Good People, Great Medicine. How Hershey Medical Center is Increasing its Talent.

Founded in 1963 through a gift from The Milton S. Hershey Foundation, Penn State Milton S. Hershey Medical Center is one of the leading teaching and research hospitals in the country.

With 8,800 staff members and close to one million clinic visits yearly, it is a huge operation. Yet the center remains focused on talent, and it pays off. With 171 of its physicians included in the Best Doctors in America, we’ll see how the Talent Acquisition improves its selection practice with Outmatch.

Owning Compliance

When you ask Richard Welsh, Director of Recruitment at Penn State Hershey Medical Center, how the recruitment proces was before the implementation of Outmatch Reference, he will tell you that the process was a shared responsibility with hiring managers. In order to give the hiring manager adequate time to deliver better care, provide better insight on the candidates, and ensure compliance, Welsh implemented Outmatch. “We now have a consistent process for collecting reference information. This has ensured our compliance with the Pennsylvania Department of Health regulations,” states Welsh. He continues, “And since the recruiters initiate the check, we have reduced the workload of the hiring managers.”

High Participation for Better Vetting

The biggest benefit that came from using the Outmatch tool is the ability to collect more information about candidates and consequently increase the quality of new hires. That was also one of the unexpected results when the recruiting department started using Outmatch. “We were pleasantly surprised at the number of reference responses. We average nearly 7 responses per candidate. I did not believe it would be possible to get that much feedback on a candidate, but that is what we have experienced,” says Welsh. And because the references participate in a confidential process, the information collected is of quality.

Moreover, some hiring managers are initiating the reference check prior to the interview and then using the results to focus questions during the interview. This action transformed their process, and Welsh concurs.

“The quality of the information we receive about the candidate has significantly increased. Raters generally freely share information, including improvement opportunities.”

ROI: from Fraud Detection to Onboarding Improvement

“The tool has paid for itself by weeding out candidates who would have otherwise been hired. The processes used by Outmatch to qualify the raters have enabled us to catch several candidates who were ‘cheating,’“ explains Welsh. Indeed, the Outmatch tool verifies the qualification of the raters and an algorithm on the backend prevents candidates from creating fake references. Since integrity and honesty are two core values of Hershey, it’s clear that they look for those same qualities in candidates. The impact of selection and the quality of talent goes beyond just identifying lack of integrity, as Welsh explains: “We were able to incorporate our organizational values and competencies into the recruitment process.” He continues, “The information received from raters made it easier to select a final candidate where two candidates scored equally in the interview process.” As they move further along in the process, the information collected has been useful to onboard new staff because “managers use the improvement opportunities information we received from the Checkup to improve employee performance during training and orientation.”

“We were able to incorporate our organizational values and
competencies into the recruitment process.” He continues,
“The information received from raters made it easier to select a final candidate where two candidates scored equally in the interview process.”

— Richard Welsh, Director of Recruitment

Outmatch’s main benefits for Hershey:

1. Weed out poor candidates. The ability to identify fraudulent activity and increase the quality of information collected has provided a new level of screening accuracy.
2. Process consistency and compliance. The ease of use of the application has enabled the recruiting department to own the process and be 100% compliant.
3. Improve employee performance of new hires. The ability to know an employee’s shortcomings before he or she starts work has enabled managers to help onboarding and focus the training and orientation.