Welcome to The Fordyce Letter:
As a physician recruiting agency, we have the usual challenge of any recruiting firm—serving our two different constituencies — candidates and clients — and the challenge of working in a specialized industry, healthcare, which has detailed credentialing requirements that vary based on the state, private versus government, and client to client. Additionally, our agency recruits for six high-demand specialties, each with its own set of expertise and requirements.
To help serve our two customer segments, we divided our account executives into two roles: marketers, who deal directly with clients at healthcare facilities, and recruiters, who work with physicians. Also, each of our recruiters and marketers staffs for a single medical specialty.
About seven years ago, we developed our Research Consulting group, a training program for account executives, to accommodate our unique organizational structure. I took over the RC group about five years ago. I started at the company as an account executive, and I had a passion for sales training. When the opportunity to manage and develop my own sales team presented itself, I was very enthusiastic about it. I am an example of the various career-path options that are available to all associates within our organization. This process guides associates through different stages of their career in a very organic manner by giving them the support and training they need along the way.
This year will mark my fourteenth year in the staffing business. They say time flies when you are having fun, and I feel lucky to be able to make a living helping people find rewarding opportunities. But had it not been for some wise advice from my father, and a recruiter I never met in person, I may have never landed in this business.
Every now and then I have an encounter with a sales professional that is so off base and incongruent with my dominant buying motivation that the lack of training, focus, and need for improvement is written across their forehead.
