Some job sites offer a CV Watchdog service. Nurses.co.uk chooses not to. I think CV Watchdogs can encourage bad recruitment practice.
A CV Watchdog is a feature available to recruiters on some job web sites. They allow a recruitment consultant to receive a CV by email as soon as the CV is registered on the jobs site.
I can completely understand why this is attractive from a recruiter’s point of view. In itself, a Watchdog isn’t evil. When I recruited, I’d have loved the convenience of it.
But, as always, it’s how it’s used. Watchdogs reinforce a culture of recruitment practice that places speed of CV delivery over candidate research.
But when did speed of email delivery become a key element of good recruitment practice? Good healthcare consultants run checks on a CV before forwarding it to their client. Knowledge and nursing industry experience, combined with strong candidate communication, ensures the recruiter does a good job. Candidate, job and client are all matched. This takes time.
And taking time and being proactive is something that runs counter to the nature and purpose of a CV Watchdog – their primary function is immediacy and ease. Recruitment codes go out the window as consultants rush to get the CV first and send it out before their rivals in a ‘first-past-the-post’ recruitment race.
In a competitive trading environment, with no laws obliging recruitment consultants to follow best practice, it’s inevitable that agencies will attempt to win fees in different ways.
Fees are crucial of course. And nursing recruitment is competitive.
But nursing recruitment is not to be taken lightly. Therapeutic care, administration of medicine, restraining patients with mental health diseases, understanding the needs of a patient with terminal cancer, showing compassion to grieving family members, assisting surgeons in theatre… these are the vital skills required from the person in the CV. They aren’t always immediately apparent in a two page document. A phone call or two is required, at least. Perhaps some background checks.
Indeed, too much speed might mean key elements are overlooked. And this is potentially damaging to both patient and the industry.
Filed under: Healthcare recruitment Tagged: | nurse CVs, nurse job sites, nursing recruitment
