By David Wolfe
Don’t just conduct a job interview. Conduct an audition.
What’s the best way to see how someone will fit in with your company? Get them to do some work for you. Get a feel for the level of their work ethic, and also get a feel for who they really are and if they are really a team player. This is definitely an optional step, but highly recommended.
For example, ask a Certified Registered Nurse Anesthetist (CRNA) candidate to shadow another CRNA for four hours, or two hours, or a full day, whatever you can arrange. Present it as a chance for the candidate to ask that CRNA working questions. That CRNA on your team can report back what they’re hearing and what type of questions they’re asking. They might be asking red flag questions or talking about things that set off alarms.
You want to get with your person afterward and try to get a feel for whether the candidate was coachable, driven, and people-savvy. Did the CRNA seem like they really knew their stuff clinically and professionally? This is a little bit of an extension of the previous step of the outside interview. It’s just another indicator.
It doesn’t have to be free work. Some groups pay candidates in a gift card to a local restaurant or simply a Visa gift card to reimburse them for some work that they did.
As I said, “job auditions” are optional. But I recommended it, and a lot of the groups we work with do it. They like it, and find it is worth doing. You often see something pop up that’s valuable, that prevents you from hiring somebody crazy and toxic. You don’t want to let the wrong person in the building so that you’re losing patients and your current staff is stressed out and doesn’t want to work with this person.