Senior Living Executive Asks…What
are your top three secrets for finding great nurses committed to serving
seniors?
Allison D. Guthertz, Vice President, Quality Resident Services, Benchmark Senior Living:
- “Hire for heart. If a resident care director possesses the basic credentials (i.e., they possess a nursing license, etc.), they may be worth meeting even if they lack experience in assisted living. See if they have the passion, creativity, and are open minded! You can train the individual on the regulations, company policy, etc. if they have the heart (and appropriate credentials) as a foundation from which to build.
- “Make the interview an interactive one, see how the nurse interacts with the residents and staff during a walk-through of the community.
- “Look to your current staff, ask for recommendations from your best nurses; good nurses stick together.”
Terry Lawrence, Vice President Health and Wellness, New Perspective Senior Living:
- “We leverage our internal team members to share with others our New Perspective Senior Living and Lighthouse Communities mission ‘to put residents first in everything we do’ and to passionately describe our differentiating experiences as we enhance and enrich the lives of our residents. Our leadership expectation is to recruit nurses to think outside the box and drive for clinical and service excellence.
- “Our hiring and screening practices ensure we’re reaching out and touching the hearts of those passionate candidates who truly have made caring for seniors their personal journey. We use the Care Profiler Hiring the Best assessment tool to create an all-encompassing individualized performance profile focusing on compatibility, relating to others, and approach to care giving.
- “We build strong referral relationships with local civic organizations, educational institutions, colleges, and universities. We believe we go the extra mile to ensure all local nursing programs are well versed in understanding the mission, values, principles of service, and foundational belief for the company.”
Download these tips as a PDF. 
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