Wanted: Competent, Caring, EMS Professionals for Immediate Job Openings

The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) estimates there were approximately 172,000 emergency medical technician and paramedic jobs in 2001, with a faster-than-average growth in demand for EMTs and paramedics expected through the year 2010. Additionally, the BLS estimates there will be increased demand for services as the general population ages.

The median income for EMTs and paramedics stands well below the national average at $22,460.1 Due to lower unemployment rates and an aging workforce, there seems to be no massive influx of EMS providers to fill these positions. In light of the decreasing number of people seeking jobs, applicants can be more selective in choosing what organization they decide to work for.

Your organization’s most valuable assets are your employees; therefore, you will want to employ and retain the best possible people, in combination with providing excellent EMS care. The way you choose who will fill vacant positions may determine the quality of your employees and the length of time that they work for your organization.

Preparing to Hire New Employees

Once you determine that you need to hire new employees, it’s time to clarify and update the job description. A proper job description clearly states the job title, duties, requirements for the position, salary information and to whom the employee reports. If your organization has a human resources department, they will assist you with writing or revising the necessary job descriptions. If you do not have access to someone with a human resources background, research human resources materials, books, articles and the Internet to help describe the exact position you want to fill. A clear, concise job description will let potential applicants know exactly what the position involves.

The job description helps you establish a job model based on competencies in knowledge, skills, attitudes and aptitudes that you need from your employees. When you are determining these job competencies, look to the best of your workforce to determine what makes these individuals stand out. When you have compiled a list of your finest performers’ best traits, you will have a list of the job competencies you want in new employees.

After writing the job description, be honest when advertising the position. You want to promote your organization, but don’t foster false beliefs in applicants. This can lead to a rapid turnover when employees become disillusioned because the service is not as it was described.

You need to determine if you are looking for experienced personnel, or if you intend to provide all needed training for the position. Is the position for an experienced paramedic who will function as a sole ALS provider, or are you hiring untrained individuals to complete a program and attain all job requirement certifications in an academy setting? The process of deciding whom will be hired will vary with the type of job in order to find the best fit between the employee and employer.

Job Requirements

Prior to advertising the job, develop a list of mandatory job-related requirements. Title VII of the Civil Rights Act prevents discrimination by only allowing job requirements that are necessary to perform the job. These are called bona fide occupational qualifications (BFOQs). The types of requirements that would fit this legal definition could include current certifications of state- or National Registry-certified EMT or paramedic, ACLS, PALS, BTLS or PHTLS, and a current driver’s license if the position requires driving. The provisions of Title VII are meant to prevent discrimination based on age, sex, religion and national origin.2

Care must be taken when job requirements include an applicant’s educational background. You may want to hire someone with a college degree, but is the degree necessary to perform the job? You can give additional weight to these preferred requirements, but you cannot require them if they are not absolutely necessary to perform the job. Examples of preferred requirements may be a college degree, firefighter certifications and instructor ratings for different EMS-related courses.

Testing

Some organizations are faced with numerous applicants for posted job openings. In order to narrow down the number of individuals who will proceed in the hiring process, many organizations have applicants take a written test. If you are looking for experience, the questions may be EMS-related to test specific knowledge of the job. However, if you are hiring inexperienced people, this type of test is ineffective. The type of test given to non-EMS-trained applicants may be a general aptitude exam that measures reading, writing and math abilities and spatial awareness. Again, this test must meet the BFOQ requirements of Title VII.

The written test may be utilized to truly determine one’s ability to perform the job, or to simply lower the number of people who continue through the hiring process, but you cannot discriminate by requiring inexperienced people to take an EMS-specific test if they are otherwise qualified.

Many departments use assessment centers to test job-specific knowledge and skills by having the applicant perform in a variety of EMS scenarios. This type of situational testing would be ideal when the position to be filled is for a paramedic functioning in a chase-car system or other systems that would require the person to perform as a sole ALS provider.

If your department decides to include strength testing as a mandatory requirement, you must be able to prove that this is an absolute requirement for the job. This type of testing is often seen as discriminating against female candidates.

References

Ideally, an employer could ask for references from previous employers to help determine the quality of the applicant; however, due to the litigious nature of our society, many organizations will only provide the dates of employment and whether the individual is eligible for rehire. If you are planning to use references, it is important to have applicants sign releases allowing you to request information from former employers to avoid legal complications.

Background Checks

The use of background checks is important to determine an applicant’s character. Due to the nature of EMS, employees may have access to narcotics, will have access to private information pertaining to patients, and will be in contact with vulnerable patients, such as minors and unconscious or handicapped persons. For these reasons, a criminal background check may be performed to help ensure the safety of the citizens whom your agency serves.

Due diligence must be observed and maintained as to the limits and scope of background checks. If you plan to perform credit checks, for example, you must be prepared to prove that this would be linked to job performance. In addition, there are laws regarding the use of polygraph tests should you decide to use them.

Interviewing

There is a wide range of interviewing techniques used to determine the desirability of job applicants, extending from a single manager interview to numerous interviews with various members of your organization.

In a traditional interview, the interviewer asks the applicant personal questions, such as “Tell me about yourself” and “Why do you want to work in EMS?” A drawback to this type of interview is that applicants often give the answers they think the interviewer wants to hear. Plus, there is no way of verifying the truth to the answers given.

Scenario-based situational interviews make use of questions that pertain to specific, hypothetical EMS-related events. This type of interview would best be applied to the applicant who has previous EMS experience. A typical question of this type could be: “You are the EMT/paramedic called to a motor vehicle crash, where there is a five-year-old child with 90% body surface-area burned, a 93-year-old female in trauma arrest and an obviously pregnant 24-year-old female with an object impaled in her chest. What would you do?”

Again, this type of interview can produce applicants who attempt to offer answers they think you want to hear, and the interviewer must ultimately decide whether he likes the applicant and his answers.

Behavioral-based interviews are established on the premise that the questions posed will pertain to events that have actually happened in the applicants’ past and how they responded. In other words, past behaviors are the best predictors of future behaviors in similar situations. The idea behind this type of interviewing is to hire the best person for the job based on his actions.

It has been estimated that behavioral-based interviewing has a 55% chance of predicting future behavior as compared with 10% for traditional interviewing.3 In a study published in Psychological Science, David C. McClelland found that:4

• High-level executives who scored well on competency-based questions received performance-based bonuses at a rate higher than those who did not score well; and
• Executives who scored well on competency-based questions had a significantly lower turnover rate than those executives who did not score well, offering significant savings to the organization.

Examples of behavioral-based questions would be:

• Please tell about an episode in the past when you were given an order by a supervisor that would violate a company policy and how you responded;
• Please tell about a time when you contributed to the failure of a group project and what you did as a result.

By asking these types of questions, you can develop a sense of the applicant’s personal strengths, weaknesses and beliefs, and gain further insight into his background.

There are many references to assist you in developing behavioral-based interviewing techniques, including numerous books, articles and organizations. An Internet search for behavioral-based interviewing revealed more than 61,900 items.

In addition to the type of interview conducted, you need to consider who will conduct the interview(s). For example, will there be a single interview with one manager, an interview with a panel consisting of management and field personnel, or multiple interviews in both kinds of settings?

Many organizations have found that having both management and field personnel involved in applicant interviews is the best way to select future employees. This allows for evaluation of the applicant not only as an employee, but also as a co-worker.

Conclusion

The process of hiring new employees can be complex and time-consuming, but, ultimately, the organization is only as good as its employees. By making a one-time investment of time and money into developing a sound hiring process, backed by a clear job description, you will find that the applicants you attract are both better-quality EMS providers and more likely to stay in the job. Furthermore—and more important—the ones you do hire will be the kind of people you want to keep in your organization.

References

1. U.S. Department of Labor, Bureau of Labor Statistics (www.bls.gov/home.htm).
2. Bohlander G, Snell S, Sherman A. Equal employment opportunity and human resources management. Managing Human Resources, 12th Edition, pp. 48–49, 2003.
3. Quintessential Careers (www.quintcareers.com).
4. McClelland DC. Identifying competencies with behavioral-event interviews. Psychological Science 9:5, 1998.