Insights

 Healthcare organizations often focus their talent attraction strategies on tried-and-true external tactics like job board postings and sponsorships, niche site display advertising, and whatever their greatest competitor is doing to poach their talent. Yet more often than not, the hidden possibilities of what an organization owns and earns by reputation are overlooked because of a lack of resources and expertise, and the urgency with which talent for high volume roles is needed. It’s easy to rely on paid media to get applications, but content remains king and authenticity is the great differentiator.

Our approach to attracting healthcare talent is to start by leveraging and nurturing the channels you own, supported by the reputation and influence you earn in the community and industry, and boosted with media that’s trackable and actionable. Here are 24 tactics we’ve deployed for healthcare companies and how we’ve considered them as part of overall recruitment strategies.

OWNED MEDIA

Engaging & Optimized Website Content – Your career website is the undisputed core of your talent acquisition and recruitment marketing strategy and can be used not only as a destination but also to attract talent through SEO best practices and content that gives an authentic view of what it’s like to work for your organization. Employee testimonials, robust job descriptions, and powerful creative and messaging are a magnet for healthcare professionals looking for the right opportunities.

Informative Blog Posts – Creating blog content is a great way to tell your stories, showcase working for your organization, and establish authority. It’s also a crucial element of informing Google that your site is continuously growing – a dynamic, content-rich destination that gives career seekers the results they are looking for when searching for jobs. Search engines and candidates alike value meaningful blog content, and creating it is one of our top strategies to establish and keep healthcare employers as part of the ever-growing conversation regarding healthcare careers.

Email Newsletters – Regular newsletters featuring job openings, company and industry news, and links to other owned content (like blog posts) are easy to create and automate through your CRM, ATS, or even your company email provider. It’s surprising that many healthcare organizations don’t take advantage of sending regular communications to career website visitors who register for your Talent Community (other than job alerts).

ATS Mining and Experience Enhancements – Speaking of your ATS, we recommend curating a list of qualified candidates who have applied to jobs in your ATS over the last 18 months but have not been hired and invite them to view and apply to available jobs again. It’s likely they have lost interest in your company or got discouraged from not being interviewed or hired for the previous role. And, an audit of your ATS process can find barriers to completion, reasons for drop-off, and functional optimizations that can increase candidate flow and qualified applicant conversions.

Social Media Profiles – It’s never too late to check social media off your list of things your organization MUST consider from a recruitment perspective. No matter your target audience, every candidate uses one or more of the big 5 – LinkedIn, Facebook, X, Instagram, and yes – TikTok. For authentic storytelling, you’ve got to be there, create, engage, and repeat. Your content and messaging are crucial here – creative storytelling is more important than the targeting itself.

Branded Content – Videos, personas, infographics, and ideal candidate profile visuals for specific roles are impactful content types to consider building to engage and convert your audiences. AI can be used here for inspiration, not final executions. Our intent when developing branded content is to create long form content that can be used and reused in different formats, lengths, and contexts to ensure maximum segmentation, visibility, and relevance.

Video Content – Video content remains the most likely to be shared of any media type and it also receives the highest engagement rates. YouTube is owned by Google and is the 2nd most visited website in the world. Now, give your employees the power to create their own video content (called user generated content or UGC) about why they chose your company and why they stay, and you have an authentic story that becomes part of your company’s DNA.

Employee Referrals – Using technology to help encourage referrals, increase visibility of referral-eligible jobs to your employees, and automate payouts and communications is a huge benefit to any organization. But really, any efforts you take at all to let your employees or candidates refer or get referred to open roles will decrease advertising spend, increase quality and likelihood of hire, boost retention rates, and reduce time-to-fill. The more strategic an employee referral program is, the better the chance of success – aiming for 35% of hires coming from referrals is a good place to start.

EARNED MEDIA

Press Releases – Announcing your hiring initiatives and milestones, educational partnerships, and innovative practices and technology from the perspective of employees can generate valuable media coverage and increase brand visibility. By collaborating with your PR and Marketing departments, you’ll become an asset to the organization rather than the department that is often the first to see reductions in budget.

Media Interviews – The opportunity to communicate your company’s employer brand story to industry publications and news outlets presents an opportunity to create new audiences at a mass scale. Your community events, facility openings, and on location hiring events should be branded and involve Talent Acquisition & Recruitment Marketing representatives who you will be proud of being the ambassadors for your employer brand.

Podcasts – Certainly one of the most popular channels for content creators right now is Podcasting. You can allow select employees to showcase company values, work/life balance, and achievements in an engaging and accessible format. Podcasts can be far reaching yet intimate in nature with video, audio, and transcribed content used together or separately and edited for many formats and lengths. A 30-minute podcast with an industry pundit and a Nurse Practitioner can generate short-form content for weeks or months.

Influencer Partnerships – Collaborating with influential people in the healthcare industry, healthcare talent acquisition, or TA software or recruitment marketing solutions can lend credibility and increase visibility with talent who value the connection to reputable individuals. We encourage not only saying yes to these opportunities when they come about, but to also seek them out actively.

Recognition & Awards – The surest way to increase your organizations’ chances of receiving industry recognition and awards is to apply to everything that is relevant to you. Best Places to Work, US News and World Report lists, and the DAISY Award are a few of the organizations that can boost employee morale, improve your reputation, and raise your NPS score to make you a more desirable company to work for.

Community & Event Sponsorships – Collaboration with schools and universities, annual 5k runs, and businesses focused on health and wellness are positive ways to strengthen ties with the community and enhance your visibility and reputation. Your employer brand can really shine here - with so much more than a logo in centerfield. Activating your employees to be the voice of your company in their communities supporting the things they believe in can improve employee retention.

Social Media Engagement – In addition to owned social media platforms, it’s important to participate in the conversation happening in your company and the healthcare industry at large. Engaging with and sharing content from others has a reciprocal effect, and it’s just a nice thing to do. Spending 20 minutes per day on the social profiles of competitors, healthcare influencers, and partners can teach you a lot and give you inspiration. This engagement also includes encouraging your employees to post positive reviews of your organization on Glassdoor and to respond to comments.

PAID MEDIA

Google Ads – This tactic will ensure you are in the top position on search engine results pages (SERPS) on Google. It’s straightforward to manage and measure, and becomes more powerful when you use the data it delivers to optimize your strategy and approach. In turn, the results of the enhancements you’ve made can increase organic search engine optimization (SEO) that will enable you to reduce your reliance on paid media.

Job Board Sponsorships – With Indeed’s ever changing rules (that’s mostly a good thing) and move to remove organic (non-paid) traffic, leading the pack of job boards will get a little more competitive for them. Programmatic job technology companies are deservingly all the rage and will remain that way. It’s imperative to set up these campaigns with expert skill and the goal of maximum exposure to qualified candidates who are actively seeking new healthcare roles.

Display Advertising – Their targeting flexibility, format options, and opportunity for creative brand messaging with imagery and video make display a strong tactic for brand awareness. But with lower conversion rates than search advertising and job boards for specific roles, a fine-tuned approach to your display spend and meticulous tracking are the ways to go.

Social Media Advertising – Like organic social and managing your own profiles, social platforms are where everyone is gathering. U.S. paid social media spend is forecasted at $83 billion in 2024, an increase of over 13% from last year. According to the 2023 Social Media Marketing Industry Report, 86% of marketers said that paid social gave their business more exposure, and 76% said that it increased traffic. Content types, audience targeting, and messaging are extremely flexible with native platform search and relevance (what’s trending) being a primary focus.

Retargeting – As we move to a completely cookieless world in the coming months, it’s important to know that retargeting is still possible with zero- and first-party data – the data you collect directly from website visitors, talent network sign-ups, or ATS candidates. Personalizing experiences and using contextual advertising will be at the core of retargeting to make it effective. With first-party data you’ll be able to deliver better targeted job ads across individual platforms and convert talent that has already interacted with you.

Content Syndication – This tactic involves republishing your content on other websites in order to give your brand and the author greater reach. You’ll see this type of content often at the bottom of high traffic sites like cnn.com (see the Paid Content section). This is different from guest blogging which is creating a new piece of content specifically for one publication. There are nuances to creating and publishing syndicated content in terms of authority, linking, and SEO that can greatly affect results.

Video Advertising – YouTube and social media channels like Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok make targeting, engagement, sharing, conversion, and establishing an emotional connection with your audience easy. The right format and length of your video ad can make all the difference, and it’s important to understand how the different video ad types for each channel are served, controlled by users, and measured. You only have about three seconds to capture attention, so your video ad has got to be impactful the moment it begins.

Native Advertising – Job ads that match the look, feel, and function of the media format where they appear provide a seamless experience to the user and don’t disrupt from the user’s interaction with the site they are on. Sponsored and promoted posts on Instagram and LinkedIn and recommended articles on Yahoo are examples of this tactic. Native ads are typically very polished and clearly labeled as ads, usually easily distinguishable from organic content.

Streaming Video & Audio – With their popularity continuously increasing with promises of better viewing and listening experiences, streaming services are raising rates and adding more ads and commercials to increase revenue. This is an opportunity for healthcare organizations to increase brand awareness within younger audiences to introduce them to careers in the industry at a time when fresh talent is needed the most. The next five years will be crucial to engage and convert an entirely new generation of healthcare workers, and these platforms are where they spend much of their free time.

We can help you develop the attraction strategy that’s right for your organization. That process will likely involve shifting budget from ineffective, expensive, and immeasurable tactics to those that are just the opposite. We’ll do this with baseline data, clear goals and ROI expectations, and your desire to be innovative and enviable by your competition.

 In today's competitive job market, attracting and retaining top healthcare talent is a priority. The landscape of Talent Acquisition solutions has evolved significantly, and in this digital age, the importance of a strong employer brand cannot be overstated – it’s a powerful differentiator and has direct impact on the success of the organization.

Companies that have strong employer brands are winning in every way. Couple a strong employer brand with the current digital marketing trends, and you’ve got the competitive edge you need without the abundance of funds that some large organizations have.

However, according to Talent Acquisition leaders, financial and capital resources are the biggest barriers to building and nurturing an effective employer brand. That response is no surprise, but it goes much deeper than that. It also has a lot to do with the personnel on your team, their expertise, workloads, and available time, and how you engage and enable your employees to be part of the Talent Acquisition process.

So how do you do better without increasing headcount and budget? By understanding the following truths and considering partnerships that fit into your Talent Acquisition budget and make the assets and resources you already have more effective. Things are changing rapidly, and it's already too late if you don’t start now.

Build A Strong Employer Brand

Talent Acquisition professionals are aware that they’ll need to do more with less in 2024. And it’s no secret that employers perform better in terms of their recruitment marketing efforts when they have a strong employer brand. Better outcomes also improve the internal perception that an employer brand is working. That positive outlook further enhances your brand, incentivizes your employees to communicate it externally and stay with the organization, and impacts the bottom line in terms of less spend and time on recruiting outside talent.

Employee and candidate surveys, retention rates, Net Promoter Scores (NPS), and engagement with your brand on social are great ways to measure your brand internally and externally.

Your Employer Brand is not something you write; it’s what you are – that’s why the voice of your employees is such a crucial part of getting Employer Branding right.

Authenticity and transparency are key in shaping a compelling employer brand that resonates with prospective candidates. From your career website headlines to your calls-to-action and your job descriptions. How are you unique, and how do your employees thrive? These are the questions an effective Employer Brand should answer.

Overcome Barriers

Oftentimes, Employer Brand strategy and Recruitment Marketing are managed by different teams. HR controls day-to-day management, marketing controls design and messaging, talent acquisition controls strategy & execution, and leadership controls the budget. This synergy requires teamwork, recognition of one another’s value, and clear expectations of deliverables.

The most essential part of this alliance is securing leadership buy-in for the strategy developed. This will likely require a business case, competitive intelligence, and an ROI evaluation. A polished, business goal-oriented approach will ensure a seat at the table when budgeting decisions are made.

Job advertising is getting more competitive and expensive every year, and while metrics are abundant, recruitment marketing leaders rarely feel that paid advertising works. Indeed and LinkedIn drive the lion's share of traffic and applications to jobs, but there is so much volume on these sites it’s difficult to really stand out.

Leverage Digital Marketing Trends Skillfully

For Talent Acquisition & Recruitment Marketing professionals in 2024, it’s imperative that you understand what AI tools such as Chat GPT, Microsoft Copilot, and Google Bard can do and what they can’t do. AI should not be used to write your content, social posts, or job descriptions. Still, it can be used for inspiration, data benchmarking, boosting SEO performance, predictive modeling, and optimizing media buys. AI will not replace your TA team, but that team will evolve into a blend of creative and analytical thinkers using AI models to become more efficient and more quickly.

In a future "cookieless" world, zero and first-party data will be crucial, and companies need to start adapting to the new norm and get creative with tracking marketing efforts. With upcoming changes to Google and iOS to launch soon, building email and mobile # lists, conducting website and social surveys, and re-engaging networks already built are several ways to collect and leverage this type of data.

Personalization has been a strategic pillar in career website development for several years. In 2024, it will become even more prevalent. With the right tracking mechanisms and technology in place, job seekers no longer have to search for jobs, or indicate location, or select preferences. When used correctly, entire experiences can be customized to any aspect of a visitor’s characteristics, demographics, and behavior.

Prioritize The Candidate Experience

Your career website is still the core of the candidate experience – nearly 90% of job seekers will use it to learn more about working for your organization. It’s imperative that the site is branded, user-friendly, full of engaging content, including videos, informative, and integrated with your Applicant System (especially on mobile devices since that is likely where most of your traffic comes from) and that it encourages action.

High applicant drop-off in the 80-90% range for healthcare is not unusual but can be easily reduced with an ATS experience audit and restructure. Organizations can’t let the most important part of the applicant process be the very thing that alienates, discourages, or frustrates job seekers into not beginning or completing an application.

How your organization communicates with applicants post-apply is also important. Design your Thank You page to make it engaging and use it to encourage applicants to stay connected to you while you are reviewing their application. Don’t make applicants enter the same data multiple times, and ensure resume parsing is working correctly. Let your applicants know their application status at every step of the process. If your ATS does not have these capabilities, you may need to look for a new one that meets the needs of your applicants.

Recognize That Job Seekers Are In Control

Job seekers have many options to connect with companies and apply for jobs. Sometimes there are so many options, making it difficult for recruiting teams to manage and measure many sources. Healthcare companies have made changes to work practices, shifts and schedule flexibility, remote and telework jobs, and job sharing at the location and unit level to meet candidate and employee expectations and to stay ahead of competitors.

The reality is that healthcare professionals want to work for an organization based on brand recognition and experience. The requirements, responsibilities, skills, and qualifications for a similar role at one organization or another are not very different. Our research has shown that healthcare professionals, more than those in other industries, seek out specific employers and will work hard to get a job at a certain company.

The Gig Economy is prevalent in the healthcare industry, with independent clinical & non-clinical professionals monetizing their knowledge and experience in roles like Per Diem, Traveling Nurses, and Technology. This can help lower recruitment and staffing costs by giving you the flexibility to hire short-term based on specific staffing needs.

Embrace A Multi-Channel Approach

Design your multi-channel approach to Employer Branding and Recruitment Marketing in this order: Owned, Earned, and Paid. Advertise and engage on channels you OWN; then by leveraging the channels, you EARN visibility & credibility, augmented by PAID advertising when you need it. This approach relies on the least amount of external spending at the start of your journey.

Employee Referrals remain the most popular method to attract, hire, and retain healthcare talent, but many companies don’t make it easy for employees to refer the right people. 50% of hires is a good target for the total number of hires that can be attributed to an employee referral. That requires a program that is visible, accessible, and usable for every employee everywhere.

A company with a strong Employer Brand is likely to use social media, actively participating on employer review sites, and engaging on industry-specific platforms. Search Engine Marketing, Display Advertising, and In-App Advertising are also channels where organizations can attract the talent they need with precise targeting and messaging control. And, of course, for high-volume visibility and conversions, LinkedIn and Indeed job postings perform well.

Invest in Continuous Improvement

Building a strong employer brand is an ongoing journey that requires continuous improvement and adaptation. Companies must track performance metrics, solicit feedback from employees and candidates, and remain agile in response to evolving market trends and candidate preferences. Organizations that commit to innovation and continued learning are better equipped for long-term success and sustainability.

Infinitee Healthcare – Employer Branding, Amplified

We provide hospitals and healthcare systems with customized solutions and flexible strategies to help you navigate today’s complex labor market and maximize your recruitment marketing performance. Our consultative approach blends proven healthcare talent acquisition solutions with data-driven insights to build, deploy, and optimize recruitment marketing plans tailored to your specific hiring goals and challenges—fortifying your employer brand and boosting candidate volume at every level.

Contact Vince@infinitee.com for a free, high-level audit of your overall candidate experience journey. It will include insights into brand visibility, career site performance, and application conversions.