Healthcare: Steps You Can Take to Improve Interest in Your Open Positions
Healthcare hiring is in the midst of a perfect storm; pandemic, retirements, burnout, vaccine requirement issues... the list goes on. It is truly a job-seekers market, with more open positions than people willing and able to fill them. According to LinkUp, job listings within the Healthcare Industry were up 12.89% in the second Quarter of 2021. Offering great pay and benefits is often not enough to land the candidate or even get your job noticed on job boards. Today we will be discussing steps you can take to improve interest in your open positions.
Sourcing and Qualifying
Sourcing and qualifying candidates is the most time-consuming and important step in the hiring process. We see that many recruiters put most of their focus on reaching and influencing passive candidates while putting far less effort into diversifying and optimizing their digital marketing efforts.
Your digital marketing activities should focus on a full SEM and PPC strategy to reach qualified active candidates effectively. There are two major errors we see most often with recruitment marketing. First, limiting your sourcing to just one or two methods. This limits the potential number of candidates that can see your post, and, with the rising cost per lead on many job boards, it is easy to overshoot your budget with limited returns on the investment. Second, setting your ads and calling it a day. Your digital ads should be checked daily and adjustments made as needed to improve your cost per click/cost per lead to be truly effective.
Having a system in place that pre-qualifies your leads reduces your recruiters' workload, allowing them to focus only on the most qualified candidates. For qualifying your leads, we recommend utilizing an applicant tracking system with built-in lead qualifying features that integrate with a strong digital recruitment marketing platform to bridge the data gap, optimize your PPC campaigns better.
Job Postings and Applications
Setting the right tone with your ad’s job description can make or break your recruitment efforts. Think of these job descriptions as you would think about advertising your services. You are here to sell your position and your company. Why should they want to work for you? Put yourself in the shoes of your potential candidate as you are writing these ads. What is that they care about? What are they looking for? What is it about your company that makes it a better place to work for than your competitors? And, most importantly, focus on conveying a positive message. Even a hint of negativity can severely impact your ad's performance.
According to Hireology, 57.2% of Healthcare job seekers apply to open positions via their cell phones. As more than half the people applying to your open positions are coming to you via mobile, it is paramount that your applications be simple and easy to fill out on a mobile device. Limit the information you are requesting to the most important items only! Don’t ask them to fill out a form with information that is already on their resume. Instead, focus on qualifying questions that are not readily answered by their resume.
Branding
Employer branding is a crucial part of your recruitment marketing. It is a job seekers market; there are so many jobs available that job-seekers can take their time and research each company to decide which organization is the best fit for them. Suppose you are not showing these applicants what your company stands for and the culture of your company. In that case, they will be left with company reviews that are often contributed to third-party sites by former staff members and may not always reflect your company's true goals and culture. You must take your reputation management into your hands. Provide content that comes from your current staff about why your company is the best place to work. Explain the benefits you offer beyond the basic health insurance and vacation time. Let them know why your organization is the best in its field, and why it is to their advantage to be part of your team.
See our article, Improve your Career Page and Gain More Applicants, for specifics on career page content for employer branding.
With a few tweaks to your sourcing strategy, advertisement, applications and spending the time growing and maintaining your employer brand, you can inch above the competition. While hiring will continue to be a challenge in the healthcare industry over the year to come, simple changes can position you to lower your cost per application and reduce your time to hire.
Here it is! You have been expecting it- the sales pitch. As I am sure you have discovered, this blog is created by Lionzone Digital Marketing, which means that we would be more than happy to assist your company with their recruitment marketing needs; for more information about our services, please see https://lionzone.com/recruitment-marketing. My favorite feature of our services, no long-term contracts! If we don't earn your business every day, we don't deserve to keep you!
Resources:
https://hireology.com/blog/event-recap-hireologys-healthcare-beat-series/
https://www.hospitalrecruiting.com/blog/7689/attracting-healthcare-talent-in-the-post-covid-market/
https://blog.getwork.com/employers/2021/08/19/quarterly-jobs-update-growth-of-remote-jobs-all-occupations/?mkt_tok=NDU4LVJKVC00NjUAAAF_AyzxLzXHcnVtUvcoFrmHm9-KAdZEImUEyTPqhQFdx4lloX92VJ8x4UtVOV3AJe0LjOIMHWYE2dzAtyaY2SSfRJ79C48NUhL-1aPHz5W_qISYXZk
