Healthcare Recruiting with Social Media Brought to you by
Table of Contents Introduction 3 Healthcare Recruiting Best Practices 5 Reach Job Candidates in the Right Places, on the Right Devices 6 Use Targeted Advertising on Social Media to Quickly Fill Positions 10 Build a Talent Community to Attract the Best Candidates Both Now and in the Future 12 Use Social Media to Promote Yourself as an Employer of Choice 14 Conclusion 17
Introduction We know healthcare recruiters have challenges with recruiting today. As the Baby Boomers age and the Affordable Care Act gives more people access to healthcare, the shortage of qualified healthcare professionals has become a big problem. To compound the issue further, Baby Boomers account for a large portion of current healthcare professionals and are retiring faster than medical and residency programs can produce new physicians, nurses, and other skilled professionals. Between healthcare professional s retirement, the aging population and the increase in people with access to healthcare, there is a bigger need for healthcare professionals than ever before and the pressure is on healthcare recruiters to fill those positions quickly. An open position can negatively impact your organization s quality of care and put strain on your existing staff, but good candidates are difficult to find in a limited amount of time. There is a bigger need for healthcare professionals than ever before and the pressure is on healthcare recruiters to fill those positions quickly. What s worse, candidates will become even harder to find as the talent shortage worsens in the coming years. We re expecting a shortage of one million nurses and 90,000 doctors by 2020 and, by 2025, we re expecting a shortage of 52,000 primary care physicians 1. There s also a lack of diversity in the healthcare workforce. Despite the fact that 25% of the US population is a racial, ethnic or cultural minority, fewer than 1. Nursing degrees advancing as physician supply wanes; https://nursing.osu.edu/assets/attachments/college_news/condegreesbizfirst.pdf 3 Healthcare Recruiting with Social Media
10% of healthcare professionals are a gap that will continue to widen 2. As the US population continues to diversify, healthcare organizations need to keep up with a diverse workforce that can understand how to work with people with different values, health beliefs and lifestyles. On top of the talent shortage and diversity hiring challenges, healthcare recruiters are also challenged with finding the right candidates. Your organization isn t just looking for a warm body, they want a highly qualified team player who will fit the culture of their Healthcare recruiters are also challenged with finding the right candidates. organization, is passionate about what they do and can handle tough situations. Top talent like that has a choice in where they work so it s crucial that your organization stands out as a top employer if you want to win in the war for talent. Candidates, on the other hand, are facing challenges of their own. Healthcare candidates hear about the talent shortage, yet they have a hard time finding a job especially right out of school. They re generally interested in working for hospitals because of the benefits offered there, but hospitals are looking for more experienced hires to replace their experienced, retiring workforce. Healthcare candidates tend to go straight to the healthcare organizations near where they live and in which they want to work, rather than going to job boards, networking or using a staffing firm. Many healthcare professionals are not familiar with LinkedIn or they don t use it much if they have an account. When they apply for a job through the hospital, they rarely get an answer to their application and, if they do, the candidate experience is often poor. 2. Recruitment and Training of Racial/Ethnic Health Professionals in Rural America; http://www.ruralhealthweb.org/index.cfm?objectid=c5cf417c-3048-651a-fe7b85e470705268 4 Healthcare Recruiting with Social Media
Healthcare Recruiting Best Practices The challenges that both healthcare recruiters and candidates face confirm that there s a disconnect in the way they search for one another but also proves that there is a huge opportunity for you to: 1. Reach job candidates in the right places, on the right devices 2. Use targeted advertising on social media to quickly fill positions 3. Build a talent community to attract the best candidates both now and in the future 4. Use social media to promote yourself as an employer of choice 5 Healthcare Recruiting with Social Media
Reach Job Candidates in the Right Places, on the Right Devices Your goal as a recruiter is to get candidates to find and express interest in your jobs but that task has become more and more difficult with healthcare candidates. Job boards tend to give you droves of unqualified candidates and only allow you to reach active candidates who have the time to dig through job listings. As mobile phones become more engrained in your candidate s lives, it s a little easier for them to sneak the time in to look around, but many candidates aren t able to apply because the application process isn t mobile-optimized. In either case, it s the best candidates you ll lose top talent knows they don t need to waste time on job boards or an inefficient application process to find a great job, so it s important to reach them where they do hang out, and make it easy for them to find and apply for your jobs on any device. Social media is a great place to start because it allows you to find both active and passive talent with extraordinary reach. Social media is a great place to start because it allows you to find both active and passive talent with extraordinary reach. If you re just getting started with social recruitment, focus on the big three networks Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter for the best reach. When recruiters first start thinking about their social recruitment program, LinkedIn is the first network they think of it is the most popular professional social network, has 2 million doctors and nurses and has some popular recruitment tools. Begin by adding a Career tab to your LinkedIn Company Page, which allows you to share information about your organization and your employees, including pictures, videos, employee testimonials and links to your career site. 6 Healthcare Recruiting with Social Media
But your social recruitment presence shouldn t stop there - Facebook is four times bigger than LinkedIn and so engrained into your candidate s daily lives that over half of their users log in every single day, spending more time there than on any other website. No matter how busy your candidates are and how many double shifts they re working, they are probably squeezing in some time on Facebook! With 1.32 billion users (as of August 2014) 3, it s no surprise that you can find nearly 1.5 million nurses, 200,000 physical therapists and millions of other healthcare professionals on Facebook 4. To get started, do an audit of your organization s existing Facebook presence (if any) and your competitor s presence to determine what you re up against. Think about what you want to develop on social media from a recruitment perspective. Decide if you want to add a recruitment tab to your existing company Page, like Arkansas Children s Hospital, or if you want to create one or more career-focused Pages, like Cigna Careers and Early Careers at Cigna. Either way, a tool like Work4 s Social Career Page can help you organize your jobs and allow candidates to easily apply for them, create job alerts or join your talent pool. Last, but not least, you should also tap into Twitter s 270 million users (as of August 2014) 5 to increase your candidate reach. Similar to Facebook, take a look 3. Facebook Newsroom; http://newsroom.fb.com/company-info/ 4. Facebook Ad Platform, targeting users aged 22 and over, Work4 Ad Team, July 2014. 5. Twitter Fact Sheet; https://about.twitter.com/company 7 Healthcare Recruiting with Social Media
at your organization s existing Twitter profiles and those of your competitors, and determine if you want to use your main profile or create a career-focused profile. Once your profiles are set up, there are a variety of tools to help you distribute your jobs across them including Work4 s Social Recruiting Platform. One client, Cigna, has found that 24% of their total applications with Work4 come from job distribution on Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn. Dina Kraus, Talent Lead of Strategic Initiatives at Cigna says, Looking beyond traditional sources like job boards is critical to attracting high quality talent, especially in the healthcare industry. Work4 has taken a more important role in Cigna s overall acquisition strategy and allows us to stand-out as a forward-thinking employer brand on social networks. Work4 has taken a more important role in Cigna s overall acquisition strategy and allows us to stand-out as a forward-thinking employer brand on social networks. Dina Kraus Talent Lead of Strategic Initiatives at Cigna To ensure that the candidates you reach can actually find, and apply for, your jobs, make sure you have a mobile-optimized application process. Smartphone usage is rapidly increasing, particularly among healthcare candidates 71% of nurses use smartphones for their job and 66% of nursing students use smartphones for school 6. With mobile devices being so deeply integrated in your candidate s lives, they have 24x7 access to your jobs because they can access social media (as well as email, text messages, etc) anytime, anywhere. 6. As Smartphone Usage Expands, Survey Says Nurses and Nursing Students Want Mobile Access to Credible Drug Data; http://www.wolterskluwerhealth.com/news/pages/as-smartphone-usage-expands,-survey-says- Nurses-and-Nursing-Students-Want-Mobile-Access-to-Credible-Drug-Data.aspx 8 Healthcare Recruiting with Social Media
A good way to get started is by setting up a mobile-optimized career site that makes it easy to find and apply for jobs on any device, like Work4 s Mobile Recruiting Solutions. This is particularly important to consider once you get into social recruitment a whopping 71% of people access social networks on their mobile phones 7 so you want those users to be able to easily join your talent community and apply for your jobs. 7. Adobe 2013 Mobile Consumer Survey: 71% of People Use Mobile to Access Social Media; http://blogs.adobe. com/digitalmarketing/mobile/adobe-2013-mobile-consumer-survey-71-of-people-use-mobile-to-accesssocial-media/ 9 Healthcare Recruiting with Social Media
Use Targeted Advertising on Social Media to Quickly Fill Positions When you have an immediate need to fill a position, social advertising can help you find qualified candidates quickly. You can target candidates based on work experience, education, location, interests and more to reach the exact candidates you need. Social advertising brings new opportunities to target and reach specific profiles. For instance, you can target physicians who work for your competitors by using their job title and company name. Or, you could reach people in a different and richer way, by reaching out to customers who may know a nurse, encouraging them to let her know about your open position. You can also use social advertising to add diversity candidates to your talent community, targeting by language, location, interests and more. For instance, if your community is largely Spanish speaking, you can recruit healthcare professionals that are bilingual in Spanish and English. Or, if your community has a large Indian population, you can target doctors who have worked in hospitals in India. Nurses Social Workers Speech Pathologists Physical Therapists 1.54 M 1.14 M 8 M 1.39 M 90 K 5 M 194 K 1.42 M LEGEND Audience sizes based on professional and education info given by Facebook users (US) Audience sizes based on interests expressed by Facebook users (US) 10 Healthcare Recruiting with Social Media
Case Study: Work4 Social Ads team launched a series of targeted campaigns to drive qualified candidates to Cigna s career site. The first campaign focused on recruiting nurse case managers in the Chicago area - a new market for Cigna - in a limited amount of time. Social ads have proven to be an invaluable component of Cigna s successful social recruiting initiatives, boosting traffic and candidate conversions on the Cigna career site by 50%. The pilot campaign mentioned above resulted in 35 RN case managers hired in 60 days, with a cost per applicant of $28.60, far lower than traditional sources. Cigna s pilot campaign resulted in 35 RN case managers hired in 60 days, with a cost per applicant of $28.60, far lower than traditional sources. 11 Healthcare Recruiting with Social Media
Build a Talent Community to Attract the Best Candidates Both Now and in the Future While it s great to advertise for positions when you have an immediate need, it s also important to invest in building relationships that will help you hire now and in the future. Healthcare candidates often form an idea of where they want to work before they even graduate from school and want to get to know an organization before applying. Social media is a great tool to develop new relationships with active and passive talent, nurture those relationships until they re ready to apply, and provide information to candidates who are interested in applying immediately. Social media is a great tool to develop new relationships with active and passive talent, and nurture those relationships until they re ready to apply After you ve set up your social media profiles, encourage your employees, recent applicants and company alumni to join your social talent community. Post information about your organization, like company news and milestones, as well as industry news to spur conversations with your candidates. Encourage your community to ask questions, share your updates and discuss topics that interest them and make sure that you engage with those that do. An added benefit of social community engagement is that your message could be spread within your candidate s network, helping you increase your reach and attract passive talent that may not have heard about your organization otherwise. By investing time in your candidate relationships, your job postings will make more of an impact because you ll have an interested, loyal and qualified following that will be more likely to convert and stay at your organization long-term. 12 Healthcare Recruiting with Social Media
You may want to start building relationships while your candidates are still in school so they re more likely to keep your organization in mind before they finalize their career decisions and start looking for a job. You can use social advertising to reach current students at any school you d like to target, inviting them to join your talent community, attend a networking event, or join your mentorship program. Even if you don t hire entry-level candidates, your goal should be to get candidates interested in working at your organization so that their goal is to get a job with you when they have more experience. By focusing on these relationships before the candidate is ready to apply, you will be ahead of your competition when hiring becomes more difficult for everyone in the future. Case Study: Cigna does this well with their early careers Facebook page, where they use a combination of desktop and mobile ads to drive current healthcare students and recent graduates to join their talent community. The strategy proved hugely successful, helping the company grow its talent pool and expand brand awareness among millennial candidates. 13 Healthcare Recruiting with Social Media
Use Social Media to Promote Yourself as an Employer of Choice The facts are clear: there are more healthcare jobs to fill than there are candidates to fill them, giving candidates the upper hand. Even with the reach and relationships you achieve with social media, your employer brand plays a significant role in a candidate s decision to apply for your jobs and accept your offers. That s why it s crucial to use social media to showcase your employer brand. Show candidates what it s like to work for your organization by posting information about your current staff, employee benefits, and company awards. This might include an employee spotlight, where you share their picture, biography and accomplishments for a different employee each week, or a testimonial where employees explain what a typical day is like and why they like working for your organization. Your employees can really make a difference in recruiting top talent so make sure you show them off! You should also ask your employees to share your social content and job postings through their own networks to increase your reach and social referrals. Your best employees probably know more top performers from past employers, school, or through networking and there s no stronger employer brand message than an employee advocating on your organization s behalf. You could even promote your employer brand and an open job at the same time with a Twitter or a Facebook Job Card, where you can attach an image to your job link to help it stand out. Show off a cool company perk, an employee testimonial or a photo of your facility to encourage job seekers to click on your job ad and apply. 14 Healthcare Recruiting with Social Media
You may also be able to target passive candidates currently employed with ads that showcase a desirable aspect of your organization. For instance, a clinic that s only open on weekdays from 9-5 could advertise that perk to hospital employees who may be burnt out on working nights, weekends and double shifts. Or a hospital that specializes in pediatrics could advertise relocation benefits to employees of another pediatrics hospital in a less desirable part of the country. Every candidate will be looking for something different, so figure out what your organization can offer and promote that to your candidates. As you promote your employer brand, you will see candidate s perceptions of your organization change in your favor, multiplying the effects of your social employer branding efforts exponentially. 15 Healthcare Recruiting with Social Media
You may see: An influx of candidates in your talent community A better response rate on your LinkedIn Recruiter InMails or Graph Search Recruiter messages A higher click through rate and conversion rate on your social job ads The offline effect, in which candidates are influenced by an ad to apply, without actually clicking on the ad itself Being highly visible helps candidates keep your organization top of mind when they re looking to make a move or recommending a job to a friend. While you may have been one of many choices before, you will start to become the top choice. This will be key in the talent shortage because your organization will be the one everyone wants to work for. 16 Healthcare Recruiting with Social Media
Conclusion As the healthcare talent crisis escalates, traditional recruiting methods won t be enough to attract the limited supply of qualified talent. Top candidates aren t searching job boards or using an agency to find a job they are either employed or seeking a job at a select few organizations. With more job openings than candidates, your organization will need to stand out if it wants to attract talent. Social media can help you recruit top talent now and in the future. Build your social and mobile presence so you can reach candidates nobody else can reach. Advertise so you can quickly find targeted candidates for your open positions. Develop relationships with your social talent community so that you have loyal candidates to choose from when you need them. Promote your employer brand so you will stand out as an employer of choice for both active and passive candidates. Investing your time in social media can give you a competitive advantage in the talent shortage so you have a readily available supply of top candidates to choose from. While everyone else is struggling to fill positions, you will have talent knocking at your door. To learn how Work4 can help you attract, convert and hire top healthcare talent, please contact us. Simply easy-to-use and effective. Work4 is ideal for jumping into social recruiting fast. Cathy Henese Manager, Career Services, at the Children s Medical Center
About Work4 powers social recruiting by making everyone a recruiter and everyone a candidate. We help thousands of companies including many Fortune 500s connect with talent on social networks. Through our strategic partnerships with Facebook and Twitter, our technology transforms social networks into a source of top quality talent, enabling enterprises to extend their employer brands, drive referrals organically and target specific profiles. Our dedicated team of social recruiting experts provides ongoing best practices and advanced analytics to ensur customer success. Work4 was established in 2010 and is backed by Matrix Partners and Serena Capital. Visit us online at work4labs.com.