My company's decade of experience with hospitals and my observations

After a decade of study and dealing with hundreds of hospital executives, my company’s direct experience is hospitals are not internalizing the behavior and expectations of web savvy jobseekers and making adaptations for their recruiting, and statistics across the board are showing higher expenses, extremely poor statistics, and record use of third party recruiters to fill advanced-practitioner jobs.  I offer my analysis and a proven solution for stability, accountability, and improvement.

Today’s Jobseekers have little in common with hospital/company leadership:

AT WORK, today’s target hospital jobseeker does not sit at their desk and stare at a desktop PC or attend meetings during their work day like the EVPs, hospital CEOs and Senior HR Executives who make decisions on the processes and tools used to recruit them. Physicians are now trained on ipads and carry them from patient to patient.  Employer campuses and locations are Wi-Fi.

AT HOME, the only thing the same about the home environment of a physician, advanced medical practitioner, or a 24 year-old recent graduate from a NP program vs. a decade ago is that they drink coffee in the morning.  Today’s higher-end medical practitioner has an iPad and a smart phone.  They take their tablets from room to room to watch TV, Skype with friends, read the newspaper, and pay their bills and bank online. They check the news and all communications on their wireless devices – NOT their desktop, if they even have one.  They text instead of email.  When they email it’s on Facebook.  They shop for food to cars to real estate online.  And when they leave the house there is a seamless transition to their smart phone or tablet.

• The best professionals that hospitals want to hire are “wireless” – “unattached” and empowered by social media platforms to explore and communicate in the world.  The Internet is now about people engaging it – not merely reading it one dimensionally like a newspaper like in the 1990s, or watching streaming, cliche-filled recruiting videos on it passively – like a TV, in the 2000s, but now being involved in it and expressing oneself and being a part of the content.   The Internet is now as real as life.

Consciously committing to internalizing this lifestyle and how practitioners use technology tools and the Internet is integral to maximizing recruiting because with this appreciation comes the understanding that traditional recruiting is no longer effective and my company has seen proof that hospitals have dropped the ball.

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Bad hospital stats and observations; there’s plenty.

• In a decade I have never met a hospital that has a 50% closing record of visiting physician candidates before we agree to do business.
• I have never met a hospital recruiter, or a corporate recruiting director for that matter, with an accomplished professional sales career – or even training, from a F500 to a F100 company in more than a decade in this business.
• A major community hospital company in America we have dealt with has less than a 50% retention rate with physicians after 36 months.
• In a decade I have never seen a single hospital show me a sophisticated retention program.
• Another major community hospital company based in Florida has an entire team and network of “physician recruiters” set up, but when you speak to the affiliate CEOs literally “more than 9 of 10 candidates” they get are from third party recruiters and not their own company’s.
• One regional physician recruiter for a major hospital company merely screens resumes he gets from third party recruiters – he does absolutely no cold calling or selling of any kind to possible candidates – this is the norm.
• All one has to do is look at the connections of any particularly community hospital CEO on LinkedIn – that they have numerous third party recruiters on their lists is all you need to know about the confidence they have in their hospital or from their company to recruit doctors.
• I have witnessed recruiting directors tell me their hospitals have had to pile on incentives and guarantees to close deals, to the tune of hundreds of thousands of dollars – selling the doctor purely on the financials – not on the hospital or its area; I am convinced this is NOT due to the shortage of candidates but slow reactions to the job seeker culture, poor selling skills, poor tools, and a malaise about the recruiting staff not wanting to engage the process and proactively impact their results.
• I have met a person in charge of physician recruiting at a regional hospital in western Arizona who is “technology averse” and doesn’t own a smart phone.  She doesn’t text either.  She has never had a sales job yet she directs physician recruiting.  Her HR Director claims to be “anti-Internet” and these two women are in charge of recruiting at this community hospital – the only one in their town.
• I have met CMOs in hospitals on the recruiting staffs who claim “I don’t believe in selling.”
• Many community hospitals start with grandiose ideas about their ideal candidates but end up not only lowering their standards and raising the income offer, but hiring a lesser candidate, such as a J-1; sometimes these physicians are good but the problem is they often leave after getting their green card.

The Advisory Board Co, Inc. of Washington warned hospitals in its May, 2008 report (that’s approaching 4 years) of the need to become web savvy and amend their efforts around using the Internet to attract jobseekers.  ABC’s research showed hospitals lose $100,000 every month primary care physician jobs are unfilled (Merritt-Hawkins came out with a similar number two years prior) – in specialties that is far greater; however, because this is “opportunity loss” and not a direct line item red number, hospitals still don’t take an alarmist view that some physician openings take a year to fill and with deals that disfavor the hospital in many ways, including the hiring of less-than-stellar candidates with a 50% chance of never setting roots in these service areas where they could join partnerships, invest in their areas and do many things to make their communities stronger.  The numbers lost are uncountable specifically because hospitals aren’t crafting world-class recruiting protocols with tools that optimize their brand, the delivery of their message to jobseekers while  maximizing their competitiveness.

We’re in 2012 and a major community hospital company is now seeing the need to do something about their awful retention problems, clearly in REACTION to terrible numbers.   Decision makers and SVPs are obviously generally aware  “the Internet is changing” but when is the alarm going to go off before they see their approach, staff, and tools need upgrades?

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CEOs agree with my assessment.

Frankly, everything I have written here a hospital executive who makes decisions on recruiting would likely agree with, and the facts bear out that their hospitals have simply not made adjustments to adapt their recruiting process and tools to the new jobseeker and how the Internet has changed everything.

• I have watched for a decade how decision makers at hospitals and their corporations have dismissed their target market with an unwillingness to adapt to the new online consumer lifestyle and its direct impact on the career search culture – because physician jobs eventually get filled; many for-profits take pride in the expense of it, including having numerous corporate staff recruiters that evidence indicates do almost no recruiting but merely “process” the candidates who are provided by third parties.

The bottom line is this inaction/unawareness/delay/sweeping it under the rug has cost hospitals hundreds of millions of dollars in wasted expenses and lost opportunities – and lives, as there is no doubt that poor recruiting has led to unfilled jobs as well as the hiring of lesser practitioners (my father died as a result of a mistake made during an outpatient surgical procedure and I take this issue seriously).

While major hospital companies proudly publish physician recruiting expenses to shareholders as though they are bragging, behind the scenes they worry to hospital CEOs and have more meetings about their 50% or worse retention rate with doctors after 36 months.  At the local level, recruiting still seems to be a “put the fire out” protocol administered by people professionally untrained who would rather be doing something else and outwardly express an aversion to “selling” in what is a terribly expensive and competitive market.

While this has created an opportunity for my company to offer our patented Online Job Tour® as a solution to reaching the new jobseeker as well as a more efficient and economical approach to recruiting, we still see untrained staff placed in charge of very important searches with frustrated administrators who are busy and faced with anxiously closing deals almost solely on “what’s it gonna take?” financials – which may end a search but doesn’t assure a long-term placement or stability, but only “kicks the can down the road.”

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Why aren’t hospitals improving?

The refusal by hospitals to address the limitations of traditional recruiting continues to be profound and ultimately hurts the bottom line and disrupts patient care – and is responsible for the boom of third party recruiters who now dominate the Internet search engines when candidates get online and look for career options.  Hospitals know all these stats.  They might quibble with me over some of them but they are legitimate.

The bottom line relates to not having key people with proven selling experience making key strategy decisions regarding recruiting strategy and tools – when online content is key, marketing people, who are often in charge of it but are hired to promote the hospitals services and for PR – don’t have recruiting experience and they aren’t technically sales, and web makers don’t have recruiting or selling experience.  The recruiters don’t have technology or professional sales experience or training – neither do local CEOs.

Hospitals don’t have the time to deal with candidates they need to, they don’t have the money to educate and host them for extended periods to solidify candidacies or rule them out, and they cannot hire $100,000+ sales professionals who have the wherewithal and know how to close deals and set up sophisticated, track-able local recruiting protocols that measure results and build on successes.

In larger-sized companies they cannot act quickly enough and by the time a new idea is fleshed out after numerous meetings, the product decided upon is often already obsolete.

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What is the answer for hospitals to offset these shortcomings and improve their recruiting?

The answer is already revealed in how hospital administrators are seeking third party recruiters – they need help in the form of leveraging better resources than their own.  However, there is baggage that comes with contingency searches and there is a “need to know” discomfort by both sides.  At the end of the day hospital administrators also know the relationship between a physician and that recruiter doesn’t magically end after the placement.  The bottom line is third party recruiters are a crutch used due to corporate, support and onsite shortcomings.

The best immediate help for a hospital would be an advanced tool that reaches today’s jobseekers and has a selling component for the hospital – a tool to offset the time, expense, and professional staff limitations of hospital recruiting.  The tool should be made available by a specialty company that can move quickly and offer additional services that keep their hospital clients ahead in the game and efficient.  Moreover, the “fresh perspective” from outside-the-box partner with entrepreneur/executives with experience and insight vs. inexperienced employees who “react” to market and technology changes, is a prudent to have in such a competitive industry as hospital recruiting.

• And in order to be a valuable addition to support hospital recruiting, the recruiting tool needs to be a) fully viewable on computer devices while b) the needed information is seamlessly and efficiently delivered while it c) maximizes the hospital’s competitiveness vs. other employers.

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The easiest and most important thing that can not only have an immediate impact but offset the shortcomings of the others, is to have a world-class recruiting tool.

Is there a tool that makes jobs more attractive and reaches today’s modern jobseekers while maximizing efficiency and competitiveness?  Online Job Tour® is a patented recruiting system proven in test market and preferred by surveyed physician jobseekers.

Based on my success in technology sales and sales consulting and born from a passion to recruit physicians after my father died in an outpatient procedure, I invented Online Job Tour to offset what I found were the financial and professional limitations of hospital recruiting, but also for the better in-house recruiters who recognize they can only speak in linear terms on the phone one prospect at a time, and they can’t be in 50 places at once or working 24/7.  I also hired a staff that understands the changing nature of technology and its impact on career search.

I invented Online Job Tour® to essentially replicate the interview visit experience but in the form of a now patented system that sets up elements necessary for recruiting and informing relocating jobseekers.

In brief, Online Job Tour is ideal for today’s jobseeker who wants to immerse himself in web content – the product makes the important emotional sales connection online while it provided a thesis-like review of every key subject jobseekers must understand before making real commitments.  Understanding sales, we know how to position the information to maximize the marketability of the client.

Today jobseekers can take a better “virtual interview visit” to our clients and their service area – profound when you consider this can be provided to every prospect and their entire families vs. the relative few who take the real trip for traditional recruiting.

• Online Job Tours are more than 10G in size with 2000 original images as well as interviews and features and testimonials of more than 50 people from all walks of life that will be the jobseekers future neighbor – on our latest Online Job Tour there are more than 50 videos and 2 hours of video time.
• Technologically, we designed the world’s first video player embedded into the Online Job Tour that plays with almost no delay or buffering even with a less-than-great signal.
• We have a mobile version of Online Job Tour – our prototype was released in fall of 2006 before the iPhone.
• After a seven year test market with community hospitals in 14 states while waiting to receive the patent we now have an expert staff that can provide additional technology/support solutions for clients relating to improving ad response, candidate acquisition from the Internet, better results from job fairs and we are always focused on improvement.
• We estimate being at least two years ahead of the hospital market with our approach and the technology we have harnessed, added to the patent which gives Online Job Tour or its concept federal protection from being copied which gives our clients a competitive advantage.
• Based on our surveys hospitals save over $47,000 per physician and advanced practitioner placement using Online Job Tour.

Without getting more detailed, we have set up our support system to help clients monitor results and feedback from all candidates and we have developed a recruiting host program to improve retention by promoting a smoother relocation via newly-met neighbors before the new employee even moves to the area.

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In summary, Online Job Tour was invented for and has proven to be a tool that offsets the inherent limitations of hospital recruiting for hospitals with serious problems to those who want to take their results to another level, including positively impacting candidate quality and retention as well as providing a means to measure and improve recruiting statistics.

For more information please visit my team’s website at www.onlinejobtour.com

or call me at our studio – 813-855-5185.

Hospital and in-house physician recruiters can learn a great deal from these guys

Although I haven’t checked into the figures, I wonder every year how many New Year’s Resolutions fizzle out by February.  My guess is that it’s a pretty high percentage, and among many reasons could be that people tend to set their goals too unrealistically and without a good plan or model to support their efforts.

If you are an in-house employer recruiter and your resolution is on the ropes or already kaput, I have a simple and powerful “resolution solution” that can last all year and pay dividends: Resolve to be a Pawn Star.

By now you have heard about or seen the show on the History Channel called Pawn Stars which chronicles the everyday life of a family who has run a successful pawn shop in Las Vegas for years. People from all over bring in goods such as old cars to a book once owned by Isaac Newton, from a circa 1700 musket to a vintage boom box to sell.

I want you to quickly get past the fact that this is a pawn shop, but an extremely successful BUSINESS.

• And there is a very simple reason for it that experienced salespeople and sales trainers (and great recruiters) quickly recognize – the principals at the pawn shop not only win virtually every negotiation with customers who bring in their goods, but they also almost never lose.

How would you like to have a simple recruiting process that saves time with job seeker prospects and drastically improves your results – from closing percentage, getting the appropriate terms your employer is pressing for with the newly hired employee, and improve your retention numbers while getting a sincere “win-win” where both you and the new employee are totally satisfied? 

I’m going to recommend that you, in a general sense, model your recruiting approach around how these pawn shop owners negotiate so focus on how they do it.

The Advantages of the Pawn Stars:

Experience:  The first thing to recognize is the pawn shop owners have an incredible advantage – they negotiate dozens of deals every day vs. the person off the street who has perhaps never tried to pawn or sell anything they have owned before – this is no different than the advantage an employer-recruiter has over prospective candidates from physicians to specialty nurses.

Exclusivity:   The next factor is the pawn shop owners have money – in other words, they have what these people want for the goods they are pawning.  Sure, we don’t know the motivations of the people – for instance, they may be desperate for cash or just curious to see what the item they have may be worth. The point is it doesn’t really matter because the pawn shop owner is going to set the terms.  These people came through the door.  Similarly, your jobseeker prospects are at least casually interested in you; after all, you have an open job and they are at least sniffing around about it.  They are coming to you.

Knowledge and Expertise:  These pawn shop owners must be masters of the goods and products over which they are negotiating – because they must turn around and sell anything they buy at what they want to be a considerable profit.  Much of the things people bring in, from jewelry to guns, they already know what their store’s selling price is going to be based on market conditions.  The more unusual the product the better – the pawn guys will simply leverage an expert to come into the store for them in front of the customer and provide an assessment of the value of the product.   The experts seem to have good credentials, and talk intelligently, they have a reputation to uphold – but they clearly favor the pawn shop owners; nonetheless, they usually provide a “retail value” of the product.  Supporting your recruiting process should be tools as well as people in your service area that can make a significant difference and they should be leveraged to improve your chances.

Even with a starting price from which to negotiate, the pawn shop owner has the process to win while promoting a deal that will either satisfy the customer or there will be no deal because he won’t accept a deal that doesn’t give him the opportunity to gain.

• This is similar to recruiting, is it not?  A jobseeker will come in with an expected salary and compensation range while to employer recruiter needs to promote a win-win that first benefits the employer, or be smart enough to drop pursuit of a jobseeker with unrealistic expectations or who isn’t sincerely interested.

Understanding “Emotion:” People buy on emotion.  All good salesmen and recruiters know this.  An emotional attachment to a product or a job can be used against the customer or jobseeker, respectively, just as the emotional attachment to a product by a Pawn Star or to any particular candidate by an employer, can cut into the bottom line of the businesses.  To keep this blog entry more brief and focus on my orientation of developing a “process,” let’s agree for this post that because the Pawn Star and the employer-recruiter have always done this, they should have a clear advantage on this subject and have an awareness (gut feeling) when emotion is playing too big of a role in their considerations.

• Clearly, an employer-recruiter needs to be consciously aware of attempting to generate a number of emotional responses from jobseeker-prospects – it helps to out-recruit other employers as well as in the negotiations; will a candidate accept lower terms for a job and a service area/community they have fallen in love with? You bet!

The Negotiating process:  What all great sales professionals have in common, as do great recruiters, is they have a “sales process” or “presentation” which is refined and improved as they gain experience into which they incorporate their experience and exclusivity, which can turn style and recite in their sleep. While this is a multi-step thing to evaluate, you’ll be amazed how simple it is and how the pawn store owners operate so smoothly that what comes off as a normal conversation is a big victory almost every time for them, and equally importantly, the customer leaves the negotiation satisfied – a “win-win.”

• This is what employer-recruiters also hope to achieve, and it’s clear that an established, expert process gets to the bottom line expeditiously – which is also important as unfilled jobs cost money.

The Two Negotiations – as I review these negotiations with you keep in mind that the customer is totally oblivious to almost all these factors and their brain isn’t wired to pay attention and understand they are involved in an almost totally orchestrated sales process that is a great disadvantage to them.  But also understand the end result is either going to be a perceived “win-win” – the customer is not going to accept an offer they don’t want, or they will part company.

A. Without a third-party expert providing a price from which to start:

From the get-go, understand the pawn store owner isn’t going to start any negotiation unless they already know the value of the product being offered by the customer, and what they perceive they will get for it. With the orientation toward being able to sell the product at the highest re-sale possible as well as knowing the most they can pay, they also start the negotiations.

The pawn store owner will naturally give a low offer with the customer generally not even understanding it  is a low ball offer:

Pawn Star:  “I’ll give you $200 for it.”   (This is the lowest the Pawn Star thinks the customer may accept and he also already knows he will only pay $275 at the most, and he thinks he can resell the item for $600)

Customer:  “Well, geez, I was hoping to get at least $500.”  (Generally speaking, the customer has a ballpark figure of what they hope to get for their merchandise, but it is often not really based on any facts or knowledge about the product; often they have had the product laying around the house for years and they have no reference point such as their own purchase price – all conditions which the Pawn Star knows is likely the issue)

Pawn Star:  “You need to understand that I need to be able to sell this for a profit, but I want to give you a fair price.  The best I can do is $250.”  (Here the Pawn Star introduces a fact that the customer likely did not consider, which promotes a sympathy of sorts and this is a power statement designed to loosen the customer’s hold on any firm price they may insist upon).

Customer:  “How about $300?”  (This is far less than the $500 the customer just said he was hoping for, but this is the counter offer that the customer is saying he will accept)

Pawn Star:  Long power pause…head shake no (that’s called a “take away”).  Brow wiped.  Stare at the merchandise. Look at the customer (all choreographed acts).  Head shake again.

“$275 is the best I can do.”

(This is exactly what the Pawn Star hoped would be the number with anything below being “extra gravy” to his bottom line, but is also the firm amount he has concluded will be a fit number where it would be worth it to take the time to turn around and display the merchandise for sale.)

Special Note:  The Pawn Star will never speak again after making the offer.  It’s a selling tenant that “the one who speaks after the offer loses.”

• Let’s say the customer does not accept this number, keeping in mind that the customer himself offered $300 – which is $25 less:

Customer:  “I don’t think it’s enough.” Usually this would not be the response because many customers who get this far do not have an absolute firm price or a need to have one.

Pawn Star:  “Well, if you want to spend the money to open your own pawn shop, advertise, pay the light bill, insurance for the business, and deal with all the hassles, maybe you can sell it for $275.  I’m sorry, I can’t do better than that.”  (This is called a “rebuttal” and the Pawn Star follows that with the close again at $275.)

Or let’s say the customer tries again:

Customer:  “Are you sure you can’t do any better?”

Pawn Star:  (Firmly) “$275 is the best I can do. (This is an absolute statement made to promote the close.  We really don’t know if the store owner will go higher but that’s not the point.  This is the art of negotiating.)  I want you to come away satisfied and come back again to me in the future. That’s the best I can do.”  (Another rebuttal promoting good feelings and prospective future business, which has no value to this deal, which the Pawn Star knows, but his intention is to get leverage, and then back to his close)

Customer:  “Ok, I can do $275.”

Pawn Star:  (Will immediately offer a handshake to consummate the agreement – this is a sales tactic, and repeat the agreed upon price) “$275 it is. Let’s write you up for the sale.”

• It is important to also understand that the Pawn Star was operating with a large profit margin on the negotiation, so he had flexibility to make adjustments based on the variety of factors – from the customer’s knowledge of the product to any insistence on a specific price.  Also remember that even if the customer turns down the final offer, if there is truly a remaining profit to be had, the Pawn Star has that 40 feet from “No” until the from door to change that “final offer.”

B.  With a third-party expert’s retain price estimate:

The only difference between this negotiation, when one of the pawn store owner’s “experts” is brought in to provide a retail price from which any negotiation (which is up to the Pawn Star to start, if at all), is that there is a literal starting price point that will be established by the expert.

Expert:  “Considering other products like this that are in the market, the demand for it, and its condition, I would say the retail prince of this widget is $1,200.”

Now, regardless of what price is offered, including the Pawn Star’s experience to quickly be able to discern how easily he may be able to re-sell it and previous demand for a product like this, if any – which are obvious considerations he quickly needs to incorporate, there is going to be a percentage the Pawn Star always works from for this negotiation.  Let’s say it’s 40%.  That would be the best he would go – that’s $480.

But the Pawn Star is not going to throw the number out there because the customer may be willing to settle for less.  So here’s the question:

Pawn Star:  “How much do you want for it?”

From here, the negotiation, based entirely on the $480 mark, is going to be run by the Pawn Star in the same manner as before (the expert knows he is supposed to leave after giving the quote so as not to interrupt the Pawn Star’s deal – he was sent away with a hearty thanks and handshake by the Pawn Star).

Review:  Promising that I would keep your resolution easy to follow throughout the year, these are the basic tenants I want you to come away with:

Watch the show – it’s actually the same song and dance, over and over, with the pawn store racking in money with satisfied customers leaving.  The biggest thing you can learn from this is the efficiency and discipline Pawn Stars have.

• They have a specific routine.  They make customers feel like it is a natural and normal process when the entire thing is choreographed without the customer knowing it.  Your dealings and onsite interview visits should feel this way to your jobseeker prospects.

• Pawn Stars run the process and the negotiation; in fact, they already know the outcome of the deal – which will be terms THEY can accept, or no deal.  The customer (or in our case, the jobseeker) never runs anything but are steered to choices they think they have or directions they feel they are choosing.  A big criticism of employer recruiters is they allow the candidates to run things.  When you start to see this happening, it’s almost a certainty that you will lose the deal or be forced into poor terms for the long run.

• Exclusivity and Firm Offers:  You’ll never see emotion or desperation shown by a Pawn Star.  For the employer recruiter to remember they have the desired job and stand firm in their dealings may be the most important factors – which garner first the respect from the candidate, but also a basis for credibility and real negotiating.

In the end, it is far better to know your best offer and be willing to walk away from the deal.

So for the rest of 2012, if your New Year’s Resolution isn’t doing anything for you, follow these basics and you will begin to craft an improved recruiting platform.

Remember, “Be a Pawn Star!”

The show Pawn Stars is on The History Channel and you can learn more about it and when it airs on the website http://www.history.com/shows/pawn-stars

This is my New Year’s Resolution post from last year when I watched this show and my idea to draw a parallel with recruiting was immediate.  If you want more information about me, visit my company website at www.onlinejobtour.com.   We are also on Facebook.

Carl Brickman
Founder and President
Promo Web Innovations, Inc.

Will your recruiting video play, if at all, on the latest wireless devices?

With the advance of wireless services, mobile devices, and how video has penetrated into the Internet world as well as the career search lexicon, the term “streaming video” doesn’t mean the recruitment video on an employer’s website anymore – the definition encompasses the need for employers to make sure their videos can be viewed on the many devices that exist today. The questions are not just if your recruitment video was built on the Adobe Flash format and cannot be viewed on the IPad. It also goes beyond the concern if your prospect has a good video player on their computer.

Tablets and phones don’t have built-in video players like desktops and laptops.

Therefore, your organization needs to have an embedded video player on its website. Your concern, among the others listed above, is now if the wireless signal strength is strong enough so your recruiting video doesn’t keep getting stuck – or your prospect will move on to your competitors.

Today “streaming video” relates to how video is “fed” to your viewing device in a manner that makes it effectively viewable, particularly on mobile devices, which is what everyone is buying.  While we do it here at our studio, there are companies emerging called “streaming video hosts” which customers store their video there, and the host provides a video player which actually detects the signal strength of the device – and based on the strength the video is fed out, or “streamed” in “bits” based on that speed in order to limit buffering:  if you want your recruiting video, or videos, to play efficiently and elegantly, your organization must go in this direction.

Here at Promo Web Innovations, Inc., video is a significant part of each Online Job Tour we produce – there can be as many as 40 individual videos and more than 2 hours of video content in one Online Job Tour.  We recently designed the first ever self-contained video player on our own streaming video server that plays our client videos on BOTH the IPad and IPhone as well as on PCs and android phones and tablets – regardless of the smart phone, tablet, or laptop, Wi-Fi, and even with a relatively poor wireless or cell signal, the videos play with little or no buffering.

• Regardless of the quality of the video on your recruiting content, you will be dead in the water if your prospect is trying to watch it on his IPhone or IPad with a modest wireless signal; and guess what, more and more of your prospects are.

And it’s tough to stay ahead.  In a market as competitive as recruiting with technology changing, a hospital can’t sit still.  That’s why we designed the world’s best recruiting product but also a support staff that is dedicated and always thinking a step ahead – you get the best recruits and save a lot of money that way.

Contact me or my staff at Promo Web Innovations if you would like to know more at www.onlinejobtour.com.

All indications from our research suggest Online Job Tour is received the same way by job seekers as the real interview trip - including the same emotional response.

During mid-July, I received more than 100 “happy birthday” greetings and well wishes from numerous friends on Facebook – ranging from childhood through college friends with whom I re-connected, to new friends from around the world introduced into my life by our new social media dynamic.  Recently, my wife Thalia also received “happy birthday”s from her friends among the same spectrum of people.

Unless you have a problem with growing old, ”happy birthday” wishes are sincerely appreciated, and generally speaking, people who take a moment from their day to write a quick note to you – it promotes an emotional response – and it was from the Internet mind you, and not a “real life,” personal experience.  And you know what?  I didn’t stop to discern who I personally know and don’t, or the fact that these greetings/salutations/wishes were over the Internet.  It’s the same now.

And with all jobseekers online now, how one gets a bona fide reaction that hits home over the Internet, should be taken seriously by in-house recruiters, espcially in competitive industries.

The better recruiting professionals understand that recruiting is also “selling.”

And the first rule of sales, via all the great sales trainers through time, is you must reach people’s emotions in order to sell them; Bert Decker, author of the famous book “You Have to be Believed to be Heard” talked about our “right brain” and his famous line is: “People buy on emotion and justify their decision with facts.”

• The  car TV commercial is a classic example – where the first part of the ad attempts to draw you in regarding the “excitement” or passion for the driving experience, or a warm hearted family-oriented theme designed to “reach” you, AND THEN the last part of the commercial reviews safety ratings, special lease rates, gas economy, etc. (So there it is: first selling on emotion, but then justifying the good feeling with facts).  The consumer watching the commercial’s reaction is:  “Hey honey (to the wife), that car is what we need, and look – they have a great safety rating and a special financing rate.”  That’s classic sales right there, and I used to train top sales pros, such as stock brokers – phrases like “sleep good at night” were rehearsed; not much was impromptu when trying to win over customers in that competitive arena.

For a decade, my company’s work has been on the singular focus of understanding how tools related to the virtual Internet (made possible through the growing of high-speed connectivity) would allow for career advertising on the Internet to go from mere “text-based” job descriptions and instead of a reading experience, to Online Job Tour being a “virtual interview visit” that “reaches” job seekers – which is that first step that is essential for effective selling, and then have authentic and “drill deep” content to make it far more comprehensive than on the real trip.

Our studies prove as our culture has made this permanent shift to the Internet and there is no longer a line between reality and web content in our lives, Online Job Tour is actually a better “trip” for BOTH sides: for the jobseeker (and their entire family – who cannot take a real interview trip) who has many options and time constraints, and usually have to bring their spouse – travel is becoming more inconvenient, etc., as well as for employers who cannot afford to host every single prospect (and their extended family) who comes across their career advertising to visit their facilities, people, and locations  and has competition issues as well as numerous costs, limitations and challenges.

Here are some examples of Online Job Tour – first is a client in Elko, Nevada – a compelling place but in a vast county that would be impossible to experience in any measurable way on one or even three trips for a candidate and spouse, along with so many of the people we feature in the hospital and area; and the other Online Job Tour is equally compelling due to its location in Selma, AL, which if a candidate looked it up online would get numerous search results regarding the civil rights conflicts 50 years ago vs. the charming town it is today – one of many problems employers have when they merely refer jobseekers to the open Internet with no proactive approach to impact recruiting outcomes.  Far more information covered than on the real trip, and now the same emotional response when visiting our clients and their areas, are generated via our work.

www.nenevadaregional.com

www.vaughanrmc.com

So just like these birthday wishes made me and my wife, and everyone, feel good and appreciated and liked, Online Job Tour promotes the same feelings employers need to begin to promote their careers.  We have countless examples from candidates including Ivy League-educated physicians and their spouses, who have emailed our clients with their willingness to accept jobs without a real interview trip after using Online Job Tour.

Online Job Tour and our seven year test market with hospitals has proven there is no longer a distinction between what is online and reality – whether it’s a simple birthday wish from a friend you never met on Facebook, or something as complex as a virtual interview visit experience for a career move.

Employers had better take notice!

For information on Online Job Tour, including our mobile and iPad-compatible sites, visit our website or call me at our studio.

Carl Brickman
President and Founder
Online Job Tour
Tampa, FL
813-855-5185
www.onlinejobtour.com

Over the last decade as our culture has migrated to the Internet, it is understandable that marketing has been placed in charge of hospital web content primarily to promote their services and for community relations – after all, somebody had to be placed in charge of it.  But this has been nothing short of a disaster for recruiting, which has totally different requirements which begins with having a selling background, which leads to having a conscious awareness of competition as well as a proactive nature

Marketing professionals don't have backgrounds in recruiting or direct sales, among many reasons why they shouldn't be in charge of producing recruiting products or developing strategies.

toward understanding how jobseekers behave, their needs, the technology tools they use, and recruiting costs.

• When a company EVP of Human Resources or a hospital administrator has a critical personnel need or opening to fill, they certainly do not think of their marketing director.
• Instead, they seek out an expert – and this begins to reveal the problem, and who should make recruiting materials for employers – especially web-based material, which I will cover at the end.

Recruiting has become more expensive!  How is this possible?  Today technology solutions clearly suggest it should be far cheaper.  Recruiter firms totally dominate the Internet even though we all knew jobseekers were headed here. 

Who is to blame for employers having no proactive orientation toward harnessing these search engine techniques to acquire candidates for their open jobs, among many ways to attract jobseekers, hospitals exhibiting no compelling web content that positively affects their recruiting outcomes and a decade-long passive approach to web design and technology and products that affect recruiting? 

Marketing professionals were not hired to recruit.  They don’t have the backgrounds to make good recruiters.  And world-class recruiting requires direct sales experience – which marketing people also don’t have, and most people don’t like selling and the rejection that is a part of it. 

Marketing professionals should be allowed to thrive and do the things they truly enjoy and what they were hired to do; instead, place them in a supportive role to experts who produce your recruiting materials.

1) Few Marketing people have any background in professional selling. 

As a former sales professional in a high-turnover tech field and then a sales trainer of stock brokers and other professionals in competitive industries, what stands out the most to me in employer recruiting is the lack of internal people with legitimate experience in competitive, commissioned sales environments.  There is no experience-based awareness of very basic approaches to leverage advantages, or “Sales 101” techniques, to impact as well as shorten what is a long, complex process, and then “close” searches.

One example of how this is revealed is the most common practice for recruiting by hospitals as the sum total of their web content for recruiting, is giving various websites to jobseekers on different topics to apparently compel them.  Today’s jobseekers can find those websites without help.  This “strategy” places the “sale” into the hands of other websites; there’s nothing more charming than to see a hospital list a link to their local newspaper exclaiming “learn about our community” and there was a recent meth bust or homicide in town featured on its home page.  Understanding sales, being proactive, influencing the outcome, is clearly not evident in hospital recruiting materials and content, and the marketing people also didn’t bother to take time to see their competition does the same things – studying the competition is what all sales pros do.  

Does a hospital really want a desirable prospect to base their decision on which hospital’s community has a better newspaper website or schools website, etc?  “Sell yourself by taking your valuable time to sift through these websites, which were not made for recruiting you, but that’s what we want you to do,” is hardly an approach I can applaud.

This orientation continues in how prospects and candidates are handled.  The hospital’s “recruiter” has been watered down to being a person who merely puts together the site visit itinerary.  Generally, the physician candidate dictates the process – not the hospital; another sign there is no professional selling being conducted to influence the outcome in any way (which is incredible to me given the costs and what is at stake).

The result is the position eventually gets filled.   But there is no orientation toward that recruiter or anyone at the hospital being incentivized to improve the process, or punishment delved out for poor results.  In most hospitals no statistics or tracking of placement efforts is done – yet another sign there is no sales orientation.  Nobody is responsible.  But the expenses are extreme – not just the cost of the search effort, but in landing lesser candidates, omissions of getting referrals, little after-the-sale work with the new employee, etc.   Turnover is generally the result of the physician not being educated on the community nor really sold into it to become a part of it and invest in it – this is absolutely the hospital’s fault, or the hospital’s management company.

I have met hospital administrators who exclaim “I don’t believe in selling” when it comes to recruiting – which is astonishing, especially when hospitals deal with lives of people!  Smarter administrators must understand that in order to deliver better service, make more money, and limit mistakes means landing the better candidates over their many career choices – recruiting is therefore competitive selling. 

• Would hospital leaders who ultimately oversee recruiting decisions rather pay expensive third party recruiters to do the work and be willing to deal with high costs and poor long term recruiting results such as poor turnover, simply because they don’t like to sell and or be rejected?  “Selling” and being rejected is a powerful and debilitating fear; yes, that fear is often more powerful than a hospital getting motivated to go after the very best candidates, even to save money or develop a process that improves things (if it involves any form of direct selling).

2)  Marketing people have no recruiting experience, either.  (Neither do website designers so put these two together and it’s no wonder hospital websites are void of compelling recruiting content).

The approach of making recruiting products or web content by marketing professionals is not from one of experience and the understanding that every candidate needs to have indelible information for many relocating needs, and they are considering other options.  And details about the employer need to be clearly provided because they have so much to remember and numerous employers and locations going through their minds.  On top of that, jobseekers should be educated so the new hire can be sustained instead of the spouse or the couple learning incompatible things after they accept the job and make the expensive move, only to see them, so they never make a true commitment to the new career position and the area. 

Marketing people don’t know the costs of recruiting such as lost time, mistakes, and omissions, and don’t have the orientation to see what new products and technologies would be helpful to make their hospital stand apart. 

They also cost the hospital by not having the mindset to be on the lookout for ways to make their recruiting process more efficient.  There is a reason hospitals need as many as three interview trips to close a physician and then have a poor turnover rate because the physician was sold on compensation and not on a career.  

3) Recruiting is not the marketing person’s primary job. 

They were hired to promote the hospital’s services and ultimately generate new business as well as for community relations.  Again, they aren’t salespeople. 

• Recruiting is not just selling, but competitive direct selling, and few people like to “sell,” or what they think as being pushy when the reality is people don’t like to be told “no” or get rejected. 

As a result, the orientation of marketing people when it comes to recruiting is to not make it their priority (so they perceive a great deal of their time devoted to recruiting is rushed and considered an inconvenience) and they are passive about it – this again explains why candidates often dictate the interviews (instead of being led on the interview which is what all good sales people and recruiters do). 

Instead, the mindset of marketing people in recruiting is to be reactive and wait to be instructed to, or react to a need vs. anticipating one or attempting to steer the process so it is more efficient.  They aren’t wired to design things to positively influence recruiting outcomes.

4) Marketing people are not on the pulse of technology regarding recruiting. 

Because their orientation is to generally promote their hospital and not “one on one” sales to anyone, unlike a sales professional, the marketing person never studies or takes time to research and understand the latest tools jobseekers are using and the challenges of reaching them. 

For example, most corporations are PC-based. With the federal government requiring the movement to electronic records and evidence-based medicine, there is a growth of the use of the IPad by physicians.  But marketing people and their website makers design their websites on the PC platform and as a result their videos and many images are not compatible with the IPad that physicians use during career search. 

• Marketing people also don’t understand how jobseekers look for careers.  One of the biggest tragedies resulting from hospitals placing their recruiting content into the hands of marketing has been how the recruiting industry is a generation ahead of them in search engine optimization and results. When a jobseeker types into a Google search “physician jobs in Ohio” almost all the results are recruiter firms.  This is because marketing people aren’t from that competitive background and didn’t think one step ahead for ways to get to those professionals; they didn’t proactively think and then seek to learn about this technology or how jobseekers behave in order to reach them. On the other hand, people with a sales background who automatically have a proactive and competitive streak, see this clear as a bell that hospitals were asleep at the wheel as the jobseeker was changing.

5) Marketing professionals don’t make their recruiting materials to last.

Because marketing people are generally not responsible for the budget for recruiting materials, so there is not a focus on making recruiting products that have a long, quality life.

Regarding products or web information designed for recruiting, 90% of the time marketing people label what is being featured in the number of years it has been in use or number of years an employee has been at the hospital. Instead, they simply placed dates, such as “Joe Smith has been at our hospital since 2005,” then they wouldn’t have such high maintenance materials and content that needs annual adjustments because “Joe Smith has been at our hospital for seven years,” etc. 

6) Numerous mistakes are made by marketing professionals when representing the employer’s service area.

Hospitals are too provincial in how they represent their communities.  Generally speaking, their recruiting content and materials only feature their immediate area.  For example, a hospital will generally not promote features outside of town – whether it be a cool Olympic kayak center, or a colonial village, major shopping centers, a NASCAR racetrack, etc. 

• With no orientation towards sales and not having a high income level of the professionals they are recruiting, marketing people totally miss how they need to represent in their recruiting content the lifestyle that a well-to-do family will have in their area – which means they aren’t going to stay home every weekend. To expand the quality of life factor out into a community’s region to cover recreation, premier shopping, entertainment venues, wineries, ski resorts, spas, country clubs, theaters, etc., is an example of putting on the prospect’s shoes and identifying with them. And yet this is rarely done by hospital marketing people in charge of making recruiting materials because they don’t understand much less internalize the needs of prospects.

7) Money Motivates.

The best way to motivate those who make recruiting materials as well as internal recruiters to grow their skills is to incentive (and penalize) them.  For instance, if the people making recruiting material were penalized or paid less for every month a job is unfilled, for every third party recruiter fee paid to fill a job, for every wasted interview trip or an additional trip needed because the candidate didn’t learn enough information on the first trip, for poor turnover results, it seems to me they would either start improving or they would quit – and my experience is that many people involved in hospital recruiting should.

The only issue with this strategy is the problem with the learning curve and the time marketing people would be asked to devote to committing to improvement.

Who should make hospital recruiting material if marketing professionals aren’t capable and the learning curve is not practical or financially feasible at the hospital?

Middle school students can make websites now.  And my college interns, many who are geeks and have all day to play with the latest technologies, can run circles around in-house web people.  And website developers – in-house or contracted, are equally inept at understanding the basic needs of employer recruiting, much less their subtleties, and they aren’t salespeople either.

• Marketing people should stick to what they were primarily hired for:  marketing the hospitals services, and employee and customer relations, making banners, the hospital newsletter, etc.  They aren’t sales people.  They aren’t recruiters.  They don’t even like doing it.
• Who should produce recruiting materials and web material for hospital companies? The answer is the same for whom hospitals call to fill their jobs, and the same for when they advertise their careers: specialists.

With Online Job Tour®, we bring to a hospital the complete knowledge of the recruiting needs and costs of recruiting – not just the line item costs, but the awareness of the difference in time to fill openings, higher caliber recruits, and better retention numbers, among many things. 

• I am a former tech sales professional and top producer, and I am a former sales trainer.  I am also a former physician recruiter.
• On top of that, after my invention of Online Job Tour in 2001 I have used it as a specialty physician recruiter with clients and candidates, and the last seven years we have test marketed it at hospitals using it as their primary recruiting tool.
• Marketing professionals, directed by their administrators, play a supportive role in the development and then the upkeep of the product after we produce it after a site visit to their hospital and service area.
• And with my ground zero expertise vs. information sharing that many consultants do, our experience and expertise offer additional value to clients as we can provide them with technology solutions to many of their staffing and recruiting strategies.
• Online Job Tour is patented, offering a compelling competitive recruiting advantage.

Other options exist in the market to help hospitals with their recruiting, which include traditional companies that can make great glossy brochures, as well as production companies who make lovely streaming recruitment videos. However, these products should be evaluated on an individual basis and also examined should be the people producing them and whether they have the expertise and experience that would promote the products being truly effective investments that help recruiting vs. costs that add to the recruiting budget.

Online Job Tour was invented and refined over a decade to offset their limitations and save time, effort, and money, promote better results, and remove these marketing people from a task they never really wanted or were hired to do, and what they don’t want to do – or they want to do in their marginalized way in order to make it as convenient as possible, but at everyone’s expense.

When a hospital CEO has a desperate need to fill a job and his or her career is on the line, they don’t call their marketing director. They can an expert with proven results.  So why should marketing directors be making the hospital’s recruiting material?  They shouldn’t be.

For more information about Online Job Tour or our significant work especially in healthcare career search, visit www.onlinejobtour.com where you can also find me.

Ten years ago, hospital administrators were hesitant to admit their use of $25-30,000 per placement recruiters to fill their open physician and other key openings. Today, they openly have numerous “connections” with recruiters on LinkedIn and the growth of physician and medical recruiters have skyrocketed in the last decade.

I’m not thrilled to see this trend and I don’t think hospitals are either, but they didn’t do a good job anticipating how jobseekers would entirely move to the Internet – the recruiting industry “beat their clients to it.” And most of the greenhorn physicians out there willingly give their resumes to recruiters after hearing “my service is totally free to you” which is not as transparent as “my $30,000 recruiter fee is attached to your resume to every hospital I send it to.” Particularly because most physician and advanced practitioner searches are on this “contingency based” relationship, there is an uneasy relationship that both hospitals and these recruiters have apparently accepted, and it is “the new climate for advanced practitioner and physician search.”

However, even though they almost immediately call upon recruiters when they have critical needs, there is a great deal hospitals can and should do in order to maximize their recruiting competitiveness and results, most notably, invest in producing an Online Job Tour®.

Online Job Tour allows hospitals to provide today’s online jobseekers with an “interactive interview visit experience” that is far more comprehensive than the real interview visit – it changes the rules of modern recruiting and provides compelling financial, time, effort, and competitive benefits. Here are some samples:

75 bed Northeast Nevada Regional Hospital, Elko, NV: www.nenevadaregional.com
90 bed Valley View Medical Center, Fort Mohave, AZ: www.vvmedicalcenter.com
125 bed Carolina Pines Regional, Hartsville, SC: www.cpinesrmc.com
200 bed Vaughan Regional MC, Selma, AL: www.vaughanrmc.com
300+ bed Lake Cumberland Regional, Somerset, KY: www.lakecregional.com

This is what hospital administrators and recruiting personnel need to know about using recruiters and how Online Job Tour makes a huge difference, even with their involvement:

• Calling upon recruiters is “the new form of classified advertising.” That’s how hospitals must think about it. As such, these recruiters, who are almost always working on a contingency basis, must “sell” their candidates on their clients’ jobs among many in the marketplace. Armed with an Online Job Tour, the recruiter’s attempt to “verbally pitch” the opportunity or merely try to hand prospects a few website links is revolutionized into delivering the compelling “virtual interview visit experience” that Online Job Tour provides, which both attracts and sells jobseekers.
• Even when using Recruiters, a Hospital still must “compete:” As a result of arming your third party recruiters with Online Job Tour, a hospital separates itself from the other employers the recruiter is representing as well as others the jobseeker may be looking at by themselves or through other recruiters. While other hospitals may have recruiters representing them, they cannot provide Online Job Tour’s “interactive visit” which stands apart. Often times, candidates will also choose to visit different places based on their top preferences. By showing everything they need, Online Job Tour eliminates anxiety and makes its clients not only an attractive choice but a considerably safer one.
• The Hospital still needs to “Sell” the Candidates. All the recruiter really gets you is the resume of the candidate. The burden of attracting, informing, and selling still rests upon the hospital and its staff. Time and again over a seven year test market, Online Job Tour literally removes the selling burden from the hospital as a proactive sales presentation that covers all the traditional things jobseekers need while putting the client’s best foot forward. Online Job Tour also allows candidates to share it with extended families and friends who cannot go on interviews – which gives the hospital the added advantage of being the only employer your candidates families can fully know – and often family makes the difference.
• Online Job Tour Promotes a Far Better Interview: Online Job Tour allows spouses to “share” in the experience of the job consideration and candidates often arrive “pre-sold” and relaxed to their interviews and often ready to sign contracts, whereas on the real interview spouses are separated for a great deal of the trip and are anxious because there isn’t enough time to learn all there is to know.
• Online Job Tour Virtually eliminates the Wasted Interview Visit – which is when candidates decide almost immediately after arriving they are not interested but still go through the motions and waste a great deal of time and money of the hospital. And because the candidates are already informed before their initial interview, very often the first interview is all that is needed to sell the career and get the contract signed – multiple return visits that are otherwise required to learn more, refresh memories, or a second chance to “sell” the candidate, are not as necessary.
• Online Job Tour reduces the need to use recruiters and pay their $25-30,000 fees, which is basically because the recruiter found the candidate first on the Internet. Our own survey revealed that client use of recruiters was reduced by one in seven as a result of Online Job Tours generating better ad response and through referrals by candidates and their families. Hospitals still advertise their jobs. Online Job Tour being a “virtual interview visit” makes job postings come alive and generates better response because it eliminates the “unknown” factor which makes jobseekers hesitate. And hospitals should always ask for referrals and there is a means for candidates excited about the Online Job Tour to easily share it with colleagues and friends in their industries. It is not uncommon for our clients to make “double-hires” or get a referral from a referred candidate because of the SHARE links with allow jobseekers to forward Online Job Tour to their Facebook and LinkedIn connections.
• Online Job Tour is preferred by Jobseekers. Most employers understand jobseekers are extremely busy managing their lives as well as their career search. If you consider the average physician jobseeker starts his career search looking at 8-10 options, they want to save a great deal of time. By telling them Online Job Tour houses literally all they need on one website and gives them a better “virtual interview trip” they graduate to it as an easier way to consider a career position. And today’s jobseekers are web-savvy and use iPads and mobile devices – and prefer web content over brochures, DVDs, and streaming videos (web users don’t want to sit through a long video but want to “click” back and forth while negotiating web content). In a recent survey physician jobseekers told us they prefer Online Job Tour by 89-100% on every question vs. traditional “manual” recruiting.
• Online Job Tour Promotes a Faster Placement. Recruiters also cannot do anything to expedite the placement – at least from the standpoint of ensuring the candidates get all the information they need – this again falls on the hospital. By providing all the information they need by covering all traditional jobseeker topics comprehensively, Online Job Tour filled physician jobs 19% sooner. This is one month out of every five. If you believe studies in the marketplace today that promote hospitals lose as much as $100,000, filling an important physician opening a month sooner promotes an amazing value for Online Job Tour clients.
• Better Quality Candidates are Hired Due to Online Job Tour. Think about it: the reason many hospital administrators use recruiters in the first place is due in part because their hospital jobs are not considered to be attractive. Very often, and more than they are willing to admit, hospitals have to sacrifice the initial experience and standards they want in candidates because there are few interested and many of the best and brightest, who are highly sought after, pass them over. More and more, our clients have promoted to us the Online Job Tour has improved the overall quality of their new employees – another considerable benefit of this powerful tool.
• Better Negotiating Position. Also part of recruiting, as well as human nature, is when candidates know they are in demand, and the hospital is desperate, there is a tendency for the hospital to also have also raise their initial compensation offer as well as guarantees, in order to land their selected candidates. This happens frequently, as opposed to Online Job Tour clients who are more “exclusive” in their dealings with candidates who genuinely prefer them as their top choice – another subtle but very important example of how Online Job Tour positively impacts recruiting outcomes.
• Retention Improvement. Does a hospital stand a better chance to make a long term placement and mitigate turnover if they hire new employees or physicians where they are that professional’s first choice? Absolutely. And are there going to be less potential problems if new employees arrive to their new home fully informed and there are no negatives learned later which promote a new employee becoming discontented and resigning only after eight months? You bet. Recruiters also have nothing to do with how well prospects are informed about their new homes while a hospital would prefer they know as much as possible, and be fully content with their decision in order to promote a permanent career position. There is nothing worse than having to start a career search over after 8 months and our clients tell us their retention percentages are greatly improved.

So the next time you have a need to fill an important career or physician opening, before the urge to bullhorn a call to your network of recruiters, consider the benefits of making your hospital’s recruiting as great as it can be – which will profoundly improve upon your results!

For more information about Online Job Tour, visit us at www.onlinejobtour.com

Carl Brickman
Studio Line: 813-855-5185

ROI Study on website. Online Job Tour® is patented in 2011 after a six year test market with hospitals in 13 states. Online Job Tour is for the exclusive use of our clients. Copying it in any part or concept is expressly forbidden. See our website for details.

What Sales (Recruiting) Consultants Do:  I know firsthand because I used to be one.  After a successful career in technology sales I got into sales training and then became a sales consultant.  Industries in which I was involved – financial services, commercial real estate and staffing, among many, pay premiums to have sales forces that effectively and efficiently sell their products and services.  

Sales consultants are generally hired to first train employees to develop a presentation for the product or service they represent, then they are trained on how to prospect and then deal with potential customers through selling the product or service (called “closing”).  The better consultants teach the finer points of growing the customer relationship to promote ancillary sales and support services for added revenue and to solidify the relationship, as well as ask for referrals, etc. Good consultants leave their clients with a method of measuring their work to judge their performance as well as mark areas for improvement. 

After a training program, the employer’s “sales professionals” should be able to prospect for business, have a “sales presentation” that is replicate-able that they can deliver, advance the sale and close target prospects, and measure their progress in order to continually improve.  But even the sales consultant, as good as he may be, leaves – and that expertise leaves with them.

“The Pressure is On” at Hospitals:  Hospitals today are under a great deal of stress to fill their open career and physician practice opportunities in a market where high-caliber practitioners are in short supply.  Statistics are coming out regarding the lost revenue to hospitals of unfilled jobs (most notably the Advisory Board Company, Inc., in Washington, DC produced their landmark report in May, 2008 on Physician Recruitment, which revealed hospitals lose $100,000 every month physician jobs remain open), so filling job openings efficiently is an important issue.  There’s competition.  It’s expensive.  And the new “black eye” emerging in hospitals is the problem of poor “retention” – in one major hospital company 50% of physicians recruited leave after 36 months – a stunning figure. 

• The demographics don’t look great. Many areas and specialties will be in short supply for the foreseeable future.
• The growth of “third party recruiters” and their staffing services has been explosive – nobody argues that professionals from this industry are actually online “intercepting” the same jobseekers their clients are targeting.
• Hospitals are dealing with an entirely new “Internet career marketplace” in which they must advertise and communicate with jobseekers in this new “online culture.” 
• Questions are arising about social media (Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, etc.) and their influence on career search and how much attention should be paid to it.

Challenges at Hospitals and Corporations Start with their Staffs:  When I got into medical recruiting, perhaps due to my background and specialization in improving selling processes, the most glaring issue I immediately saw in hospitals was their internal staff recruiters had little if any competitive sales experience or professional training.  And the people for whom they worked, whether HR Directors or regional recruiting directors, also did not come from professional selling.  In the last decade I have spoken to many and they have an aversion to selling and even look down upon the notion of it, choosing instead to be “facilitators” of the advertising and interview process.  It takes a certain breed of person to be a “sales professional.”  HR people are not cut from the same cloth and are generally 9-5 employees on salary whereas sales pros are heavily incentivized by commission and “live their jobs” – they are thick skinned.  They work based on the axiom that the greater the work effort and volume of it translates into greater pay.  They want to close deals and move to the next. “Time is money” them.  This is how it should be in a hospital that wants to be world class with its recruiting. 

But community hospitals and their corporations cannot afford to lure seasoned sales professionals from their $100,000+ jobs.  And in the mid to smaller markets, hospitals “pluck” a local resident from the community who ends up being a pleasant personality on the front lines of communication with doctorsnwithout any professional skills.

• As a result, in hospitals there is no discernable “recruiting protocol” that keeps statistics on subjects such as “closing percentages” and “time to fill,” among other things that rookie sales professionals are immediately pressed about and judged on.  Staffs don’t have the background to recognize tools to make their jobs more effective and save money – and many don’t view their role as one which is required to find ways to improve.
• This also partly explains why there continues to be an unusual “passive” approach to selling hospital and physician jobs – without a background in sales there is no conscious awareness of the competitive component; in other words, the need to not just sell jobseekers but outsell other employers jobseekers are considering.
• Marketing people, expressly not recruiters, are also in charge of web content at hospitals.  This “disconnect” between marketing and recruiting promotes a void as all jobseekers are online now – marketing people sell the hospital’s services but to patients.  Generally speaking, “marketing” is vastly different than “sales.” 

“Rah-Rah Sessions by Recruiting “Consultants” and the new “Internet Coaches:” Many corporations spring for annual conventions with guest speakers.  The company reviews its statistics and passes out reports at these meetings.  Workshops are held to teach “techniques” and much of these meetings are designed to motivate their recruiting force.  At their worst hospitals, companies might spring for onsite recruiting consultants. 

• The bottom line regarding the problems of recruiting is the people who deal with physician recruiting don’t like to hear “no” or face the prospect of getting rejected – they have an aversion to “selling.”

You can’t make a sheep into a wolf.  The techniques meant for wolves fade quickly when they are taught to sheep.

Hospitals Recruit the Same as They Always Have – the  “manual” recruiting process has repeated itself for decades: They advertise/post their jobs and call third party recruiters for the important openings – 90% of the time for physician recruiting the calls are made to recruiting contacts immediately (pre-Internet the employer advertised in various periodicals, and in the last decade there has been greater use of expensive third party recruiters – for many reasons, but also due to the importance of filling the jobs).  Hospital administrators unabashedly have numerous relationships now with recruiters out in the open, such as on LinkedIn – this says a great deal about their lack of confidence in their companies recruiting. 

Generally, when contact is made with a prospective candidate it starts a “passive” delivery of information in the form of hotlinks to various websites – you can’t get any more passive than giving jobseekers websites which they can easily find themselves.  Some employers produce DVDs and perhaps even streaming videos, which may show but age quickly – they are ultimately “teasers” – streaming videos are always very short on details.  Another problem today is the jobseeker culture has changed – jobseekers today do not want to sit on their hands and stare at a 10 minute video.

Any resumes that come to the employer – the majority are from third party recruiters working on a “contingency basis” (which means they do not get paid unless one of their referred candidates are hired) are reviewed by employers and ranked in order of preference.  Prospects are then called.  They are immediately invited to interview without any hint of exclusivity. Hospital recruiters get this veiled impression that they are “busy” with candidates when they are merely looking over CVs and making site visit itineraries.  The famous quote from John Wooden comes to mind: “Never mistake activity with achievement.” 

Prospective candidates and their spouses arrive for interviews “site unseen” and unprepared – this is where the hospital spends a great deal of time, money, and effort of many people, using this trip to try to “sell” them.  Thousands of dollars are spent as hospitals attempt to negotiate numerous landmines – again, these interviews are set up by passive “recruiters” that aren’t salespeople who generally allow the prospects to lead them, they speak in awkward clichés about their facilities and communities, and many don’t know the most basic techniques to pre-qualify, question, or be advocates for the jobseekers by being learned experts about important subjects which would otherwise promote a real relationship and serve to separate them from other employers.  After the expensive visit in which they did almost nothing to guide or maximize the process, the hospital recruiters don’t know how to close or ask open ended questions which presume competition and other factors the candidate may have raised in discussions in order to start closing.

And then the physician goes on five to ten more interviews elsewhere and forgets facts.

In fact, the physician may need to return one or two more times to get more information because there is simply not enough time during these logistically challenged, extended weekend interview trips to learn everything they need.

Few stats are kept by the hospital “recruiters” who set up these visits.  Almost every important job search is a headache and stressful.  They are all expensive. Spouses are generally separated on the trips and family members don’t go on them.  The weather can be poor, key people can miss meeting candidates, people may send conflicting messages, etc. There’s not enough time and a lot can go wrong – especially considering there are as many as three to four more candidates interviewing for one opening.  This is extremely stressful and “high stakes” when you consider the onsite interview trip itself, is the hospital’s expensive “sales attempt.”

It is not uncommon, after paying the recruiter fee, for a hospital to pay in excess of $50,000 to fill one specialty physician opening – the number can approach $100,000.

• Hospitals still post “text-based” job postings, which do compel the market in job advertising – they don’t get enough response to their advertised jobs.  Their process therefore requires the use of outside recruiters 90% of the time for major positions (physician, particularly), and then putting huge expenses into interview trip – which is reserved only for the few selected prospects, “manual recruiting” takes a long time, and as stated earlier, in a major hospital company its retention rate of physicians after 36 months is 50% – which clearly suggests it leaves a lot to be desired and clearly, new employees arrive to their new jobs knowing little and with trepidations.    

On the other hand, Online Job Tour® Promotes a Perfect Hospital Recruitment Platform: First and foremost, the only way to offset hospital career advertising that lacks the ability to reach jobseekers is to understand they are all online and reach them on the Internet in a compelling way that also addresses their needs.  And the only way to offset recruiting personnel who are not sales professionals and have no professional sales experience is to provide them with a tool that offsets their shortcomings.

In the early 2000s, when I became involved in recruiting and generated dozens of clients I doubly recognized how the high speed “virtual” Internet would soon be commonplace as well as recognized the limitations of hospitals and “manual recruiting,” I invented Online Job Tour to maximize the hospital’s effort to attract, inform hard-to-recruit medical professionals while at the same time putting the hospital’s best foot forward and compete for them.  As a former sales professional and trainer, and then as a recruiter, I was aware of the value of time and the desire for “quality hires.”

Online Job Tour is a 24/7, mistake-free web-based “virtual interview visit experience” harnessing web and other technologies that is far more comprehensive than the real trip. Over a seven year test market we have perfected a hospital’s ability to present it as a tool for jobseekers to “immerse” themselves and their families into their review of the hospitals facilities and personnel as well as into the immediate and extended service area in order to get a clear, comfortable, complete awareness of what living and working will be like.

Why Online Job Tour is Clearly Better than Traditional “Manual” Recruiting:  Placed on a website and with an address that we choose to suit the hospital, Online Job Tour is made to be exhibited on job postings, in communications, on the hospital’s website, and to support every open career position in the hospital from specialty physicians to respiratory therapists.

• With basic instruction by the hospital, jobseekers use Online Job Tour and are fully educated BEFORE any decision is made for interviews.  Ultimately hospitals using Online Job Tour fill their positions 19% faster – that’s an incredible one month sooner in five months. 
• Online Job Tour also automatically “pre-qualifies” prospects automatically without the hospital personnel’s need to do it.  Those unterested beg out of the process before it starts, which wastes no time.
• Online Job Tour placed on all job postings not only makes them into a “virtual job trip” but it is a “turnkey candidate producer” that produces bona fide candidates who are fully prepared and motivated for the advertised jobs.  This better ad response has proven to limit the need for third party recruiters.
• Online Job Tour proactively influences the outcome automatically.  This not only limits mistakes by personnel, but they embrace Online Job Tour since the “sales component” is removed from their responsibility and allows them to facilitate interviews of the hospital’s selected candidates.
• Simply by introducing a tool that gives prospective candidates such a compelling, in-depth and complete presentation gives the candidates the impression that local recruiters are de facto experts and puts conversations into the realm of being a “peer relationship” where they confide in them and are more revealing instead of viewing them as merely “interview schedulers.”
• Online Job Tour allows the hospital staff to take advantage of their best traits – their genuine enthusiasm for their employer and community as well as being legitimate representations of the kind, generous community members and friends in the area who will be the neighbors and friends of these prospects should they become employees. 
• A great deal of stress is removed from the hospital – who no longer has to use the interview visit to “make the sale.”  Instead, Online Job Tour does the informing and the selling before any talk of a trip – it has sales tenets built in, it leaves no stone unturned, makes no factual errors, and  pre-qualifies and sells – automatically and with no anxiety or miscommunication on either side – every time.
• Now every single professional is provided with the far better “virtual trip.”  This dramatically shortens the time to fill of the search process as all candidates will arrive “pre sold” and relaxed to their interviews, and ready to sign after authenticating their interest during the interview trip.  Online Job Tour has proven to reduce a hospital’s overall need for interview trips by 33-40% a year. 
• While other hospital competitors struggle with the old “manual approach” and have to worry about what their candidates remember, Online Job Tour’s client’s candidates continue to refer back to Online Job Tour throughout the process, which ensures they don’t forget important details and they remain motivated, and the hospital in the better position to compete for them.
• Better informed and motivated candidates lead to higher closing percentages which also fill jobs faster.
• By improving a hospital’s competitiveness automatically, Online Job Tour promotes hiring the higher caliber practitioners from the marketplace.
• Better informed and motivated new employees result in far better employee and physician retention rates.
• Our 2009 ROI Survey revealed hospitals saved $47,000 per physician placed using Online Job Tour, and in the same year physician jobseekers were surveyed:  89-100% preferred Online Job Tour on every question. 

Online Job Tour was invented and has been tested and refined after years in test market to “fit” what hospital staffs need after a realistic and candid evaluation of their personnel and process, and natural, unavoidable “manual”  shortcomings, by harnessing technology tools to offset and improve upon them, while at the same time fit the needs and preferences of today’s online jobseekers.

Here are some Online Job Tour samples:

75 bed Northeast Nevada Regional Hospital, Elko, NV: www.nenevadaregional.com
90 bed Valley View Medical Center, Fort Mohave, AZ: www.vvmedicalcenter.com
125 bed Carolina Pines Regional, Hartsville, SC: www.cpinesrmc.com
200 bed Vaughan Regional MC, Selma, AL:  www.vaughanrmc.com
300+ bed Lake Cumberland Regional, Somerset, KY: www.lakecregional.com

“What is better than bringing the hospital’s ideal, mistake free, virtual interview visit experience that is more comprehensive than the real trip, which all jobseekers can use at their convenience to consider the hospital’s careers?”

• In today’s Internet culture and after a decade of research of web user behavior and their expectations, as well as direct involvement with dozens of hospitals and their recruiting staffs as well as jobseekers, we believe there is no better approach to “selling” prospective candidates than the patented Online Job Tour system of placing a far better “virtual interview visit experience” on a web platform in order for the employer to maximize their presentation and time while doubly providing target prospects with an experience that they prefer and contains the specific information they want in greater abundance than on the real trip.

I mentioned earlier that great sales consultants help clients establish a convincing and repeatable presentation of its goods and services as the first step to having a successful selling platform.   Online Job Tour sets up a Perfect Recruiting Protocol: 

• Hospitals absolutely need to have a proactive, compelling “presentation” in today’s online culture given the intense competition for the best medical practitioners, for many reasons.  Online Job Tour’s patented system is based on categories jobseekers traditionally need and cannot be copied – offering a “federally-protected” competitive advantage. 
• It is online – where jobseekers are, and gets the needed “emotional connection” for selling. 
• You can’t beat Online Job Tour’s method of efficiently delivering the information which is provided BEFORE interviews even start.
• Online Job Tour convinces and sells as it is produced in the manner that puts the hospital and its service area’s “best foot forward.” 
• Web-based, Online Job Tour was made so it can be modified, and grow and change as the hospital and area change – unlike other sales products in hospital recruiting, it never gets old or needs to be replaced.  In many cases, hospitals spend a great deal on recruiting products which start aging from day one and are faced with the awkward choice of how long to keep using them.
• Because all jobseekers see the same thing, it is far easier to deal with them and manage their candidacies, and build standardized questions for them to better evaluate them as well as the important feedback from spouses.
• Hospitals require a sales tool that works and is reliable, on which they can begin to keep statistics which are more reliable due to Online Job Tour’s consistency.
• Hospitals can survey their own clients and use feedback from them to alter or improve upon Online Job Tour; for instance, if the same complaint keeps surfacing, Online Job Tour can be modified to address that issue – this makes its orientation and design one where the hospital can keep their recruiting process “perfect.”

And also mentioned earlier, while consultants leave and so does their expertise and any results they may have promoted, Online Job Tour was developed to stay perfect and keep its incredible value to hospitals’ recruiting:  Because it can be updated and changed at any time, a hospital’s Online Job Tour can be improved upon.  More people, places, and features can be added.  Also, testimonials can be taken of new employees who successfully used Online Job Tour during their candidacy which adds to its credibility among the current candidates. 

• Perhaps its greatest asset is that Online Job Tour is the only recuriting approach that never gets old or tired, but gets better and better. The investment in it is returned year after year – making it more valuable as time goes on, instead of less effective.

Hospitals Must Embrace leaving “manual recruiting” and respect that new technology makes recruiting easier and more effective, and is preferred by jobseekers – the alternative, the status quo which is continuing to “manually recruit,” while it eventually fills jobs, is too expensive, relies too much on others to sell for them, it takes too long, and not meeting jobseekers online where they search for careers loses the better candidates. Moreover, they must consciously be aware of their competitors and have tools that are better than theirs.  The closing percentage of visiting candidates is low, there are numerous “wasted” interview trips by prospects who aren’t interested within hours of their arrival and seeing the hospital and its area for the first time.  Retention in many hospitals is abysmal and the result of candidates not being fully educated and convinced, and is also a byproduct of the overuse of “contingency search” recruiters who “shotgun” the candidates they represent to multiple hospitals as the recruiters are more focused more on making a placement anywhere than with any specific hospital – and generally, the recruiters maintain their relationships with those professionals after the “placement” which leaves open the door for a physician who isn’t totally happy in 8 months to engage the services of the recruiter again.

More and more hospitals will be attracted to Online Job Tour as they analyze their costs and start to see they must improve and when they see what is possible by harnessing the Internet and technology to offset natural limitations on people, time, resources and as they begin to appreciate their need to compete in the new online employment marketplace where today’s jobseekers clearly prefer web solutions to many of their needs.

If you are interested in seeing samples of Online Job Tour, visit www.onlinejobtour.com or consider calling our studio to learn more.

Third Party Recruiters are hardly a temptation but commonplace now, which changes things

Third Party Recruiters & Their Steep Cost to Hospitals – Hospital executives using third party recruiters is at a steep cost and using them is so commonplace they have become the “new form of classified advertising” – hospitals must now compete for the same candidates who are being presented to multiple competitors by these recruiters. Instead of the growing reliance on them, which is revealing corrosive effects, hospitals can empower themselves in a new way by making perfect what they can control, which is their own presentation and recruiting effort with Online Job Tour®.

When it is decided there is a need for a new physician, particularly with non-urban, community hospital executives, 90% of the time the first call is to outside recruiters.

Recruiting is too important and  hospital administrators are under pressure to fill their openings “by any means necessary.”  Losing a single specialist doctor can seriously impact their service areas.  Today, they unabashedly maintain open relationships on LinkedIn with third party recruiters and the willingness to ultimately pay a $25,000 “recruiter fee” is accepted as part of the recruiting process and budget.

Hospitals are Paying a Steep Price for continually using Third Party Recruiters:

In one larger hospital corporation last year, of the 230 physicians recruited, I was told that 75% of them were via third party recruiters (I think that number was far greater given what the local affiliate hospital CEOs told me). At $25,000 per placement for these recruiters, this company paid $4,312,500 just in recruiter fees! And this is only the tip of the iceberg of the losses.

Because the recruiter is working on no promise of payment (referred to as “contingency”) his objective is to place that physician ANYWHERE. As a result, the jobseeker is promoted to many employers which drives up the time-to-fill timeline (and the losses to a hospital for an unfilled physician job placed at $100,000 per month, based on two credible industry sources). Onsite interview visits are also expensive and can exceed $3,000 for a candidate and spouse, and multiple trips are needed – often these are leveraged by the recruiters to try to sell the job – jobseekers are encouraged by them to go on these trips – particularly since it is no cost to the recruiter.

Retention Problems: In the same company, 50% of doctors leave by 36 months – an astonishing figure. This begs the question “why?” The first clear answer is the physician was aware of multiple options presented by the recruiter, so the commitment to the first choice was not as strong. Another answer is that “the third party recruiter was a band aid who didn’t heal the wound.”

It’s the pink elephant in the room that hospitals won’t acknowledge: they ignore the overall “losses” and look only at the line item costs of recruiting, which can still exceed $50,000 to fill one job in direct “line item” budget expenses after the final tally, which is bad enough; but considering the additional months needed to fill jobs, hiring lesser-caliber doctors and practitioners, and the retention problems causing the need to re-fill the physician job and start the entire process over again, the most business-oriented hospital administrators know the true bottom line: hospitals spend/lose more than $200,000 to fill one physician job opening, and considerably more for specialists.

The Awkward Relationship & How Third Party Recruiters Have Beaten Hospitals on the Internet:

We all saw it develop before our eyes.  Jobseekers, once found in many venues, were migrating to one place: the Internet. We know that a vast majority of  physicians presented by third party recruiters merely went online to look for openings and the recruiters were what they found and convinced the physicians to give them a resume and voila, the third party recruiter says to the hospital, “look who I recruited for you!”  The recruiting industry reacted to the changing dynamic of jobseekers and figured out how to position themselves online to jobseekers while the hospitals sat there watching things change. 

• Ultimately, there is a $25,000 in-the-balance awkwardness with the hospital thinking they are getting a steady flow of physician resumes at no immediate cost but with that worry of the candidates being shown other employers by the same recruiter, while the third party recruiter is worried about being on a need-to-know basis. All the while, the candidate has a $25,000 price tag attached to his candidacy – whether he understands that or not.

So 0ver the last decade there has been a clear trend in the growth of third party recruiters who are all over the Internet and are in the position of harvesting jobseekers by being on search results for phrases used, such as “physician jobs in Florida” or “Nurse Jobs in Cincinnati” – effectively beating their own hospital clients to getting the jobseekers first – or “intercepting” them. And then, the third party recruiters convince the jobseekers, much like the lawyers on TV who advertise “no fee to you unless we win” that their services are “free,” they convince the physician they can offer them numerous job options, and now you have candidates who have been “recruited.” 

Third party recruiters want their hospital clients to fail – this is what promotes the need to use them. And hospitals paying into that industry ultimately make the situation worse as it pays into the system, or “feeds the beast” regarding how third party recruiters and their companies “harvest” candidates. This is ultimately why I left the business – it bothered me that third party recruiters didn’t work with their clients in order to make them better so they wouldn’t need to rely on their services; I wanted to be an advocate for hospitals and create tools to overcome their shortcomings and empower them.

So Why Do Hospitals Use Third Party Physician Recruiters Almost All the Time?

The obvious economic answer is there is a market for their services. In more sobering terms, hospitals cannot fill their physician jobs. Clearly, hospital executives have not trusted the resources provided to them by their companies for more than a decade as their use of third party recruiters has grown. 

The shortcomings of recruiting by hospitals have not changed in the last decade since I got into the business from my sales consulting background. Individual hospitals are simply not going to pay the salary of $100,000+ to land an already-successful, professionally-trained, seasoned sales professional from the competitive arenas of tech/pharm/medical device sales to run their local recruiting efforts. Many (on site) hospital “recruiters” are hardly that; they do little more than help to sift through resumes and then set up interview visit trips for unprepared jobseekers. 

Corporate and Regional Recruiting directors are also not from competitive, professional selling (nor do they have a background in technology which would otherwise help them identify tools and systems to compete online for talent). They are generally former private recruiters or hospital employees, such as RNs, who in turn have developed large networks of recruiters instead of  focusing on the challenges of creating strategies to out-recruit their competitors.

And regarding the web content of hospitals, the in hospitals corporations who oversee that are in Marketing – they have no recruiting experience and no understanding of the needs of jobseekers. 

As all jobseekers are online now, this “disconnect” between Marketing and the hospitals company recruiting is a huge stumbling block, and another reason why hospitals are “behind.”

• As a result, local hospital recruiting has no professional set up or protocol designed to measure real progress, results, and percentages and accountability like in major corporations with sophisticated product sales channels.
• Physician and other advanced practitioner jobs, eventually get placed – but often due to simultaneously lowering qualifications and raising compensation, at a huge costs.
• Most in the hospital industry who oversee recruiting have an aversion to sales – as much as they have a sense of passion and commitment toward their employer, they are not warriors and proactive sales pros who “live their jobs,” but are “pleasantly passive” 9-5′ers and administrative in nature – more akin to an HR executive.

Summary and a Solution:

Today, the outstanding $25,000 placement fee is the hospital’s advertisement– but as I reviewed, the costs of this practice are much more to a hospital and its service area than this fee. And for hospital leaders with their own administrative and professional goals, they need a competitive recruiting tool they can rely on.  How can hospitals attract jobseekers to their hospitals and service areas, maximize recruiting efficiency and save money? Can they do a better job of educating, informing, and selling jobseekers and their families in order to promote a more solid, long, term placement?

Online Job Tour® is a better approach to attracting and informing today’s online jobseekers and helps hospitals maximize the things they can control: their presentation, the time they spend, putting their best foot forward, ensuring candidates are fully informed and prepared for their relocations, by offering a “mistake free” virtual visit experience that covers more people and places and topics than the real trip. And by being a proactive sales presentation, it offsets the limitations of local onsite recruiters who are likely not professionally experienced or trained.  In the many cases where candidates are considering multiple options through a third party recruiter, hospitals with Online Job Tour have the ability to bring their onsite interview visit to them in order to create compelling immediate and long term advantages.

• Therefore, before they even decide to become candidates, Online Job Tour fully informs jobseekers and their extended families. Candidates arrive pre-qualified and “pre-sold.” Both spouses come to the interview authenticate why they are interested and then after they leave use Online Job Tour as a touchstone while the hospital’s competitors  hope the candidates remember important details.
• This is instead of advertising their careers “site-unseen” which results in lost time, lost candidates, and significant cost as hospitals try to cajole possible candidates to visit them and awkwardly use the expensive interview trip – which is filled with logistical and cost limitations, to make the sale.

After a 7 year test market in hospitals in 13 states, Online Job Tour received its patent in 2011 and was acknowledged by the US Patent and Trademark Office as the first website-based recruitment system that provides a holistic presentation of careers offered by an employer.

• Our surveys revealed hospitals were able to fill their jobs 20% faster, attract and hire the higher caliber candidates, they reduced their number of onsite interviews by 33% per year and lowered their need for third party recruiters by one in seven. Their closing percentage of visiting jobseekers was doubled – which speaks for their improved competitiveness. Hospital savings averaged over $47,000 per physician job filled.
• Retention, which is a major problem and possibly caused in part by use of third party recruiters, is dramatically improved by Online Job Tour. In fact, at a flagship regional hospital after 36 months their Director of Physician Relations left his position to start a new hospital consulting division at a Michigan-based company with a 100% retention record (vs. the company average of 50%).
• Physicians interviewed preferred Online Job Tour by 89-100% in every survey question.

Today’s jobseekers are online and physicians naturally gravitate to Online Job Tour’s “better approach:”

There is no longer the hesitation about online content as their once was – particularly the younger jobseekers – such as graduating residents and fellows who grew up online, view what they see as reality, which Online Job Tour harnesses.  The appeal to physicians is demonstrable in our work and we have seized upon it by having Chiefs of Staff introduce their Online Job Tours, and we “build on the hospitals’ successes” by featuring physicians successfully persuaded by it:

Dr. Mark LeQuire, Radiologist, Chief of Staff at Vaughan Regional Hospital in Selma, AL, provides an example of how current physicians encourage prospective candidates to use the hospital’s Online Job Tour: http://vaughan.promoweb-us.com/videos/lequire.htm

Chief of Staff Paul Herman, MD, Family Practice, also encourages jobseekers to use Northeast Nevada Regional Hospital’s Online Job Tour: www.nenevadaregional.com/videos/phy_DrHerman.php

Dr. Eric Borofsy, Orthopedic Surgeon – on Valley View Medical Center’s Online Job Tour in Fort Mohave, AZ and how he was about to accept a position in Florida until he saw it: http://www.vvmedicalcenter.com/videos/vid_eric-borofsky.php

Dr. Juan Rodriguez, Cardiologist, on Carolina Pines’s Online Job Tour in Hartsville, SC – on how his family in Columbia, South America was able to “visit” the hospital and community using their Online Job Tour: http://cpinesrmc.com/videos/DrRodriquez.php

Dr. Brian Mullaly, Family Practitioner, on Seven Rivers RMC’s Online Job Tour in Crystal River FL – his wife actually found the Online Job Tour on the hospital’s website and they were so impressed with it that it was the only hospital they visited: http://sevenriversrmc.com/physician/brian-mullally.htm

Hospital Online Job Tours, in order from above:

Vaughan Regional Hospital in Selma, AL: www.vaughanrmc.com

Northeast Nevada Regional Medical Center, Elko, NV: www.nenevadaregional.com

Valley View Medical Center, Fort Mohave, AZ: www.vvmedicalcenter.com

Carolina Pines RMC, Hartsville, SC: www.cpinesrmc.com

Seven Rivers RMC, Crystal River, FL www.sevenriversrmc.com

The climate for the use of third party recruiters seems to be that they are now commonplace, regardless of the reason or who is to blame.  Candidates brought forth from this climate come with issues based on the contingency relationship which is unfavorable to the hospital.  Mitigating them is a big key for hospitals who want to land the best possible talent and ”seal the deal” with strongly committed and confident new employees.  Online Job Tour gets referred by jobseekers to others and  makes job postings stand apart - which lessen the need to fill every job with $25,000 recruiters in tow.   Online Job Tour lands the better candidates. 

Online Job Tour also limits the mistakes and continual oversights by local recruiters, and promotes a bona fide, repeatable protocol instead if every search being a “new ordeal” with unpredicatable, delay-inducing problems.

For these reasons, Online Job Tour should be a tool all hospital leaders insist on.

Carl Brickman is a pioneer in harnessing technology to help employers recruit today’s web savvy jobseekers in this entirely new employment landscape promoted by the Internet in the last decade. The rules are totally different now. Jobseekers have new expectations. Technology allows for new ideas and better approaches. Carl has personally dealt with hundreds of hospitals and has viewed the web content of 5,000 healthcare organizations. From the psychology of selling to strategic recruiting to establishing models for hospitals to maximize their recruiting, there is no professional who knows more in this important area for your hospital’s success.

After stints as a sales consultant in ultra competitive industries training six figure sales professionals after his successful technology sales career, and with more than a decade of dealing directly with hospital executives and supporting their recruiting efforts to attract today’s web savvy jobseekers at Promo Web® Innovations, Carl has a very unique understanding of harnessing technology to maximize recruiting results, which is represented in US patented Online Job Tour®, which he invented and has been refined through a restricted seven year test market with hospitals. Carl writes and speaks in plain terms for busy decision makers who want answers and who value recruiting excellence. Online Job Tour® has been Carl’s true passion to empower employers like no product since the Internet, saving millions while making recruiting more productive and less stressful, and improving upon efficiency and quality benchmarks. To learn more about Carl or his company, visit www.onlinejobtour.com. You can also find “Carl Brickman” on Facebook and LinkedIn.

On this Easter I have a sincere wish for all internal recruiters – those of you who work for a hospital or their corporation and recruit new physicians and employees: Consider you Recruit for Moms and Dads and always be open to getting better for their sake. 

Since I started my new career in 2000 with sorrow driving me regarding my father death, I have realized what I am doing makes a difference in the lives of other peoples’ parents.  Isn’t that an awesome thing? As an internal recruiter, you deal with prospective employees who will meet, touch, care for, save, console, and impact the lives of the people you serve, and their parents.

My hope is that you stay mindful of the importance of your job that you also remain motivated to be the best recruiter you can be, which includes constantly searching for the best practices and tools – like any top professional or pro athlete, being great requires constantly pushing the limit, never being content, and always looking for the best training regimen and equipment.

———————————————————————–

Ok, so you understand the need to constantly improve and continually seek to get better, but when is the right time to consider new ideas?

I recently had a staff member here express some disappointment that he had been in contact with a hospital regarding Online Job Tour and the internal recruiter he talked to was rude.  We had mailed a package and made a courtesy follow up call to ensure its delivery and to seek a way to discuss Online Job Tour with a policymaker.  Naturally, this wasn’t a personal call and the internal recruiter likely deals with many solicitations.  I understand the call may have been an interruption - but it was in response to an email by someone who gave no title on an email to our company, so our staff called to learn who it was. Hopefully we reached this person on a bad day.

• When you are aware that your work impacts lives and recruiting is extremely competitive, time should always be made to consider new and better ideas and products, right?

You can’t hold it against salespeople that they are enthusiastically promoting their products.  They are the delivery mechanism for new ideas as well as every product you use today, which was either sold to you or to your boss for you to use.

Maybe not today, but all internal recruiters need to be allowed by their employers the autonomy to investigate new practices and recruiting tools.  Dedicate a week to it. So when solicitors call, instead of a blow off of a potentially great product because of your initial irritation, accept their information and inform them of the time you have dedicated to seeking ways to improve by reviewing new products and services.  They can call back then.

If you are not the person who makes the decisions, then save everyone time by pointing out the right person – because any good sales pro is going to root that out with multiple calls; so save your employer the time of getting more calls than it needs to receive.

By reserving a specific time period to evaluate new ideas, you don’t have to be rude, and at the same time you can look forward to taking an important break to see what has been offered to you from the wonderful world of inventions, ideas and generally well-meaning people with legitimate references, who are outside of your box.

The best recruiters in healthcare are motivated by their almost-daily conscious awareness of the importance of what they do and that their work impacts lives – this motivates them to be great and to actively welcome new ideas as well as seek them out.

Consider being one of them for the benefit of the moms and dads whom you serve.  Speaking from my personal experience, their children will appreciate you for it!