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.

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.

When I first started Career Tree Network in 2007 I often made efforts to appear like a large organization. My theory was that potential clients would be impressed if they thought that teams of people were working with me in some high rent Brookfield office park.

For example, the job title on my business cards was “Vice President of Talent Acquisition”. I was like that 17 year old boy who just started lifting weights and feels the need to walk around with his chest sticking out and arms in the air.  Many entrepreneurs and small business owners follow this approach.

In truth…it was just me…working from my dining room table.

As the business has grown, I’ve been fortunate enough to bring on Independent Contractors to help with various aspects like Marketing, Graphic Design, Data Management, Computer Programming, Web Design, etc.  On a regular basis I engage these folks to lend a hand with projects…but Career Tree Network still does not have any employees in the traditional sense. (Perhaps this will change in 2013…)

Now that the business has been around for a few years and has survived a poor economy, I no longer feel the need to pretend that Career Tree Network is a Multi-National Conglomerate.  Rather, I feel pulled towards an honest authenticity about who we are and what we’re doing to impact healthcare recruitment in Wisconsin.

Working with a small business, like Career Tree Network can produce great results for your organization. Here’s the secret: as a small business, we need to produce results for our clients. In our case, we need to be the best in the world at connecting healthcare candidates with career opportunities in Wisconsin…otherwise we’ll fail.

We work hard every day to accomplish our mission. Thanks for your continued support.

Earlier this week we completed a recruitment direct mail campaign for a client.  
Here is some feedback sent to our client from a candidate who had received the mailing.
We’ve used XXXX for some information to protect the innocent.  :)

Email subject: Career Tree Network / Brian Weidner

–BEGIN EMAIL–

Hello!

I recently received a letter from Brian Weidner, founder of the Career Tree Network.

He did a great job praising your company and put forth a valiant effort to recruit me. His letter is creative and the best one I have ever received. I receive letters every week.

I work at XXXXXXXX in XXXXXXXX. I have many opportunities for professional growth and am completely happy at this time.

Thank you.

Best of luck with your search!

Have a great day!

XXXXXX XXXXXXXX, PT

–END EMAIL–

Imagine going to a restaurant where there is no menu.  Rather, the waitress knows you personally.  With an understanding of your preferences, she comes to the table with a few hand selected options.  You then easily make a decision to meet your needs.  The whole process is personal and hassle free.

How can you apply this scenario to your recruitment process?

In a hiring context, the candidate is treated with a personal touch.  The recruiter has an established relationship and understands the candidate’s needs.  At Career Tree Network, we believe that the future of recruitment is direct, personal, and hassle free.

There is a recent news story that makes me sad to be in the recruiting business.

It reports that companies are starting to ask candidates for Facebook passwords during the application process or interview.

I have three problems with this…

1.  The goal of the hiring process is to determine if a candidate has the skills and abilities to perform the open position.  There is a cultural fit that also comes in to play, but this can easily be determined during the in-person interview.  Viewing Facebook information about a candidate does not provide a valid data point on the individual’s qualifications.  It gives hiring managers more information than needed.  These unnecessary data points are now factored in to the hiring decision…making our job as recruiters more difficult.

2.  It puts the candidate in an awkward position.  I can’t imagine anyone who would be enthusiastic about sharing their Facebook password with a potential employer.  At the same time, they want the job and don’t want to be seen as having something to hide.

3.  It creates a line in the sand for companies to start asking all kinds of questions that have no relevance to the job.  “What kind of car do you drive?”  “How much debt do you have?”  “Do you buy organic groceries?”  “What are your mortgage payments?” – - When this starts to happen, the hiring process turns in to a personality contest and the most qualified applicants might be left in the dust.

—
I’m interested in your thoughts on this topic.  If you’re reading this on our website, you can leave a comment below…otherwise send me an email.

After over a year of planning, I launched PTCareerTree.com in June of 2008. It was the only service offering of Career Tree Network. An employer could post their opening on our website and view resumes in our database. If they wanted additional help or other options, they had to look elsewhere.

In those early days I would often hear a client say something like, “well, what else can you do for me?” These organizations had a strong need for candidates and wanted more proactive recruitment solutions. The problem with difficult to fill positions is that they are in fact, difficult to fill. Even a super-specialized resource like, PTCareerTree.com can fail to produce candidates.

This became an issue. I had clients who wanted additional services, but I had no additional services to offer.  This lead to the development of some additional services including recruitment via direct mail and email blasts.

After a few direct mail projects, I realized that a follow-up campaign would be effective to nurture relationships and encourage people to come forward. An effort like this is labor intensive. It involves making phone calls, sending emails, and contacting candidates via social media. There is no automation involved and seeks to build individual relationships with candidates.  With the added follow-up effort, we are able to consistently produce impressive results. Now, we always include a follow-up component with our recruitment direct mail projects.

Bottom Line
Technology is great, but people remain at the center of a successful recruitment effort. Often we want to take the easy road. We want to just post an open position on a website and hope that a group of highly qualified candidates respond. We want to just send a direct mail campaign and have people knocking on our door. Unfortunately, things don’t always work as planned.

Successful recruitment is relationship focused. It must involve a series of (labor intensive) follow-up activities to nurture relationships and build trust with candidates. It’s about planting the seed, watering it every so often…and then eventually seeing the benefit.

At Career Tree Network we’re moving forward with some exciting initiatives that have the potential to change the face of Healthcare recruitment in Wisconsin. Since our initial launch of PTCareerTree.com, it’s been a work in progress to effectively leverage technology while also retaining a individual relationships with candidates who use our service.

Employers want proactive options to build relationships with candidates and at the same time, candidates want a higher level of service than a website can provide. They want a personal touch and are looking for a real person to develop an understanding of their career goals…and take it a step further to help them achieve those goals.