How can nurses use social media to search jobs

A recent survey by AMN Healthcare shows that health care professionals are using social media for career development and nurses are the number users of social media for career growth.

An article published in healthcareITnews.com, states a “survey was conducted by AMN Healthcare, which bills itself as the nation’s largest healthcare staffing and workforce solutions company. AMN Healthcare’s “2010 Social Media Survey of Healthcare Professionals” was designed to provide healthcare employers and leaders a snapshot of how healthcare professionals are currently using social media and other online applications for networking, job hunting and other career development activities. The survey, which was conducted this fall, received 1,248 responses. “

Some interesting stats:

• Thirty-eight percent of clinicians surveyed are currently seeking employment, and 12 percent of current job seekers have been looking for more than a year.
• Nurses have had a significantly shorter job search than their fellow professionals, averaging three months, compared to just less than seven months for physicians and allied professionals, and nine months for pharmacists.
• Thirty-seven percent of clinicians reported using social media for professional networking; nurses had the highest use among healthcare workers at 41 percent to search for nurse jobs.
• Ten percent of healthcare professionals are using mobile job alerts to find the latest hot jobs, but only 3 percent have received an interview, 2 percent have received a job offer and 1 percent secured a new job.
• Physicians are by far the heaviest users of mobile devices for professional reasons among their medical colleagues; 37 percent used healthcare-related applications and 17 percent used mobile devices for healthcare-related content or jobs. Check out the latest iphone app from http://www.jobjobhealth.com/ at the itune store http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/jobjobhealth/id413438423?mt=8
• Sixty-four percent of the clinicians surveyed would choose Facebook, the clear favorite, if they could choose only one social networking site for employement.

Also interesting is the survey found “that traditional methods of recruitment such as referrals, online job boards and search engines are not being superseded by social media, whereas social media does surpass other job search methods such as newspaper ads, career fairs and other methods.” Good news for those of us that have developed job search engines.

Enjoy the article in its entirety http://www.healthcareitnews.com/news/survey-nurses-highest-users-social-media-career-development.

Calling all IT professionals for a career in health care

With the switch to EMR (Electronic Medical records), the demand for experienced health care IT specialists and specifically Clinical Informatics specialists is growing at a tremendous rate. Any business owner that contracts IT professionals knows that finding talented programmers and retaining them can be a challenge in such a high demand area. Clinical informatics specialist positions are relatively new so competition among medical employers for experienced professionals in this area can be fierce.

Bernie Monegain over at HealthcareITnews.com has written an interesting post highlighting the competition in this growing area by healthcare employers for talented IT specialists. http://www.healthcareitnews.com/news/clinical-it-professionals-hard-find A recent study by the Hay Group has found that healthcare companies are growing their EMR programs at a rapid rate in response to the American Recovery Acts. The study points out that many healthcare organizations have formed clinical informatics positions without the needed structure due in part to “lack of benchmark data and understanding of best practices”. This is not surprising given the rapid growth in this area and the need to” learn and you go” in an area as new as clinical informatics.

As with any specialty in health care that is relatively new –most often driven by new technology- health care IT is now an area of tremendous job growth. Experienced Health IT specialist can “call the shots” (for now anyway) as we have seen in other areas of health care where demand in high and supply is low. This again shows that the health care industry is an area of tremendous opportunity not only for direct care providers but for those behind the scenes that improve efficiency and help to provide better patient outcomes.

Search jobs on the latest health care job iphone app

New iphone app frees internet job searching from computer access and offers instant real time health care job listings from the JobJobHealth.com search engine.

Written by Amy Milani, Ph.D.

GAINESVILLE, FLORIDA, February 14, 2010– Career Management Source has announced an iphone app version of their health care job search engine, JobJobHealth.com. Installed on any iphone for free, the JobJobHealth app will enable anyone with an iphone to search for new medical jobs anywhere, anytime. No personal information is required to retrieve job listings from the exclusive health job search engine. With the app, online searches for health jobs are no longer restricted to computers and their internet access.
The JobJobHealth iphone app presents real time listings of all medical jobs, such as nursing jobs, hospital jobs, pharmacy jobs or assistant jobs. The app makes the same search results available as those found on the computer. The JobJobHealth search engine draws only healthcare jobs from diverse sources on the internet, including: healthcare employers, leading job boards, and medical associations. Therefore, the JobJobHealth app provides job listings exclusively within the health care industry, increasing the efficiency of searches.
As a convenient mobile device, the JobJobHealth iphone app advances how people make use of online job searching. With it, medical workers are able to do searches immediately as they get new information pertaining to their health care career, wherever they are. Freed from the computer, the JobJobHealth iphone app enables people to take real time information and turn it into potential job opportunities. The app was designed to give job seekers an instant method for retrieving the latest jobs to facilitate a more successful search.
Searching for healthcare jobs with the JobJobHealth iphone app begins with two keyword search bars. A medical working can look up new jobs by simply typing in a job title or a company name. By clicking on the “Find Jobs” button, the app activates a search for the latest jobs including the requested keywords. A new page will appear with a listing of organically ranked search results. Each job listing is linked to another site providing details about the position.
JobJobHealth.com not only features the search engine that drives the iphone app; it also serves as a valuable resource for the development of healthcare careers. The website offers many additional resources including: advanced job searching, job alerts, healthcare job forum and blog, healthcare news feed, healthcare employer directory and career tools. While the search engine aggregates job listings from currently listed job postings, healthcare employers are also able to post jobs directly to the site. These listings are included in the iphone app search results alongside those pulled from websites. The iphone app is the latest tool made available to healthcare workers in conjunction with JobJobHealth.com.

To learn more about the JobJobHealth iphone app or JobJobHealth.com health care search engine, visit www.JobJobHealth.com, email info@careermanagementsource.com or call 888-865-8914.

Career within healthcare is it time to change?

Many health care professionals come to a cross road in their career where they have done excellent work clinically but feel they want to do something different. The questions become what exactly do I want to do and how do I get there? For some it is changing to a career in health care administration or perhaps health care education. Other medical professionals take the entrepreneurship route knowing that if the business venture does not work out they can always return to their previous clinical job.

I know fellow RN colleagues that have attended law school and now work in the Risk Management Department of various hospitals as well as a private physician owned national staffing business. What I have observed over the years is that highly intelligent, accomplished clinicians-physicians, RNs and Therapists don’t necessarily have the business experience to be successful in a business venture and need to expand their education.

I came upon an interesting blog post http://doctorscrossing.com/blog/ that recommends a book to physicians offering advice to those that want to leave the clinical world and make a career change. I imagine this is a very difficult decision given the amount of time and effort it takes to become an accomplished and specialized physician. The book, Do You Feel Like You Wasted All That Training? Questions from Doctor’s Considering a Career Change by Mike McLaughlin, offers some key advice when considering a career change as a physician and can be applied to other health care professionals as well.

Many of us have left the clinical setting with mixed feelings-after all, look how many years our work defined who we were. Patient care is extremely challenging and rewarding. There are other challenges that can be embraced where the skill sets we used in a clinical setting can translate to other areas.

Good luck in your next medical career!

Working as Travel Nurse or Travel Therapist-things to consider

This is the time of year in the colder regions of the country that many of us are growing impatient for spring and warm weather. Within health care, there is a group of health care professionals-primarily RNs and therapists-that schedule their work around the 4 seasons and follow the sun. For those experienced medical professionals that have the flexibility in their personal lives to be able to basically move to another part of the country for 13 weeks, travel assignments are a great way to make a sizable income, avoid relentless snowstorms, power outages and never-ending grey skies.
Travel assignments are not for everyone. As previously mentioned, Registered Nurses and Therapists with family responsibilities will not be able to pack and leave for 13 weeks. To take on a travel assignment a health care professional needs a solid base of experience in their specialty area, as well as some great people skills to assimilate into a new group of co-workers- a sense of adventure is essential. I have known highly experienced RNs that are so tied to working in their specific unit that they became almost hostile when pulled to another unit to help out in a crunch-I’m taking about once every few years. Obviously travel nursing would never be on their radar. A close friend of mine, and fellow RN, has a sister that is a nurse practitioner and has been “traveling” for years and absolutely loves it. Aside from loving her work, it has afforded her a very nice life style. She has taken off months at a time to travel the world when not working-she is a true adventurer.
A nicely written article by Carol Dunbar highlights what nurses need to consider before pursing an adventure in traveling-this would also apply to Physical Therapists, Occupational Therapists, Speech Pathologists, COTAs and PTAs that travel. http://www.nurse.com/travelmoving/travelinfuture.htm
So if you are an experienced health care professional, with a sense of adventure, maybe a travel assignment next winter is the way to go. Perhaps walking on a sunny beach in February instead of shoveling endless inches of snow is the way to go.

finding a job in health care

Anyone that has worked in health care recruitment for a few years has crossed paths with the jobseeker that has put their resume out there to just about every potential employer sit e and specialty job board e.g. health care job boards. We all also know acquaintances that have done the same thing and are genuinely disappointed and puzzled they have not had one response. A reality of the job search process is that jobseekers need to network and do it methodically. An article I recently read outlines very nicely what it takes to network successfully-these are tips that can be used not only for a medical job search but for any industry. An impressive stat that stands out is that “research shows that 70-80 percent of all jobs are filled through networking.” http://jobs.aol.com/articles/2011/01/27/ultimate-guide-to-networking/
The first tip highlighted in the article is to ask for information and not a job. OK, so the person you are approaching for information knows the bottom line is that you want a job but they will appreciate the fact you are viewing him/her as an expert and not putting them on the spot. “Your goal is to build a relationship and establish rapport so that if a potential opportunity becomes available in the future, they will want to refer you.”
The second tip points out that everyone has a busy work day filled with meetings or in health care seeing patients, doing initial admission assessments, triaging patients, etc in addition to those administrative meetings. If you have scheduled a networking meeting ahead of time, keep the meeting brief (have an agenda in mind) and to the point. “By planning your meeting ahead of time, you establish your professionalism, gain credibility, and cover all the critical agenda items”.
Other helpful hints that are included are: Ask questions, Ask how to expand your network, find ways to keep this professional networking relationship going, find ways to give back and follow up with a thank you note.
Like many things in life networking takes work and persistence to be successful –in this case finding a job in your industry. Although health care is considered somewhat immune to the volatility of the economy, networking for those key healthcare administration jobs has been the norm for years. Enjoy the article and we wish you success in your networking endeavors.