Staff recruitment webinar – The good, the bad and the ugly!

20/05/2026

We held a really popular webinar on 20 May on staff recruitment, whereby host Karen Young was joined by Claire Small, Steven Berkman and Jason Dodds who shared their real-life experiences. Lucy Goldby also shared information around her internship programme.

Some key discussion points from Karen

• More senior physios seem happy to teach and mentor, but not to manage staff as those are the bits that more challenging and therefore less attractive.
• Always know where you next employee is coming from.
• We don’t use Indeed anymore and prefer Linked in as we don’t have a big pond to fish from. So we have to be more creative and see if people have a similar motivation to us
• We have a finder’s fee for team members.
• We have extended our interview process in line with employment law changes

Some key discussion points from Steven

• Getting the right clinicians is one of our biggest challenges. We take comfort that we’re not alone in that difficulty currently.

Overtime as we have grown we have had a wider selection of senior and junior and everyone in between.

• We believe in growing our own and run a graduate training programme. We’ve had about 6 clinicians through that pathway.
• Be more intentional about what you are offering. Hours pay etc is one thing. We need to tap into what is our DNA, what is it like to work here, how do we help them and why should they come and join us.
• I’d highly recommend having Visa sponsorship status.
• Final reflection is often I’ve made the mistake of recruiting for what we need today, rather than for what we may need in 18 months.

Some key discussion points from Jason

• If you’re not part of a network you think it’s only me. It’s really reassuring we are all in the same boat.
• Our biggest success is using Linked In. We are constantly trying to recruit and push things out there and put things on different platforms to engage with people.
• We do inhouse recruitment and give a finder’s fee. Part of our problem is we have predominately self employed people.
• We’re trying to record everything we do. What’s it’s like to work with us
• I listen to a lot of business podcasts about the way they recruit
• We hold 3 interviews – a screening call, interview with clinical leads and then a presentation where they set out what they will do in the first 3 months of working with us and then we review this as part of their appraisal process.

Claire discussed her successful MSc Training programme.

• We’re constantly recruiting and spreading the word at events, networking, meetings, lecturing at university etc.
• Scan this QR code or speak to us
• We don’t take on students are we haven’t found a way of monitoring what they do
• We run a 2 stage process – clinical interview and we get them to present a case study. The 2^nd interview is with myself and our clinic manager. The question is please prepare a presentation on what you would do in first 3 months to build a list.
• They get a detailed copy of our pay structure and of our values
• If our values aren’t aligned then it’s not going to last, we want someone to be part of our organisation, help us grow.

See the full recording here: Staff recruitment webinar – The good, the bad and the ugly!