Employee Recruiting

and Retention
TRACEY MAREK
OCTOBER, 17TH, 2014

Denise Cook, BBA

Arkansas Childrens Hospital

Denise Cook works in Nurse Recruiting and Retention in HR. Denise is one of four
recruiters in the hospital. The departments are divided among them. She is
responsible for the nurse recruitment of the Trauma team/ER services, Clinical
Informatics, all outpatient clinics, and the Travel Nurse Liaison for exempt and nonexempt positions. Denise does recruit/hire for non-nursing positions in these
departments.

Nurses take longer to recruit to ensure all credentialing and licenses are up to date
and meet the ACH minimum requirements.

Denise has eight years experience with ACH and over 10 years experience in Human
Resources.

Arkansas Childrens Hospital 1 Childrens Way, Little Rock, AR 72202

More than 4,400 employees, 500 physicians, and 95 residents

Private nonprofit organization

ACH was founded in 1912. Originally an orphanage, ACH has been thriving for 102
years.

Recruiting Strategies

Labor Pools:

Fall and Spring recruiting trips to nursing schools statewide.

Jonesboro is a big trip. Out of state trips consistently traveling to LA
and TN

Career Fairs

Social Media: FaceBook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and other Internet job sites

ACH Homepage: This is really good for employees seeking a change

and wanting to transfer within the organization.

Student Nursing Association Meetings

Some Radio/TV

Personal Networking is very important

Newspapers hardly utilized. Too costly and considered archaic

Recruiting to Hiring Process

Initiation:

Managers initiate the process by filing for a new position or to refill an

existing position by sending an e-request to HR. The e-requests are divided
out to the appropriate recruiters. Recruiters do a lot of the legwork to allow
the managers to focus on the day to day operations of the department.

Recruiters make initial phone calls to those candidates who meet the
minimum requirements from a compiled database of past recruiting
strategies. Recruiters determine which candidates are ready to apply from
this initial phone interview. She may choose 10 out of 20 candidates.

Interviews:

HR recruiters do initial interviews. First impressions are critical to get your

foot in the door. Being well spoken, neatly dressed, and polite are key
characteristics that will speak volumes. Candidates should convey they
want the job.

Recruiting to Hiring Process

Interviews: Experienced Nurses and New Graduates

Presently, all new nursing grads must have their BSN to apply at
ACH.

Recruiters have sets of example questions for either type of

candidates.
1.

Experienced Example Questions: Tell me about a time you cared for/dealt

with a difficult patient/family.

2.

Tell me about a time when you had to deal with multiple changes at
work.

3.

Tell me about a time you motivated a team member.

4.

New Grad Example Questions: Share with me feedback you have

received from your clinical instructors regarding your performance.

5.

Tell me about a time you did not meet a professional goal.

Recruiting to Hiring Process

Managerial Interviews:

The recruiter decides on 3-5 applicants to send to the manager to interview.

The manager can have other personnel to interview such as the medical director
or staff members.

Skill surveys: An old recruitment tool brought back to life. Skill surveys are prefilled out forms about the applicants that help the recruiter and manager make
a final decision. These surveys ask for the most recent e-mail addresses of the
2 past supervisors and/or instructors to fill out these forms. The forms ask for
strengths, weaknesses, and characteristics that can help recruiters and
mangers find the right fit for the department.

Selection:

The manager and the recruiter are both responsible for the new hire. They must
work together in choosing the person for the right job. Knowledge, skills, and
abilities are important, but equally important is finding a person who will
compliment the rest of the team.

Recruiting to Hiring Process

Selection:

Final applicant is selected as well as a possible runner-up in case applicant falls

through.

Background Checks: Background checks are critically essential anytime when the
safety of our children are concerned. ACH uses the Higher Rights Agency. Turnaround
time is 3-5 days.

Total Selection time takes about 2 weeks.

Job offer: Once offer is made and accepted, a salary or wage is determined. Denise
has very little latitude when it comes to earnings. She looks at years of experience
and positon and uses a formula pre-determined by ACH. There are very few
exceptions.

Exceptions: Bilingual job positions- Only the VP of HR can authorize a salary increase.
These jobs are hard to fill. Although ACH is diverse as far as culture and race, they still
have a hard time finding Spanish speaking employees. These applicants might get a
higher salary or wage determined how long the positon has been open.

Diversity

ACH is a multicultural facility.

In order to recruit more Spanish speaking employees, ACH has put ads in
Hispanic newspapers to help attract Spanish speaking people to the
organization. Spanish speaking employees can help close the gap within
the language barrier that exists between patients and medical personnel.

Diversity is weakest in military and disabled personnel.

Candidates Benefits: How does the recruiter sell ACH to the

candidate? The recruiters use the excellent reputation of ACH to help
sell itself as well as the friendly atmosphere, community spirit within
the organization, family friendly jobs(on site daycare and preschool),
and examples of real miracles that take place at ACH. Denise also
talks about the positive aspects of relocating to the city of Little Rock
to potential candidates.

Diversity
and other Challenges

Develop effective Skills/Competency Strategies

Versant is a new RN Residency Program. 18 week orientation program

with classroom time and clinical time to transition newly graduated
nurses from students into more confident, competent , and safe medical
practitioners.

New ACH nurses are paired up with a mentor to learn the ACH methods of
treating patients before reporting to duty on an actual shift.

Increases commitment and retention.

Cons of Recruiting: Every hire is a risk. An interviewee may appear

confident, but their skills may be weak. Shy candidates sometimes
have the best skills. These candidates can have a direct effect on a
patients well being. This is the challenge of recruiting.

Future of Recruiting
and Retention

Recruiters will be forced to think outside of the box to keep attracting

the right people to ACH. More Web-X interviews and skyping as
competition is getting fierce. More on-site interviews. More selling of
the hospital itself and to make people think this is their dream job.
More catering to the needs of new employees.

Revamped Onboarding process

Recruiters and managers meet quarterly to discuss new ideals. Implement

new retaining procedures to make sure new employees stays. Turnover
occurs within the first three years. Recruiters would check in with the
new hires every 3 months for the first year to ensure employee satisfaction.
Employees have an responsibility to ask for what they need.

Realistic Job Previews: Allows for the applicants to work within the setting to
determine if they feel comfortable. Also gives mangers a look to see if
applicant is the right fit. Helps in making the final decision.

Conclusion
and Reflection

I learned a lot about Arkansas Childrens Hospitals recruiting and retention processes. I had
picked this topic because I was interested on how to find people willing to stay longer than a
couple of years within my department. I was very interested in the new proposals of
onboarding ideals and how this can potentially affect new hires. I feel these new onboarding
implementations would have been extremely beneficial. Turnover can be costly to the
department and the organization. Prevention is the key factor in decreasing turnover, and
hopefully the new onboarding techniques can better the recruiting and hiring processes.

Speaking from personal experience, working at ACH either attracts candidates easily or
scares them away. Some find that working with children is too sad and how can one work in
an atmosphere like this everyday. In my job, yes, there has been sad times, but I say to
look at all the positives. Focus on how we help these children, kids, and young adults from
being sick to the healthiest that they can be. These patients are more resilient than any
adults on any given day. If I had to recruit someone to consider working here, I would tell
them all of the miracles I have witnessed in my lab. I could tell numerous accounts of all the
amazing miracles I have seen. Miracle do not happen everyday, but when they do, it is most
rewarding.