PHYSICAL THERAPY JOBS BLOG

Physical Therapy for Dogs

JC Andrew — Wed, 26 Nov 2008 17:34:29 +0000

NORTH AURORA — Oreo was one of the friskiest, most energetic Boston terriers in Oswego, said owner Mike Donzelli — until his littermate, Cookie, playfully leaped on him from a sofa two years ago and damaged his right hip. Degenerative joint disease soon set in and made walking so painful for the 6-year-old dog that the Donzellis had to carry him everywhere — even outside for relief.

“We had to pick him up and take him outside, put him down, then carry him back inside when he was done,” Donzelli recalled. “He couldn’t stand up more than 30 seconds.”

Earlier this month, Oreo walked into Animal Rehabilitation Clinic’s basement treatment room, picked his way through an obstacle course of six-inch-tall hurdles, then trotted on both an inclined treadmill and an aquatic treadmill in a water tank. Lured by encouragement from Donzelli and canine physical therapist Carol Jurca — not to mention flakes of dried beef liver — he completed a 45-minute workout and walked out on his own.

Read The Rest Here…

Mastering The Telephone Interview

JC Andrew — Wed, 27 Aug 2008 18:35:20 +0000

There is one purpose and one purpose alone for a Telephone interview……

FOR YOU — It’s to get invited on-site for a face-to-face.

FOR EMPLOYERS — It’s to find out if you’re “NORMAL”.

To expand on that seemingly odd statement, let’s discuss what “normal” means to an employer.

Normal means:

1. Do you talk too much, do you not talk enough, do you speak proper English, and above all else, are you like them…meaning - do you fit in with their culture?

Expect questions like…”Tell me about yourself”…to kick off the process of a company trying to figure out if you “fit in”. There isn’t much you can do in this situation – because you are who you are – but show a little restraint if you tend to talk too much…or be a little more elaborate if you’re normally the quiet type. Also, think of some “middle-of-the-road” activities that you can tell the employer about who you are outside of work. Things like…spend time with my kids, ride bike, do yoga, or cook.

2. Do you have realistic expectations? In other words, are you within salary range, can you work the required hours, are you willing to do the job that they have available.

This is where all the basic questions start rolling in. “What are your salary expectations?”, “Are you looking for full-time, part-time or per diem?”. These are pretty easy questions, but be careful! Not telling the truth here will waste your time and theirs if you pass the phone interview, go on-site, get the offer and then decline it because the offer wasn’t high enough or the hours weren’t right. Be up front with what you want and move on if they can’t make it work. They’ll appreciate your honesty.

3. Are you qualified to do the job?

Questions like, “Tell me about your current case load, what types of therapy services do you provide daily, what does your employer specialize in, etc..” These simple questions are designed to size up your experience. Again, this should be easy because you’re just speaking from experience. Our advice to you here though, is to throw in some accomplishments along side your duties. For example:

“I currently work for an Orthopedic Outpatient Clinic seeing 10-12 patients per day. When I started 2 years ago, I was seeing only 7-8, but I’ve since become the #1 billing therapist in my office because I’ve learned how to schedule multiple patients each hour based on the level of attention they need. I now schedule high touch clients with low touch clients to maximize my time and profit for my employer.”

The more you can seem like a ”normal” candidate while peppering your conversation with “abnormal” achievements, the more on-site interviews you’re going to have. We’ll discuss ace-ing the on-site interview in a subsequent post.

Fluid Healthcare Staffing is a recruitment firm dedicated to identifying high-performing healthcare professionals in the Allied Health and Executive Healthcare Ranks. Visit us online at www.FluidHealthcare.com

Physical Therapy Jobs – Get Variety In a Rotational Program!

JC Andrew — Sat, 23 Aug 2008 20:51:42 +0000

Bored PT’s Listen UP!

Are you looking for some variety? Tired of the same-old same-old?

Then come to work for the leading PT employer in the Lancaster County, Pennsylvania area!

The Opportunity:

Learn a new specialty every 3 months as you rotate through a variety of case including Orthopedic, Neuro, Open Heart, Trauma & More!
See the full spectrum of patients from pre-to-post operative.
Receive support from expert Mentors and on-site PT Educators.
Work in a team environment with a PT, PTA and Supervisor on every case.
Enjoy professional growth within the 3-Level PT Career Ladder.

The Organization

Winner of “Best Places To Work In PA” 6 years in a row!
Affiliated with one of the Top 100 Hospitals in America the last 8 out of 10 years!
Located in the heart of Lancaster County boasting big city amenities with a small town cost of living.

The Offer

Top compensation package including SIGN-ON bonuses and overtime options.
Low Cost – High Quality BENEFITS including medical/dental/vision/prescription/plus more!
Tuition Reimbursement, scholarship programs, employer sponsored certifications.
Home purchase assistance up to $10,000 and the potential for relocation if you qualify

Full Time, Part Time, Casual and Weekend Only Options will be entertained.

Interviews are being scheduled over the next two weeks, contact us TODAY to schedule yours!

1-866-553-6059 OR info@fluidhealthcare.com OR Apply Online!

REQUIREMENTS: Bachelor’s degree in Physical Therapy is required, perm or temp licensure issued by the PA State Board.

Working With a Physical Therapy Recruiter – Ghost Job Postings

JC Andrew — Sat, 23 Aug 2008 20:43:57 +0000

In my previous posts, I’ve been focusing on how to differentiate a good recruitment firm from a poor one. This post is dedicated to helping you decipher what IS and IS NOT a real job opening.

Bad recruitment firms often use a tactic called “Ghost Posting”. It’s a practice used by many, many firms who advertise on online job boards using generic job listings to lure you into calling their firm or sending them your resume. I don’t believe it’s illegal, but it’s certainly not acting with integrity.

Learning how to identify these postings can help steer you away from recruiters who are just “fishing” and help you home in on those companies who actually have strong relationships with their clients and have fresh/active job openings to represent.

So what do they look like? You may see postings such as this:

Physical Therapist – Statewide or 5 Physical Therapists Needed! (followed by extremely vague information with no specific region of the state and nothing that would indicate it’s a real job)

Now sometimes you’ll notice that recruitment firms won’t list the exact location of the job. It might say, Central Texas or Near Boston. The reason you see this is because in this competitive environment, if recruitment firms give away all the details of their clients, they risk other firms stealing their business. Sometimes the jobs are also confidential too.

Take a look at one of our jobs as an example of what a real job posting looks like:

http://fluid.catsone.com/careers/index.php?m=careers&p=showJob&ID=25187

So as you’re browsing online for jobs, make sure the jobs you’re researching have enough detail to signify to you that it’s an actual job listing and not just bait that some unscrupulous recruiter has used to lure you in…

Working with a Physical Therapy Recruiter – Confidentiality

JC Andrew — Sat, 16 Aug 2008 01:51:11 +0000

In our previous post, “What’s with the High Pressure Tactics?”, we touched on some of the ways that you can identify a SUB-PAR recruiter. In this post, we’ll focus on a really important issue: Confidentiality.

As a healthcare professional, you know via HIPPA that patient confidentiality is a hot topic today. But as a job seeker, you should also be concerned about the privacy of your information in the hands of both a potential employer or a healthcare recruiter.

Whenever you deal with a healthcare recruiter, you should always tell them that you are contacting them “in confidence” and do not want your name or other information released to any employer without your verbal or email consent. A great recruiter would never do that anyway, but there are some rookies and poorly trained recruiters out there that will send your resume or CV blindly into a hospital in hopes that they’ll pick up a recruiting contract.

One of the main reasons for requesting confidentiality is to prevent your current employer from finding out that you’re on the hunt for another job. Another reason you want to maintain your anonymity is to prevent over exposure. Let’s say you’ve decided to conduct a job search on your own and have sent your resume in to a few organizations. Your recruiter sends your resume to all the same employers and now they see that you’ve applied directly AND you’re going through a recruiter. This might give them the sense that you’re desperate and it may devalue you as a candidate or devalue the offer that you receive.

Being up front with your recruiter and any employer you’re dealing with is one of the best things you can do to manage your career. So make sure you request a confidential search right off the bat.

Working With a Physical Therapy Recruiter – What’s With The High Pressure Tactics?

JC Andrew — Wed, 13 Aug 2008 12:49:00 +0000

Make no mistake about it…recruiters often have a bad name. As I mentioned in my previous post “What’s a Headhunter Do?”, a lot of recruiters “fall into” recruiting from some other profession. Usually it’s sales, mortgage lending or insurance…Three industries notorious for high-pressure tactics that earn professionals in those fields a bad rap. At Fluid Healthcare, we make sure our recruiters care about what they do and receive proper training before ever interfacing with our customers.

The purpose of this post is to make you aware of the way a recruiting relationship should feel versus the way it often comes across.

First of all, recruiting is all about relationship-building and making a perfect match, so a recruiter should never try to force you into something that isn’t a great fit you or the employer.

A GREAT recruiter will NEVER put pressure on you to take a job or go on an interview that isn’t aligned with your needs or wants! A SUB-PAR recruiter will do whatever it takes to talk you into taking an interview or a job even if it doesn’t align with your needs or wants.

A GREAT recruiter will NEVER call you out of the blue, having never spoken with you before, and pitch a job to you followed by the words….”Would you or someone you know be interested in this opportunity?”

If you get calls like this…and I’m sure you do…you’ve run into either a rookie recruiter or a poorly trained recruiter. I call these “transactional recruiters” because all they care about is finding someone to put in front of their client. It’s like walking up to someone you’ve never met before and saying, “Would you be interested in marrying my friend Tom over there whom you’ve never met and know nothing about?”.

A great recruiter may call you out of the blue, after getting a referral from someone who knows of your talents, but the nature of their call will be to get to know more about YOUR wants and needs before trying to present you with a job that they’re “trying to fill”. At Fluid Healthcare, we call this “Relationship Recruiting” because we focus on YOU…not the job. And if it so happens that you’re a match for a client we have, we’ll schedule more time to get to know you to make ABSOLUTELY SURE that you would be happy with our client and our client would be happy with you.

Maybe you’re not even interested in making a career move. In that case, we’ll ask for your permission to keep in touch, just in case your sitation changes. No pressure – No sales pitch. Just simple networking.

If you’re working with a high pressure recruiter or you get the sense you’re dealing with a high pressure rookie, end the relationship because they may do more damage than good for your career!

Working With A Physical Therapy Recruiter – What’s a “Headhunter” do?

JC Andrew — Tue, 12 Aug 2008 18:02:53 +0000

Let me first start by saying that I’ve been a recruiter for over 10 years. It’s a profession that I chose in college after doing an Internship at a healthcare recruiting firm while grinding out a degree in Molecular Biology. I selected this profession as a career because I believe that what I do improves the lives of the candidates that I work with and helps my clients grow their businesses by leveraging the most important element in an organization….good people.

But don’t be fooled…most healthcare recruiters don’t have a background like mine.

Not to sound elitist, but most recruiters ”fall into” recruiting from some other profession or use recruiting as a springboard into other human resources-related ventures. In my experience, this lack of commitment can often lead to high turnover and apathetic salesmen misrepresenting the profession that people like me and my staff work so hard to elevate every day.

This post is the first in a series of short articles that will demystify what recruiters do and how you, as a Therapy professional, can leverage their expertise to get ahead in your career.

The focus of this post is simple and concerns defining what a recruiter is and what we do…

What Is a Recruiter? Often called “headhunters”, placement agents, career consultants, staffing consultants or talent acquisition specialists…either way you slice it…our primary function is to find good employees for our clients, which in our case, are healthcare organizations. We’ll talk about how we do that in a later post.

How Are We Paid? A good recruiting firm does not charge the candidates that they work with. They are hired by the healthcare organization who typically pays the recruiter AFTER we deliver a candidate who is ultimately hired.

What Are The Qualifications? Recruiting is not a profession that requires a degree or a certification; however, there are programs available and most recruiters will get specialized training from their employer. The main characteristic that makes up a good recruiter is the ability to evaluate a candidate, identify their motivations and match them up with an employer with a like-minded culture and opportunity. There are other things like honesty, integrity, resilience, etc that are paramount, but if you can’t size up a candidate and make a match, your value to a client diminishes.

This post should give you a good introduction to this profession. Subsequent posts will dive deeper into helping you understand how you can and should work with a professional recruiter.