Recruiting in the health sector with the Brest Universitary Hospital

Hospital recruitment is a highly competitive sector, with a high turnover rate. How do we recruit in hospitals? What are its rules and specificities, and how can a recruitment software for hospitals like Beetween support health institutions? Sandrine Perhirin, head of recruitment at the CHRU in Brest, shares her experience with our ATS software.

The Brest Regional University Hospital Center in a few words

The Brest CHRU is an establishment with a budget of more than 500 million euros, employing around 6,500 staff and 600 doctors. The natural “turnover” of the establishment’s professionals leads to approximately 300 new recruitments each year, excluding seasonal contracts.

To manage this structure, recruiters divide the 4 main sectors of activity:

• Recruitment of administrative staff
• Recruitment of logistics personnel
• The recruitment of the medico-technical pole regrouping the regulated professions and diplomas (nurses, physiotherapists, and other professions for which one cannot practice without the specific diploma)
• Hospital recruitment, i.e. the management of recruitment in the care sector, which is the largest provider of positions. It represents about 50% of the workforce.

Seven managers handle these recruitments throughout the year and Ms. Perhirin supervises all of these teams.

Who is Sandrine Perhirin?

In the logic of a second career path oriented towards the development of Human Resources, I have been in charge of recruiting and monitoring staff at the Brest University Hospital for four and a half years now.
With a scientific background, and having worked in a profession where technological and computer innovations had a fundamental place (medical electroradiology technician), the development of digital tools was part of my daily life. I think that this is not unrelated to my thinking on the necessary evolution of recruitment practices and in particular my desire to implement dematerialization.

Why did you choose a hospital recruitment software?

Dematerialization

Innovation, whether medical, scientific, organisational or in terms of the services provided, is the DNA of the BREST CHRU.
Hospital recruitment could not escape this logic, and the modernisation of processes was also obvious!

When I arrived at the HRD, I could see that there were piles of CVs several metres high in the premises, and that no classification system made it possible to use this data correctly.
Moreover, the internet and social networks are now an integral part of the recruitment process. Candidates, who are increasingly connected, consult the “paper” media less and less. They want to have access to information in real time, and to be able to apply in a dematerialized way via smartphone, tablet, PC…

The dematerialization of hospital recruitment is a fairly new process in the hospital civil service. The Brest CHRU was one of the first establishments to embark on digital technology with the support of Mrs. Perhirin.
An ambitious but necessary challenge, because this organization had many consequen

• Indeed, beyond these inoperable piles, the optimization of the land is a key point which decided us, the premises not being extensible.
• Some applicants did not receive a response to their application because everything was done by mail. The result was a loss of time, a significant cost and a worrying environmental impact. The new strategy therefore emphasizes the importance of receiving a response, whether positive or negative, by making a commitment of 100% response to candidates.
• Very high postage costs with no real added value. Indeed, everything was done by mail, everyone sent his paper file.
• Publication costs, not always optimized, because contracted and managed by different and sometimes compartmentalized recruitment sectors.
• Ecological consequences due to this overabundance of paper.

All this put together, I decided to think about the different solutions that could exist. With Beetween, we have a quality assurance that has been proven with other companies.

Collaborative

The Brest Regional University Hospital Center is an institution that has just completed a plan to return to equilibrium.
In order to continue to guarantee the necessary control of the wage bill, and to avoid recruitments that may be useless, the idea was to have only one recruiter’s license, in order to allow one person to have a transversal vision before the announcement is published.

In addition, due to the arduous nature of some of the jobs performed in hospitals, some employees require specific support in order to remain in employment.
From a new job scope taking into account new possibilities and physical limits to the need for professional repositioning, it is necessary to succeed in breaking down the barriers between recruitment sectors and to go beyond the sometimes restrictive notion of grade in order to allow a return to productive, even restorative, professional activity; without forgetting profiles at the end of a contract, which have given satisfaction, in order to offer them new positions.

The human capital of the CHRU is a gold mine as long as you have “the right person in the right place”: this is what Beetween’s transversality allows us to do! […] This unique position allows us to find the most efficient solutions, whenever possible, and to recruit externally only when the need is real.

Sandrine Perhirin holds this key position. It receives all recruitment offers (after analysis of the relevance of the need by each recruitment officer) and publishes the offer if the need to recruit externally is validated.

In addition, the 4 sectors had very disparate practices: each division had set up its own recruitment process with its own mail templates, and since the CV libraries were in paper form, they were not used.

Recruiters had no visibility on recruitment in other sectors. It was therefore necessary to decompartmentalize these cells, by creating a common process and to evaluate the needs in terms of job boards to optimize the packages on the paying job sites.

How did the Brest University Hospital embark on this project?

Harmonization of the hospital recruitment process

First of all, we worked as a team on a quality approach and formalized our recruitment framework: what were the prerequisites, the essential steps… This process lasted a few weeks, the time to reach an agreement.

Following the elaboration of a quality charter (the recruitment process), the team decided to take up, step by step, all the necessary technical supports and operating modes.

This formalization is also in line with the accreditation and certification procedures expected of public service health establishments engaged in a quality approach.

Harmonization of the speech to the candidates

As a logical consequence, a harmonization of the discourse has been put in place, through the creation of model letters to candidates, for all teams.

The distribution of roles for recruiting

Mrs. Perhirin centralizes the hiring needs, she writes the advertisement, distributes it, shares the recruitment files between the different divisions and the applications that are automatically attached to them.
Each recruitment centre then manages the recruitment file: consultation, sorting of CVs, interviews, etc.

A weekly meeting is held between the teams to review recruitment results. An exchange on the relevance of a need also takes place during this meeting, during which the teams agree to recruit externally with Beetween.

What is the first assessment of one year of hospital recruitment with ATS Beetween?

A significant time saving

The multiposting of job offers and the centralisation of applications on the Beetween platform allows the University Hospital to save time throughout the entire hospital recruitment process.

We refocused on talent search, sourcing, and everything that makes up the expertise of an HR manager, and were able to free ourselves from administrative tasks with no real added value.

Increasingly dynamic job offers

Thanks to the time savings and statistics offered by Beetween, recruiters can improve the attractiveness of their advertisements.

By integrating videos according to the position we are looking for, advertising or communication campaigns that have been done on the subject, articles, interviews with people in the sector… we try to make the ad quite dynamic and I find that we have much better quality applications than those we had before.

100% response to candidates

I thought it was a plus in terms of the image of the establishment.

Indeed, by responding to each application, the Brest University Hospital was able to improve its employer brand.
The management of duplicates and the history of files made possible by the Beetween software also allows us to better identify candidates and to know if they have already applied for several offers. This information allows recruiters to better orient them and meet their expectations.

A collaborative mode allowing an easy follow-up of all recruitments

The multi-distribution of job offers

Previously, when we wanted to put a job offer online, we had to go to APEC, then Indeed, then Pôle emploi… Today, we do all this in ONE time: Beetween multiply the job offers in one click and this saves a lot of time.

Multicasting has also allowed the team to broadcast to more sites than previously. Indeed, each site having its own ad format, the teams did not have the time to test new media.

Greater visibility

A diffusion on numerous job sites, but also on social networks and on their own site thanks to the integration of an iFrame, allows the Brest University Hospital to reach more potential candidates.

The fact that we are more visible has enabled us to attract candidates for whom we were in a disadvantaged position: I am thinking in particular of physiotherapists, operating theatre nurses, etc. We have made ourselves more visible and have therefore perhaps made people want to work in the establishment more.

Use of the CV library

Today, we can use our CV library and easily find candidates: we just need to type in relevant keywords, such as a particular certification or licence, and the candidates corresponding to these criteria are automatically filtered by Beetween.

Managers’ opinions

The “manager opinion” feature allows managers to rate or comment on a CV to help or guide a recruiter. Recruiters have been able to include managers in the hiring process thanks to this feature.

A software linked to our Outlook calendars

This allows the team to schedule interviews, blocking the slots directly into their work schedule.

Statistics tool

Every year we make an important assessment. Thanks to Beetween, we are able to identify precisely the major phases of the year when there are more recruitments than others, which we did not do in such a detailed manner before. We also worked on the relevance of the media and their profitability in order to optimize them.

What was your initial obstacle to using Beetween for hospital recruitment?

Since it’s a time saver, are we going to lose HR positions?

The Brest University Hospital has chosen to keep all of these HR positions.
Managers were able to refocus on their expertise, namely hospital recruitment. A renewed motivation was felt by the teams who were able to refocus on the quality of the applications and interviews:

We had more time to rework the ad, to explain what we were looking for, and we obtained a better quality of publication of the offer because we had more time to devote to it. So all in all, we all won.

• the teams: because the candidates are of better quality
• the candidates: because they are more motivated because they chose the CHU of Brest”.

The little extra from the Beetween team:

What I also liked was the relationship I had with the Beetween staff: they were responsive and gave me the opportunity to have a demonstration of the Beetween platform, on site in Rennes. We were also able to take advantage of video conference training which went very well.

Thanks to Beetween, the Brest University Hospital received the innovation prize at the 8th edition of the HR Meetings.