Our client was looking for IBODE nurses (technical nurses working in operating rooms) due to new regulations in France that no longer allow standard nurses to technically assist surgeons in the operating room.
This means surgeons have the support of nursing staff specialised in the medical devices needed in the operating rooms. Typically, those with this level of knowledge of the medical devices are classed as sales people so this is more of a hybrid role combining nursing and sales.
The challenge:
Given the demand for these candidates was the result of new regulation, there was quite a candidate shortage. Complicating this, the people that were relevant for the role typically spend up to 12 hours per day in operating rooms, they are not active on job boards or LinkedIn, and also we not really aware of this new sales-related area of their profession, therefore that they might be suitable for it.
In addition, people typically get into the field of nursing for altruistic reasons and are not usually thinking about a commercial sales career.
Our process:
We had sent an interested candidate to this company for another role two years before, but everything was put on hold due to the covid pandemic. However, they remembered the quality of our candidate and when they were ready to hire again, they came back to us, asking us to work on these specialised profiles.
Due to the niche focus of our consultants, we already had a network of relevant candidates, it was just a matter of explaining to them the benefits of this new hybrid role and the professional development available, compared to what they could achieve in the hospitals.
It was important to us to find nurses and convince them about the sales side of the role, rather than the other way around, given the technicalities of nursing. We wanted our candidates to be the right cultural fit for the client and part of that meant being able to communicate with surgeons about technical healthcare topics.
Given sales is quite a different career to nursing, we knew it was a gamble converting nurses into this hybrid role and therefore utilised the services of our personality testing partner. One of the tests in particular shows the commercial potential of the candidates, which was crucial to this role, and the results helped reassure the client they were making the right decision.
The outcome:
Not only did we fill the role but that client recommended our services to their parent company when they were acquired, expanding our recruitment support to a much larger company.
The recruiter that placed this role now account manages this larger company and places on average one role a month according to their requirements.