Recruitment marketing has evolved from being an emerging trend in talent acquisition to a necessary strategy to attract top candidates, especially in competitive talent markets. Given the shortage of healthcare talent in both clinical and non-clinical roles, organizations looking to attract and hire the best candidates need to leverage recruitment marketing strategies to stay competitive. In this post, we outline key strategies to help healthcare organizations build a robust healthcare recruitment marketing program.

Clearly Communicate the Employer Brand and Value to Healthcare Talent

Healthcare hiring managers spend a lot of time crafting the persona of their ideal candidate. However, some hiring managers neglect to address the value their healthcare organization presents to potential candidates. Building a strong employer brand can have a positive impact on recruiting. In fact, according to a LinkedIn survey, 75 percent of job seekers consider an employer’s brand before applying for a position. This means candidates are as concerned with the reputation of a potential employer as the employer is concerned with a candidate’s experience and work history.

To present value to candidates, healthcare hiring managers and recruiters need to look through a marketing lens and carefully reflect upon how their employer brand will be interpreted by healthcare talent. Good employer branding not only communicates an organization’s mission and values, but also the experiences and triumphs of an organization’s current workforce. Effective employer branding highlights employee engagement within an organization and the community it serves and will attract like-minded candidates eager to help an organization achieve its goals and objectives. Below we outline a few ways healthcare organizations can better communicate their employer brand to candidates:

• Hire a film crew or photographer to take candid shots of the facility and employees. Candidates are savvy enough to tell the difference between stock photography and real employee photos and will appreciate a real look inside of an organization.
• Tell the stories of real employees progressing and excelling within the organization. These stories serve as an inspiration and show candidates that there is a clear path to advancement and success if they join the team.
• Review the organization’s social media accounts to see if it reflects the culture of the organization and whether it is used to full effect to highlight employee success stories, internal commitments to staff and fun work-related activities.

Update the Career Page

Providing an excellent candidate experience is a vital component of an effective recruitment marketing strategy and building a well-designed and easy to navigate career site can help positively impact candidate experience. What’s more, Talent Board found that 64 percent of candidates listed career sites as a top resource for researching new opportunities. When candidates visit a career page, it is often the first experience they have with an organization. From the moment a candidate lands on a career page, he or she begins to sketch out a mental image about an organization, its facilities and employees, so it is vital to provide applicants with the information they want most. According to a Glassdoor survey, the top five pieces of information job seekers want employers to provide on a career site are:

• Salary and compensation information
• Employee benefits and perks
• Basic company information
• What makes an organization an attractive place to work
• The organization’s mission, vision, values and culture

Beyond providing applicants with the information they want, healthcare organizations also need to make applying for open positions simple. Sometimes replying to a job posting can be a frustrating experience. Many career sites have a burdensome online application process that bogs down applicants with long forms and multiple hoops to jump through before they can submit their resume. This leads to lots of qualified healthcare talent leaving applications half-complete or worse, applying with a competitor.

To prevent applicant frustration and abandonment, healthcare organizations should build career pages that have an easy interface with no separate URLs or pop-up screens. According to a study from Appcast, recruiters can boost application conversion rates up to 365 percent by reducing the length of the application process to five minutes or less.

A well-designed career site can also help filter out unqualified candidates. Healthcare staffing teams should structure applications to include screener questions to filter out unqualified job candidates so talent acquisition resources can be dedicated to engaging the most qualified applicants.

Invest in Content Marketing to Recruit Healthcare Talent

The objective of content marketing is simple: create relevant and engaging content aimed at current and potential customers in an attempt to educate them on products, services or topics of interest. While the majority of content marketing efforts are targeted at obtaining clients, content marketing can also be leveraged as a recruiting tactic to attract and engage healthcare talent.

Healthcare recruiters looking to deploy content as another tool in their talent acquisition arsenal should work with their organization’s marketing team to create compelling content. Compelling content can come in many forms such as blogs, ebooks, podcasts and videos. The only prerequisite to great content is that it should tell a story can add value for readers and in turn, improve the candidate experience.

Beyond the above-mentioned content vehicles, interactive content can also make a significant impact on job seekers. According to a report by the Content Marketing Institute, 81 percent of content marketers agree that interactive content grabs attention more effectively than static content, and 79 percent agree that interactive content enhances retention of brand messaging. Interactive content provides candidates with a two-way conversation and is more personal than other pieces of content. A simple yet fun quiz that tests how well a candidate aligns with an organization’s brand values or video tours of the facility allow candidates to research a potential employer and helps them feel more in control of the recruiting process.

SEO and Healthcare Talent Acquisition Strategy

The best recruitment marketing strategy is only as effective as an organization’s presence on search engines. What’s more, 30 percent of Google searches—around 300 million a month—are employment related. In the highly competitive healthcare talent market, ranking well on search engines and job boards can mean the difference between attracting a steady stream of healthcare talent and losing talent opportunities to competitors. Below we list recruitment marketing SEO basics:

• Create a distinct, index-able job page for each open position and at each location if applicable
• Ensure jobs pages are marked up with the proper schema and metadata structured data
• Send regular XML sitemap updates to Google

In addition to SEO basics, properly optimized job postings provide additional job data Google finds valuable. This data can be added to a job post to help Google index and rank the page better. Remember, Google values “completeness of data” so the more information placed in a job posting, the more likely it is to turn up in the top results of a job candidates search. For better optimization, job postings should include:

• Employment type (full-time, part-time, temp-to-hire)
• Salary or hourly pay rate
• Minimum education requirements
• Minimum experience requirements
• “Valid through” date
• Work hours and schedule type
• Industry sector: i.e., biomedical, hospital food service, laboratory work, etc.
• Required skills such as “ability to lift more than 20 pounds” and “MS office proficiency”
• Qualifications, certifications and experience
• Responsibilities and job duties that are clearly defined

Job titles are also an extremely important SEO factor for ranking in search engines and on job boards. When drafting job postings, make sure common titles are used for open positions. For example, a healthcare provider looking to boost nursing recruiting might refer to nurses as “medical ninjas” instead of their traditional title. While quirky and unique, job seekers will never search for “medical ninja” openings when looking for a job. It is best practice to use common titles and standard terminology as keywords that job candidates are likely to use in their search.

Conclusion

As the skills shortage in healthcare remains a factor in recruiting healthcare talent, organizations need to continue to find ways to attract candidates. By implementing a strong recruitment marketing program, healthcare organizations will ensure they stay ahead of the talent curve. A healthcare RPO partner can guide you through creating effective campaigns that will make an impact.