search process presents a critical opportunity to advance your organization’s strategic hiring goals. However, it also entails significant challenges. As a Chief Human Resources Officer, you are acutely aware of the profound impact one leader can have on the organization’s direction. It is your responsibility to identify new executives whose strategic vision, professional approach, and work ethic will permeate the organization, driving positive and sustainable outcomes.
Finding a leader who can drive organizational goals from innovation to stabilization is a tall order. You’ll need time, expert resources, and a concrete plan. And, if you want the best results, you will need an industry-specialist partner, too. Here, the Kirby Bates team will break down a checklist for your next executive search process, including what bases to cover before the search, during the search, and after you make a hire. Let’s get right to it.
Part One: Getting Prepared for Your Executive Search
Abraham Lincoln’s reported quote about sharpening an ax before chopping down a tree is an approach full of wisdom. Preparation is equally essential for your organization’s executive search.
In an industry like healthcare that faces uniquely complex regulations and reimbursement models, you can’t afford to make the wrong hire. Therefore, the first part of any successful healthcare executive search revolves around clarifying crucial elements like the role’s responsibilities, aligning other stakeholders on the process, and establishing a timeline for placement.
Let’s take a deeper dive at those steps here:
1. Engage an Executive Search Firm that Specializes in Healthcare
In the modern healthcare ecosystem, hiring successfully is more important than ever. With rapidly changing regulations, reimbursements, and technologies, finding a candidate ahead of the curve is vital. Unfortunately, hundreds of other organizations are also seeking those candidates.
Working with a healthcare industry specialist executive search firm like Kirby Bates Associates can help your organization connect with the right leader quickly. Our search team has been exclusively in the healthcare industry for decades and, with our proprietary methodology for executive searches, we’ve placed executives in hundreds of leading organizations across the country.
Additionally, while traditional search processes yield just a few candidates to choose from, our recruiters can give your organization access to a sprawling pool of candidates by tapping their vast professional networks and passive candidates.
As a result, we can guarantee a first slate of candidates in less than 30 days, helping your organization get the leadership it needs, faster.
2. Assemble a Search Committee
Attitudes, expectations, and approaches to decision-making flow from leadership downward in healthcare organizations. When hiring for a C-Suite role, it’s crucial to consider the impact they’ll have on the leaders who work most closely with them and the organization as a whole.
Forming an executive search committee can help your organization iron out what’s needed from a leader.
Tips for a Successful Executive Search Committee
- Outline the committee’s responsibilities and scope, including the stages of the search process they will be involved in, like screening, interviewing, and final selection. This will help your executive search committee stay on track and focus on the critical work at hand.
- Include diverse stakeholders from across your organization to help prevent unconscious biases from impacting the outcome of your search.
- Establish transparent decision-making processes and a protocol for sharing updates, news, and next steps. These processes will add predictability, calmness, and order to what is an exciting, albeit stressful, period for your organization.
- Finally, keep it positive. While the steps we outline above can help prevent your executive search committee from becoming a grievance committee, you and the others on the committee must actively choose to be invested in the organization’s future rather than focused on the past.
3. Define the Role, Requirements, and Ideal Candidate Profile
While you might need to hire a CEO, a CFO, or a CIO, the actual competencies that role needs will vary depending on your organization’s long-term goals and strategy. For example, a healthcare CIO might need experience implementing telehealth offerings throughout a system, or they may need experience modernizing an IT security infrastructure.
Clearly outlining the requirements assures that you look in the right places and prepare to make the best decision for your organization’s needs. Additionally, consider what type of candidate will align with your organization’s culture — and whether it’s time to shake things up.
Don’t know what you need? You’re not alone. As the healthcare industry rapidly evolves in practices and technology, it’s easy to feel like you’re falling behind, yet difficult to pinpoint why. If you know your organization needs change but don’t know what needs to change, consider bringing in interim leadership.
With a fresh perspective on your organization and decades of experience behind them, interim leaders can provide stability during transition periods while also helping advise on the qualities a long-term successor should bring to your organization.
Finally, take feedback from your executive search committee and use it to outline the ideal candidate. Bolster that information with data on what your organization needs in terms of results.
4. Create a Timeline and Budget for Hiring
Every organization’s needs are different, and yours should carefully assess how rapidly an executive needs to be placed. If your organization is undergoing immediate, unplanned changes, you may need a leader ASAP. Regardless of the runway your organization has, beware of the trap of making a rushed decision. The wrong leadership can have an immense cost.
Your healthcare executive search partner should provide a clear timeline of search process benchmarks, communication touchpoints, and deliverables. They should also prioritize keeping the search on track with scheduling assistance.
If you urgently need leadership, consider bringing in an interim leader. Interim leaders can provide stability amidst uncertainty and keep your strategic initiatives moving forward while you work on finding a permanent replacement.
Part Two: Executing Your Executive Search
1. Launch the Search
When you launch the search, publish your job posting in leading industry publications and job boards. However, you should also keep in mind that if your organization follows that traditional approach to hiring, you’ll only be accessing active candidates.
Often, passive candidates represent the highest-quality leadership out there, and just because they’re not actively pursuing a new role doesn’t necessarily mean they’re unavailable. Kirby Bates’ executive recruiters are masters of the art of recruiting passive candidates. By taking the executive recruiting process from public to private spaces, our recruiters can identify matches that elevate candidates’ careers and your organization’s success.
2. Screening and Shortlisting Candidates
If you’re running your executive search solo, screening and shortlisting candidates will take time, and a lot of it. During this time, be sure to use standardized evaluation criteria to mitigate risks of bias and assure fairness throughout the screening process.
If you’re working with a healthcare executive recruiter like Kirby Bates, you won’t need to worry about screening candidates because we present you with a refined slate of only pre-qualified candidates.
An added benefit of working with a healthcare executive search firm like Kirby Bates is our exclusive focus on the healthcare industry. Our recruiters know this industry better than other executive search firms. This specialized knowledge enables our recruiters to ask the right questions to separate good candidates from great candidates. As a result, we can present candidates that hit the ground running and ready to address your organization’s specific challenges and lead it where you want.
3. Interviewing Candidates
Whether you’ve identified candidates independently or have reviewed a slate presented by an executive search firm, interviewing candidates is one of the most critical moments in the entire healthcare executive search process.
Take the time to structure interviews thoughtfully, asking questions that will reveal the candidate’s competencies and skills with respect to your organization’s goals, as well as their cultural fitness. A strong executive search partner will provide search committee members with interview questions and an objective candidate evaluation tool.
Last, remember to bring your A-game and be prepared for their questions. Passive candidates particularly won’t feel the pressures of job-searching, so your performance in the interviews can play a significant role in whether they choose to join your organization.
4. Follow Up With References
If you’re impressed with a candidate’s credentials and past performance, your next move is to follow up with their references. A few things worth considering with their references include:
- How closely did the candidate work with their reference? Is the reference someone who interacted with the candidate daily, or is the reference largely unfamiliar with the candidate and used as a reference primarily for clout?
- Does the candidate provide 360º references? Getting input from professionals the candidate has worked alongside, below, and above can paint a complete picture, reiterating or disputing what you saw in their interview.
At Kirby Bates, our healthcare executive recruiters follow up with all candidate references to gain deeper insights into the candidate’s experience and fit for your organization’s role.
Part Three: Assuring a Successful Transition
1. Making the Offer
When you’ve identified the perfect candidate, it’s time to make an offer. Your search committee should have already established what will be offered regarding compensation and benefits. However, you may tailor it to your candidate depending on their experience and expectations.
Working with an executive search partner can be especially beneficial here. By setting expectations early in the recruiting process, you can assure the candidate and your organization are aligned when it comes to compensation. At this point, your team has invested significant time in the executive search process, and every day without a leader is costing you. Running into hiccups this late in the search process can be frustrating and costly.
2. Onboarding and Integration
Your organization’s onboarding process can play an outsized role in an employee’s impression of you. From the bedside to the C-Suite, the new hire’s onboarding experience can determine whether someone remains there a year later. Therefore, take the time to make your organization’s onboarding process thorough, supportive, and organized.
While C-Suite leaders won’t have the same onboarding experience as someone working directly with patients, your organization still has a lot of work to do to demonstrate your dedication to organization and communication.
Kirby Bates’ Executive Integration Service is a natural extension of the selection process. We actively support the candidate’s integration and assimilation into your organization through scheduled follow ups. Through this process, we help your organization assess the candidate’s progress against benchmarks and provide support through consultations, assessment tools, and additional resources.
If your organization has been working with an interim leader, one of the most significant benefits you’ll experience is that the onboarding period is significantly smoother. The additional coverage and experience an interim leader brings to your organization enables new executive leaders to invest their time where it matters most for your organization’s strategic direction, rather than starting their new role by scrambling to put things in order.
The Bottom Line on the Healthcare Executive Search Process
Leadership determines the direction of your healthcare organization and the attitudes that permeate your culture. Finding the right leadership requires a significant investment of both time and resources — and for good reason. Healthcare’s unique nuance and vital importance in society demands the best leadership possible, and as the industry changes and more private-equity backed funding opportunities arise, finding the right leaders is more important than ever.
Take the time to thoroughly prepare for the search, bringing in diverse voices from across the organization to get explicitly clear on what your organization needs from its next leader. Launch your search wisely, using an executive search partner like Kirby Bates Associates, that exclusively specializes in the healthcare industry, to find the hidden gems. Finally, create a thoughtful onboarding experience to set your new leader up for success while confirming that they made the right decision by joining your organization.
Following this checklist for the healthcare executive search process will put you on the track to success. However, when you can’t afford mistakes or delays, turn to the healthcare executive search specialists.
About Kirby Bates Associates
Kirby Bates Associates is the leader in healthcare executive searches . Our team of executive recruiters can understand the challenges facing your organization because they’ve been there.
With over 35 years of experience exclusively in healthcare, we’ve seen the industry shift and have connected our clients with the leaders to steer them through each change. Our first-hand experience in healthcare allows us to understand your organization’s challenges and identify the competencies a leader needs to overcome them.
If your organization is preparing for an executive search, we can find the leader you need. Get in touch with our team today to get started.