Recruitment of Doctors From Philippines Problems, Causes & Solutions

Process of Hiring and Difficulties faced

Growing Population in Dubai

Mode of Recruitment

Assessment and Approval

Approval from the Ministry

Candidates Backing Out After Completion of Recruitment Procedure

Preference given to Public Hospitals

Strict Regulations by Dubai Government

Feedback Received From Filipino Doctors

Better prospects in developed countries

Lack of Good Education

Major Focus on Nursing

Social and Cultural Differences

Strict Legal Obligations

Language Barriers

Patriotic Feelings for Their Own Country

Lack of Opportunities for Disabled Doctors

This report has been designed as a result of difficulties faced by HR team of ABC while performing recruitment for Filipino doctors in order to fill internal vacant positions. During the course of hiring, we faced several problems in finding the potential candidates. Most of them were caused because of our virtual presence of ABC in Philippines. We failed to contact the potential candidates and our virtual hiring procedure made it rather difficult for us to analyze the determination shown by the candidates. Also, the tests that were provided to these candidates were also subjected to manipulation. Due to these reasons, we opted the practice of contacting professional recruiters and other professional social networking forums which enabled us to reach suitable candidates. As a result of these strategies, we were managed to hire a team of twenty doctors who were legally bonded to stay with us for at least three years. This decision of making the doctors legally bound was taken due to higher turnover rate in ABC's medical staff.

Other than these practices, we also conducted a survey to analyze the possible reasons for lack of interest by Filipino doctors to join ABC and also any other organization in Dubai. Various factors such as racial discrimination, cultural and social differences, language barriers, legal problems etc. were some of the major reasons identified. Through this report recommendations were given to make ABC an employer of choice in Filipino talent as well as other workforce. These recommendations not only focused on making ABC an attractive employer but also were intended to make ABC its contribution in overall industrial structure.

Introduction

Philippines has been a major contributor in the global healthcare industry especially nurses and healthcare assistants. Due to rapid growth of demand, healthcare workers specially doctors and nurses have shown a greater rate of migration in last few years. However, the noticeable fact is the increasing number of availability of Filipino nurses rather than doctors as the global demand has shown a tremendous increase. Because of lack of doctors' availability in Philippines, the internal demand is not being met; similarly hiring Filipino doctors in such scenario is also a difficult task itself. Furthermore, the difference between the cultural, economic and social differences, UAE is lesser preferred destination of the Filipino doctors.

Currently, UAE has shown lowest growth in number of doctors per thousand heads. These statistics are rather dangerous as compared to similar statistics related to United States and UK. With reference to the current statistics, by 2014, in order to match the growth rate of UAE, 13,000 new medical professionals will be required. Due to this demand, UAE needs to have more doctors (Abbas, 2012). "On the back of factors including improving financial stability of the country and emergence of new industrial sectors, besides oil and gas, per head healthcare spending of the country has been increasing incessantly," as per the study conducted by RNCOS.

Where Dubai has been showing a consistent decease in the strength of doctors, the need for having the expatriate medical professionals has increased tremendously. For this purpose, various companies have been focusing on outsourcing workforce from ASEAN countries. Dubai and other UAE countries have been focusing more on development of Oil and gas industry whereas Philippines have been making contribution to global industry of healthcare professionals (Awad & Rola, 2009). Also, domestic workers are also mainly provided by Philippines. Where companies are trying to make the most of this opportunity by filing in this gap in demand and supply, this task is not easy itself because as compared to Filipino nurses, recruitment of Filipino doctors is a different and rather process altogether. Due to hike in global demand of Filipino nurses and doctors, major interest of such health professionals is to migrate to other developed regions such as U.K., U.S. And Canada. Because of difference in culture and job prospects, Dubai is lesser favorite place. Secondly, research has shown that Filipino workers, be it health...

Thirdly, the overall strength of doctors produced by Philippines is already shown in terms of small figures as most of the doctors who have moved abroad have opted for the field of registered nurses instead of practicing their original profession.
This case study is a culminating work which reflects on the difficulties faced while hiring a batch of twenty doctors from Philippines for ABC Company. The main intent for hiring this batch was to have in-house medical team who can workforce at the oil refinery located at (NAME OF THE PLACE) for immediate healthcare in case of emergency, monthly checkups of the workers and saving capital on medical expenses that would have been incurred in terms of medical insurance. This report comprises of three parts. First one will analyze the difficulties faced during the course of hiring; second will reflect on possible reasons for that. Second part will be concerned with the feedbacks given by these doctors on their reluctance of coming over to Dubai. Whereas, third part will be related to recommendations, on how to attract and retain talent in this field.

PART A: Process of Hiring and Difficulties faced

International recruitment is a time-taking complex process which requires thorough analysis and documentation keeping the laws and culture of the targeted country and the host country in consideration. There are various difficulties that are faced while hiring doctors for Dubai which is quite opposite to hiring nurses. Some of the problems faced are mentioned below:

Growing Population in Dubai

Where UAE is a federal state comprising of seven different states, like other neighboring states, Dubai has been a destination for foreign labor. In 1971, the major contribution of increase in population was due to foreign population. As per the statistics of CSD (2008), the share of foreign population in Dubai was calculated to be about 91%. However, it is a disappointing fact that despite this major contribution of foreign population, most of them are found to be related to the field of nursing or domestic assistance. Therefore, the competition in terms of attracting and retaining doctors has given rise to an unnecessary increase in their demands of salaries.

Mode of Recruitment

Our company has used printed media and web portals for attracting such talent. It is a noticeable fact that in the robust world of today, printed media fails to acquire its due attention. And as far as web portals are concerned, the application rate is usually less. Therefore, it was potentially difficult to find out candidates in the relevant field with relevant background.

One cannot stress enough on the importance of having a physical representative or a liaison in a foreign country who can help with attracting and interviewing the candidates. Since we failed to attract sufficient talent on web portals and most of the applications received failed to meet our standards, therefore, there were rejected in the initial phase. At this point, the idea of campus recruitment sounded suitable.

For this purpose, numerous medical schools in Philippines were contacted by our team and they were asked to help us out with this search of potential talent. Unfortunately, the graduations departments or student placement centers were found not be serious enough in this regard. We were mostly provided the data of the students who were undergraduate despite out constant request for details of graduate students. Where two of the universities finally agreed to conduct online campus recruitment session of their graduate students, we found only five students turning up for the interviews. At this point, the importance of physical representative could not be stressed enough.

Other than failure of campus recruitment campaign which resulted in short listing of only two doctors with a year of relevant experience, we also faced barriers in conducting interviews of the applicants who applied through web portals. We conducted interviews of around thirty doctors on Skype; many of them found to have insufficient proficiency on English language. Where majority of the labor at our power plant has the know-how of English language below the desired level, presence of medical examiner speaking foreign language would rather worsen the problem instead of serving its purpose.

Assessment and Approval

The whole recruitment process was conducted by our HR team. Starting from posting ads on websites and newspapers and short listing candidates, the entire procedure was conducting by the HR Manager, Mr. XYZ. However, it is important to know that hiring doctors requires presence of some medical practitioner who can perform interviews and evaluate candidates' proficiency in their own field.

After performing analysis of the candidates IQ and EQ coupled with remarks from HR team,…