Well said Martin. HR departments too often rely upon certifications and degrees without looking in depth at the candidate’s career progression (analysis is hard!). Problem is, a degree does not demonstrate one’s ability to learn, reason, or analyze. If we accept that the degree by itself is of relatively little value, then the trend of psychological testing should come as no surprise. This will be more prevalent in the U.S. as time goes on. Check the page linked.

You make some very good points about expanding the search field for qualified applicants, but perhaps your conclusion flies a little higher than necessary. Specifically (emphasis added):

“The shortage relates to training and certification specific to the solutions (i.e. Cerner, Epic, Meditech, etc). The only way to expand or grow these qualified resources are to receive the build and design training associated with a client contract and play a principle role in the implementation project. This creates a very closed and restrictive supply of experienced professionals that very quickly join the ranks of consultants and installers that leave the provider organizations and join consulting organizations and go from project to project. These exits create an even greater shortage overall so we constantly have one organization stealing from another with many going to the highest bidder. ”

I think the first notion that needs to be discared is that there is some sort of magic about having worked with a specific application (”Cerner, Epic, Meditech, etc”). I don’t have experience with any of them, because for fifteen years (two stints over two decades) I worked at a hospital that BUILT such applications. CPOE? We had in in the late 80’s. EMR? We built a network on token-ring in ‘91. Revenue Cycle? Been there, done that.

In each situation, I worked with the users and the developers to implement the changes necessary to achieve functional goals. You think maybe that’s transferable?

The notion that really needs to change is that people are disposable and interchangeable. “The last guy only lasted six months, so this time we don’t want to do any training.”

Why not hire the guy or gal that can learn whatever application you have in a couple of weeks? If you’re looking for such a person, you will see a resume that demonstrates diversity and adaptability (preferably with some retention history — showing both candidate loyalty and employer satisfaction) rather than a resume that has certain product names popping out of it.

It also means having the employer take a serious look at their own operations for the flaws. Why can’t we keep people on staff? It’s easy to blame “the market,” but that’s like blaming the weather because your roof leaks when it rains.

You can start with salary, but most of the reasons people leave one job for another have nothing to do with money. You should also look at the hiring process itself. Most managers are lousy interviewers, which leads to mismatches — hiring the wong guy without ever interviewing the right gal.