AGISANTE

Placing doctors and other health professionals in France and Belgium

AGISANTE, written Agisanté on its own site, is a recruitment firm for international medical placement. It says it has been active since 2007 and that it searches for and selects healthcare professionals for medicine and the pharmaceutical industry. Its clients are care institutions and companies in France and Belgium, with others elsewhere in Europe and beyond, and its site is offered in several languages including French and English.

Posts and registration guidance

The site's current vacancies give a sense of the work: geriatricians in a private hospital in central Brussels and in public hospitals in Alsace, an emergency physician and a diabetologist-endocrinologist in Alsace, and a self-employed general practitioner in the Bourgogne-Franche-Comté region. Candidates can also send in a CV without choosing a post. The firm publishes a guide to joining the professional orders in both countries, written for doctors, physiotherapists and dentists, which matters to anyone qualified abroad and moving to practise there.

Support during the placement

The firm says its consultants travel to meet each client in person so that they understand its particular needs. Candidates are generally interviewed in their home countries, and a consultant can accompany them to the presentation to the client where that is useful. Once someone has started the job, the firm says it consults both candidate and employer to check that things are going well and to step in before a misunderstanding puts the working relationship at risk.

Selection stages

Candidates pass through several filters, which the firm sets out as:

• a first screening by research officers;
• assessment by the consultant in charge of the assignment;
• a self-assessment grid for each specialty;
• several telephone and face-to-face interviews with the consultant and the client;
• targeted reference checks;
• language preparation made to measure, in general and medical vocabulary;
• online training through resources that can be used remotely.

Network and results

After about ten years of work the firm says it holds a large database of European healthcare professionals and works with a wide range of public and private employers. It reports that 95 per cent of the candidates it places are still in post at the end of its guarantee period, and says references are available on request.