At Westmed Medical Group headquarters in Purchase, Joseph T. DiCarlo has settled into his new job as human resources director. At the start of this year as in the last quarter of 2010, he has been busy with hirings and job postings, despite the stagnant economy in a state whose unemployment hovered above 8 percent and a county whose jobless rate was nearly 7 percent in December.
DiCarlo was hired five months ago by the physician-owned multispecialty group practice, a 15-year-old business that has grown to include more than 180 doctors and 900 employees at 19 offices in Westchester. He left a position in Manhattan as vice president of corporate human resources at Porter Novelli, the international marketing communications firm, for a career move into the health care industry.
“Health care is a hot field overall right now,” said DiCarlo, who followed his father-in-law, a physician specializing in sleep disorders, and his wife, a pediatric occupational therapist, into the field. “Frankly, the allure of health care for many people is the same as the allure it had for me. I felt it to be a very stable, growing and healthy industry and I wanted to be a part of that.
“I also wanted to help people of my community,” said the Irvington resident. “I wanted to give back.”
Leading the way in job gains
The health care industry led New York”™s private sector in net job gains from December 2009 to last month, according to the state Labor Department. The private sector overall recovered 70,800 jobs in that period, a 1 percent increase. Health care employment, including social assistance jobs with hospitals and other health care providers, increased by 21,900 jobs statewide. Of that increase, 11,100 jobs were in ambulatory health care services, the Labor Department reported.
In the Putnam-Rockland-Westchester labor market, the one-year rise in private-sector job numbers was slight, amounting to only one-fifth of the state”™s 1 percent growth rate. The leisure and hospitality industry added 1,500 jobs, leading the region with a 3.5 percent increase.
Trailing only leisure and hospitality, health care and social assistance employment in the three-county region rose by 2,300 jobs, a 2.5-percent increase. Of that growth, ambulatory health care services accounted for 1,500 jobs, a 4.8 percent increase from December 2009.
“The numbers don”™t lie,” said DiCarlo, whose new employer is a leading provider of ambulatory care services in Westchester. “I”™ve seen a significant uptick in hiring in health care overall and particularly at Westmed.”
In the fourth quarter of last year, Westmed hired 63 people to fill a range of clinical and non-clinical positions, DiCarlo said. The group practice has more than 30 positions to fill this winter. That hiring number could double this summer, he said, when Westmed is scheduled to open an approximately 83,000-sqaure-foot medical office at the Ridge Hill office, retail and residential development in Yonkers.
At Westmed, “We look for innovative people who challenge how things are done, who challenge the status quo and are looking at doing things better and more efficiently,” said DiCarlo. With an abundance of talented candidates in the job market, “The challenge is finding the right fit for Westmed at this time,” he said.
Meeting critical needs first
At The Healthsearch Group in Ossining, a family owned recruitment firm serving health care professionals and institutions, president Alan Gordon was skeptical about the state”™s reported increase in industry employment. His 50-year-old company”™s clients include New York -Presbyterian Healthcare System, Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, Westchester Medical Center, Mount Kisco Medical Group, St. Joseph”™s Health Care System, Greenwich Hospital and Yale-New Haven Hospital.
“Key critical-needs positions are being filled, but they”™re certainly cutting back in other areas,” said Gordon. Hospitals, for example, will hire a manager for an emergency room, but have cut many other staff jobs. “Everybody is stretched that much tighter,” he said. “They”™ll have less full-time employees but they”™re going to meet critical needs.”
Since 2009, “This is the first time in more than 20 years that nurses are coming out of college with a four-year degree and not walking into jobs,” Gordon said.
Though his firm began to see some movement in hiring in the fourth quarter of 2010, hospitals still are uncertain about their reimbursement rates from the federal government in the wake of health care reform legislation. Hiring is tied to those rates.
“I think the uncertainty of all that has bottled up a lot of hiring and a lot of expansion and changing their work force numbers,” Gordon said. “There”™s not clarity on it,” so hospitals and other health care organizations are reluctant to add staff.
Is IT again the place to be?
After dropping off sharply in 2009, the job market for information technology professionals in Westchester showed some recovery in 2010, according to Pace University analysts in their latest quarterly report on the market.
Though the IT market here was flat in the fourth quarter of last year, the Pace/Skillproof IT Index registered a 37 percent increase from December 2009. The index tracks job openings based on a selection of 130 blue-chip companies from a cross-section of major U.S. industries.
Evelyn Sirena, a founding partner at Top Prospect Group, an IT staffing agency in Purchase, said the market improved considerably last year in both Westchester and Fairfield County, Conn. Companies are especially looking to hire project managers, systems engineers, application developers, software program analysts and data specialists. At many companies, “It”™s mid- to senior-level folks that they”™re looking for,” she said.
In 2009, “The market slowed down tremendously,” Sirena said. Now companies have begun to provide multiple job opportunities for talented professionals. “I think they”™re trying to beat each other to the punch a little bit” in hiring, she said.
Despite companies”™ outsourcing of IT services, “I think there”™s a decent need for people in this marketplace for IT jobs, both contractor and full-time,” Sirena said. For 2011, “I definitely see an upswing. I think we”™re seeing it already, which is a good thing. I think it”™ll be much more positive this coming year than last year.”
