In any recruitment effort, it’s extremely important to first determine how you will go about reaching the best possible match. Our industry was created because in the past people that needed a physician would use word-of-mouth which generally involved reaching out to colleagues in training programs to see if anyone coming out might be interested. Of course this method was rarely effective, and in the case of rural opportunities, it almost always failed because rural is not the first choice of any candidate looking for a new opportunity. Rural opportunities needed the help to promote, position, and sell their opportunity to candidates.
Even today with Internet, clients don’t often have the time, or experience with the tools required, to mass market to potential candidates. For most opportunities it takes time, as well as multiple channels, to position and place the opportunity in order to attract the best candidate. This strategy is key to producing the results you need, but if your campaign results in only a few candidates, you won’t have the ability to choose the right candidate for your opportunity. Unfortunately in these instances, clients will often compromise and take the first physician that looks good and agrees to take their opportunity.
The difference is in how to market your opportunity. It’s extremely important to develop a well-planned and targeted marketing strategy to ensure maximum impact across multiple channels. In marketing it often takes multiple impressions over a period of time to generate the desired response. We know from experience that it generally takes four interested physicians to result in one interview and four interviews to make one placement. Of course every situation is different, but you can’t expect the first candidate to take your opportunity every time. The numbers can be very revealing, and if you don’t have enough candidates responding to your opportunity, then you won’t get enough presented candidates and enough interviews to result in a placement.
In these instances if your opportunity is not generating enough activity, it might be necessary to go back to the basics and make sure you are marketing the opportunity across enough channels to reach the maximum amount of potential candidates. At Pinnacle we work closely with our clients to fully understand their opportunity. We are then able to compare their opportunity to what already exists in the marketplace and then position our client’s benefit in the correct manner to generate the best response. Everything has to be professional and extremely well done, and it requires a proactive and knowledgeable team of people to make it all happen. It always amazes me the large amount of leads it requires to generate a handful of presents and interviews which results in the eventual desired placement. In the market today, the shortage of physicians is real, and in order to recruit the best, most qualified, and ideally matched physician possible, this is the difference it takes. Contact us today if you wish to learn more.