“Question of the day: With 20+ years of nursing experience & my HIT certification, why is it still so hard to break into the field?”

This question was posed by one of the followers of HIMSS JobMine’s Facebook page. I wish I had the answer. It’s not so cut-and-dry. Employers look at a job seeker's work history and ask, have they moved around a lot, are there unexplainable gaps in between jobs, etc.?

Pushing all of that to the side, a person with 20+ years of clinical experience and an HIT certification should be a prime candidate for any IT department. Maybe not at the managerial level (yet), but their knowledge of the workflow processes in a hospital or physician practice setting will help them advance quickly. But they have to be given the opportunity.

There are a lot of frustrated certificate holders out there in the same boat and I know I’ve written about this in the past. The ONC’s initiative to build up the HIT workforce has great intentions, but they can’t force employers to hire. I’ve heard from several program managers at the participating colleges about how challenging job placement is for their graduates.

Employers, now I pose the question to you: You have positions to fill and there are eager job seekers with the interest and the certification ready to go to work, so what’s the hold up? They don’t have experience with a particular information system? Then train them or have your vendor train them. They have IT knowledge, but not in the healthcare industry? Then train them. Don’t have the resources to train? Then you’re going to have a hard time filling positions as the pool of experienced HIT workers dwindles. Maybe it isn’t so cut-and-dry on the employer side either?

The reasons why people aren’t getting hired are known, but it doesn’t seem enough progress has been made by the employers to overcome these invisible barriers. Let’s keep the conversation going. Are steps being made to improve the employment situation? 

E.J. Fechenda is the Audience Data Manager for MedTech Media. Since 2008 she has helped manage Healthcare Finance JobSpot and Healthcare IT JobSpot - now merged with HIMSS JobMine. She is not a Human Resources professional, nor a healthcare expert, but over the years she's accumulated a lot of feedback and insight from both job seekers and employers alike. Each week E.J. will deliver a blog based on this information. One week will be employer focused and the next week, job seeker focused.