Save Time and Find Better Case Manager Candidates

According to the Harvard Business Review, 80 percent of employee turnover is due to bad hiring decisions. That means 4 out of 5 bad hires could have been avoided.
So how do you save time while finding better case manager candidates? Start with our six simple hiring hacks:
- Know what you want in your care manager.
Is it time to freshen up that job description? Before turning to Craigslist, CareerBuilder, Monster.com or any other job board, have a clear understanding of the position you need to fill and the person you want to fill it. Do not recycle past job descriptions because chances are the role has changed. After all, if there is one thing we know about the world of care management, it is always changing.
- Be specific in your case manager job post.
Now that you know what you want, get who you want by creating a specific job post. A detailed job description will help reduce the number of resumes you receive from unqualified applicants. By putting in a little more work in the beginning, in the long run, you will save time while finding better case manager candidates. Pay me now or pay me later certainly applies here! Investing the time up front means less time dealing with the wrong candidate later.
- Utilize social media when searching for your new care manager.
Go beyond the typical online job boards and get social!
According to the Pew Research Center, nearly two-thirds of American adults use social networking sites, up from 7 percent when the nonpartisan fact tank began systematically tracking social media usage in 2005. With 65 percent of American adults on social media, it only makes sense to expand your search by using social media.
Others companies are doing it. In fact, a 2015 study from Jobvite found that 92 percent of recruiters surveyed utilize social media networks as part of their recruiting process. Of the respondents, 87 percent used Linkedin, 55 percent used Facebook, and 47 percent used Twitter. You can pay for recruiting ads and/or simply announce your own openings.
- Use all your resources when looking for your new case manager.
Although you might be in charge of adding to your case management team, the hiring process is not a solo process. Do not go at it alone.
Connect with colleagues. Those in leadership and even your employees could give you excellent referrals. Also take advantage of the tools available to you at your company. Human Resources, for example, could help you with the job description and posting openings on company job boards.
- Choose your care manager carefully.
Look beyond your candidate’s cover letter and resume. A care manager’s skillset is not limited to his or her functional abilities.
The right candidate should fit well within your company culture and be passionate and driven to succeed in his or her new career. The right candidate will also be able to communicate effectively and work well independently and collaboratively — internally and externally. As we all know, case managers are managing more complex populations than ever before.
The complexity of cases case manager face today has grown significantly in recent years. The right candidate requires new skills, more training, and a deeper understanding of the people you serve.
“Care managers at health plans have to be able to cross gaps of ethnicity, of class, of culture, and be able to earn trust of the people they try to engage,”
– Dr. Kelly Pfeifer, Director of High-Value Care at California HealthCare Foundation.
“A lot of the patients who are currently in Medi-Cal have had severe childhood trauma,” she added. “We have learned that childhood trauma has impacts decades later, not only in terms of the things we would think about, the challenges to mental health or to addiction, but also severe medical problems that are a bit often interplay with the challenges with mental illness and substance use disorder.”
- Take a chance on someone new to the world of case management.
You have clicked with a candidate on all levels. This particular candidate would be the perfect fit for your company — except he or she is fresh out of nursing school or social work school, and lacks the necessary skills to succeed in this new career. Now what?
Care Excellence can help.
With the support of California Health Care Foundation and The SCAN Foundation, the CSU Institute for Palliative Care worked with health plan leaders and care managers to create Care Excellence — a new resource for training all levels of health plan care managers to prepare them in all phases of their career for success.
“It allows you to hire brand new graduates out of nursing school or social work school and help that person get the full suite of skills that they need to be able to work with complex populations, including people of mental illness, addiction or severe medical conditions,” Dr. Kelly Pfeifer said
Far beyond webinars and video playbacks, Care Excellence’s learning management system was created by experts in the field with significant care management real-world experience. Courses are delivered online with highly interactive activities and testing to assure deeper integration. Therefore, by continuing their education, your new hire will be able to more effectively support a diverse patient population with complex medical and social care needs.