Recruit for Personality or Skill?
The competition for adding and retaining physicians is an ongoing battle for healthcare organizations. Some key things that could cause physicians to leave or avoid coming on board could be a lack of a roadmap of success, unwillingness to integrate new tools or trends or a lack of positive culture.
Organizations are in the unenviable position of having to fill a plethora of gaps while dealing with physician and nurse shortages left and right. However, these organizations shouldn’t be so quick to place anyone just to have an opening filled. What needs to be taken into consideration is the personality of a potential candidate.
Sure, the technical skills are important. Those skills are what make them physicians, after all, but regarding an organization’s culture, the soft skills (aka personality) can either boost the overall morale of the team or doom previously established cohesion.
Any physician that comes your way during the recruiting process should have the technical skills needed. After all, they’ve spent years in school, residency and training (and maybe years at another organization), and the credentialing process should properly vet these candidates.
But what about the secondary or tertiary skills that are nice-to-have but aren’t immediately required? Do they possess those skills learned on the job or a desire to want to learn them, or have they been averse to adding to their repertoire?
A bad attitude, work habits and general personality traits do not change easily or quickly, if at all. If any of those are off or do not align with the current organization’s culture, it would be best to avoid possibly damaging that.
The key is finding that ideal puzzle piece to complement the rest of the team, which will make it strong, a better sense of communication, more collaboration and employees who are more willing to stay than to look elsewhere. But whether that is achieved with pure talent or personality is up to the organization’s needs.