Thought Leadership Library
Perspectives on Healthcare Executive Placement & Life Sciences Executive Placement

 By  Ralph DiPisa

A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Interview: 
Five Guidelines for Not Fumbling Your Next Career Opportunity

Over our many years of healthcare recruiting, we’ve guided thousands of candidates through the search process.  Little of what we shared with them is complicated.  However, much of it is counterintuitive to senior executives who don’t often find themselves on the selling side of the job search equation.

When a promising candidate is passed over late in the process, it’s generally not because of the candidate’s skills or experience.  Rather, it’s usually because of simple mistakes that could be easily avoided.

The job search process is a “sudden death” competition.  You need to win every round, and there are few second chances.  In our latest white paper, we share five points we often make with top candidates as they begin the interview process.

 By Dan Phillips

Believe it or not, the Boston Celtics and your hospital’s executive team have something in common.  They’re both comprised of highly experienced professionals.

But as we’ve learned from the Celtics, winning teams don’t just happen.  Teams with consistent winning records are carefully engineered, maintained, and led.  And that’s the responsibility of the coach—meaning you.

In this white paper, we offer five important principles to remember when reaching for your championship ring.

by Ralph DiPisa

When it comes to executives, the term “high-maintenance” conjures up synonyms like “disruptive,” “time-consuming,” and “draining.”

Think high-maintenance executives are “no-win” hires that you must avoid at all costs?  Think again.  

High-maintenance executives may well have just the skill set and experience you need to solve an important problem or move your organization in a particular direction.  We’re talking about very specific skill sets, i.e., implementing a new revenue maximization initiative, identifying inefficiencies in your ED, or making quick but equitable cuts in your overhead.  And, even in today’s tough economic times, you just may not be able to find that expertise in “less challenging” candidates.

This white paper answers the “who,” “why,” and “how” of adding a high-maintenance executive to your team.  We also consider the “when” - when it may be time to ask that executive to move on.

By: Dan Phillips

Phillips DiPisa’s latest article sums up the factors involved in making cultural fit “happen” when hiring senior health care executives.

Making cultural fit “happen” requires paying close and deliberate attention to a number of factors, as summed up in this whitepaper.
In contrast to so many other industries, health care is a human capital-intensive business.  If health care firms make mistakes where new hires are concerned, they face serious ramifications down the line.  This is especially critical when it comes to hiring great executives.

Two factors – competencies and experience – are essential in finding the right executives.  But these alone are not enough.  What’s typically missing is “cultural fit.”
 
Cultural fit involves finding executives that match your organization’s working norms – the match up of their values, management approach and decision-making style with those of your organization at large. Unfortunately, this important factor in health care executive recruitment often gets overlooked entirely.

By Ralph DiPisa

This article offers guidelines to consider when contemplating a move to a new organization.

Successful senior healthcare executives are constantly seeking career advice.  One frequently asked question relates to job tenure—specifically, “Should I stay or should I go?”

There are no simple answers. Rather, there are invariably pluses and minuses on both sides of a potential job change. As a result, arriving at the best answer for your particular situation demands considering a number of factors.

However, the stakes often are high.  Knowing “when to hold ‘em and when to fold ‘em” is as important to career success today as is competence and experience.

By Kevin Carroll

 Today’s physicians face many career choices.  They include opportunities to focus on patient care within a hospital setting, embrace a speciality, and perhaps enter into private practice.  At some point in their careers, many physicians also contemplate entering industry.  They may consider employment with pharmaceutical firms, biotech companies and medical device organizations who are clamoring for their expertise.  Clearly, such a path offers many pro’s and con’s, and physicians are wise to consider them carefully in light of their particular skills and interests.
 
This article offers an insider’s perspective on what life sciences firms look for in physicians making the leap into industry.  It presents eight considerations they would do well to assess when evaluating a career on “the dark side.”

Living in the heart of New England, we’ve had the privilege of enjoying some amazing sporting accomplishments, especially of late.  This year, between the Red Sox World Series win, the Patriots’ undefeated season (sort of), and the Celtics off to their best start in 25 years, we’ve had a lot to talk about.

We’ve also realized a number of lessons – hiring lessons in particular – from the successes of our local teams.  And that’s why we decided to call this brief white paper, "Hiring Insights From the New England Playing Field."

I’ve been involved in healthcare and healthcare hiring my entire adult life.  From my student days as an undergraduate at Providence College and a graduate student at George Washington University; through several management positions at hospitals across New England; and in nearly a decade here at Phillips DiPisa, I’ve learned a lot.  Not everything, certainly, but enough to be able to say without a doubt that, “I wish I knew then what I know now.”

And while I’m not sure I’ve made enough mistakes to write a book (yet), I’ve certainly made enough to write a brief white paper.  And so with no further delay, I give you, “Five Healthcare Hiring Insights That I Wish I Knew Twenty-Five Years Ago.”

Kevin Carroll, a Phillips DiPisa associate, co-authors an article that appears in a leading pharmaceutical trade publication, The Monitor, in its September, 2007 issue.  The article is entitled, “An Executive Recruiter’s Perspective on Hiring for CRP, Pharmaceutical, and Biotechnology Companies.”

The article offers perspectives on how executive recruiting and search firms need to adapt to meet the challenges of the ever-evolving pharmaceutical industry.  It considers the trends and changing practices that affect executive search firms and their clients in the drug development arena.

The authors illustrate the current recruitment climate based on their experience of more than 25 collective years of recruiting and selling recruitment services within the industry.

During the winter, I coach youth basketball.  I didn't plan to get so involved, frankly; but with four sons, I felt that the gravitational pull of sports in our house was just too strong to ignore. 

One of the coaching lessons I've learned over the years is that you have to "coach to the team."  In other words, some years you might have a tall group, and that dictates one type of approach.  Other years you might get a group of small, scrappy players, and that suggests something else.  The worst thing you can do (in my opinion) is pick a coaching strategy before the season begins and stick with it, all the while ignoring the realities of your team's strenghts and weaknessess - and those of your competition.

When it comes to hiring - particularly in a specialized industry such as biopharmaceuticals - you'll find that the same kind of flexibility is required.  Here's what I mean.

Chances are, whether you're head of a large organization or just starting to put together your team, the time will come when you'll need to tap outside sources (recruiters and the like) to assist.

You’ve just gotten some bad news. A valued member of your senior management team is leaving your organization. Perhaps he/she has chosen to pursue another career opportunity – or has decided to retire early or step down for health reasons. Whatever the reason, the news is troubling: You’re losing a key player.

If you’re like most healthcare CEOs, you may quickly begin to ponder how your organization will function in the near term with a vacancy in a key executive slot. Your instinct may be to replace the departing executive as quickly as possible – and start the hiring process right away.

Hold that thought. Consider the possibility that you may be facing not only a challenge, but also an opportunity…

Handled well, a transition in the senior management ranks can be an opportunity for successful organizational change. The key? Thinking through your strategic and organizational goals before you set out to hire.

One key challenge facing today’s healthcare executives is finding the time for adequate strategic planning. Often, executives in our industry are so busy with the many complex operational challenges of running a healthcare institution that they end up simply reacting to changes in the industry rather than proactively planning how to address coming trends. Caught up with the pressing problems of today, hospital executives can find it hard to allocate enough time to prepare for important changes the future may bring. I’ve seen many highly capable, talented healthcare CEOs face this dilemma.

As we approach the beginning of a new year, it’s natural to think about long-term planning – about your organization’s goals and the strategic issues it faces. With that in mind, we asked several leading healthcare management experts – Robert V. Reece of Cambridge Research Institute; Dr. Eric D. Lister of Ki Associates; and Marc Grossman of Smart Solutions for Health Care – to share with us trends they believe healthcare executives should be strategizing about – in the coming year and beyond.

In today’s highly competitive market for healthcare leadership talent, recruiting alone may not enable a hospital to meet every executive hiring challenge. This article explains why and how today’s healthcare organizations must establish a succession management program to develop their internal talent.

It also offers an insightful case study of one healthcare organization that faced leadership recruiting challenges. This hospital successfully implemented a succession management program that now develops its most promising future leaders. Finally, the piece offers tips for identifying the leadership positions in healthcare organizations that will benefit most from effective succession planning.

It’s not common for an executive recruiting firm like Phillips DiPisa to take a position like this. But, as former healthcare executives themselves, the principals understand that hospitals’ best leadership talent strategies may well draw on a mix of executives they recruit from the outside and developed internally.

Chief Medical Officers and Vice Presidents of Medical Affairs are not new to hospitals and healthcare systems. But what may well be new is why Boards of Directors and CEOs are now looking to them for clinical leadership.

Promotion of quality medical care and patient safety have taken on a renewed priority for our nation’s hospitals. They are in turn placing emphasis on CMOs’ responsibility towards assuring that patients are safe and their institutions deliver consistent, high quality care. This article identifies the attributes hospitals seek for their CMOs, and considers some emerging trends that impact the CMO hiring process.

The healthcare industry has been roiled by an acute labor shortage, causing hospitals to actively compete for a small number of candidates who are demanding quality work environments in addition to excellent salaries and benefits. This article examines how three Phillips DiPisa clients – New England Medical Center, Inova Health System, and Cooley-Dickinson Hospital – address workplace issues to improve their chances of recruiting top talent.

As you will see, the benefits of becoming an “Employer of Choice” go far beyond attracting job candidates; by tackling key (and often sensitive) workplace issues, healthcare organizations resolve other challenges, such as retention, productivity, reliance on agency use and overall staff morale.

Everyone associated with American healthcare understands the importance of enhancing institutional diversity. This article describes how three prestigious organizations, Wishard Memorial Hospital, Boston Medical Center, and Boston College, have implemented innovative and effective diversity recruitment programs.