COVID-19 has escalated healthcare’s decision-making demands, reinforcing the industry’s need for highly skilled analytics team members. As a result, health systems face mounting pressure to hire the best-suited analytics talent in a timely manner and with minimal burden on existing team members. Five proven inclusive strategies will help hiring managers efficiently build an analytics team that can adapt to healthcare’s shifting environment and also fit within an organization’s culture: Open positions to remote employees and conduct interviews via video conferencing. Insert “tollgates” into the hiring process. Use scenario-based role play to assess many competencies concurrently. Assess cultural fit. Follow up with and provide feedback to all candidates.

1. Hiring Top Healthcare
Analytics Talent:
Five Best Practices
Dan Lowder, Analytics, VP
Trevor Smith

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Hiring Top Healthcare Analytics Talent
COVID-19 has placed immense pressure on
healthcare organizations to have capable,
reliable, and diverse analytics team members
to aid healthcare leaders in making data-
informed decisions.
The need for robust analytics, however, isn’t
new to healthcare and will be just as critical
after the emergency phases of the pandemic.
As the industry further digitizes, analytics
demand will also grow, driving organizations to
prioritize sound strategies for hiring the best-
suited analytics talent as efficiently as possible.

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Hiring Top Healthcare Analytics Talent
According to a 2018 survey by HealthLeaders Media, organizations have
prioritized hiring analytics staff over every other role except care coordinators.
Amid COVID-19, U.S. (and global) health systems need sound analytics to
study pandemic patterns in their region to achieve the following:
Identify patients
at high risk for
COVID-19
Deliver safe care Perform financial
analysis for
revenue recovery
Pursue other
related goals.

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Five Best Practices for Hiring
Healthcare Analytics Talent
Based on repeated improvement cycles around hiring analytics talent, five
best practices have emerged to help healthcare organizations efficiently
attract, hire, and retain the best analytics team members to identify and
support meaningful outcomes improvement:
1. Open Positions to Remote Employees and Conduct Interviews Via Video Conferencing
2. Insert “Tollgates” into the Hiring Process
3. Use Scenario-Based Role Play to Assess Many Competencies Concurrently
4. Assess Cultural Fit
5. Follow Up with and Provide Feedback to All Candidates

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Five Best Practices for Hiring
Healthcare Analytics Talent
1. Open Positions to Remote Employees and Conduct Interviews Via Video Conferencing
As many organizations become more
comfortable having employees dispersed
around the country (and globe), they’re
creating inclusive job descriptions that
transcend geographic, racial, ethnic, and
gender barriers.
As a result, these employers are widening
the candidate pool and conducting more
interactions online.

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Five Best Practices for Hiring
Healthcare Analytics Talent
1. Open Positions to Remote Employees and Conduct Interviews Via Video Conferencing
Also, a remote interview process that
accommodates dispersed candidates by
using video conferencing software (e.g.,
Zoom and WebEx) saves time and money.
Interviewers now have many practical tools
for interacting in a web-based interview, such
as cameras for face-to-face interaction,
virtual whiteboards, screen-sharing, text
chat, and more.

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Five Best Practices for Hiring
Healthcare Analytics Talent
2. Insert “Tollgates” into the Hiring Process
Tollgates are ways to identify candidates
who are not a good fit early in the hiring
process, stopping them from going through
all steps, thereby improving the process
efficiency.
However, to prevent tollgates from
disparately impacting underrepresented
groups, hiring teams must ensure these
checkpoints are accessible regardless of
gender, race, or ethnic background.

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Five Best Practices for Hiring
Healthcare Analytics Talent
2. Insert “Tollgates” into the Hiring Process
The following inclusive hiring tollgate examples save time and narrow the applicant
pool to the best matches:
AN INTRODUCTORY SCREENING CALL
As an initial step, the hiring team partners
with the HR department on an introductory
screening call to validate the candidate’s
information, interest, experience, and
match of skills.
AN ONLINE ASSESSMENT
A brief online assessment evaluates
basic technical skills, focusing only on
elementary skills. Experienced candidates
should complete in under 30 minutes and
no more than 60 minutes for any other
candidate.

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Five Best Practices for Hiring
Healthcare Analytics Talent
3. Use Scenario-Based Role Play to Assess Many Competencies Concurrently
Candidates who pass the basic tollgate steps
then undergo structured interviews with the
hiring manager and often one or two additional
team members, who represent the team’s
diversity.
An effective interview helps hiring teams
determine cultural fit, as well as validates
technical skills and appropriate domain
knowledge.

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Five Best Practices for Hiring
Healthcare Analytics Talent
3. Use Scenario-Based Role Play to Assess Many Competencies Concurrently
Role play can help interviewers assess
many technical skills and domain
knowledge in a short period.
Interviewers can use a real-world
example of analytics needs at the hiring
organization to stage an exercise that
puts the candidate in the driver’s seat of
the position for which they’re applying.

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Five Best Practices for Hiring
Healthcare Analytics Talent
3. Use Scenario-Based Role Play to Assess Many Competencies Concurrently
A scenario-based role play involves four main steps:
Present a problem
with a backstory
(ideally, based on a
real scenario at the
hiring organization).
1
Add some de-
identified or
engineered data to
allow the candidate
to work through the
problem on a shared
computer screen or
whiteboard.
2
Current teammates
can role play as
project stakeholders
to assess how the
candidate might
interact in a real-
world setting.
3
Interviewers may
seek a more holistic
picture of a
candidate’s abilities
by asking to create
some code or
manipulate the data
for a more in-depth
technical assessment.
4

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Five Best Practices for Hiring
Healthcare Analytics Talent
3. Use Scenario-Based Role Play to Assess Many Competencies Concurrently
Creating good quality, reusable role play takes
some work. Still, that upfront effort will pay
high dividends in helping determine the
strongest candidates for an analytics role in a
relatively tight time frame (60 to 90 minutes).
The role play exercise will also help separate
real analytics talent from basic report writers.

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Five Best Practices for Hiring
Healthcare Analytics Talent
3. Use Scenario-Based Role Play to Assess Many Competencies Concurrently
And, while interviewers still need to ask the
candidate a series of questions outside the
role play, the exercise will break up the
interview and make it more engaging and
memorable for the candidate.

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Five Best Practices for Hiring
Healthcare Analytics Talent
4. Assess Cultural Fit
In quick succession with the role play exercise,
hiring teams can perform a cultural fit interview.
This assessment involves a more traditional
technique of asking candidates standard
questions to understand their style of working
and collaboration.
These questions should be consistent for all
candidates and focus on the most important
attributes for working effectively with the hiring
organization and analytics staff.

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Five Best Practices for Hiring
Healthcare Analytics Talent
4. Assess Cultural Fit
The cultural fit assessment also ensures the
candidate’s personal goals and mission align
with the organization.
For example, hiring managers will want to
determine how a candidate relates to the
organization’s core values and will support
companywide efforts around those values, such
as annual unconscious bias training.
Taking the time to ensure cultural fit can help
identify candidates with potential as long-term
team members—meaning lower turnover and
improved overall hiring process efficacy.

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Five Best Practices for Hiring
Healthcare Analytics Talent
5. Follow Up with and Provide Feedback to All Candidates
The hiring team should follow up with
each candidate in a timely fashion and
provide feedback—for both hired and
non-hired candidates.
In the event of delayed hiring decisions,
hiring teams must advise all candidates
of the nature of the delay and the
new timeline.
Prompt and considerate feedback
creates a positive experience for the
interviewee and a lasting opinion of the
organization.

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Five Best Practices for Hiring
Healthcare Analytics Talent
5. Follow Up with and Provide Feedback to All Candidates
A positive impression impacts the likelihood
a candidate will accept an offer or apply
again as they gain experience and skillsets,
or a more fitting position materializes.
Regardless of hiring outcomes, a candidate
will likely share a positive experience with
peers, thereby driving more analytics talent
to the organization.

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Make Finding Top Healthcare Analytics
Talent an Operational Imperative
COVID-19-era decision-making
demands have reinforced
healthcare’s need for highly skilled
analytics team members and an
efficient, effective hiring process.
Strategies to hire the right people
quickly with minimal burden on
existing team members are critical.

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Make Finding Top Healthcare Analytics
Talent an Operational Imperative
Following best practices for hiring essential
analytics talent and continually adapting to
healthcare’s shifting environment will help
organizations attract and retain the most
capable people, thus enabling massive,
measurable, data-informed healthcare
improvement now and well into the future.

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For more information:
“This book is a fantastic piece of work”
– Robert Lindeman MD, FAAP, Chief Physician Quality Officer

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More about this topic
Link to original article for a more in-depth discussion.
Hiring Top Healthcare Analytics Talent: Five Best Practices
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Dan Lowder joined Health Catalyst in December 2013. Prior to coming to Health
Catalyst, Dan was a Business Intelligence Engineer at the Church of Jesus Christ of
Latter Day Saints, and before that a data architect at Intermountain Healthcare. Dan
has a degree in computer Information Systems from Regis University in Colorado; as
well as an MBA from the University of Utah.
Other Clinical Quality Improvement Resources
Click to read additional information at www.healthcatalyst.com
Dan Lowder
Trevor Smith joined Health Catalyst in June of 2015 as a Sr. Recruiter. Prior to coming
to HC, he worked as a recruiter for 15 years with companies including: Parallel HR
Solutions, Who Blue Resources, and others. He also spent time working internationally
with businesses and students in the Pacific Island Kingdom of Tonga –as a consultant
with Gateway Pacific, LTD.Trevor has a degree in Business Management from the
University of Utah.
Trevor Smith

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Other Clinical Quality Improvement Resources
Click to read additional information at www.healthcatalyst.com
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