Background and aims

Recruiting a new doctor into a large and busy practice with a distinct culture is not a straightforward exercise. To begin with, doctors are trained to be doctors, not recruitment and interviewing experts. Secondly, with so many doctors in the practice, how do you make sure that everyone is happy with the chosen applicant? The junior doctor charged with organising and setting the interviewing procedure was known to us after attending our seminar on Writing Personal Development Plans. She saw part of her development as learning as much as possible about the management side of running a practice and therefore offered to organise this as a learning exercise. She then turned to us for help in deciding which tools to use.

Description

We decided to use the Thomas DiSC profiling system for the last four candidates that were to be interviewed on a specific evening. With modern technology, the logistics of this were made easier by the fact that the profile can now be completed over the internet. The practice members discussed in advance what sort of person they wanted in the team and a Human Job Analysis was completed, against which the candidate profiles were compared. The members of the practice were divided into 3 panels, each considering a different aspect, for example clinical expertise, personal attributes etc. However, as the practice had never used profiling techniques before, it was important for the doctors to know how to best use the results of the profiling so they did not use it as an absolute decision-maker on which candidate to employ. A seminar was set up for all the practice members in advance of the interviewing, during which an outline of the DiSC system was explained, the results of the profiling were presented and they were shown how to use the results to formulate the best questions for each candidate.

Results

The first interesting result was that the profiles of the candidates were all quite similar and nothing like the ideal. (This leads us to wonder if there is a standard¹ profile for a doctor?). However, differences in their characters were established and the full report showed the interviewers how well each of the candidates were likely to demonstrate the qualities they particularly desired as well as indicating the sorts of questions that should be asked to test aspects that were important. The interviewers then spent half an hour discussing and preparing their questions. In spite of none of the candidates matching the ideal, they were able to choose one, knowing exactly what his strengths and limitations were. Everyone was happy with the decision and the organiser commented: It proved to be a useful guide to interviewing and we were impressed at how accurate the profiles were.

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