All Entries Tagged With: "recruitment campaigns"

Five Reasons Healthcare Recruiters Must Engage in Social Media

As physician shortages worsen, one of the most pressing marketing challenges facing many hospitals today is recruiting top talent. To meet this challenge, in-house recruiters routinely deploy an all-too-familiar marketing mix of job board posts and journal ads, while largely ignoring social media.

But why the snub?

Granted, a job tweet on Twitter doesn’t yet have the same reach or cachet as a recruitment ad in the New England Journal of Medicine. But I do believe social media offers immediacy and relevance that may be more effective than traditional means to connect with a growing segment of healthcare job seekers.

Still skeptical? Here are five reasons your recruiters must actively engage in social media.

Your candidates are already there. If you don’t think your next Chief of Surgery or Head Nurse could possibly be on MySpace or Facebook, think again. Social media is fast becoming mainstream media-and clinicians are embracing it. My company recently surveyed physician and RN job seekers and found that 56% are using or interested in social media and 37% use Facebook. And adoption rates will continue to climb with Facebook adding 600,000 new members a day, the fastest growing segment of which is adults 35 and older.

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Interview Questions You Ask Yourself

In today’s column I wrote about how marketing and HR can partner together to make recruitment efforts more effective. I found the open-ended questions posed by Keith Jennings interesting, so I thought I’d share them with you here. Love to hear your answers:

• Why is there a shortage of healthcare workers?
• What’s driving this shortage?
• Is this shortage affecting patient care?
• Why should a nurse or doctor choose your hospital over their other choices?
• What makes you so special?
• And once with you, why should they stick around?
• How do you make a difference in their lives and those they serve?

By the way, if you’re interested in recruitment issues, there’s an upcoming HealthLeaders Media Webcast on recruiting nurses you might want to check out.

Show us Your Best Online Recruitment Campaigns

Problem: There’s a shortage of healthcare workers, especially nurses. And at the same time, many hospitals are cutting back on recruitment campaign budgets. Solution: A low-cost recruitment tool that can make a big impression on candidates.

What does your online careers page say about you?

In this week’s column, I wrote about hospital and health system sites dedicated to attracting employees. Some of them were pretty bad. But I also found a bunch that work well. I’m linking to them here and I’d love to hear what you think of them. And please share some examples of sites that you think work. (Let’s keep it positive, though–we don’t need to shame anyone whose site needs improvement, OK?)

Three of my picks for great online recruitment pages:

Check out the left-hand column on this children’s hospital jobs page–I love the “our culture” and “our people” links. The text and picture on the main page give a clear impression of the organization’s personality. 

Here’s a medical center jobs page with several engaging elements. Check out the healthcare trivia game and the employee testimonial videos.

The mission of this faith-based hospital’s jobs page comes through loud and clear. You get a real sense of the organization’s culture. Plus the page looks nice. Note how many times they use the word “you” in their introductory paragraph.

Look forward to hearing your thoughts and seeing the recruitment pages you like.