The Career Tree Network Blog

A job description is your primary opportunity to attract the attention of candidates.

In many disciplines, like Physical Therapy, candidates are highly sought after and often could literally choose any position that they’d like. When candidates are scarce, the strategy of recruitment must shift from a screen resume framework to a proactive sales approach where the job description is a persuasion tool.

Your job description must do more than disclose the essential functions of the position. View a job description as a sales tool that persuades candidates to join your organization.

Key Thought: Candidates already have a good idea of what work a licensed healthcare professional within their discipline will perform. Use the job description to persuade candidates to come join your team.

I recently had a conversation where a recruiter at a major Healthcare organization said: 

“My marketing team hates me.  I’m constantly upsetting them because there is some confusion around my need to “market” our open positions to attract candidates.  Social Networking websites have only complicated the issue.  The marketing team has taken control of our corporate social networking profiles and they never approve the content that my team in recruitment suggests.  I’m stuck and at the same time, my recruitment deadlines are looming.” 

Here’s the problem:  Your marketing team does not realize that sourcing candidates often requires a direct and interactive approach.  In effect, your marketing team is not comprised of recruiters…and often they take the wrong approach with candidate sourcing campaigns.   

Traditional marketing involves creating mass messages to blanket a target audience.  Think: Television, Radio, Newspaper, Billboards, etc.  These messages will have a broad appeal and might even use a nice picture of an airplane with the tag line:  “A career at our organization will take you places”.     

In contrast, my definition of “Recruitment Marketing” involves building a direct and interactive relationship with a targeted group of candidates.  Think:  Email, Phone, Direct Mail, Resume Databases, etc.  Your marketing team is not interested to invest the time required to build these relationships as such they will push for campaigns that don’t involve targeted relationship building…this is a big mistake.     

It’s a classic battle and unless you push for a relationship focused campaign, I fear that your recruitment goals will suffer.  Of course there is an alternative…it involves paying Headhunters and Agencies to build relationships with candidates in your target audience.  You don’t mind paying agency fees, right? 

I was involved with student government in college. This was before the Internet, so there were two main approaches that people used to win elections.

Approach 1: Put up a bunch of flyers around campus and hope that people remember your name on election day.

This would involve spending time and money to blanket the campus with your printed propaganda. The face-to-face interaction with students (aka: the voting public) was limited.  You would have some funny and artistic friends help with the design process, then you’d print off as many copies (always in black and white) as you could afford. 

Approach 2: Get out there and meet the people.

In this approach the strategy would be to meet as many people as possible. You’d stand outside of an academic building passing out school newspapers. You’d sit on a stool in a busy elevator and push the buttons for people. At the end of a class you’d make a short speech about your candidacy. etc.  In short, you put yourself out there, having real interactions with people.

The candidates following Approach 2 were almost always a guaranteed winner.

It was a mistake to hide behind the printed propaganda.  People can’t vote for a poster, but they can vote for the nice person they met in the elevator.  Approach 2 involves more risk, but the reward is usually worth it.   

My company, Career Tree Network, is a collection of websites that connect job seekers with Wisconsin Healthcare Organizations.  Since it’s an on-line business, my default focus has been to leverage on-line marketing strategies as a primary approach.  This has involved things like, Search Engine Optimization, email blasts, banner ads, link exchanges, profiles on twitter and facebook, etc. 

I still see value in on-line marketing, but for the last year, I’ve been looking for a better way to engage with Wisconsin’s Healthcare Professionals.  Many folks don’t spend very much time on-line and there is a huge real world opportunity that I wasn’t fully leveraging.   

The Wisconsin Healthcare Tour will be an avenue to allow for better engagement.  The goal of this project is to explore the people and places that make it great to work at Healthcare organizations in Wisconsin. 

The project is just getting started, but I’d like to offer you a cordial invitation to get connected with the tour:    
 
Website:  www.wihealthcaretour.com
Facebook:  www.facebook.com/wihealthcare
Twitter:  www.twitter.com/wihealthcare

Our aim is to interact with a wide audience of Wisconsin Healthcare professionals who will then turn to Career Tree Network websites when they are ready to explore career options.     

As you explore the websites, please share with me your ideas or suggestions. 

Many organizations are starting to harness the power of social networking websites within their recruitment efforts. These companies have probably created a Twitter account and Facebook fan page and are now working to keep their pages maintained with a continual flow of content.

Smart organizations are keeping their content interesting so that the target audience stays engaged. And lazy organizations haven’t updated their account since Christmas, or use some fancy automated system that posts a cryptic update for each new job posting.

Given the work involved with using social networking websites, it’s important to build your fan base so that your efforts aren’t wasted. A good rule of thumb is that you should have four times more fans/followers than the number of employees that you have.

Example: Let’s say that Weidner Hospital has 800 employees and their Facebook fan page has 90 people. This is not good. A better number would be something closer to 3,200 or higher.

Keeping your social networking profiles updated involves the same amount of work whether you have 5 fans or 50,000 fans. You need to work on building your fan base so that your labor investment can reach a wide audience and thus increases your potential pay-off (ie: sourced candidates).

Increasing your fan base is best accomplished through a dedicated marketing effort. Ask your marketing department for help…or call Career Tree Network.

Dealing with the demands of individual candidates is a pain.  In this post, I’ll identify three easy ways to treat candidates poorly.  This will ensure that less applicants come forward, which reduces the burden on you.

1.  On your outgoing voicemail message, say something like:  “Due to the number of phone calls that we receive, I am unable to return phone calls from candidates”.

The last thing you want to do is talk to a candidate who has an interest in your company!  Including this outgoing message will make it very clear that you don’t like talking to candidates on the phone and even if they leave a message…it will never be returned. 

2.  Use a general HR email account. 

Developing a personal relationship with candidates is time consuming.  Even with the convenience of email it’s too much of a hassle to reveal your personal email address and communicate directly with candidates.  Setting up a general mailbox provides a nice smoke screen to keep your personal email account safe.  Candidates can send their email to the “black hole” and will then be less disappointed when they don’t hear back.       

3.  Require that candidates apply on-line.

Never spend time dealing with potential candidates.  Don’t put your contact information on job postings.  Any questions that a candidate has can be answered during their interview.  Forcing candidates to jump through your organization’s on-line application process will weed out those people who only have a casual interest in a position.  If they don’t have 30-45 minutes to formally apply (like anyone who has a family), then why should you bother with them?

Conclusion

Avoid contact with individual candidates so that you can stop building time consuming personal relationships.  Another avenue is to pay a headhunter (30% of salary) for all of your recruitment.  Then sit back and let them take the time to develop relationships with your candidates. 

When a candidate does join the organization to become an employee, flip the switch and treat them well so that they’ll help you become a “Great Place to Work”.  That garbage about making a good first impression is so overrated.