Healthcare Recruiting is in a category all by itself. As the Recruitment Advertising Industry has continued to migrate more and more online over the past several years, Healthcare recruitment advertising has bucked this trend and continues to be a very offline play.There are several reasons for this, the main one being the fact that Healthcare professionals for the most part are bedside and thus not online while at work. Another reason why Healthcare recruitment advertising continues to be a mostly offline industry is because most Hospitals are large employers within a community. And with a large brick and mortar presence with high visibility, most Healthcare professionals in the community are already aware of the Hospitals within their community. Therefore, you are dealing with a very targeted audience within a relatively tight radius around a location.The primary goal of Healthcare Recruitment Marketing is awareness and differentiation – distinguishing yourself from the rest of the pack. Most recruiting success is defined over years through policies, benefits, community reach, technology investment, and pay rates. Your hospital’s reputation is usually fairly well established and the Healthcare community is a relatively tight-knit one. Everyone has heard stories from friends or acquaintances that work there. It is an ongoing battle to keep employees happy and motivated, because they are one of your most important community marketing vehicles. If your employees are happy, the community you are trying to reach will likely know that you are a good place to work. Conversely, if your employees are not happy, that word will spread equally fast making your job as a Recruiter far more challenging.
So, how does a hospital or Healthcare system stand out from the crowd? The answer is through a direct, personalized approach. The key is to stand out from the crowd and to use offline advertising methods to target the audience you are trying to reach and pull them into the web where you can serve them with a very targeted message. A well designed website, or series of “micro-sites”, will act as a “virtual recruiter” and should include video testimonials, pictures of the facility, slide shows, patient and/or employee testimonials and anything else that can highlight the reasons your employees take pride in working for your organization.
To maximize the effectiveness of an offline-to-online campaign, you should never present too much information on the Ad itself. If you attempt to answer all of your prospective candidates questions within a Newspaper Ad, Trade Magazine Ad, Direct Mail piece, or Radio Ad, you will allow them to make a decision without ever really exploring the full benefits of working for your organization. As awareness is the goal, you should really focus on Personalization (talk to them by name), Awareness and Relevance (“XYZ Hospital is looking for RNS, PTs, and Pharmacists in Madison Wisconsin. To learn more, visit us on line at www.xyzhealth.org”) Or better yet, if you are utilizing direct marketing techniques such as direct mail or email, you should try and utilize PURLs (Personalized URLs) wherever possible. Targeting the right audience, serving them a relevant message (their field of interest and in their area) and then following through with a very focused message on the web is extremely effective and can make the difference.
One last thing to really focus on is the candidate experience. You can be an absolute master of identifying candidates and getting them to your career page, but if you then require them to navigate through 4 or 5 clicks to get to the apply page and then put them through a rigorous 20 minute application, you will very likely fail to convert. Be patient and don’t try to over-automate things. For the most part, they aren’t ready for that yet. Make it easy to submit their resume or key information. As a good general rule, the first point of submission should take no more than 2 minutes. There will be plenty of time for a full application after a recruiter has touched them. Once you have expressed some level of interest in the candidate, they will be far more likely to take the time to go through a rigorous application process and you will better convert on these precious candidates/ applicants.
To summarize, there are systems, rules, and best practices galore for Recruiting in today’s online world. However, if you try to apply these practices to Healthcare, you will struggle. You need to really focus on a handful of best practices to convert.
• Be very targeted in your approach.
• Don’t try to sell them on the Ad, just get their interest and get them on line.
• Tell your story well on the website. Make it meaningful to them.
• Make sure that you have a simple and easy apply process.
And remember, if it’s easy, it wouldn’t be so rewarding. Although Healthcare recruiting can be very difficult and even frustrating at times, it plays an invaluably important function within a hospital and can provide great recognition and exposure. Happy recruiting!
