While a bad candidate experience might cause to a candidate to quit your hiring process entirely or hurt your employer brand with a negative review on Glassdoor, a great candidate experience can help you turn your top prospects into hires. 

So, what can you do to create a great experience that helps your organization stand out from the competition? Our Redefining Recruitment series will provide answers in the coming weeks through blog posts focused on how to: 

1. Harness SEO to Showcase Your Job Opportunities 

People can’t apply to jobs they can’t find. 70% of all job searches start with Google—150 million of them every month. And Indeed can still boast that it reaches nearly 93% of online active US job seekers. Structured data and properly formatted feeds are the key to helping these sites find and properly identify your content. 

2. Create a Compelling Careers Site 

A careers site is vital to a quality candidate experience. Most referral sources will push prospects directly to a job description. If that description is coming from your ATS, those candidates will miss any employment brand messaging, benefits info, and hiring events you have invested in for your careers site. From delivering the right first impression to content that authentically presents insights candidates seek before they convert to applicants, we’ll outline the must-haves for creating a compelling careers site. 

3. Master the Art of Effective Job Descriptions 

Go beyond the requirements and internal jargon. Help the prospects see themselves in a career with your organization. You can also use the job description as a filter to connect with the talent you want and dissuade those you don’t. Salary, benefits, and hours are table stakes that should be included in all job descriptions. Stand out by highlighting sign-on bonuses, remote/hybrid opportunities, and quality of life and DEIB content and, most of all, differentiating your organization from the competition. 

4. Simplify the Application Process 

Have you tried applying for a job through your ATS? If so, was it on a mobile device? Most job seekers conduct their searches on a handheld device. If your ATS application process is long and involved, consider an alternative call to action where candidates, especially those for your harder-to fill-positions, can express their interest quickly and connect with a recruiter who can take it from there to guide them through the next steps.  

After 18 years, the unemployment scales have finally tipped, and we’re seeing more available jobs than unemployed individuals. According to the Wall Street Journal’s Eric Morath, “U.S. job openings rose to 6.7 million at the end of April [2018], compared with the 6.3 million Americans who were unemployed.” It’s the first time this has happened since the U.S. Department of Labor began keeping records of such statistics in 2000.

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Shawn Kessler talks recruitment strategy with ASPR 2015 attendees.

This year I attended my fifth ASPR (Association of Staff Physician Recruiters) conference. My biggest takeaway: The physician shortage has truly become a real, living, breathing thing that, understandably, has a lot of recruiters terrified.

Rewind to 2011. Chicago. The conference was smaller with fewer attendees and vendors.  You would hear “The physician shortage is coming” and “Take these steps so your health system is prepared” or “These are the recruiters you should be using.” The term “recruitment marketing” was hardly known at that point.Read full post...

As a staff recruiter, you have to target physicians precisely, and then differentiate yourself from your competition — and do it all on time and on budget. That budget may be tight. You may be a team of one. And the physician shortage sure doesn’t help. But you press on.

Because your bottom line relies on the income physicians bring into your organization.

In AB&C’s 10 + years of helping physician recruiters, we’ve seen the challenges you face. And we’ve helped healthcare organizations find and bring in the physicians they need to keep the bottom line in the black.

But even if you can’t hire an agency just yet, we can still help with your recruitment strategy. Here are four areas you should focus on:Read full post...

A website portal is an excellent way to brand your organization and offer members something more specific then the general information on your website. We recently updated one of our client’s physician recruitment portals by asking these three simple, strategic questions:Read full post...

It’s smarter and less expensive to invest in your own employment brand identity, rather than depend on outsiders to fill your pipeline.

The best physicians deliver better care. But what’s the best way to find those physicians?

Investing in locum tenens to fill vacancies can certainly deliver the physicians your patients need, and there will always be a need for them. But at what cost? The physicians’ longevity and loyalty are uncertain, and they’re only a short-term solution.Read full post...

Nobody has to tell you times are tough. Budgets are tight. And senior execs at your hospital or health system likely believe your efforts to attract physicians and advance practitioners are getting more expensive. And to an extent, they’re right — because they only look at recruitment as an expense.Read full post...

Have a clear plan in place for the changes your staff will go through over the next few years.

Welcome to the wildest of times in the history of American healthcare. Consumers, physicians and advanced practitioners, administrators, insurers, and government bureaucrats are caught up in a systematic change that’s as manageable as a tornado in a mailbox. Since 2010, we’ve all been loosely aware of the guidelines of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (or “Obamacare,” if you prefer). But today — only a couple months from full adoption — uncertainty and fear loom large. All parties are scrambling to make sense of this monumental change, let alone predict how it will affect their daily operations.

Here’s a clue: Unprepared health systems and hospitals throughout the country are facing mass layoffs or, worse, closing. Some even project that one-third of hospitals in America will close or completely reorganize by 2020. Healthcare is rapidly becoming the newest commodity in an open competitive market, and healthcare employers with brand names will prevail.Read full post...

What is a stronger employment brand really worth?

If you want to recruit and retain top talent, visit our recruitment marketing page. 

An interesting collection of statistics showing the current state of physician recruitment

If you want to recruit and retain top talent, visit our recruitment marketing page. 

A guy spills coffee on himself on the way to a job that has been slowly grating on his psyche, and boom — he starts looking for a new position.

When I tell people I’m in recruitment marketing, they ask, “So you recruit doctors?” Or they nod knowingly, assuming I’m in traditional marketing. The words “recruitment” and “marketing” together have that effect. People find the concept challenging.

Unlike most of our colleagues on the services or B2B side, we work in a fickle climate. Job changes can be instantaneous or carefully thought out. A guy spills coffee on himself on the way to a job that has been slowly grating on his psyche, and boom — he starts looking for a new position. Or an employee gradually realizes she wants to be closer to her family and moves back to her home state. That’s why it’s so important to have the right message at the right time in the right place. That’s where search engine marketing (SEM) comes into play.

SEM allows your opportunity to appear through relevant searches and even on relevant content pages. If you’re not using SEM in Read full post...

23 percent plan to leave medicine or are at least considering doing so.

In August, I’m headed to sunny Tucson, AZ, for the annual Association of Physician Recruiters (ASPR) Conference. Along with my friend and colleague Emerson Moses of One Medical Group, I’ll present on how technology is changing recruitment. Thanks to our partnership with MDLinx.com, we’ll have great data from our 2013 market research survey on physicians and how they seek employment.

We’ll take an in-depth look at our research study details during our August 13 presentation, but here are some other fascinating statistics to hold you over until then (cardiologist turnover rates are really high!).

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