Department of Medicine Fellowship Recruitment Toolkit

The purpose of this toolkit is to collect, align, and share best practices in fellowship recruitment. This allows DOM to
advance strategic goals and ensure our workforce best serves the healthcare of all our communities.

Preparation and Time Allocation

It is critical to be prepared and mindful of time allocation to ensure a fair and objective recruitment process.

• Schedule an annual meeting with the fellowship leadership team to discuss goals, divisional priorities, recruitment strategies, program aims, and clear expectations and communication.
• Review documents for updates.
• Avoid recycling documents to save time.
• Provide time to review candidates and their application materials.
• Ensure time for interviews/ranking, including time for rubric/evaluation directly after.

Search and Screen Committee

The purpose of the committee is to provide different perspectives and minimize the likelihood that one decision-maker will have a preference toward/against a candidate(s).

• Assemble a committee with a variety of representation (i.e. rank, roles, areas of focus, etc.)
• Prepare and allot time for the goals, interview questions, rubrics, evaluations, rankings, etc.
• Acknowledge we all have unconscious assumptions. Awareness can help in our decision-making.

Unconscious Assumptions

Everyone in the recruitment process should engage in ongoing learning, unlearning, and relearning. This is important for our decision-making.

• Unconscious assumptions may impact us.
• Strive for progress versus perfection.
• Implement strategies while reviewing applications, interviewing candidates, and any other areas where these
  assumptions show up.

Screening

• To ensure all qualified candidates are considered during the screening process:
  • Rely upon comprehensive strategies in making decisions to move a candidate forward.
  • Stop periodically to review your evaluation criteria and screening rubrics to ensure their application is aligned with the fellowship requirements.
  • Provide support for every decision to advance or eliminate a candidate.
• Redacted application screening is the practice of intentionally making personal information anonymous from application materials.
  • NOTE: We encourage the use of redacted or anonymous application screening versus blind screening to
    avoid ableist language.
     

Objective Language

• Use objective, comprehensive language. Examples:
  • Use technical skills instead of hard skills
  • Use people skills instead of soft skills
• Use language that centers the candidates.
• Avoid references to “fit” and/or “goodness of fit” in the process. Instead, focus on qualifications and skills.

Unconscious Assumptions

• See bullet points from PHASE 2: APPLICATION REVIEW
• Interviewers can/should have:  
  • Awareness of personal assumptions.
  • Deliberate thinking and decision-making.
  • Perspective taking.
• Increasing standardization by implementing the following enhancements:
  • Clearly define evaluation criteria.
  • Use a scoring rubric.
  • Train interviewers. 

Interview Process

• Interviewing
  • Select a virtual interview format.
  • Develop a structured interview. Structured interviews involve standardized procedures, including predefined questions and established scoring rules, which enhance reliability and validity.
  • Before the interview:
    • Familiarize yourself with interview materials—including interview questions, contact information for
      technology support, applicant’s contact information, etc.
    • Follow typical interview protocol. Ask only permitted questions, take notes, allocate time for
      applicant questions, etc.
    • Be aware of common rating errors, such as the halo/horns effect, central tendency, leniency/severity, contrast effects, etc.
    • Considering special issues for hybrid interviews.
    • Preparing applicants.
  • During the interview:
    • Use your interview materials.
    • Use the STAR (Situation, Task, Action, Result) format to gather information during the interview. When utilizing situational or behavioral interview questions, the STAR format serves as a valuable tool for gathering crucial information from applicants.
    • Take notes during the interview.
  • After the interview:
    • Evaluate applicants holistically.
    • Post-interview communications between programs and applicants should be limited to objective questions about the program.
• Content and evaluation-related competencies:
  • Choose competencies to evaluate.
  • Maintain a list of standardized behavioral and situational questions (tied to competencies) and update the list annually.
  • Rate evaluation-related components.
  • Maintain a balance between the number of competencies you want to assess, the number of questions needed to assess them, and the amount of time you have available for each interview.

Evaluation

• Use rating scales to evaluate candidate responses. Rating scales will increase interviewers' ability to compare candidates because they were evaluated on a common scale.

Best Practices

• Use these strategies when ranking candidates:
  • Structured interviews (See bullet points from PHASE 3: INTERVIEW/EVALUATION - Interview Process)
  • Unconscious assumptions training/learning (See bullet points from PHASE 2: APPLICATION REVIEW - Unconscious Assumptions)
  • Standardized Rubrics (See bullet points from PHASE 3: INTERVIEW/EVALUATION - Evaluation)
  • Varied Review Panels (See bullet points from PHASE 1: PRE-RECRUITMENT - Search & Screen Committee)
  • Regular Calibration (See bullet points from PHASE 2: APPLICATION REVIEW - Screening)
  • Feedback and Reflection (See bullet points from PHASE 2: APPLICATION REVIEW - Screening)