In a competitive market for physician talent, hospitals and medical groups must build an organized, exceptional recruitment process that helps them stand out from the pack.

This toolkit—along with its companion research briefing, Winning the War for Physician Talent—offers resources to help you successfully attract and onboard new physicians.

Establish an organized recruitment process

Provider Recruitment Agreement
This document, from Greensboro, N.C.-based Cone Health, functions as a “contract” between the health system’s centralized physician recruitment team and the practices for which it recruits, defining clear expectations for both parties.

Provider Recruitment Requisition Form
Also from Cone Health, this form directs requesting practices to provide recruiters with comprehensive details about the job opening and a list of people with whom candidates should interview, ensuring that searches are properly scoped and that interviews are efficiently managed.

Picklist: Diversifying the Physician Hiring Process
Many organizations struggle to recruit a physician workforce that is representative of the patient population they serve. This picklist includes strategies to help organizations diversify their physician workforce.

Standardize the interview approach

Interviewing Reference Manual
A third resource from Cone Health, this document provides guidance on how to conduct effective interviews of physician candidates and a long list of sample behavioral-based interview questions.

Behavioral-Based Interview Questions for Physicians
This Advisory Board-developed tool offers an additional set of questions that recruiters and physician interviewers can pull from.

Common Biases in Physician Recruitment
The hiring process is riddled with the potential for bias, and evaluators often over-rely on snap judgements and gut decisions. Use this guide to learn about potential biases, so you can keep them out of the recruitment process.

Build a pipeline of viable candidates

Third-Party vs. In-House Physician Recruiter Assessment Tool
Use this Advisory Board-developed Excel-based resource to compare the long-term costs of using a third-party recruiting firm to the cost of hiring a dedicated in-house recruiter.

Onboard for long-term retention

New Provider Mentor Handbook
Formal, in-depth onboarding programs can ease new physicians’ transition into the organization and reduce the risk of early turnover. This handbook describes Pennsylvania-based WellSpan Medical Group’s one-to-one provider mentoring program, which is offered to all new physicians and advanced providers and receives high reviews from participants.