1. How long have you been in your current position? Your decision to move to another hospital or health system should depend greatly on your tenure at your current facility, Mr. DiPisa says. You might think that 20 years with one organization would demonstrate your longevity and increase your attractiveness to future employers. But Mr. DiPisa says a candidate who has spent more than 10 years in a single hospital or health system poses a significant risk to other employers. “After you’ve been in an organization for 15 years, you really want to question whether you want to be there,” he says.
If you’ve reached the highest possible goal in your career and you’re satisfied with your current facility, staying where you are might be the best fit. On the other hand, if you’re still looking to move into a higher position at a better hospital, you’re more likely to be hired if you can demonstrate a history of working with various organizations rather than just one.
“No one is going to want you if you’ve only worked in one place, because they won’t know if you can survive elsewhere,” Mr. DiPisa says. “If your hospital is a market share leader that’s not unionized and has no competition, organizations will find you less attractive than someone who has been in three different, challenging organizations in the last 15 years.” Consider a candidate who starts with a hospital at 25 as a nursing manager, and at 35, the hospital promotes her to vice president of nursing. If the candidate stays with the hospital until she’s 45 and then tries to look for another job, organizations may wonder if he could survive outside her current hospital. On the other hand, a candidate who starts at 25 at one hospital, makes some significant improvements, and moves to another hospital at 35 and continues a trajectory of success, will be much more attractive to organizations when she’s 45. He has already shown a history of achievement in two disparate organizations.
Mr. DiPisa says this advice may not apply to a leader who has already reached the peak of his or her career goal. Many hospitals thrive when a CEO stays with the facility for 20 years, while lower executives should probably move on after 5-7 years with the organization.
2. Does your organization have a strong brand? The decision to leave a hospital or health system should also depend on the strength of your organization’s brand. If you work at a facility like Massachusetts General Hospital or Cleveland Clinic, and you have strong relationships with your co-workers and appropriate increases in responsibility over time, you might want to stay. “Particularly in the small world that is healthcare, there’s a common understanding of which are the best, most well-run organizations,” Mr. DiPisa says. “If you’re fortunate enough to be part of one, make sure that any move you’re considering takes into account where you’ll be working, in addition to the more obvious considerations of job title and salary.”
That strong brand name may be more important than salary, a factor that may seem like a driving force in most decisions to move jobs, Mr. DiPisa says. “On the money side, I always say take the right job,” he says. “Even if you feel like you’re underpaid, if you do a good job, it’ll take care of itself. The organization will bring you to market level or you’ll be recruited to market level by [another facility].”
3. Do you have a strong relationship with your boss? If you’re still working your way up the career ladder, a supportive, helpful mentor is invaluable for a rising healthcare executive, Mr. DiPisa says. If you are lucky enough to have one, you might consider staying with your organization to reap the benefits. “If you have a boss who takes you under his or her wing, brings you to meetings you wouldn’t normally get to go to and exposes you to their job, that’s of tremendous value,” he says. A great boss should also give you increased responsibility as you stay with the organization.
He says executives should not assume that great relationships between bosses and employees exist at every healthcare organization. “You hope that a CEO is going to be supportive and want every one of the members of their management team to achieve their professional goals, but not everybody is that way,” he says. “Some people will say, ‘I can’t really talk to my boss about my career goals because they’ll think I’m disloyal and write me off,'” he says. A great boss can make all the difference in helping you advance in your career. Don’t move until you know the leadership structure at your new facility and can assess whether the move is worth losing your mentor.
4. Are you still effective in your current position? The biggest risk in staying in one position for many years is that you will start to become complacent, Mr. DiPisa says. If you have been with the same organization for 10 years or more, ask yourself whether you still bring fresh, creative ideas to the organization. Moving to a new organization would likely push you to rethink your traditional work habits and try new approaches to problems. The problem of complacency is not only damaging to your effect on the hospital, he says — it could also make you less valuable if your facility decides to restructure its management team.
“If an organization has a team that’s been together for a long period of time, they need to stay cutting-edge,” he says. “If the organization is still an industry leader, that’s fine, but a lot of times, the organization is stale and the management team is stagnant, and when the organization looks for a new CEO, the whole team changes.” Healthcare executives must make themselves indispensable to their current employers. Otherwise, the organization could eventually get fed up with the management team and sweep everyone at the door, regardless of age, experience or loyalty.
5. What are your other options for employment? Obviously, no hospital executive should leave his or her organization without a plan for the future. If you decide to leave your facility without really considering your options for future employment, you could be in for a nasty shock, Mr. DiPisa says. He gives an example of a vice president in a healthcare organization who wanted to leave his current position because he felt he had stayed too long. Instead of looking to move to a similar — or better — position in the same field, he decided to move to healthcare consulting. Unfortunately, he didn’t take the time to guarantee a consulting position that fit his experience level. “The consulting firm benefitted greatly because it brought in a high-level individual as a senior level associate, meaning he went backwards in his career,” Mr. DiPisa says. “He was just so anxious to get out of the organization, and he made a terrible mistake because he’s now expected to have a certain number of available hours, and he’s not able to move as freely as he did when he was a hospital senior executive.”
Don’t just move for the sake of moving, he says. If you want a new job, wait for one that improves upon your current position. Otherwise, you could end up in a lower position, and you might have to work harder for a few years just to get back to your previous level. Don’t assume that every job will have the same “work norms” as your current position. Before you move, find out the details of the job, including day-to-day responsibilities, time commitment expectations, salary and opportunities to move up.
6. What will your current facility do to retain you? Some hospitals use incentive plans to retain executives over several years, Mr. DiPisa says. Though these incentive plans are most common at the top executive level, some organizations may implement long-term bonuses to keep their best employees. “If everybody leaves, the CEO has a lot of extra work today, so they want to make it harder for you,” he says. “So they might put incentives around you to keep you year to year. If you have bonus money coming your way, you’re not likely to leave [before you receive it],” he says. While incentive plans may not apply to your current position, you should find out what your hospital is willing to offer to keep you in your current role. If you are a valuable employee, they will most likely want to keep you and might be willing to offer more money or other perks in exchange for your commitment.
Learn more about executive recruiting firm Phillips DiPisa.
Read more employment tips for hospital executives:
–10 Traits of High-Earning Hospital CEOs
