If you’re a medical employer that utilizes consulting services to source physicians for your practice, save time and prevent frustration by screening the physician recruiter. Three quick questions will tell you which physician recruiter will take the time to help you thoughtfully match your open physician jobs with quality candidates.

Consider asking your physician recruiting partners these questions to ensure you’re getting a quality search with top physician candidates:

1. Have you spoken to the candidate before contacting me? This might be the most important question. Some firms simply pull CVs from online sources and send them for a name clear before they even know if the candidate wants them to. This wastes your time and frustrates physician candidates.
2. Are the candidates you’re proposing informed about our physician job opportunity? Many employers reach out to a referred candidate and the candidate tells them they know nothing of the opportunity and aren’t interested. They also wonder how the employer got their CV. This is all the result of a recruiter sending out CVs in bulk without doing the recruiting work. This leads to frustration on all sides as employers receive unenthusiastic responses from unprepared candidates and question how their information was accessed in the first place – costing valuable time that could have gone towards other recruiting efforts.
3. Ask the recruiter details about the candidate that are not listed on their CV such as, “are they willing to work in an underserved area?” This will help you discern if the recruiter actually spoke with the candidate and knows about them versus simply stating what they read off of a CV.

Whether you’ve been working with a consultant for years or just weeks, revisiting the quality of physician recruiting services is imperative.

See More: How Employers Can Prepare for Physician Site Visits