Selling Is Hard; Hiring Is Harder

When people think of marketing, they most often focus on branding campaigns or advertising campaigns designed to sell products. However, systemic changes in the job market, especially resulting from the Covid-19 pandemic, have made recruitment campaigns an increasing focus for industries that depend on a large, skilled workforce. Our experience working with healthcare clients has taught us the hardest thing to market in healthcare might just be a job. What changes when the thing you are selling is a career? These are four lessons to keep in mind when you must grow your healthcare team.

Know your audience

Say you are trying to hire nurses. No one nursing position is alike and neither is your talent pool. To achieve your hiring goals, it is critical to conduct research to understand the unique roles you are hiring for, what candidates are likely a good fit, and what would likely interest and motivate prospective hires. Knowing your target audiences on a more personal level allows you to tailor your campaigns to better cut through the clutter.

Ensure your value proposition is actually valuable

Let’s face it, the available talent pools are incredibly low in relation to available positions. On top of that the competition is fierce and healthcare workers are even being lured away by different industries. Your offer not only needs to be competitive, but you also need to be able to authentically articulate what you can offer a candidate beyond salary. This is where a solid employer brand is critical in addition to being able to highlight your culture, benefits/perks, flexibility and variety as well as training and advancement opportunities.

Personalization is key

You not only need to know your audience, but you also need to personalize your campaigns to meet them where they are. Take a hard look at what your talent pools care about and where they spend their time. Create personas that align to what motivates those individuals. And then leverage data, personalize your communication strategy, and tailor your outreach and response strategy to ensure your message is relevant, reduces barriers to conversion and cuts through the clutter.

Brand + Lead Generation

The “secret sauce” for successful healthcare recruitment is the right balance between brand and lead generation. Stay top of mind to avoid getting lost in the noise and keep critical channels always-on while layering in targeted campaign strikes that drive action. Reduce friction across the recruitment journey and think about your brand as more than just a campaign. Conducting experience audits for our clients have proven to be incredibly valuable to diagnose where gaps in the experience may be to ensure you aren’t losing valuable prospects.

Achieve alignment across the organization

Marketing’s success can only go so far without collaboration with the HR department, hiring managers, system leaders and colleagues. Getting input on the positions you are hiring for, current priorities, quality of leads, and what led to an offer being accepted or declined keeps marketing authentic and provides the opportunity to constantly improve. Additionally, sharing the messages in market and the personas you’ve developed with recruiters and hiring managers can help prepare teams and aid them in better connecting with candidates.

Jump Company has not only helped our healthcare clients generate leads, but more importantly, exceed their hiring goals. We attribute our success to not only our strategic, performance-driven approach but also our own successful recruitment of great employees.