UpLevel Sourcing

A quick thing for anyone in healthcare updating a resume right now.

The recruiter or system reading it first is scanning for specifics, not adjectives. "Hardworking team player" tells them nothing. "Charge nurse, 32-bed med-surg unit, precepted 6 new grads last year" tells them everything.

Numbers, unit types, patient populations, certifications spelled out — that's the language hospital recruiters actually read in.

Most strong clinicians undersell themselves here. They list duties when they should be showing scope and scale.

You don't need a flashier resume. You need a more specific one. The good work is already there — just make it legible to the person on the other side.

Quick thing for anyone in healthcare worried about AI in hiring.

Yes — a model probably reads your resume before a human does now. That's real, and it's worth making sure your resume and LinkedIn are clean and easy to read.

But don't lose sleep trying to outsmart the algorithm.

AI is great at sorting through volume. It's genuinely bad at spotting the things that make someone worth hiring — judgment, presence, the way you handle a hard room.

Make yourself easy to find. Then be the person worth finding. That second part has never been something a machine could fake for you, or take from you.

Some career moves work. Some don't. And the difference often comes down to one question most people don't ask themselves:

Are you leaving toward something, or just away from something?

Leaving away usually means the next role disappoints almost as fast as the last one did. Different paint, same problem.

Leaving toward means you've actually figured out what's missing — what the next role needs to provide that the current one can't. That's the move that sticks.

Worth asking before the resignation letter goes out, not after.

Most healthcare leaders' LinkedIn profiles read like they were last touched the day they got their current job.

Which would be fine — if no one ever looked at them.

Recruiters look. Boards look. The candidates you're trying to hire look. (Yes, they're checking out their next boss before applying.)

Three quick fixes if it's been a while: a headline that says what you do, not just your title. An About section written like a person, not a press release. A photo that's not from a 2017 conference.

It takes thirty minutes. Most leaders just never make the thirty minutes.

A quick one for any healthcare leader thinking about a move in the next year:

The first thing a recruiter does when your name comes up isn't read your resume. It's open your LinkedIn.

Most healthcare leader profiles read like a scrubbed corporate bio — title, dates, three sentences in the About that sound like an org chart.

Nobody hires titles. They hire people.

The leaders who get pulled into the best searches have profiles that sound like them. What they care about. What they've actually built. Why they got into this work.

If you're not actively job hunting, that's exactly when your profile should be working hardest.

The hospitals with the strongest hiring outcomes share something in common — and it isn't comp.

It's process discipline.

Their interviews start on time. Their feedback loops close within 48 hours. Their offers go out fast and clean. Their recruiters return every call.

None of this is glamorous. None of it shows up in a marketing brochure. But it's what candidates use to decide whether you're a place worth saying yes to.

Hiring is the audition. And the strong candidates are paying attention to every detail of how you run yours.

If you're hiring in healthcare, here's something worth remembering:

Every interaction a candidate has with your organization before the offer is data they're collecting on what it's like to work there.

The recruiter who doesn't call back. The interview that runs late. The radio silence after round two.

These aren't minor — they're the audition. And the candidate is watching closely.

Many resumes get filtered out before the hiring team ever gives them a real look!

Your resume has to pass **two filters**.

First, the system.
Then, the human eye.

That is where many resumes break down.

Some are designed to look polished for people, but rely on tables, text boxes, columns, or graphic-heavy sections that can create parsing problems.

Some are overloaded with keywords to satisfy ATS or AI screening tools, but read flat and unconvincing to the hiring team.

A common mistake is putting key skills, leadership traits, certifications, or core competencies inside a table because it looks cleaner on the page.

It may look sharp to a person.
But if the system does not parse that section correctly, your resume may be read incompletely, matched poorly, ranked lower, or overlooked before the hiring team gives it real consideration.

And even if it clears the system, it still has to win the human review.

Because in that first quick scan, the hiring team is deciding whether your resume is clear, relevant, and worth more attention.

If they cannot quickly, within mere seconds, see your fit, level, and value, they may quickly move on to the next one.

The best resumes do both jobs well.

They are structured simply enough for systems to read and parse accurately, while still telling a strong, credible story to the person reading next.

Because your resume does not face one test.

It faces two.

Most traditional recruiting models have a "noise" problem.

Not a little noise.

A lot.

More resumes than anyone can really sort through well.
More screening than the role actually needs.
More handoffs.
More waiting.
More “we’re still aligning internally.”
More activity that looks useful but does not move the decision.

That is noise.

Noise is anything in the process that creates motion without creating clarity.

And hiring teams deal with it all the time.

Signal is different.

Signal is what helps you actually make a good decision:

A clear intake.
A real understanding of the role.
A short list of what matters most.
Consistent interview criteria.
Fast feedback.
A hiring team that knows what would make someone a yes.

That is the real signal-to-noise ratio problem.

In a noisy model, the team has to work harder just to find what matters.

In a cleaner model, the process is built to reduce noise so signal shows up faster.

That should be the goal of any efficient hiring system.

Not more volume for the sake of volume.
Not more steps because they sound thorough.
Not more meetings to talk about what should already be clear.

Less noise.
More signal.
Better decisions.

That is the work.

What shows up as the biggest source of noise in your world right now?

A role can be approved, posted, and actively discussed internally...

and still not be fully clear.

Not unclear on paper. Unclear in practice.

What does this person actually need to walk into?
What kind of manager will they be working with?
What pressure comes with the role?
What makes someone succeed here six months in, not just week one?

In a lot of hospitals, hiring drag does not come from lack of effort. It comes from trying to hire around a role that sounds settled before the team has really aligned on the day-to-day reality.

That usually shows up later as slower interviews, mixed reactions, weaker closes, or an early mismatch that should have been preventable.

A good reframe is simple:
Before pushing harder on outreach, get sharper on the role itself.

Clearer role realism tends to improve more than candidate conversations.
It improves hiring velocity, decision confidence, and retention after the hire.

Where do you see more friction right now: attracting the right people, or aligning on what “right” actually looks like?