When recruiting for physician executive positions, the greatest challenge isn’t always getting great candidates in the door. Oftentimes, it’s actually closing the deal. It happens more often than we realize: a healthcare organization brings in a candidate that has the ideal blend of experience, chemistry, and culture fit. Both sides are energized by the interviews and eager to discuss an offer. Yet the momentum grinds to a screeching halt.
The culprit is typically an avoidable misalignment that shows up somewhere within the ten-yard line, also known as the offer process. With a little preparation, flexibility, and tuning into market signals, you can create an offer process that wins top healthcare leadership talent.
Understand What Really Motivates Physician Executives
It comes as a surprise to many organizations new to physician leadership recruitment that compensation is often not the most important component of an offer. It sometimes doesn’t even crack the top three candidate priorities.
Whereas clinical physicians often cite compensation as a primary driver for a career change, physician executives have pointed out other motivations that may take precedence, including:
- Scope of impact: Communicate the prominence of your organization and the size of the population being served. Candidates want to know that the policies they’re responsible for will have far-reaching impacts on the most people.
- Professional advancement: Illustrate clear pathways to larger roles, broader influence, and professional development opportunities.
- Geographic location: Family, lifestyle, and community fit are hugely important. Many experienced physician leaders are more likely to want to settle into a community and have family members’ needs to consider. Others may be planning for retirement.
Compensation still matters, as most executives won’t take pay cuts. However, it more often functions as a baseline requirement than as the primary motivator. Once you’ve met market expectations, additional dollars rarely swing decisions.
The challenge? Unlike clinical roles, where you might offer extra call coverage, flexible scheduling, or research time, executive positions offer limited creativity in non-monetary benefits. This makes how the offer is presented even more critical.
Consult Your Recruiting Partner Throughout the Process
Your chances of presenting a successful offer increase significantly when you leverage the experience, market knowledge, and relationships of your recruitment consultant throughout the entire hiring process.
Building the Offer:
Because recruitment consultants are conducting multiple, concurrent searches, we have data and insights that published reports can’t match. This is especially true for physician leadership roles, as the MGMA and AMA datasets are more oriented toward clinical positions. However, the biggest limitation of industry reports is that they field the survey data months in advance. In contrast, a recruitment consultant brings real-time compensation data and market dynamics to the table. Recruitment consultants also know which offers candidates accept, what causes negotiations to fail, and which creative deal-sweeteners and levers worked with other clients.
The other disadvantage of relying solely on surveys — even those oriented toward leadership positions — is that roles vary widely across institutions, depending on their current situation and organizational objectives. These variables make it extremely challenging to genuinely evaluate the leadership component of any specific role. Leaning on your trusted search partner’s access to real market data can help avoid the faux pas of going to market with a prohibitive financial offer.
Negotiation:
Your recruitment team’s value is at its peak during the negotiation process. We’ve built a trusting relationship with the candidates that allows them to voice concerns they may be uncomfortable sharing with a prospective employer, and to share personal details that can help better position the offer to both parties. This transparency lubricates the process while keeping the contract terms on track.
Presenting the Final Offer:
Your recruitment team’s experience and relationship-building really shine when it’s time to present the offer. This is a critical moment in the recruitment process. Depending on how it’s handled, the outcome and the time to reach that outcome are set in motion at this step. Organizations that include their recruitment partner in the offer presentation improve their chances of securing the candidate in a condensed timeframe. However, in our experience, this only happens in roughly 25 percent of our searches, which is a significant missed opportunity.
When empowered to present the offer, a trusted third-party search partner can maintain the candidate relationship, manage expectations, and provide coaching, while softening some of the transactional aspects that can create friction and erode trust. Consider the following examples:
- Each institution uses a different language in its offer documents. This can result in confusion or misinterpretation on the candidate’s part. When your recruitment partner has access to the offer letter, they can eliminate unnecessary back-and-forth by clarifying wording and managing the candidate’s initial reaction.
- The offer stage is often the first point at which an organization and a candidate misalign in an otherwise smooth process. It also happens to be the peak of excitement and emotion for both parties. However, negotiation can breed mistrust. Empowering the steady hand of an objective “mutual friend” (a search partner that is accustomed to interpreting the needs of both parties) can help manage both sides toward the end goal in good faith.
Agree on the Parameters of the Offer Before Your Search Begins
Too often, physician executive offers get caught up in bureaucracy: long approval chains, hiring committees, and benchmarking. All of which cause delays, confusion, and cold feet. The most effective improvement you can make to your offer process is to complete the contours of the offer before you even identify candidates. I know this sounds counterintuitive — and it is not yet a common practice, so you’re not wrong — but it works. Here’s how.
Convene your committees and stakeholders to agree on:
- Compensation ranges
- Benefit structures
- Approval chains/authorization requirements
- Opportunities for flexibility versus hard lines
This approach both reduces a lengthy hiring process and helps your recruiting consultant better identify and vet candidates. The cherry on top: it demonstrates your organization’s commitment to the candidate who ultimately receives the offer and signals to them that your team executes effectively. Most organizations wait until they’ve selected a finalist to even begin this process, so having a pre-approved offer framework becomes a sizable competitive advantage.
Offer Presentation Best Practices
There’s no way around it: the hiring process for a physician executive takes time, averaging approximately 180 days with Jackson Physician Search. However, with an average candidate presentation date of less than 60 days, many organizations have the opportunity to shorten this process while improving the probability of securing their top-choice candidate. Here are a few things you can do to keep things moving as smoothly as possible:
Avoid Sending Contracts Before a Verbal Agreement:
Physician leadership/executive contracts can be complex and full of legal language that may be unfamiliar and overwhelming. This can take the air out of the moment that should be the culmination of your team’s hard work throughout the process. Capitalize on the momentum by providing the candidate with the highlights of the actual offer as the first step. At a minimum, provide your search partner with the contract language prior to the offer so they may identify any language that might raise questions and prepare to address them.
Eliminate Arbitrary Expiration Dates:
As an alternative, you might extend an offer that is protected until a certain date, after which it may be subject to availability. After that date, you might choose to offer the role to another candidate, giving them priority during a protected period as well. This allows for flexibility to evaluate other candidates while leaving the door open. Moreover, it protects organizations from prematurely closing off options while reminding the candidate that there is competition for the role.
Consider Incentive-Based Timing:
This is the carrot versus the stick approach of offer expiration dates. Reward quick decisions with sign-on bonuses that reduce with time.
Include Your Recruitment Consultant in the Presentation of the Offer:
This is so important that it warrants repeating. Your search partner should have the relationship to keep the process warm, the incentive to keep things moving, and the ability to manage expectations on both sides.
The bottom line: recruitment consultants have the ability to bring much more to the table than most clients recognize, simply from their position as a third-party consultant. While hiring is one part of an internal hiring manager’s very big job, it’s 100 percent of what a search firm focuses on, with every incentive to make your offer succeed. By following these guidelines, you’ll extend more offers and shorter timelines to the right candidates.
If your organization is seeking physician leaders, the Physician Executive Search team at Jackson Physician Search is eager to leverage our vast network and expertise to help you find the best candidate for your organization. Reach out today to learn more.
About Dirk Jansson
Dirk Jansson is the Director of Physician Executive Search at Jackson Physician Search, where he is dedicated to connecting healthcare organizations with results-driven physician leaders who can help reach their short- and long-term objectives while aligning with their unique culture.
Leveraging more than a decade of experience across multiple industries, Dirk’s passion for the art and science of physician executive recruiting, coupled with an intense commitment to serving others, is foundational to his success. His unique access and refined method of navigating complex, specialized candidate pools help healthcare organizations of all settings and sizes nationwide secure the physician leaders they need to thrive in the rapidly evolving landscape of healthcare.
