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Hiring managers at other facilities say they have been searching in vain for the right candidates to fill open positions in their biomed departments. What’s going on? At a time when the nation’s unemployment rate is high — it stood at 9.4 percent in December — why would any biomed department have a hard time filling jobs?

Some managers say it’s the quality of the applicants that’s the problem. They say they can’t find the well-rounded biomed, someone with sound customer service skills as well as technical skills. Others say they are having trouble finding candidates with the right educational training and background.

“There is no lack of candidates, but there is a lack of college or military-level training programs that have the type of educational coursework I look for in a biomedical equipment technician (BMET),” says Troy Gillette, director of clinical engineering and patient equipment logistics for Robert Wood Johnson University Hospital in New York City. “I discovered that a four-year biomedical engineering program in the New York area does not even offer a basic electronics course.”

At Baystate Health in Springfield, MA, Kirk Creswell, the clinical engineering manager, says he searched for a year to find a radiation therapy specialist, but could never find the ideal candidate. “I hired an experienced imaging service specialist and invested in radiation therapy training to bring the individual up to speed,” he says. Creswell says there was simply a lack of qualified applicants, a problem compounded by the fact that original equipment manufacturers look to hire the same type of employees that he needs.

Others haven’t had trouble filling positions. “We partnered last year with DeVry University to sponsor biomed interns, and it has worked out very well,” says Debra Grigg, the clinical engineering manager at Elmhurst Memorial Hospital near Chicago. “We actually have one intern who is finishing up his internship and I’d like to hire him, but I don’t have an open position.”

Meanwhile, educator John Noblitt, CBET, says he’s had a difficult time finding entry-level jobs for his graduates.“It seems every job opening wants two to three years of experience. I tell my graduates to apply for the job anyway as the employer may not find what he or she is looking for,” says Noblitt, the BMET program director for Caldwell Community College in eastern North Carolina.

“I’m seeing a 30 to 40% new graduate hire rate, which is not good. Is this because we are producing too many new graduates? Are the new graduates not demonstrating proper knowledge?” Interviews with hiring managers suggest it’s more of the latter. “It is not easy to find the perfect candidate,” says Izabella Gieras, director of clinical technology for Huntington Memorial Hospital in Pasadena, CA.

“Nowadays, employees need to be multitalented. Customer service, verbal and written communication, negotiating, and other non-technical skills are just as essential when selecting the right candidate for the job.” Customer service skills are especially important, managers say. “I believe customer service skills are the key to growing good service engineers, with technical ability a close second,” says Brown. J. Scot Mackeil, a biomedical engineer at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston, says that a solution might be to up the ante.

“Raise pay levels,” says Mackeil. “The dramatic increase in the costs of the basic living essentials is for real.”