In conversations with clients I often use the terms “hiring” and “recruitment” interchangeably. For all intensive purposes they both relate to filling an open position with an interested candidate. However, let’s take a closer look…
Over the years, I’ve noticed a big difference related to how organizations view their hiring process. It boils down to the concept of proactive candidate sourcing vs. reactive candidate screening.
The best recruiters are more than glorified resume screeeners. They are proactively building their talent pool for current and future hiring needs. They hire the best and brightest, rather than solely screening the resumes from people who apply. It involves a long term strategic perspective rather than the typical practice of putting out fires.
Recruiters can prove their organizational value by incorporating proactive and personal sourcing campaigns that bring highly qualified passive job seekers from the woodwork.
As we all look for cost cutting methods, organizations that develop some proactive sourcing expertise would also reduce their reliance on staffing agencies and headhunters.
Let’s get back to hiring vs recruitment. Perhaps “hiring” involves the administrative tasks of moving a candidate through the process. While “recruitment” looks to proactively source top talent for an organization’s open positions. Screening resumes vs. searching a resume database. Calling applicants vs. cold calling from state licensure lists. Posting a job on LinkedIn vs. searching LinkedIn for possible candidates.
The main idea is that recruiters are far more valuable when they proactively source top talent! Screening resumes and asking scripted interview questions can be easily accomplished…the real art of recruitment is proactive and strategic.
We firmly believe that collaboration is the future of healthcare recruitment. Organizations no longer have the budgets to hire headhunters to fill their most challenging positions. As recruiters look to fill these hiring needs with candidates, they employ proactive recruitment strategies to reach the target audience. And, proactive recruitment is time consuming, expensive, and tricky to pull off effectively.
Time Consuming
Proactive recruitment involves personal contact with candidates within your target audience. We can’t post a job and hope that people apply.
Expensive
Often this will involve a direct mail campaign where there is a fixed unit cost to print and mail each of the advertisements to the candidates. Other options would include email blasts, cold calling from resume databases, etc. – - all options have a price tag.
Tricky to pull off effectively
Candidates in these target areas are frequently contacted by your competitors and headhunters. Over time they become immune to any marketing effort that is not highly creative. The key becomes capturing their attention and then delivering a targeted recruitment message.
In Conclusion…
With all the factors involved, the future of effective recruitment will involve collaboration among healthcare organizations. A number of organizations can come together to share the fixed costs associated with a campaign. The result is a lower cost and at the same time, the candidate is provided information and options about a variety of current career opportunities.
At Career Tree Network we currently offer a number of services to bring together healthcare employers for a shared recruitment effort. A good example is our Featured Jobs Postcard.
Simply put, in order to remain competitive, your organization no longer needs to work in a silo to recruit candidates for your difficult to fill positions. Sharing expenses with other employers enables you to benefit from a reduction in your recruitment costs and an increase in effectiveness.
I first wrote about Collaborative Recruitment in January 2011, if you’d like to read that blog post, please click here.
It’s fun watching old television commercials. If you have a minute, check out this one from April 1979. (If you’re reading this within your email, visit: http://www.CareerTreeNetwork.com/blog to watch it.) I now want to go camping, purchase a station wagon, and call someone.
We are lucky that within therapy recruitment we can use state licensure lists to identify the individuals legally able to fill open positions. This is extremely helpful because anyone who is not licensed is unable to perform the job. Your Occupational Therapist position requires an Occupational Therapist. This is much different from other recruitment where the requirements are more flexible and a license is not required.
Your open OT position can be filled with a person from one of these groups:
1. Person currently licensed as an OT in your state.
2. Graduating student who is working toward licensure.
3. Person from other state who would relocate and work towards licensure in your state.
Pretty basic so far, right?
Here is the punchline: with the licensure requirement and our ability to individually identify potential candidates, your recruitment strategy should focus on Direct Marketing activities.
Direct Marketing reaches out and touches someone directly.
In a practical application, direct marketing would involve building a list of potential candidates for your open position and then proactively contacting them directly via phone, email, mail, social media, etc.
Rather than posting a job and praying that our ideal candidate sees it, we work backwards to develop a list of potential candidates and incorporate direct marketing activities to advertise the position.
This direct proactive approach is effective when candidates are scarce or if an organization is committed to only hire the best candidates for open positions (as opposed to hiring those candidates who happen to see the advertisement).
Career Tree Network has developed an expertise to help organizations leverage a direct recruitment strategy to fill open positions more quickly and with higher quality candidates.
I recently met with an HVAC contractor for a price quote on a new heating system for our home. At the end of our meeting he pulled out the rate sheet and then said, “Because you are a local customer, I’ll discount the price.” He then gave us a lower rate. We asked a few more questions and then he mentioned a special rebate with the manufacturer…lowering the price again. As he realized that we were still “on the fence”, he lowered the price again. I left the meeting confused and frustrated. Was there a better price available? Should I ask for more discounts? How much did the last customer pay for the same product?
At Career Tree Network our pricing is firm. If a client is looking for a special package, we can build custom price quotes, but 99% of our pricing is standard and published on our website. We don’t believe in special discounts for certain clients. The price your organization pays will be the same as we charge everyone else. At the end of the day we strive for fairness and equality.
I think in the long term this is the best strategy to build customer loyalty.
When I graduated from college, I remember purchasing a newspaper to explore the classified job advertisements. Some companies were posting their jobs on-line but the vast majority of jobs were still posted in the newspaper. Employers knew that posting their jobs in the newspaper was important. Candidates knew that most of the available jobs would be posted in the newspaper. Thus a marketplace was created. Fast forward to 2013 and newspaper classifieds don’t carry the same effectiveness. An employer’s website is often the most reliable source to see the current jobs open at their organization.
I believe that the idea behind a newspaper classified section is still valid. Candidates prefer to see a selection of open position in one place. Employers still want to advertise in locations where high-quality potential candidates can see their open positions.
The main problem is that newspapers are no longer being read by many people. I can’t recall the last time that I read a newspaper or looked at the classified jobs. If your organization currently has jobs posted in a newspapers, I won’t see them. If you are advertising for a Physical Therapist position, how many PTs will happen to see the ad posted in your local paper? This is a big problem as organizations seek to attract the attention of qualified candidates.
Distribution is the key to effective advertising. You could have the best job advertisement in the world, but if it’s not seen by the right people, you’ll never fill the position. Career Tree Network is working on a new service to take the idea behind newspaper classifieds and give it a new distribution channel to ensure that it reaches the target audience for your specific hiring need. Please contact us to learn more.