International IVF Initiative Podcast

Recruitment, Training, Talent Management, and Succession Planning

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Episode notes

Welcome to the latest behind-the-scenes podcast from I3, which took place after two Legacy sessions, discussing the need for embryologists globally and the changing challenges and demands of the embryologists, the demographics of the people working in an IVF laboratory, and ways to retain, train and recruit embryologists into the workforce as more of the veteran embryologist retire. Speakers during the sessions included: Giles Palmer, Bill Venier, Andrew Thomson, and Dr. Gloria Calderon, Eva Schenkman, TJ Farnworth, Andrew Thomson, Dr. Alison Campbell, Dr. Tony Anderson: The second part of the webinar which is also discussed in an after party here - continues on with this topic and Giles Palmer is joined by Keshav Malhotra, Dr. Tony Anderson and Eva Schenkman, Elina Roumian, and Dani Smale, Debbie Venier and Dr. Joe Conaghan.

What was discussed:

Talking about filling spaces
Why does someone leave suddenly? If that happens you need to figure out why as any good team member will give notice eg. 1 year
Team having an exit strategy - post-pandemic
How busy are the training centres - currently booked out until June 2023
How the training has been reinvented with 2-3 month courses and how beneficial they are, delivering programmes in a condensed fashion enabling junior trainees to get more experience
People who come off the courses are hot commodities - end up being part of a bidding war as candidates have several offers
Salaries that are 30/40/50% than 12 months ago
People aren’t let go - until they are comfortable with procedures such as ICSI which is different from older courses where you only got a few hours of hands-on experience
Helping to teach in a custom way to a network’s protocols - signing NDA’s.
There is a reluctance from clinics to not have the teacher’s methods taught - instead, the clinic needs to trust
Consultant trainers- go into clinics to train someone who can’t travel

SESSION 2:

IVF Olympics - challenges for senior embryologists that trainees do but with opposite hand
People approaching embryologists to be mentors on Linked In
Encouraging students to use social media such as Linked In to help them find work and build connections
Mentors and building your network which is so important as at some point in your career you will come across a problem where you need to call someone outside your network to solve it
Get involved with associations and communities
To talk to new people when you go to meetings, find people in the same boat as you to support you
Are Embryologists introverted people?
Importance of putting yourself out of your comfort zone to talk to other people.

Legacy Session 1

Legacy Session 2

Make sure you keep an eye on the upcoming events at IVFMeeting.com for the follow-up to this conversation