A soon-to-be launched national ‘one-stop-shop’ recruitment process will see new graduate job offers made simultaneously nationwide and a clearer picture of graduate job-hunting trends.
Chief Nurse Jane O’Malley, who first mooted the idea of a centralised recruitment process nearly 18 months ago, sees the upcoming launch as good news and great progress towards collecting better data to guide workforce planning.
Details of the new system will be announced next month in readiness for the launch in August. Third-year students will then be able to file a single online application for NETP (nursing entry to practice) programme places next year in their preferred District Health Boards (DHBs).
Job offers will be coordinated, so all successful applicants will get sent a single job offer on the same day.
O’Malley says it should ensure a quicker picture of who has accepted a NETP or NESP (the mental health new graduate programme) place and the ability to match unfilled positions with applicants still seeking jobs. This is especially relevant as in the last two years not all NETP positions offered have been filled.
She said it would also help meet her goal of having District Health Boards “ringfence” a set number of short-term new graduate positions each year.
Paul Watson, senior advisor to the Chief Nurse, said the system would also provide information on trends in the characteristics of graduates not finding work.
The system, likely to be called Nursing ACE, is built on the junior doctor recruitment system ACE (advanced choice of employment) and is being project managed by the Northern Regional Training Hub, which also manages the resident medical officer (RMO or junior doctors) ACE.
Peter Hargraves, the project manager, said the previous DHB-by-DHB recruitment process resulted in some DHBs being short of recruits despite there being graduates without jobs.
He said the likely outcome of the new process – given that, in recent years, DHBs received almost double the number of applications for NETP places available – was that all available DHB positions for the New Year NETP intake would be filled before early December.
Unsuccessful applications would become part of a database “talent pool” available to DHBs to recruit from as other vacancies arose. Hargraves said the project would also be working closely with nursing schools and had the potential to produce a wide range of reports on graduate employment trends for the Chief Nurse’s Office.
A project team of representatives from the Chief Nurse’s office, directors of nursing, nursing schools, New Zealand Nurses Organisation (NZNO), and the NZNO National Student Unit are currently working on finalising the details for Nursing ACE, particularly the dates and timing of the recruitment process.
Watson said the team has been working very hard to “nursify” the system ready for the recruitment system going live in August. He said it won’t be perfect but will continue to evolve over the coming years. Students involved were initially wary of a new system, but later, more positive feedback found the system provided transparency and allowed them to make a single application to multiple boards.
Hargraves said after the launch that, in August, prospective graduates will have up to a month to start and complete their online application, including listing and ranking which DHBs they would prefer to work for – up to half-a-dozen or more.
After the application close-off date, the DHBs are sent the applications of all interested students. The DHBs then follow their usual recruitment process.
Once all Boards have selected and ranked the students they were ready to employ, the ACE software system matches the DHB’s job offer with the student’s own preference.
If the applicant at the top of a DHB’s list has put down that DHB as their first preference, then “it’s a match made in heaven” and the graduate’s application disappears from the pool. The pool keeps shrinking as the digital matchmaking process continues by cross-matching board and applicant’s preferences.
All DHB job offers are then dispatched nationwide on the same day, with each successful applicant getting a single job offer. The unsuccessful applicants are informed at the same time. Successful applicants have seven days to accept or reject the offer, and any resulting vacancies are filled through a second ‘matchmaking’ process
Hargraves said details about the new recruitment process will be released to the sector on the joint DHB initiative website, Kiwi Health Jobs, in June.
Hargraves added that applications can only be made by graduates who meet the NETP criteria, which include being a New Zealand resident, having graduated from a New Zealand nursing programme within the last 12 months, and not practised as a registered nurse for more than six months.
The RMO ACE scheme has been operating for eight years.
