Nurse Candidate Interview Experience

Healthcare organizations seek to improve their processes, services, and operations by understanding the patient, physician, and employee experiences. Similarly, understanding the “Nurse Candidate Interview Experience” improves your ability to attract and hire high-quality nurse candidates by creating a positive interview experience. Download the 14-page guide here.

The Nurse Candidate Interview Experience includes all interactions a nurse candidate experiences with their prospective employer. These are interactions with you, Panel Interview Team members, and everyone they encounter. It is about what happens before, between, and after the interview conversations. All contacts with your organization will influence their perception, even the realtor you select to show your candidate around the community.

This “Nurse Candidate Interview Experience” guide discusses developing a positive recruiting and hiring process and culture. A culture that engages, attracts, and successfully hires outstanding leadership candidates. The organization must commit to building, monitoring, and continuously improving high-quality candidate experiences.

The candidate’s experience with your organization begins with their submitting a resume or job application. This experience determines how a candidate views your organization and can negate anything they learned during the interview.

This paper is a guide to being the best host before, during, and after the entire interview process.

Remember, while you determine if the candidate is right for your organization, the candidate determines if your organization is right for them.

Consider these real-life experiences of highly desired masters-prepared, director-level, and advanced practice candidates:

• The organization’s escort brings you to a hallway with one office door. The door is closed, and your escort says that your next interview will begin shortly. You then sit alone for 1 hour and 20 minutes. Finally, your escort returns – no explanation, apology, or interview. Result: offer declined due to “disregard for my time and effort.”
• As directed by the interview schedule, you are in the hotel lobby on time to ride to a 6:30 AM breakfast meeting. This interview meeting was for surgeons who could drop in between surgeries. No one picks you up, and you miss the appointment. Result: offer declined due to “lack of organization.”
• You spend more than 1 1/2 hours filling out an exhaustive online application, followed by a phone interview that went very well. In the following 36 hours, you receive seven emails. These emails demand names of references for current and past employers to be contacted as a condition before scheduling an on-site visit. Result: The candidate withdrew despite feeling like this was an exceptional organization and could have been her dream job. “The emails felt incongruent with the phone interview and made my hair stand on end; I felt bullied.”
• The evening before the interview, you visit the hospital and encounter a distressed and confused family lost in the hallways. You observe the family ignored by several employees who appeared to avoid eye contact with the family on purpose. You are the one who guides them to a loved one. Result: offer declined due to “questionable culture.”
• A Panel Interview Team member tells you that your prospective boss has a bad reputation and advises against taking the job. Result: before an offer was extended candidate withdrew due to a “toxic political environment.” (Later, the hospital learns this employee had done this twice before; three highly qualified candidates withdrew their applications.)

Reasonable candidates understand when mistakes happen and the unexpected occurs. However, each organization lost someone they likely intended to hire and months of recruiting efforts and on-site interview expenses. Moreover, each of these situations was avoidable.

The sections in this guide cover the entire hiring process and include:

• Improving the Candidate Experience – make sure you and your organization is ready,
• Being a Good Host – how to put your best foot forward,
• What’s the Candidate Thinking Before and After – seeing your organization from a candidate’s point of view,
• Your Guest has Arrived – your entire organization is on display from staff to CEO, parking lot to operating room,
• A Second On-site Interview – ways to expand upon, and not simply repeat, the first visit,
• Making the Decision – being ready when the right candidate appears,
• Post Acceptance and Before Start Date – it’s never too late to lose your selected candidate, and
• Starting Over – what to do if your first set of candidates did not work out.

You have just read a short overview of the 14-page guide “Nurse Candidate Interview Experience.” This guide reflects more than 25 years of experience guiding nurse professionals through career advancement interviews.

Get your copy of the complete “Nurse Candidate Interview Experience” guide. Fill out the following information to receive a PDF copy emailed directly to you.