Paul Szmal: Good morning 749, it's FLX Morning, a Monday brought to you by Enstech Automotive and Trailer, your go-to destination for hauling and vehicle services. 2567 Edwards Road, Waterloo or online at enstechautomotive.com. We're Zooming with Tori Perron from UR Medicine Thompson Health. Thompson Health dot, oh I forgot, is it dot-com or dot-org Tori?
Tori Perrin: Dot-com. Dot-com is the website.
Paul Szmal: Welcome back. Another job fair, this one coming up on Thursday. So we talked not very long ago, was this one already planned at that time or was it just more demand for new positions?
Tori Perrin: We try to do job fairs here at Thompson at least four times a year. So we kind of knew that this one was coming up but we had great success at our last one. I think we had 10 hires from that out of like 22 people that came. So that was a good return for sure.
Paul Szmal: So remind us what kinds of positions are open there?
Tori Perrin: There are some that are direct care providing and some that are behind the scenes administrative and custodial and things like that. Exactly. So we have some entry-level positions in places like environmental services, nutrition services. We have clinical secretary positions and then we also have direct care positions. We need LPNs and RNs, respiratory therapists, radiology techs and pretty much everything in between.
Paul Szmal: One of the things that's great about this, probably most of us have been unemployed at one time or another and you just get down in despair and you think you're never getting hired again. But hiring managers are there that day. They are ready to hire. If you come in with the right qualifications and or the right attitude, you can be signed up pretty quickly.
Tori Perrin: That's true. We recently, probably two job fairs ago, started an option where if someone interviews with a hiring manager and they decide to hire them that day, we send them home with basically a sheet of paper that says, these are the next steps but you have a job offer. So there is potential to actually be hired on the spot and of course all of that is always pending the pre-employment process. But yes, even if that's not the case, a lot of people leave with shadows planned and interviews planned already on the calendar. So they have, you know, not only gotten in the door but also have those next steps already planned before they leave the fair.
Paul Szmal: Now I know one of the things that you do at UR Medicine Thompson Health is you have educational opportunities for people who hire on. So you might hire on at one position and be able to get some education to get an even better one down the road.
Tori Perrin: Yes, that's something we're very proud of here. So we have a couple different opportunities. We do tuition reimbursement, which for full-time employees is up to $6,000 a year and part-time employees up to $3,000 a year. But then we also have a lot of folks that start in positions, maybe a patient care tech or a certified nursing assistant, who I'm just going to use nursing as an example, decide to go back to nursing school. And we have a lot of scholarship opportunities where Thompson will support them to do that. And when I say support, I don't just mean like cheer them on. Of course we do that, but also financially support them while they're going to school. And we have some different options. They just have to apply for the scholarship, but we really want to grow folks from within and we love that people want to grow their careers here. So we want to support that.
Paul Szmal: You can begin the process of working at Your Medicine, Thompson Health by going to thompsonhealth.com job. So you can already be kind of pre-checked in if you want when you go to the job fair. And I'm sure also get future notifications of openings.
Tori Perrin: What if somebody's listening and they say, I don't have any background in health care. What could I do there?
Paul Szmal: There's lots of opportunities here. So you know, even folks who come in in a patient care tech role, there is no training required for that. The only thing you need is a high school diploma. So if you're interested perhaps in health care and want to get your foot in the door and see if it's something that you'd be interested in, then that would be a great position to start. Now that is a direct care position. It is an assistive position to the nurses. And like I said, high school diploma is the only thing you need and then the rest of it is on the job training. So that's just an example of different ways to enter health care even if you've never been in this genre before.
Tori Perrin: I make you repeat your spiel every time, but it's worth repeating. And that's about Thompson being one of the top 150 places to work in health care list from Becker's Hospital Review and also just the way that you talk about the atmosphere and the camaraderie and what it's like to work there.
Paul Szmal: Yes, we are very proud of our culture and I'm always happy to talk to people about that. The culture here is very friendly. It's warm. It feels like a family. You walk down the halls, everyone says hello to you and good morning and how are you. And it's just a very welcoming feel. And we really pride ourselves on that culture and want to bring people into that. And people see that even when they come to shadow an interview. I have nurses, you know, call me afterwards or email me and say, wow, what a great experience. Everyone was amazing.
Tori Perrin: I talk regularly to my friends at Finger Lakes Health here in Geneva. They recently had an affiliation with UR Medicine, as you do. How long has Thompson's been in place and how has it gone? Because the folks over here just rave about that partnership.
Paul Szmal: So this partnership has been ongoing for several years and I actually worked at Strong before I came to Thompson. So started there and then came here. But yeah, the affiliation is nice for a lot of reasons, but one of the primary reasons is that we can offer more things to our community as far as health care. We have physicians that perhaps work at Strong and come down here a day or two days a week. And we're able to offer, we've really expanded things like vascular care, neurosurgery care, things that we weren't able to offer to our community when we were just on our own. And this has been great for folks to not have to travel to Rochester for that.
Tori Perrin: So we've been getting all excited about talking about this. Let's make sure we give everyone the nuts and bolts. The job fair is this Thursday. It's from 2 to 4 p.m. It's at FF Thompson Hospital at 350 Parish Street. You're familiar with it. It's in the cafeteria on the ground floor of the Constellation Center for Health and Healing. Enter by way of the Thompson Way. That's the private drive off West Street. And again, hiring managers will be on hand on-site. So dress for success. Bring your resume. If you want, start out at the portal ThompsonHealth.com slash job and you could be working in any number of disciplines in the health care field and in a place where everybody seems to love to work.
Paul Szmal: So Tori, we love talking about this each time. I'm glad the last fair in December went well and hope you grab a whole bunch more good people this time.
Tori Perrin: Thank you. We hope so too and thank you for having me. I appreciate it.
