The traditional approach hospitals take to try to educate and “sell” their physician careers, is to cajole prospects to take their interview trip. Merritt-Hawkins and the Advisory Board Co. have published studies that show physician billing revenue – with many specialists worth $200,000 PER MONTH to a hospital, so is the traditional interview the best approach?
The interview trip is a losing proposition in this digital age, and it bleeds money, and loses talent. The hard cost, multiple logistical challenges that jeopardize success, wasted time, the “linear approach” (hosting one-prospect-at-a-time) of recruiting, multiple company team members participating and not working, plus the lost placement time (Merritt-Hawkins study) can translate to $500,000 lost, every six months for EACH open specialist physician career. Hospitals are additionally victims of too many factors they can’t control; furthermore, a hasty, anxious 3-day candidate fact-finding mission by people who know little to nothing about the hospital and its area, doesn’t promote a good forum to close a favorable deal for the hospital, or a long-term placement.
Online Job Tour productions REPLACE the need for the interview trip, to better inform all prospects (not just those offered the limited trip) and better position the hospital for success and efficiency, and they make the real interview a relaxed “validation process” among fully educated, pre-sold, and motivated candidates that prefer our clients.
The Online Job Tour production series for the Mountain States Health hospitals, invite all prospects to use them as “the first step” to considering their careers, bringing an efficient, complete education to jobseekers, and better positioning the client to compete for top talent, and fill their openings
For example, client Mountain States Health, offers a landmark, 100% digital career search process from start-to-finish, that “moves” jobseekers along, promoting decisions, action, and efficiency – by providing the interview trip digitally.
The traditional interview trip that is used to try to educate and sell prospects has been eliminated by MSHA, in favor of Online Job Tours produced for each hospital.
Worth noting is the company implements this process for ALL their career openings, not just physician recruiting, adding immense value.
Want to dominate your competitors, land better talent, reduce waste, fill career opportunities 30-50% faster, create a new revenue source worth millions and improve your retention? Then stop using your interview trip as a wasteful, inappropriate “sales tool,”in favor of the modern, complete digital approach, with Online Job Tour.
Review our seven year test market results, U.S. patent, and then see the TRIAL OFFER, with which your organization can experience Online Job Tour and improved results for yourself, with no long-term commitment: Click for our Website!
Carl Brickman
Founder & Creative Director
Promo Web Innovations Studio – Tampa
As hospital organizations and physician groups continue their focus on being operationally lean and on ways to generate revenue, light is being shined on the financial “production” of physicians and key healthcare practitioners. Industry studies show specialists can generate as much as $300,000, and more, in monthly billing. The combination of unfilled physician openings and retention problems, translates to hospitals losing millions annually – this is visible, for example, when a cardiac surgeon leaves, and hospitals see that “hole” of what that former doctor was bringing in while trying to replace him. Unfilled careers, and the loss of a physician – and the related stream of services provided, not to mention interruption of care to patients, is expensive, and demoralizing. Today, the hospital industry now uses the term “recruiting and retention” instead of simply “recruiting.”
The traditional industry approach to physician recruiting is to cajole prospects to take the expensive “three-day weekend” interview trip, where THEN the hospital passively educates, and tries to sell them. However, doctors are often sold on a contract with a sign-on bonus, and not on the career and the life they perceive they will have. They learn “the rest of the story” AFTER they relocate. Candidly, many physicians do not come to the new job fully committed. Doctors also take advantage of employers who reveal through poor recruiting products, practices and communications, that they are desperate, often in non-urban settings. Many have no intention of staying past the contract’s length.
The “golden goose” all hospitals hope for, is hiring doctors who end up making roots in their service areas. How can they increase their odds to make this happen?
Clearly, making faster placements, hiring the most talented practitioners, and improving retention, directly leads to increases in hospital income, and maintains staff and service continuity. How can physician and staff recruiting for these hospitals be improved, and made more efficient?
Answering these two questions can secure a rural hospital for a generation, and can turn a good regional or national system into a world-class healthcare organization.
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“Administration” vs. “Sales:” The key reason for poor recruiting statistics and “high turnover” of physicians and practitioners in non-urban hospitals, is these organizations continue to view recruiting as an administrative process and not as a competitive sales process.
Human Resources, their hiring arm, is staffed with dedicated professionals but who are trained on policy and legal issues, employee relations, and benefits. Hospital marketing personnel have no direct sales backgrounds – they do not have roots in professional, transaction selling, but are “public relations” people who promote the organization’s services. Quality aside, recruiting videos are often filled with cliches, leave out crucial topics, and open more questions than answers. When it comes to filling jobs, there is a general hesitation to “lead” prospective candidates “because it feels pushy.” Without formal training or experience at the core, there is no selling orientation in advertising, the process, or even how prospects are communicated to. Recruiting doesn’t include strategically addressing the real needs and anxieties of target prospects, nor appreciates of the competitive component – the need not just to “sell” the prospect, but outsell their other options. There is no sense of urgency.
The Needed Sales Orientation:
When I came into this field after being in tech sales and sales training, I evaluated hospital recruiting based on that previous career. I saw poor closing percentages of signing candidates, long placement times with wasted interview trips, little accountability or record keeping for evaluation to improve, no real pay incentives for recruiters, poor recruiting materials and tools, excessive use of outside recruiting services, high sign-on bonuses, and high turnover. I also saw in-house recruiters busy doing the wrong things, namely, spending too much time being interview hosts. All physician jobs are eventually filled, but at what “expense?
A professional sales process is measurable, and can be studied in order to be improved on. It insists on guiding the prospect, to be certain of the best outcome for BOTH sides. “Selling” understands that “people buy on emotion, and then justify their decisions with facts” (Bert Decker). Jobseekers must believe they have all the information they need. The advantage goes to the employer with the best “presentation” to the candidate of how they will live and work, with the information to justify it to themselves, and often to others.
“Having Exclusivity:” A start-to-finish career search process that has an “end” to it promotes the client is expecting an answer. If driven by professionals paid for production, it is more akin to a sales process. Instead of acting desperate, sales pros wait for the candidates to bring up their sincere interest in wanting the job before offering an interview trip. Promoting that the career is wanted by others and is therefore a valuable opportunity, is done in selling in all other industries.
All great sales professionals have a great sales tool. It is an extension of their knowledge and presentation, available to many prospects at the same time in order to maximize influence and competitiveness, on 24/7 when the recruiter isn’t, and offsets any lack of sales training or experience, and is mistake-free.
Improving Poor Physician Retention: Many doctors and practitioners leave suburban and rural places because it was never their top choice – they accepted the job and a large bonus, as opposed to competing for and “winning” a “dream” career over other candidates. And a physician who grows to love where he lives eventually sets up roots, invests his time and energy there, and forms personal and financial partnerships that make it virtually impossible to recruit him away.
Motivated recruiters perform better and yield better results: they should have incentives to generate most of their earnings through commission, and hospitals should be comfortable with having high-income “sales” professionals who are willing to be paid based on production and results.
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Introducing Online Job Tour: I invented Online Job Tour as a “tool” to offset many of these limitations and challenges, adding professional sales tenets to the in-house hospital and physician recruiting process.
Online Job Tour is an “interview visit simulation” to a hospital and its area that educates prospects better than the expensive, logistically challenging, limited real interview trip, offered up-front for all and before commitments by either side, while the production puts the client’s “best foot forward.” After one use, prospective candidates are fully educated, and have a better “holistic understanding” of working with the hospital and living in their area, than they could gain from multiple real trips.
When used as prescribed, our 7-year test market revealed compelling client improvements in ad response, closing percentages of preferred candidates, it limited wasted real interview trips, there was less use of outside recruiters, faster placements, and less need for sign on bonuses. In many cases over 12 years since its use, Online Job Tour clients dramatically reduced turnover, promoting “lifetime career placements” of significant, revenue-producing doctors.
A Great Sales Tool that Offsets Traditional Challenges:
“Location:” Studies have recently been released by reputable physician recruiting firms, revealing that physicians under the age of 35 (young professionals who are well compensated consumers, as well as young families) list “location” as the top criterion of their career search. And physicians age 35-50, list location as #2. Online Job Tour is the premier product that shows these professionals (and their extended families, with whom it can be shared) how they will work and live, in their mind’s eye, as high-end consumers.
Helpful in Non-Urban Areas: One of the biggest reasons for Online Job Tour’s success with many hospitals was how it “revealed” their areas – some locations which can fly under the “Internet radar” regarding what is available to learn about, while leaving “no stone unturned.” Hospitals use tourism or Chamber of Commerce sites in recruiting that are too provincial – only focuses on local offerings and don’t represent a complete picture to future high-end resident/consumers. School and economy sites have too much non-recruiting information and require jobseekers to do too much work, to “sell themselves,” or to compare between employers. Instead, Online Job Tour is personalized for the physician consumer and presents a work and life presentation for them. Our productions also review entrepreneurial opportunities, introduce prospects to area small business support principals, as well as angel investor groups – we are promoting how physicians can become a part of their areas and invest in them, because our recruiting experience knows that doctors invested in their communities are very difficult to recruit away. True selling is being an advocate for prospects – telling them what they need to know and providing “inside information,” and “insight,” even if they do limited research.
Empowering Recruiters: Our test market also revealed a heightened sense of confidence by our client in-house recruiters, who leveraged the compelling ability to hand to prospects a virtual trip to their hospital and community to their prospects and to advertisers. We encourage clients to measure closing numbers, placement successes and to institute ways to measure the performance of recruiters.
Creating Needed Exclusivity: Having multiple motivated candidates responding to ads, means they a) know that they must compete for the job and b) fall into a sense that they are dealing with a desired employer. Hundreds of pages, dozens of videos, and tens of thousands of original photos – all in an Online Job Tour especially for a hospital organization’s candidates, sends a powerful message of professionalism. Online Job Tour eliminates “wasted interview trips” and promotes hosting candidates who deem our client their top choice, which improves closing percentages, as well as retention; new hires believe they are working and living in their top pick.
The Placement is Faster: Without the need to utilize the real trip to educate prospects, the window to fill the job opening is shorter. Online Job Tour serves to pre-qualify prospects, limiting wasted real trips. After using Online Job Tour, questions from client recruiters should include: 1) How do we compare to your other options? 2) What is your timeline to decide? 3) What does your spouse think of the Online Job Tour? Answers allow clients to compare candidates in order to determine which they try to close and in what order, as well as help the client choreograph their dealings with prospects, as well as their interviews. The client can also better compare a “group” of pre-sold, motivated candidates vs. the linear, one-after-the-other approach needed, because the real trips for each, takes time. Candidates arrive for interviews ready to negotiate their careers. Clients cut their time to place new physicians 33%-50% faster; for some specialists, starting 4-6 months sooner translates to as much as a million dollars in revenue.
Creates Ideal Physician Career Placement: A client recruiting process that includes Online Job Tour as the education, sales, and pre-qualifying tool, promotes motivated candidates who prefer our clients’ careers, who excitedly (as opposed to anxiously) arrive to their interviews already knowing about their work-life mix. They often eagerly sign without needing to be “incentivized” with a huge cash bonus. They relocate to the client with their families fully committed. Clients experience a significant improvement in their retention numbers.
Reaching emotions during the recruitment with a great sales tool, and then getting their decision reinforced in positive ways through the recruiting process and then after they relocate – with no negative surprises after their start, promotes a continued career and life fulfillment where our test market showed an improvement in client turnover numbers, with physicians becoming long-term professionals who invest themselves and their resources, into our client communities.
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Promoting Efficient, “Lifetime” Physician Placements for Rural Hospitals
Online Job Tour is a patent protected, tested product/tool, covering multiple topics and produced after significant research and an on-site production visit. It is updated to remain “fresh and new” for the client’s latest prospects. Our team has combined backgrounds (medical recruiting, sales, professional writing, video production, medical recruiting expertise, web-tech experience) that a PR or marketing firm doesn’t have. Hospital marketing departments also don’t have the expertise or time to develop and maintain a production with 300+ pages, 80+ videos, tens of thousands of original photos, as their primary duty (and expertise) is to market the hospital’s services – not recruiting.
PR groups cannot be expected to be able to produce our niche product, and they can only follow client directions, not provide any consulting.
Particularly because location is so crucial to their choice, presenting a physician-consumer-jobseeker with a “thesis-like” immersive experience, is essential in today’s Internet age. Online Job Tours blanket key subjects that relocating professionals need to understand about a new hospital and its location, on their terms, before the first conversation with the hospital’s designated recruiting person.
Online Job Tour can be the first step in establishing a measurable, accountable recruiting process that can take a hospital organization to the next level.
To learn more about Online Job Tour visit www.onlinejobtour.com. Call our studio at 813-992-2299 if you have any questions.
Recruiting for the Working Man – My Time in Southwest Virginia and How its Music and the Miners influenced me.
While gassing up my rental car in Clintwood, Virginia – at the Marathon Station and McDonald’s, on SR 83 from the Town of Pound, something caught my eye: an older model truck passed me – the driver was a middle-aged man with soot on his face. On the back window of the truck was a car sticker – a silhouette of a man crawling on his hands and knees, over the phrase “Six Inches from Hell.”
My brain said to me, “A miner!!” And because I use social media and it’s part of my work, the next thought was to “get a selfie” with that man and then post it. It was a fleeting thought, though, because what quickly followed in my mind, and what is in my heart after learning about the compelling history of the industry and its impact on my client’s hospital service area and generations of its families, is respect I have for that man and the culture of the region.
Our Online Job Tour productions – “interview trip simulations” made for the MSHA hospital campuses and communities located there, focus on giving candidates a “holistic understanding” of working and living there – where unique music and the culture of coal families and their descendants, adorns it, particularly in Southwest Virginia, including the historic Coalfields region.
Heartwood, in Abingdon, Va, was my first authentic introduction to “The Music”
THE MUSIC
I know the story of Country, Old-Time, and Bluegrass now. I didn’t at first. Like many people unfamiliar with the region and music that comes from this area, they think it is either backward, or at least not sophisticated. It has been somewhat negatively stereotyped by the television and film industries.
Appreciation of especially Bluegrass music, comes in steps – at least it did for me, someone who is casually interested in music – not a musician or a music lover. First, you have to listen to the lyrics. Its history and what it represents, makes it come to life when the music starts. This is how learning about the mountain music unfolded for me:
During my trip to Abingdon, Virginia, I was seeking out tourism-related business regarding the diversity the economy – not even focused on the music side of it. I visited Heartwood – a heritage arts center, and home to The Crooked Road Music Trail – a state-sponsored music heritage venue trail, which hosts music events and festivals. On that night there was a “jam,” which is an open date where area musicians are invited to “sit and play” with each other after forming impromptu groups. I wasn’t expecting much.
Jack Hinshelwood, Director, Virginia’s Crooked Road Music Trail
I eventually sat down next to a trio of musicians – it was at the end of the night because I got there late. I became immediately fascinated by one man, who I sat next to with my film camera, who nodded “OK” when I motioned to him, if I could film him. He was a savant on the guitar (and violin, and other instruments, I would later learn). I had never sat next to a person playing like that – along with a mandolin player and a violinist, he sang, with each player taking turns, or “breaks.” After they finished, I learned he was Jack Hinshelwood, the Director of the tourism organization. After everyone left, he sat with me, told the story of the Bristol Sessions, the Carter Family, and the roots of “American Music” which actually grew from the hollers in the mountains around Abingdon and in the region.
“How do you think I sounded?” -Lonesome Will Mullins
When interviewing Emory & Henry College President Rosalind Reichard, she told me when her friends from the Northeast visited her, they would go to “The Carter Fold.” About 30 minutes later, after the interview, I asked her, “What is a fold?” I learned she was talking about the Carter Family Fold – where the Carter Family is from. I made a commitment to change my schedule to include a visit to it. That Saturday night, I went, paid my two bucks, and filmed Lonesome Will Mullins perform. After his performance, he kept pressing me, asking, “How did you like it? How do you think I sounded?” He explained that he felt he was on “holy ground”– like many players, this was “ground zero” for his music – where the music he loves began. He had to play well here to honor his heritage – his daddy, and his mentors, that reached back all the way to the Carters. I later met Flo White. She let me kiss her on her cheek after a great talk about her family, and her cousin, June Carter-Cash, and her friend, Johnny Cash.
The Birthplace of Country Music Museum, Bristol (Joy Blair, docent)
Since then, I have met teachers, and teenage to young players. The region is “music” infused. The Smithsonian’s Birthplace of Country Music Museum was since opened, in Bristol. A docent gave me a tour, enabling me to immerse myself into the music heritage even more – it’s my job to try to be an expert on all the subjects we review in our productions. Many job seekers aren’t great candidates; our Online Job Tours also act as an “advocate” for their needs, as in, “this is what you really should understand about our region’s culture if you are going to consider living here for the next 20+ years,” which opens an opportunity for us to “reach” and compete for candidates, for the client.
Doug Pote, MD, Playwright
I later met Doug Pote, MD, a music lover as a kid who grew up in Massachusetts, now a beloved physician in Smyth County, who wrote the screenplay for “Keep on the Sunny Side,” a popular play performed regularly at the Barter Theatre. I recall Dr. Pote described Ralph Stanley’s voice as “haunting” (The Ralph Stanley Museum is just one of many amazing, historic venues on The Crooked Road in the region). During my trip last week, I was trying to track down Nathan Stanley for an interview, and was provided by Clintwood Mayor Baker’s assistant the phone number to “Mrs. Jimmie,” Ralph Stanley’s widow. The motivation to call her beyond my hesitation, was that it was my job. So I called her. She was the sweetest lady. I tried my best to make it “just like any other call.” She took my message left for her grandson, who lives with her when he isn’t on the road performing.
The Carter Family, a/k/a “The First Family” of Country Music
Jack Hinshelwood told me the first song Southwest Virginia kids learn to play on the guitar, is Mother Maybelle’s “Wildwood Flower.” I made a commitment to memorize it. Today, that enduring song is heartwarming to me, and I have played it for my sons. I often hum it. I cannot talk about Southwest Virginia without mentioning the Crooked Road, now. I also think about meeting Jack and how he symbolizes the talent, and the heart of the people of the region, just by playing his guitar and fiddle, and his singing.
Many folks there believe they are born with a predisposition to be able to tune a banjo. After meeting dozens of amazing people there, who play as good or better than Jack – and do it in their spare time as their hobby, I don’t argue with that.
Now I understand the music – because it’s all those things put together in its instruments and melodies and songs.
THE MINERS
So back to that epiphany I experienced during that brief glance at the miner, his truck, and that sticker – a “whoosh” feeling that is generally indescribable because such moments tend to be powerful, emotion-based images rooted in knowledge coming together, like an “awareness.”
Coach Cummins is an inductee into the National High School Hall of Fame for his wins and state championships coaching Clintwood’s Green Wav
Two years ago, on my first visit to Wise County, Virginia, for the Online Job Tour production we were making for Norton Community Hospital, I quickly realized it was going to be a great place for our product, which “reveals” the recruiting assets of areas that often fly under the Internet radar and are a challenge for job seekers to research, and almost impossible to understand, even after an interview trip. NCH’s region is a multi-county service area comprised of eight different towns. Among many people I met and interviewed, from the University of Virginia chancellor, to school district superintendents, to mayors, the legendary Southwest Virginia football coach, Clintwood’s Ralph Cummins, stood out. I recalled, during today’s geopolitical milieu of the permanent decline of the coal mining industry, of what he told me about his teams – that they didn’t do as well during the down times of the coal industry, when families moved away because jobs were scare – so the talent pool for his team was less.
Coach Cummins still holds the two longest winning streaks in Virginia High School football history, numerous division titles and state championships through the 1950s and 1970s. He was a World War II veteran who survived getting shot down from a plane in Europe, and a legend in the Southwest Virginia Coalfields. 78 former players are now coaches themselves, around the United States.
Coach Cummins immortalized in many ways in Clintwood, including how almost 80 of his former players are now coaches
In that flash of a moment and in a sequence (soot-face, old truck, car sticker, “a miner!”), I thought of young boys who watched their father come home from work, looking just as that man. I thought about mining families that dated back 100 years. I imagined Coach Cummins’ players driving past memorials in Clintwood, Dante, and Clinchco, honoring miners who died in accidents. I know those boys were thinking to themselves that whatever Coach Cummins gave them wasn’t anything like what their fathers would go through every day. I was the last professional interviewer of Coach Cummins, who died six months after meeting him.
When the working man walked in, Dominion Energy’s Geoffrey Hensley, took notice, and respectfully stepped aside for himFreddy Elkins, Meador Coal Museum, Town of Big Stone Gap
At Dominion Energy’s Virginia Hybrid Energy Center – perhaps the world’s most modern coal plant, located in St. Paul, I recalled how a management official stepped aside and held a door for a miner. It was a sign of respect for the real working man in the company. I later met museum volunteer, Freddy Elkins, who took two hours to walk me through the ENTIRE Meador Coal Museum in Big Stone Gap, delighted that I was interested in the coal history that he was a part of – once a general manager for the historic Westmoreland Coal Company (Freddy discusses his career at Westmoreland Coal and how coal mining families got along together during the prosperous years of coal mining in the region.)
All of these thoughts passed by me in that instant the miner and his truck passed me: I imagined Coach Cummins’ players thinking, “I have to win for my dad,” and it was reason for the state championships and record winning streaks that Clintwood High still holds. I thought about Freddy and his friendliness. I thought about the music of the region, and how subsistence farmers, and miners and others, entertained themselves with it, with instruments they made by hand. I thought about Jack’s friendliness and enthusiasm talking to me, who I now call a friend.
MSHA introduces Online Job Tours to prospective candidates as “the first step” to considering their careers, to impress upon them the understanding of the area cultureMSHAJobTour.com has been branded into the company’s recruitment process. Up front, each hospital provides prospective candidates for all jobs with its Online Job Tour, which introduces them to key subjects, and dozens of people, places, and things the real interview trip (offered to very few) cannot offer, which they can share with family & friends
The Mountain States Health Alliance leaders whom I have met, from the CHRO who hired us, to the hospital administrators who are actively involved in their communities – they understand who they are serving and the history of their communities. But it’s a challenge for them to translate their years of knowledge and respect for the region and the working man, during their very busy days and in haste – which is what our productions help them to attempt do when they recruit physicians and team members and their families, to this amazing place.
So much suddenly rushed in during what was a passing moment. That combination of seeing a coal miner after work, and that sticker and all that it brought to me. It was a moment I won’t forget.
Mountain States Health Alliance (MSHA), a regional 13-hospital, $1.1 billion non-profit system based in Eastern Tennessee, has established the hospital industry’s first 100% digital career search, which enables physician, hospital executive and staff job seekers to find an advertised job opening, and then the Online Job Tour production for the corresponding Mountain States Health affiliate hospital provides a “digital interview trip experience” that simulates the real visit, but contains 20x more information. Prospects are then directed back to the job listing to apply.
The traditional hospital recruiting approach takes very few selected candidates offline – they are hosted, one-after-another, for the expensive, logistically challenging and limited real interview trip, which additionally requires significant people resources, where spouses are separated for much of the trip, it loses months of time (often multiple trips are needed) and leaves out immediate and extended families. Now, with Online Job Tour plugged into MSHA’s in-house recruiting process, all prospects, with their families, are automatically fully educated and pre-sold with each Online Job Tour maximizing the delivery of information while putting the client’s best foot forward.
For the first time, physician and hospital job seekers complete their entire career search and application process, while 100% online.
This landing page was created for advertising purposes, and to replace the company’s traditional career page site, which introduces the Online Job Tours while incorporating proven proactive selling axioms used in popular Internet marketing strategies, and introduces MSHA’s “new and better process” that is attracting more prospects. The company’s local and national advertising promotes this page. Third party sourcing groups and recruiting firms can also be directed to use this page, or any individual hospital Online Job Tour.
MSHA is experiencing extremely positive feedback (“best recruiting approach I have seen”) from prospects, and the company’s time-to-fill their career openings is in the top 1% in the industry, maximizing recruiting efficiency.
New clients experience significant improvement in virtually all recruiting results, from increased response from ads, to closing percentages of selected candidates, improved quality (experience and education levels) of hires, positions are filled in as much as 50% less time, less wasted interview trips, less use of expensive sourcing and need for financial incentives, to significantly improved physician and staff retention.
Online Job Tour productions were test-marketed in hospitals in 15 states over a seven year period, intensively studied, and clients and job seekers were surveyed, before being awarded a U.S. patent in 2012.
Online Job Tours are true “immersion experiences” into the hospital and its area, exceeding 350 web pages-which would print to 10,000 pages, 100 videos (as many as 5 hours of video time), 15,000 original photos, including galleries, providing a complete “holistic understanding” of work and living, after covering key subjects job seekers traditionally need to know.
The production series was delivered on the time schedule promised to the client, and 33% under budget.
Employment branding and recruitment marketing supports the landing page with content from our production visits from throughout the region:
Our company’s production studio is capable of making feature films, and employs a talented team of former tech sales and medical recruiting professionals, professional writers and photographers, along with the country’s most talented content and video creators in studio.
Each Online Job Tour is created following a choreographed on-site production trip that incorporates more than a decade of experience in evaluating, and then gathering the needed people, content, and information needed for these immense productions. Agreements with clients support and maintain each Online Job Tour, so unlike any other recruiting materials of the past, they always remain updated and “new” year after year, increasing the yield from the client company R.O.I.
Our 80-page MSHA Case Study reviews the production series and the individual productions.
For documented benefits also experienced by clients in our extensive test-market, including personal references, along with a review of our TRIAL OFFER, please visit our website www.OnlineJobTour.com.
Carl Brickman
Founder, Creative Director
Promo Web Innovations, Inc.
Tampa Studio
813-992-2299
Our Online Job Tour for NCH puts a profound, game-changing narrative on recruiting to the Southwest Virginia Coalfields
Our Online Job Tour production for Wise County, Virginia’s Norton Community Hospital is our latest accomplishment, and one of our largest: at 400 web pages with 115 videos and more than 8,000 photos from our on-site production trip, it represents the culmination of our 12 years of experience and expertise profiling the community hospital and the relationship with its service area, while maximizing physician and hospital recruiting.
Our productions are phenomenal to the career search world; a sophisticated and researched study, the Norton Online Job Tour would print to a phenomenal 900 pages, and has more than 5 hours of video time. Made to attract, reach and recruit what will be a physician professional, consumer, and area resident, this is a “virtual immersion experience” to the client’s campus and its region; it provides 20x the information a candidate would obtain on an interview trip.
Reviewing four of the challenges we faced for this project, and overcoming them by controlling the narrative while educating prospective candidates on its virtual touring format, reveals why U.S. patented Online Job Tour provides compelling recruiting improvements and savings for our clients.
1. The Coalfields – it’s a tough word for recruiting.
Diffusing “The Coalfields” moniker was about showing the industry’s latest technology, adding the academic and science of geology, the study of the culture with a university Ph.D. linguist, and placing negative coal mining images in the context of history & museums
A city or area with a negative name association can be particularly punishing for recruiting. We test-marketed our product in many towns whose names alone placed them in disadvantageous recruiting positions: Dodge City, Kansas certainly suffered from the historic “Get out of Dodge” phrase. Another is Selma, Alabama, a beautiful southern town with more structures than any town in Alabama on the Historic Register, that once had a Jewish mayor and still has a synagogue – is overshadowed by the civil rights unrest from the 1960s. Larger places, like Eastern Nevada (“The Great Plains”) or Clarksdale, Mississippi (“The Delta”) carry with them often unfair stereotypes or wrong impressions, based on their locations, or reputations, that are sometimes media driven.
Before gaining a more favorable reputation because it is the home of President Francis Underwood from the Netflix show “House of Cards,” the town of Gaffney, South Carolina experienced a double homicide – a fluke, generational tragedy, to be sure, but that news dominated the Internet and was found by every jobseeker considering Upstate Carolina Regional Medical Center. These words, bad histories, reputations, what is online, are real, vivid concerns to jobseekers who don’t know the area, or the region.
In this case, “The Coalfields” of Southwest Virginia is a similar major obstacle for recruitment. The negative geo-politics of the coal industry combined with the stereotyped images of the black faced miner with the pick ax, can cast a poor light on it. In my years visiting the Tri-Cities, the home of the parent company of this hospital, I would regularly meet people who claimed to be “from the Coalfields” who talked in negative terms about it. Were it not for my experience knowing these communities usually are far better than how they are referenced or talked about, I would have been concerned that Wise County was a remote place with people riding horses and walking around in bare feet!
The words alone, “coal fields” come with a negative connotation and in recruitment, needs to be confronted. So how did we chose to “present” the area?
Dominion Energy’s $1.8 Billion plant is the marvel of the coal industry, exceeding federal standards, and is a stabilizing economic base for the county – aerial photos and a tour included; “this ain’t granddaddy’s coal mine” is a popular refrain
Fortunately for Wise County, Dominion Power built the compelling 2012 Hybrid Energy Center here – a $1.8 Billion behemoth, and marvel of modern energy production that may be the cleanest coal plant in the world (it remains the last coal plant built by the company to date). This is a station/facility/complex designed to produce energy even from the poorest grades of coal, called G.O.B., that older plants cannot use, and even wood scraps can be used to produce energy. Its cleaning and disposal methods EXCEED federal guidelines. It exists within 5 miles of the Clinch River, one of America’s most bio-diverse. Completely defying what most think about when they imagine a coal plant, this facility will fulfill the county and its tax base with millions of dollars, for decades – an economic certainty that is also important to be represented to physician jobseekers.
So first, we promote the extreme “cleanliness” of the plant, as well as provide photos of the entire property with a young, supervisor with an engineering degree, which runs against typical “coal miner” stereotypes – Geoffrey provides a tour of the facility which include our aerial photos, to show the magnitude of the complex.
Coal companies are required to “redevelop” properties which they mine: we arranged for a tour with a local Virginia Tech agent and visit a vineyard, golf course, scientific research project, and a cow pasture – that all used to be surface mines
We also focused on finding another narrative that jobseekers likely don’t know much about, called “reclamation,” which refers to what is now the requirement of mining companies to “replenish” formerly-mined land, much of which was jagged mountainsides, into a natural state. We profiled an expert and Virginia Tech engineer, on the subject, who provided an extensive video presentation, taking us to a vineyard and cow grazing/raising pasture – businesses new to the area, and even a golf course on what was once a coal mining operation.
Our production was designed to lower jobseeker anxiety about the television stereotypes of modern coal companies and set a narrative about it that was based in realities of the local culture and economy, and even the heritage of the area, that was agreeable and understandable. In addition, all the people in our production genuinely extend invitations to meet candidates on their interview, which promoted these are professionals with nothing to hide and who want to proudly share the compelling information and welcome new doctors.
In addition to featuring the Hybrid Energy station and examples of reclamation, we sought out a renowned geologist and author to explain the reason why coal is in the area, providing a scientific, or academic angle, that would appeal to a prospective candidate. Tony Scales used maps of region, photos taken from space, and even discusses the chemical make up of coal, and its prevalence in the region and specifically where it is.
More, a local UVA professor and nationally-known linguist, was interviewed, telling prospects in our unique second person format (our subjects speak to the camera and are coached by us to pretend they are talking to prospects) about the culture of the people and families they will care for – Dr. Amy Clark is a fourth generation resident of an area who speaks eloquently and reassuringly to candidates about what they can expect from the people who make up the “culture” of the region.
Finally, the aforementioned allow us to introduce coal stereotypes, but in the context of their being part of a history that is cherished; we visit local museums and talk about the heritage and what forged the area, including important historical figures. All of these people we interview “humanize” the area, and the nostalgia creates a “place” for jobseekers to imagine they will live in, and make their next hometown.
Familiarizing the area and any issue of concern to jobseekers, is the first step to selling them, as well as beating competing employers in hiring them, and our team properly presented the narrative to maximize our client’s ability to get past negative connotations while we made “the Coalfields” competitive.
2. Seven Towns – That’s way too many for traditional recruiting
How do you handle the fact that Wise County has seven towns, when on the real interview visit, a candidate would not be able to fully visit one? We made incredible profiles of each, and they compete with each other to jobseekers
In traditional recruiting, hospitals attempt to “sell” their communities and hospitals to candidates on the expensive interview site visit, when they fly in and host them and their spouse (often over numerous trips). In many cases regarding rural counties, however, they can have multiple towns that are distinct and separated by significant distances, making it literally impossible for a candidate to visit them, even on multiple trips.
There is no doubt that Wise County is better when considering the sum of its seven communities – they are all incredible, with amazing histories, their own schools, festivals, businesses, and tourist features, all which are not well marketed to attract a $500,000 per-year physician. They also “fly under the internet radar” and are difficult to research even if the candidate is motivated, and these places are therefore missed by jobseekers almost entirely. Again, this leaves hospitals with the expensive proposition of the costly and limited interview trip, and the associated challenges relating to their budget, to attempt to fill the job – when even then, the trip cannot do it.
Festivals show the spirit of a community or town and promote to candidates thoughts of living there, especially with our professionally produced, entertaining content which includes video
So having seven towns is a huge problem for Norton Community Hospital, because in traditional recruiting, no candidates, until Online Job Tour, were able to fully experience all of the county’s towns, much less one of them.
In our Online Job Tour, we decided to profile each each town (Appalachia, Big Stone Gap, Norton, Wise, Pound, Coeburn, and St. Paul) as if it existed alone and had to “sell” candidates; we produced a profile of each community that is not only better than their own online presentations of themselves, but better than any combination of sources, and then we additionally show how the physician and family would live in each – we effectively set up a protocol that drives candidates through each town, and they compete against each other. Some of the town profiles print to 40 pages. We feel strongly that the client has a “good problem” when their candidate is debating which town they like best and want to live in, as opposed to considering a career with another employer.
3. “What do we have to give up?” – This is a key question of jobseekers considering working in a rural hospital and living in its area
Perhaps the most significant recruiting asset in Wise County is the University of Virginia campus, where we were fortunate to interview the chancellor; but the county school system also defies “rural;” it just completed a $50 million upgrade (Central High School)We expertly break down the service area of the client and feature the top recruiting assets, as well as the distance to them; with limited time off from working, physicians want to maximize their free time for their hobbies and with family
Over the course of a decade, we have met hundreds of physician jobseekers. They admitted there was an appeal to living in a non-metro market and working in a smaller hospital, whom I call “throwback candidates.” But when considering rural areas they had not visited, they would invariably ask us:
“It seems like a nice place, but what modern conveniences would we have to give up (if we chose to live there)?”
This common refrain was referring to the (often but not always true) belief that there would be fewer amenities, a poor quality of schools, etc., that would negatively impact a quality of living they would enjoy/or thought they would, than new jobseekers had during their residencies/fellowships, which were often in large cities, or with experienced physicians living their comfortable lives in a metro area or the suburbs.
In Wise County, we waited until the completion of a $50 million public school system consolidation for our production visit, which included the construction of three high schools that looked like small colleges – along with a University of Virginia campus and its resources, which include a “pre-college” program offered, free, to the area’s college bound students, and a capable local community college; we presented videos and tours, and a comprehensive breakdown showing that the public schools and facilities rivaled the best in rural America.
A powerful feature of Online Job Tour is when we “reveal” not only features that candidates probably don’t know, but when they appear to be better quality than they ever thought would be in our client’s area, such as these brand new school facilities as well as a special UVA program for students, they promote a “double-take” which are powerful selling and closing points we position our clients to use vs. competing employers/locations.
We understand in recruiting, like in professional selling, our client must not only sell candidates, but outsell many options physician jobseekers have.
Regarding area lifestyle features, naturally, this region isn’t New York City, and candidates already perceive it to be a quality, outdoor recreation area because of what they find online. We not only feature that, but delve into other pursuits that a physician salary could engage in, which range from area history and cultural museums, music venues (including the region’s popular Bluegrass music trail and its area venues – which we tie to heavily because it marks the identity of the region in a charming way), the Barter Theatre, resorts, golf clubs, premier fly fishing, a tourist-booming ATV trail system, the Clinch River to TVA lake recreation, the local airport for private pilots, along with a comprehensive run down of area festivals – to promote there is far more than people expect. This is all done in a “touring” fashion, so receiving all of the information is manageable and “fits” into their considerations.
A key in our productions is to provide client area assets in a competitive manner – to compete against perceived other employers, and to get candidates to “check off from the list” these core concerns, because with most jobseekers they are looking to disqualify jobs and places based on what they want and their quality. So for example, if our productions promote a candidate and spouse to agree to “check off” that the schools are good for their family, we achieved what we need to for the client.
Suddenly, candidates begin to understand they aren’t giving up much at all, and these features, on their income, are easier to access and they would increase their living quality standard enjoying them.
So instead of not knowing, and therefore having anxiety based on stereotyping, our productions clearly show jobseekers that Wise County offers the opposite of their concerns: a plethora of living features in so many categories that rural living changes to “high quality living,” as opposed to the dread of life in a remote place that doesn’t satisfy, like they may have thought. It’s also possible, and even likely, because competitors fall short in doing this, that THEY are considered to be less favorable than our clients, and the competing employers fall short to same jobseekers.
4. Expanding the Circle – The Driving Circle, that is.
Large box retailers featured in the Norton Community Hospital are not in Wise County. The Porsche dealer is in Kingsport; approximately 45 minutes to get there. Now jobseekers know
Maybe the biggest mistake rural hospitals make is not putting themselves in the position of the physician jobseeker and how they will live – this is a core tenet that is taught to all sales professionals, regardless of the product or service being sold.
We know that doctors don’t stop at the county border on weekends. But each town and county websites, including tourism sites, focus on selling their features, and don’t focus on the entirety of an area or region they are in. Physicians will drive to what they want to do. Online Job Tour better illustrates how candidates will live with their families: we expand the outer circle of “lifestyle amenities” to cover 15+ entertainment venues in the region, show where the top golf clubs are, the best marinas, resorts, shopping – generally capping the distances to 60 miles, which in a rural area is about an hour’s drive.
The perception candidates have of life in Wise County just improved immensely because it’s not just about Wise County. Physician jobseekers and their spouses can now envision drives to Kingsport for shopping or to Abingdon for a Barter Theatre show, or to Marion to the Lincoln Theatre to see a PBS “Song of the Mountains” telecast — many things they would never visit on the traditional interview trip, or even be told about in traditional hospital recruiting.
Often hospitals lose candidates because they never got enough information, or they get frustrated looking, and quit the process. We learned more than a decade ago that it’s better to reveal where all of the highest-end shopping and traditional amenities are located, even if not local, so when they commit to moving forward in their interviews, candidates are accepting those distances. In our productions, knowledge is power for the client, and for their candidates.
Dozens of additional examples of Online Job Tour overcoming traditional recruiting challenges that limit non-metro hospitals and physician employers, reveal that our digital, more comprehensive and convenient career search product, is compelling and a significant benefit in this modern age of online career search.
A Note on the Rural Hospital: The rural hospital, to us, is the most sacred business in America. We think it represents the “Norman Rockwell approach” of how hospitals were once set up to serve their communities. Their physicians still have city parks and high school gyms named in their honor. Hospital employees are held in esteem, and serve friends, neighbors and families they know. In the sacred halls of the community hospital, we see expert care given by people who choose to live in a town where they are recognized and appreciated. It gives us joy to represent these businesses, and to see Online Job Tour have a positive impact on their recruiting outcomes.
Our unprecedented test market: Since the Internet became a career search fixture for physicians and hospital professionals in the early 2000s, Online Job Tour productions were being test-marketed by selected non-metro hospitals while the invention was going through its patent application process, which was awarded in 2012. Through a seven year period, for reasons that primarily included misperceptions and stereotypes of their areas by jobseekers, the limitations of traditional recruiting to efficiently address jobseeker needs and compete for them, and the lack of information available, particularly rural hospitals continue to be challenged when competing for doctors and staff, but not Online Job Tour clients.
Empirical evidence was gathered that showed incredible efficiency improvements, as clients filled their jobs in less time, reduced multiple costly interview trips, reduced their use of third party recruiters, they gained more referrals, the quality of candidates rose, retention rates doubled, and on-boarding programs were focused to credentialing and expediting start dates. New hires relocated with confidence and excitement to their top choices.
With research emerging regarding the “opportunity loss” from unfilled physician openings and with specialist careers a hospital can lose $200,000 per month, filling jobs months sooner yields millions in additional income.
Call Promo Web Innovations to discuss a trial offer of Online Job Tour today, which allows your organization to try our productions for yourself without a major commitment and at an affordable investment price.
Healthcare and physician recruiting is an expensive “business” and hospitals will start becoming attracted to technology-based products that make them more efficient and effective as organizations are tightening their belts. Studies clearly show financial benefits of getting physician starting sooner. Corporations are now focusing on “efficiency” practices to streamline operations, and that needs to happen on the recruiting side. And with the continues documented shortages in a variety of areas, recruiting today can no longer be viewed as an administrative function but a very competitive one. The advantage will be with the employers who take prudent and common sense steps that run against the old, “standard industry operating recruiting process” and use better recruiting strategy and material that attract and compel, outsell, and recruits more efficiently, while hiring the better practitioners than their competition.
The smart phone – especially the iPhone’s popularity, is driving the computer to our hands
Today’s web content is moving to “mobile:” Driving web content design is the smart phone along with the proliferation of video content and broadband speed, and their accessibility, which continue to enamor consumers. With Apple recently announcing record earnings due to iPhone sales (emphasis on phone – that is, the smart phone), and with its market lead in mobile device software, the market of web design (as seen in the growth of Apps and the most popular social media tools) is more influenced on the mobile side of the marketplace. The reality is that the iPhone has driven the computer device to our hands – in a manner of speaking.
The mobile web is also video now: If you are a lead executive, informed, and you can afford it, you own the iPhone. And you are buying the next one. And you must be tech savvy if you lead recruiting, so you are engaged in social media which is dominated by video (Instagram, Snapchat, Vine, etc., and the leader, Facebook, can’t get out of the way of continuous streams of video on your feed).
Mobile content is made for “quick checks” to keep users moving through advertising
Mobile content is “built” for “quick checks;” that is, quickly checking your messages in whatever form you receive them from work, home, and friends, and from breaking sports scores and news sources.
Commercial organizations are finding it challenging to generate revenue on mobile, prompting design agencies need to create content that can cram commercials and ads into the structure of the content.
Our attention spans are being designed to be shorter online, especially on mobile, because companies need to keep users moving through advertising.
The latest mobile content design trends aren’t conducive to permanent placement recruiting: All sales professionals understand no matter what product or service you are selling, you must “reach” your prospects emotionally, and they must feel comfortable that they have the information that they need in order to make a decision. Especially with jobseekers that are nervous and face crucial, life-changing choices, a very substantial review and comparison process is needed. This flies against the “mobile world” of web content. With the 2 minute videos with talking cats and digital content that is in vogue right now for mobile devices, which is designed to incorporate advertising, the challenge to employers is to stay away from the “temptations” of sites that may offer pizzazz and hype but don’t provide deep, required information for analysis that plays an advocate’s role to support the jobseeker’s needs, in order to get educated on core subjects they require, and want, in their career search process. So where do you start when considering making changes to your recruiting materials?
How can employers negotiate through the influence of mobile trends in web design and maintain optimized recruiting practices and tools for jobseekers?
First, when it comes to making decisions on web content for recruiting purposes, employers must understand the differences between their marketing and recruiting departments. Recruiting, is in its essence “sales,” which includes qualifying prospects, competing, selling jobs, seeking referrals, hustling to meet start dates – even working to quicken start dates. This is entirely different than “marketing” a hospital’s services, branding, or promoting its local charity work – which is directed to its patient area. The people, and mentalities, are also different, and the pay is different with recruiters/closers often being compensated based on performance bonuses and meeting placement deadlines, and other commission-oriented incentives. While web designers hired by marketing departments can take the trending content design concepts and incorporate them because they think it will impress their client by looking like it fits into current commercial designs, recruiters who put their prospects’ needs first to sell them, and want a sales tool to accommodate those needs and would balk. The quick checks and quickie videos work in the branding and consumer markets. They don’t satisfy jobseekers and their needs, nor compete for them. So marketing and recruiting are entirely different.
Do these look like marketers? Recruiters are sales pros/closers – there’s a big difference
A marketing director may find mobile design concepts compelling because they appeal to their instincts to attract and brand and create “buzz,” but these things that work in marketing a hospital’s services to patients – they contribute to the biggest complaint we have heard from jobseekers in the last decade since the Internet took over the marketplace: “there is not enough information.”
So what will work effectively? Designing recruiting content demands first focusing on the needs of jobseekers – this is a selling tenet – not necessarily a marketing one: As the best in-house recruiters know, the first step to attracting a doctor starts with understanding the basics of his or her situation, knowledge of the marketplace, a physician’s options and choices, pre-qualifying their needs, and understanding your organization’s positives and negatives vs. competitors, which can depend on many factors which include the needs and wants of the specific physicians and their families, the time in their careers (their age), what they value – many factors. Experience is also important – dealing with doctors over a decade (like we have) leads an in-house recruiter to know candidates much prefer to be “led” by advocates being proactive about their immediate needs and immediate and long-term career interests vs. following them with a clipboard. “Leading them” to make their decision is necessary to manage the process. Getting them the information they need is essential while competing, while selling the assets of the employer. Even pulling back on enthusiasm is sometime necessary to make sure the physician is making the right decisions for both sides. The “x-factor” is everyone’s need to educate the marketplace on their people, culture, facilities and the areas they serve – and do it in a manner that is efficient and out-competes, and that’s where a sales tool/recruiting material comes in.
All great sales professionals rely on a world-class selling tool
Acknowledging today’s need for a recruiting tool (“sales tool”): Agreeing that technology can enable a company’s recruiters to be in many places at once is the first step to appreciation the benefits of a sales tool. A recruiting tool is needed if the employer wants to compete and maximize its recruiting operations. For starters, in today’s world where jobseekers are online, there is a need to deal with multiple prospects who have different and complex needs on core subjects simultaneously, and for efficiency. But the tool must be something that is credible and substantial – remembering the sales tenet that prospects must be given information that fully answers their core questions – the more questions answered and subjects covered, the more time is saved and the less “work” is needed by the recruiter to take the time to “fill in the (primarily knowledge-educating) gaps.”
All top sales professionals in almost all industries (certainly my prior tech sales and Wall Street brokerage industries) leverage a sales presentation or tool of some kind. It is the sales professional’s hallmark, their “leave behind;” it works in their absence, legitimizes their efforts, saves time, and pre-qualifies their prospects and keeps the selling process manageable.
The most powerful in-house physician recruiter is one with experience, is well-trained and uses a tool that is an exemplar of their knowledge and supports the ultimate needs of the jobseeker, often acting as a tool that guides prospects through the selling process. All world class sales professionals have a “go-to” sales tool.
Back to web content: Can technology provide an optimal sales tool for employer recruiting? Absolutely, but content today that is being influenced by mobile trends need to be avoided. Web content that is ultimately an employer’s sales tool works when: jobseekers’ needs are met and they must also be emotionally compelled (again, these are core selling/recruiting tenets).
A 100% digital career preview, this Online Job Tour for St. Jude’s-affiliated Niswonger Children’s Hospital can be viewed at http://www.mshajobtour.com/niswongerCHS’s Seven Rivers Regional Medical Center Online Job Tour – from charming Crystal River, Florida, is at http://www.sevenriversrmc.com
Special Note: Both Online Job Tours have a mobile version which are automatically activated when accessed with a smart phone.
Introducing Online Job Tour® and its accompanying mobile version: For more than a decade after I invented it and filed for a patent when I was a private physician recruiter in 2003, Online Job Tour (finally patented in 2012) has proven to improve hospital and physician recruiting in a variety of ways as an online presentation system designed to replicate the real interview trip that hospitals traditionally use to “sell” their facilities and service areas to finalist candidates – but without the time limits, expense, and many inconveniences and logistical challenges of travel and setting meetings, etc.
More than a dozen physicians – among 50 community leaders, are featured in Online Job Tour productions – far more than candidates meet on the real interviewExpert Randy Ratliff takes job seekers fly fishing in one of our productions – what would take all day – including discussions of strategy and making a new friend, is more easier facilitated in Online Job Tour
Extremely comprehensive, the real interview visit cannot cover 5% of an Online Job Tour production, which can exceed 400 pages with 4,000 photos and more than 100 videos. Also changing the entire dynamic of the candidate evaluation process, because all prospects are fully and better educated in hours instead of a few making multiple trips over as long as a year, all prospects can be considered simultaneously because all who express interest in the client’s career are fully knowledgeable and have a holistic understanding of living and working at the client’s location – equal to knowledge the employer would pay for multiple trips.
In hours, instead of months to a year over multiple, expensive interview visits that interrupt the work flow of many team members and physicians who must take time out, candidates and their entire families holistically understand working and living with our clients after using Online Job Tour.
Jobseekers can RELAX and learn everything they need with a deliberate and comfortable “tour” format: Unlike the frenetic, “entertainment-orientation” of today’s new design in the mobile arena – which again is produced by commercial agencies to incorporate advertising, Online Job Tour is “touring;” it keeps jobseekers on a deliberate protocol that they want – they want the information first, while Online Job Tours certainly entertain and compel. We do not have the need to create content that includes advertising so we can stay focused on efficiently driving to the jobseeker the information they need to ultimately be able to make decisions. Online Job Tour is the “ultimate sales tool” for the in-house recruiter as it guides prospects through a tour of all relevant topics, allowing the recruiter a number of time, categorizing, pre-qualifying luxuries and instead of spending time educating, the recruiter can focus on the relationship with candidates, closing them, and choosing from a better and larger group of motivated candidates. Many benefits include:
Also important in sales is the competitive component. Candidates note they prefer our clients over competitors because Online Job Tour better prepares them so there are fewer unknowns – this moves our clients hire on their preferred lists.
Unlike the recruiter, Online Job Tour is on 24/7 and can be shown to an unlimited number of candidates at the same time.
It shared with extended family members who are usually shut out from considerations.
Spouses enjoy Online Job Tour because they are usually separated from the candidate for much of the real visit – if they are indeed invited by the employer.
Particularly rural hospitals were focused on in our test market have never-before-seen results regarding candidate satisfaction as many small communities are not professionally represented online.
Our clients are getting more and more candidates willing to accept career openings, and in many cases regarding spouses who don’t need to take any physical trip to our clients, who commit to signing.
Closing % of visiting candidates is dramatically improved.
Time-to-fill open jobs is shortened considerably.
Clients have noted higher better caliber and more qualified practitioners.
Online Job Tour saves wasted trips; that is, jobseekers who use it may determine the service area of the hospital isn’t what they want, so the employer doesn’t waste the time, effort and money to host candidates who, once they show up, go through the motions but wastes everyone’s’ time and delays the hire.
Candidates arrive far more prepared for interviews, and all new hires are far more committed to the long term career because there are no “unknowns” like many who move to a new home without learning “everything” about a community.
On-boarding is easier and only requires credentialing and no “welcome wagon”-type of community education.
Our stats show far better retention (less turnover) – candidates are ultimately better educated and therefore better able to make firm career commitments.
Online Job Tour is US-patented, so our clients have phenomenal advantages over competitors who still must rely on the traditional process of providing a patchwork of websites they hope jobseekers will research, and expensive trips to sell their towns, and they deal with fewer candidates due to personnel and logistical limitations that our web tool doesn’t have.
What about the influence of mobile? I didn’t forget! In fact, I designed the first mobile version of Online Job Tour for a smart phone in 2006 and because I believed the iPhone in particular would be a “game changer,” we re-tooled our mobile design within six months of the release of the first iPhone in 2008. After almost eight years researching our mobile version, it is an abbreviated version of our large productions that motivates jobseekers and their families to use the production on their full screen devices (tablets, laptops and desktops). The look and feel of our mobile versions are similar to many mobile sites and their content style, and the videos are optimized for the iPhone – principally because our target market (primarily physicians) have iPhones, but without clutter or designs inadvertently influenced by commercial needs to incorporate advertising and banners, video ads, etc. Our mobile version can be viewed on Android and Samsung mobile software-driven devices, among others.
Because more and more prospects are first viewing Online Job Tour on their smart phones, ultimately our mobile pieces are extremely elegant. Because jobseekers ultimately want to get details for their career search, the mobile versions help to transition them to the full site versions that they can enjoy on larger screen devices – although prospects can choose to view the “full site” on their phones.
In the end, Online Job Tour is providing a compelling advantage as the sales tool for our clients’ recruiting teams, made ideally in an era where web content is moving to mobile, but accommodates the true needs of jobseekers who must feel “fulfilled” in obtaining the information they need. Online Job Tour keeps everything manageable and comfortable for the user because it is designed as a “tour.”
Commercial groups influenced by mobile design trends who develop recruiting content to impress marketing folks will fall way short in meeting needs for recruiting
While many hospital companies will fall into the temptation of the “pizzazz” of mobile content trends and fall short with poor recruiting investments, through years of test marketing we have already negotiated the issues relating to user expectations of content, the tools they use to access the web (including mobile), and have a proven tool that significantly improves healthcare recruiting, empowers our in-house recruiter clients, and helps our employer clients stand far apart from their competitors in a tough marketplace.
Carl Brickman
For more information on Online Job Tour, please contact me at 813-992-2299 (that’s my iPhone!) Carl Brickman is Founder and Creative Director of Promo Web Innovations, Inc., in Tampa, FL. After a sales career in which he broke his technology company’s production records, Carl was a sales consultant for a Wall Street brokerage and a major commercial real estate company. He decided to get into the field of physician recruiting in 2001 after his father died during a hospital operation, when he invented Online Job Tour.
My Day Online was Easier… Hospitals can improve their physician recruiting by embracing how our time spent in the online world is less stressful and more efficient, making Online Job Tour® the ideal approach to connecting with today’s busy, web-savvy healthcare job seekers (who also have kids, commutes, honey-dos, school recitals, workouts, grocery trips…).
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My day started by slipping in the shower while rushing to get ready for my work day, which includes an important staff meeting I’m not fully prepared for because my youngest child, three year-old Joe, has an asthmatic condition and had a few small spells that kept us up late. To top off the morning, as I rushed out the door forgetting to kiss my wife who was handling the boys’ pancake breakfast, coffee spilled on my favorite shirt. As much as I would like to think my problems are exceptional, the reality is this is a typical day for a business executive/owner who is trying to manage family and work. I’m not going to get any sympathy from others.
What may be exceptional, though, is my 40 minute commute through Tampa traffic to go 14 miles Downtown – that’s barring any accidents. Let’s ignore the “check engine light” that is illuminated despite just getting it back from the dealership and a $717 bill. I will deal with honking, the intermittent semi-truck’s throttling engine as it drives by at the same height as my ears before pulling into my expensive parking spot.
You know my first moment of peace? It was getting into the parking deck and seeing a text message on my iPhone which included a photo of wifey kissing pancake syrup faces of two sons. Before unbuckling the seat belt I took a moment to check a text from my brother in Los Angeles. I use Twitter as a news source, following just 32 Twitter accounts of news sources – I glanced at a few.
Before heading into my office, mobile texts, and the predictability of my preset Twitter feed – even before my morning cup of coffee, calmed me down after dutifully waiting for me to read them. The Internet facilitated that.
Carl Brickman with USF student interns Jason and James in our Online Job Tour studio
I could go on about my day – the unpredictability of life and work, twists that are natural – I actually embrace them because it is life. A supplier didn’t come through, or conversely, did a spectacular job. A staff member with important information got caught in traffic running an errand so we had to put together a hasty conference call. The delivery guy got our lunch order wrong today. “Stuff” happens, right?
I did a Skype interview with a candidate. And then I was interviewed on Skype. Trusty email was checked on my desktop, and I had two Facetime calls via my iPad. I took the first 10 minutes of my lunch hour to check news online, ESPN, I checked my social media accounts and responded to priority stuff, passing over the many posts of birds – it seems many Facebook friends are birders.
My point in describing a typical workday for me is that being online ebbs and flows seamlessly into and out from my life, and work – and my existence. There is no longer a conscious move to rear-up the computer to get online, and skeptically consider giving your credit card number to Macy’s online, or to order lunch for staff online. The internet is living. And you know what? It all went a lot easier, and how I program social media and how I use my computer devices, makes my life more efficient and enjoyable.
And I don’t need to tell anyone how children are picking this up. My three and four year old have their own tablets. They sit with them for a designated hour every afternoon – sometimes we let them have tablet time after breakfast or on weekend mornings. And what parent doesn’t have a few Apps on their phones to try to keep their kids occupied in their cars?
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Glenn Trent, MD, Orthopedic Surgeon/Chief of Staff, Pediatrician Jennifer Rose, MD, and Sudhirkumar Patel, MD Hospitalist, are among 12 physicians interviewed and featured in our latest Online Job Tour for client Indian Path Medical Center in Kingsport, TNJennifer Rose, MD, PediatricianPatel, Sudhirkumar, MD, Hospitalist
With hospitals continually investing in ways to be more efficient and competitive while they must also maintain high standards and results, Online Job Tour® embraces this new “culture” we live in, where we all accept and actually look forward to the predictability, and in many ways, the comfort, of how technology makes life and work easier. We “move” in and out from the Internet all day long without knowing it.
Online Job Tour is a US-patented “web production” also optimized for mobile devices, that allows hospitals and physician practice clients to provide jobseekers, prospects, and candidates with a “career preview” that is far more comprehensive that the expensive, limited, real interview trip:
Few candidates take the real interview – who arrive unprepared to a new location, spouses are separated, extended family misses out, and they meet few people – and get to know even fewer. On site, the candidate rarely gets to meet any people in the community and at best, drive past landmarks but don’t get to know their stories.
The real interview trip cannot cover 5% of an Online Job Tour – and that is if the interview goes off without a hitch; and we all know there can be flight delays, weather problems, people miss meetings, conflicting comments can be made to candidates by different executives, locals or staff. Often, hospitals forget the competitive component – they are competing against many other employers for this candidate, as well as how it is pretty inconvenient for them to travel. All of these issues are satisfied with our advanced innovation.
Alice Page and sister Margie Anderson welcome IPMC jobseekers and their families to Rotherwood stables, in an unrushed visit to see the facilities, meet kids and parents, and learn about the joy of having horses in Kingsport, Tennessee
Instead, jobseekers, at their own pace, can go through Online Job Tour – while at home, or on their phones, during their free time, or when they make time, to get a FAR better holistic understanding of what life and work will be like at our clients. Our work pre-qualifies candidates automatically. They arrive for interviews already knowing everything and to authenticate why they are interested – as opposed to with anxiety and with their head on a constant swivel with the hospital hoping, at best, that they will want to come again for yet another logistically challenging interview.
Aside from our clients saving third party recruiter fees, limiting the number of interview trips they must subsidize, attracting better candidates, filling jobs faster, and improving their turnover percentages, Online Job Tour is a “make sense” approach that integrates into the everyday life of today’s busy professional jobseekers – who now find comfort, peace, and certainty in being online now, during their hectic days.
Expert Randy Ratliff takes IPMC jobseekers flyin fishing in the hospital’s Online Job Tour – what would take all day – including discussions of strategy plus fish takes, and making a new friend, are easier facilitated in Online Job Tour
For the jobseeker, the advantage goes to the employer who “guides and provides” prospects with the information they really need to make decisions, and the patent protection for Online Job Tour regards its design, which covers the traditional topics jobseekers need to understand to make a decision – while we place our clients’ best “feet” forward. Online Job Tour was test marketed for seven years before receiving our patent in 2012 with hospitals in 15 states which ranged from 75 beds to 500 in suburban to rural locations. We know the needs of both sides and their practical , logistical, cost challenges, as well as the healthcare marketplace and how to produce comprehensive content that addresses these concerns and issues like no organization.
We have already experienced clients receiving communications from jobseekers who are willing to accept their career opportunities without ever setting foot on campus or in their towns – this is not just a sign of the product’s effectiveness but that Online Job Tour is a reflection of how we all accept web content into our lives, seamlessly. This phenomenon of professionals ready to commit to new careers after using a “100% digital career preview experience” via Online Job Tour, will become more and more common.
After all, often our online day is easier.
To learn more about Online Job Tour, find us online or in social media, or contact me.
Carl Brickman
Founder/President
Promo Web Innovations, Inc.
813-992-2299
*Our Online Job Tour for this client is currently in production on the day of this post. To see our group’s work for client Mountain States Health Alliance, please go to www.mshajobtour.com
Promo Web Innovation’s latest Online Job Tour® for Mountain States Health Alliance’s (MSHA) Sycamore Shoals Hospital (SSH), a 121-bed community hospital of MSHA’s 14 affiliates based in Elizabethton, and Carter County, TN, shows our talent for supporting regional health systems by drawing the central benefits of the parent company, as well regional lifestyle resources which include the primary population center around which the region revolves, to craft a one-of-a-kind preview of a career and lifestyle for its physicians and staff candidates with this hospital client.
Prior to receiving our patent in 2012, Promo Web Innovations, Inc. spent a decade test marketing our work with suburban and rural hospitals in 15 states and we watched how all their in-house recruiters would excuse what they believed were a lack of prime lifestyle benefits but would say to candidates, “…but we live close to (whatever large city was within an hour).” Additionally, there continues to be a sophomoric approach to trying to appeal to the multi-hundred thousand dollar earner-jobseekers by providing websites of the local chamber of commerce and “tourism” websites – Chamber websites represent their members (which don’t provide a full representation of the business or the area at all) and tourism represents vacation features – resulting in a poor representation of “what living is like” to prospective candidates for their jobs; it really didn’t help our clients at all and still doesn’t help hospitals like them.
Even if the material provided to candidates was deemed to be good quality, not in dispute is that these websites or videos/materials were being “contorted” into this use for the hospital’s recruiting – the materials used were also “provincial;” that is, only focused on local businesses and features which does not represent the real “life” a doctor would live as he/she would often drive outside that immediate area. Often this material was out-dated. Additionally detrimental was the in-house recruiters were not considering the competitive component – if candidates being given all this material were looking at 8 jobs, then they were “adding to a burden” of candidates and their families trying to get the information they really need to make decisions.
We saw this same phenomenon repeat itself for hospitals in Midwest City, Oklahoma (to Oklahoma City), Paris, KY (to Lexingon), Elko, Nevada (to Salt Lake City), Sparks, NV (to Reno), Crystal River, Florida (to Tampa), Geneva, New York (to Rochester), Selma, Alabama (to Birmingham) – the small community hospital that would repeatedly be down on their own area but try to sell themselves by claiming they were close the large population center close by.
As a result, the hospitals’ approach was to try to get any jobseeker who expressed what they hoped was a sincere interest to take the limited, expensive trip for an extended weekend – this started a linear, “do we make an offer to this doctor who just visited while we weigh the costs of another site visit and recruiters fees, (etc.)?” approach to trying to fill critical jobs. This creates industry-systemic problems which include poor turnover numbers because the practitioners were sold on contracts and jobs and not “on a life and career in the area” that they never got to learn about until after they took the jobs – this is still a real challenge among hospital recruiting in-house personnel.
The Regional System: A Flagship in a Population Center surrounded by regional hospital affiliates – we “draw” from the lifestyle features of all the areas, even beyond any of the hospitals’ locations, to maximize every system hospital Online Job Tour
Online Job Tour breaks through that expensive, time consuming, wasteful, “eventually fill the job” approach (which is how hospitals often fill the job – not by expert recruiting, sourcing, or selling, but by raising the pay or lowering the qualifications desired) – in the test market we found our work had a compelling and immediately positive impact because it enabled clients to give ALL prospects – and their family members a more effective, and more competitive presentation of “what working and living is like here” for their recruiting by producing fully informed, pre-sold candidates with our clients as their top priority – with their extended families, preferring our clients.
Our work shared with all prospects was opposed to merely the handful of candidates who are hosted onsite by the client for a hasty expensive visit which can’t cover 5% of our Online Job Tours.
Our premier work is backed by the latest technology, web creation and support services, including mobile – our work is extraordinary detailed, taking almost 600 hours among six dedicated staff to craft these massive productions.
Because our work is comfortable and in a touring format designed around the needs and issues of jobseekers, it was easy to share with them where all the “shopping” and other lifestyle amenities would be regarding the large city amenities.
With that information out of the way and with candidates 100% informed, and they understand if they moved to our client area where these things would be, this allows us to focus on presenting the REAL story – what jobseekers really want to know, which is the story of the town they are considering and the hospital it serves: Online Job Tour is an “immersion experience” through a detailed array of categories traditionally needed to be understood by jobseekers, that includes testimonials by community leaders, local features, and set up as a compelling “virtual tour” that isnot limited by the real interview visit weekend – time, weather, money, and all other challenges of the real interview trip. The regional features become additions but not the hollow selling points of the client.
We design our productions for a regional client system as though their service areas are related – it makes recruiting easier and better
Carter County & Elizabethton and Sycamore Shoals Hospital is where all of our talent and years of experience clicks into place to produce an ideal representation of our work:
With an agreement in place with MSHA to produce Online Job Tour for each of its 14 hospitals, in addition to the production trip I made for SSH’s Online Job Tour, we already published an Online Job Tour production for their Level 1 Trauma Center and flagship, Johnson City Medical Center, which is in Johnson City, Tennessee, the primary city of the Tri-Cities region. I also traveled to Abingdon, Virginia for a site visit there, a second trip to Johnson City for the company’s children’s hospital, as well as to Kingsport, TN for a project we are working on now. We understand the entire region and how it relates to recruiting and the assets that are most marketable.
The Online Job Tour for Sycamore Shoals Hospital, below, presents life of pristine outdoors with immediate and regional lifestyle amenities vs. the area being too remote; now the lake is a “plus” – an important subtle recruiting difference (click on to enlarge image)
Carter County, which rests on the Western North Carolina border and has in it some of the best of the Appalachian Mountains and pristine streams and a TVA lake, was recognized by us early as the “nature gem” community in the company’s region. In anticipation of the production I had visited a state park there and used it in our Johnson City Medical Center Online Job Tour production.
Because Online Job Tour is designed to “show jobseekers what their lives will be like,” we were able to draw from my previous visits to the region for the other Online Job Tour productions as well, and pick and choose the best regional shopping, we picked from the Abingdon visit the Barther Theater and Bristol’s State Street Shopping. From the Johnson City production (Johnson City is just 9 miles from the SSH campus) we took content from ETSU – the regional university, the major regional mall, restaurants, and even two private schools that would be a short drive for future employees of SSH. And even though we have not produced it yet, we are taking video from a fly fishing guide from my Kingsport trip and backing that video into this piece for the Elizabethton client, primarily because the guide picked Elizabethton for the best fly fishing.
So as you can see from the previous paragraph, our previous visits to other hospitals and the productions for them- we could “draw” from and “pick and choose” which features from them we thought would work for this latest client – that is actually closer to Abingdon than Johnson City. What’s more, we featured Banner Elk and Sugar Mountain, NC in our Johnson City Medical Center Online Job Tour – Sycamore Shoals hospital is much closer, so again, we feature these places – not even in the same state, but that are within 30 miles of Carter County – because these places are where doctors and others go to and enjoy on weekends – although they would be absent from Chamber of Commerce websites.
With all of that “peripheral” lifestyle information to enhance our presentation of Carter County, we have made it so it no longer appears to be too rural or remote. In fact, the opposite is revealed – that Carter County is an “outdoors paradise” within an easy and better drive to regional features than even Johnson City – suddenly, this is a better place for candidates who want to live with waterfalls and bike and hiking trails and Watauga Lake in their backyards.
Elizabethton and Carter County are transformed by our work as “the place to be” instead of the place that is a struggle for in-house recruiters to get candidates there because they look it up on a map and perceive it to be remote, and the Chamber website isn’t substantial or appealing.
Each community and hospital needs its own identity – drafting the attractive regional lifestyle components that new employees will like and use allows us to rack all of them and focus on presenting “how you will live” in Carter County and making it as appealing as possible.
A compelling feature of this client’s location is its history – jobseekers can appreciate it far better because they are relaxed due to being reassured the “necessities” they feel they need which have been covered by our additionally incorporating regional features from previous production trips for other hospitals of our regional system client in the region – as opposed to not including them (click on to enlarge image)
Moreover, we have the luxury with the regional features already known and how we are going to represent them and their accessibility – even across counties and states, to focus on the incredible people and personalities, and backyard features of Carter County, from their nature to history.
The Barter Theater isn’t in this hospital’s service area, or even its state – but is just 35 miles from campus and locals go here for fabulous theater. It is included as a regional benefit because jobseekers are future employees and doctors who will go here often (click on to enlarge image)
“Cross-pollinating” selected features of a region make complete sense because it better represents “the kind of life and work” the jobseekers will have as employees of our clients’ hospitals and this is a “must” theme we are executing when prudent in our productions – for example, of the 102 videos in the Sycamore Shoals Online Job Tour, 38 are from other MSHA productions – but they ideally fit into our approach, which understands physicians and medical practitioners are people of means who drive across county and state lines for all of their needs – and this is greatly illustrated in this compelling piece with 4,000 photos, and we feature more than 50 employees, physicians, and community members.
Our substantial work now regularly surpasses 225 pages of web content and 5 hours of video – they are “web films” or “productions” that are “immersion experiences” to these clients and their communities. From the start, driving our development of the material we produce is my unwavering passion to honor my father, who passed away due to a mistake made during a medical procedure in 2000. Our group is truly committed to extreme detail and craftsmanship that would reflect how they would want to recruit a medical jobseeker to care for their own family in our work, which encapsulates our mission. Thank you for looking at our groundbreaking work.
Online Job Tour® Founder and Creative Director Carl Brickman
For more information about our work or to discuss a no-obligation trial of Online Job Tour, call me anytime at our studio 813-855-5185 or email me at carlbrickman@yahoo.com
Can Onboarding programs reduce physician turnover problems and justify their investment?
If the primary reason for health systems and hospitals developing physician onboarding programs is to reduce physician turnover, they will not significantly improve their numbers because these programs don’t address the reasons for turnover which are embedded in the traditional recruitment process which comes before them. Below is a solution that can otherwise make an onboarding program with this intent actually work.
Over the last year I’ve read intently on hospital organizations and their investments in physician onboarding programs that are administered by in-house recruiters – ostensibly in reaction to poor turnover numbers. The general thought process seems to be if hospitals can provide a “welcome wagon approach” to ushering physicians into their new jobs – as opposed to merely credentialing, the physicians and their families will be more apt to stay longer.
Off the bat, I can say as a former trainer of high-end sales professionals that the focus on what is essentially “service after the sale” is long overdue. But on the hospital side this concept put into practice won’t solve the problems of physicians leaving abruptly or at the end of their contracted term – the investment into this endeavor is a “band aid that won’t heal the wound.”
How am I certain that health systems that have spent considerable money and time on this won’t yield an ROI or see the changes in turnover they are hoping for?
Because an onboarding program doesn’t address the reasons doctors leave early, which lay in the traditional recruiting process, which promotes physicians and their spouses having to make ill-informed decisions because they never get enough information through their career search that makes them commit to a long-term relationship. Instead, physicians are often sold on a contract after the hospital asks, “what will it take?” and then hard closes with a $15,000 check. In fact, what the doctor and family learn AFTER the close, and often DURING this kind of onboarding program – such as “real living” issues and lifestyle, work and peer relationships that weren’t fully revealed in the interviews, is what promotes turnover. They determine, after the fact, that the hospital, the people, and the service area, isn’t for them; in fact, had they learned what they know now, they wouldn’t have accepted the position in the first place.
Physician Turnover Rate
Today’s Recruitment Process is what Promotes Turnover Problems:
The Recruiting Process Doesn’t “Reach” today’s Web-savvy Professionals: The traditional process of providing prospective candidates with a handful of links to investigate and then flying very few of them in for the limited real interview trip for which they are unprepared – to learn about working and living in the area, simply does not advance their knowledge to make well-formed decisions. The bottom line is, year after year, statistics and long term results PROVE many new physician candidates aren’t fully informed to feel good about a long-term career choice. So they essentially “take a chance” when accepting jobs. Alternately, candidates may have unrealistic expectations brought on entirely by their own hopes and dreams that aren’t based on real facts. It’s a hard pill for healthcare systems to swallow, but poor retention numbers are promoting trying new things like these onboarding programs. No booklet, 5 minute recruiting video filled with clichés, or even a second trip paid for by the hospital, makes a compelling dent – these have been tried and again, the numbers are what they are.
In-house Recruiters: The vast majority of in-house recruiters are not coming to health systems leaving a six-figure sales job at Boston Scientific, or Microsoft or Pfizer, where they were expertly trained, and then survived intensely competitive, quota-based selling environments – but isn’t physician recruiting competitive, expensive and doesn’t it deal with high-caliber, high income “prospects?” The platform for developing leads, then selling and closing in a very competitive forum with selling tools by expertly trained and incentivized sales pros, and KEEPING customers – which all GREAT companies do, is the SAME intent of in-house recruiting. In-house recruiters don’t come into their positions with that pedigree and many aren’t incentivized with bonuses or pay tied to production and results. Nor are they provided tools to offset their shortcomings – all great sales professionals use great sales tools, which are almost always provided by their company.
The Tools: What has not worked are referring prospective candidates to various websites, sending them brochures and cliché filled recruiting videos, as the numbers bear out poor closing results and poor retention which has prompted onboarding programs as the latest attempt to tinker with results – a “reaction” to a problem that doesn’t really examine the causes of the problem.
Leadership: Many senior directors of HR and Physician Recruitment have resisted looking at recruiting as a competitive function but an administrative one. Although that is changing due to the cost but also because of revelations regarding how improved efficiency can yield significant revenue to hospitals, the “process” of in-house recruitment isn’t yet being re-calibrated regarding new protocols and new standards for hiring as well as compensating in-house recruiters.
Third-Party Recruiting Firms: These firms have “cornered the market” on sourcing, and its born in many ways because of the aforementioned lack of focus by employers on the competitive component. We all knew a decade ago that jobseekers would pour into the Internet to engage their career search but hospitals did little in the way of planning a cogent, competitive strategy to “net” steady streams of candidates with online branding and search engine strategies to obtain proprietary candidates. Now the result is many hospitals use these places to source candidates while on a contingency basis the same candidates are being shown multiple opportunities to the job seeker.
Any hospital that doesn’t think their new physician will not be be checked up on in a few years by the same outside recruiter who placed them and collected a fee in order to showed them multiple options again, would be naive. The key is to source the candidates without these third parties – not just to avoid the fee, but because the physicians develop a relationship with an outside recruiting firm that for the long term isn’t in the hospital’s best interests.
What is needed before a successful onboarding program can be implemented is a better informed and more motivated new physician candidate, who is committed to a long-term career when they are signed.
Online Job Tour sets the table for successful onboarding by offsetting the limitations of traditional recruiting, in the sense that the healthcare system, hospital, or employer now wants to implement a program to establish a protocol to credential and track benchmarks of success as well as “community integration” which keeps them in practice in their area. Here’s how and why:
World Class and New Modern Tool: Over a seven year period while waiting for its US patent, we found that Online Job Tour “front end loads” all of the information about working with the hospital and living in the area – in fact, the real interview trip cannot cover 5% of Online Job Tours, which have as many as 300 web pages, 3,000 original photos and 80 videos with as many as 4 hours of video time, providing an extraordinary, robust, complete “holistic preview” of work and life with our clients. By the time candidate arrive for interviews they “know all there is to know” – they also shared it together and with friends and family who already support their decisions; in fact, many arrive already committed that should the authenticate their interest on the interview that this is their top choice – this lowers the barrier of anxiety, promotes a smoother relaxed interview, an earlier placement, and often less need for incentives or income guarantees because the candidate wants the position as their top choice and is not begrudgingly considering it.
Better More Productive Recruiters: With no training, our client in-house recruiters provide this “all-in-one-resource” that lets candidates take a “virtual preview visit” that educates them on topics they need to know while putting our client’s best foot forward, satisfying the need to sell and compete. Online Job Tour sells the “lifestyle and career” vs. the traditional process which sells a job. Online Job Tour allows our client in-house recruiters to focus more on being advocates for the candidates by promoting local relationships sooner. Less time is spent dealing with candidates trying to inform and educate them – this expands the role of in-house recruiters as the generally consider remedial work of candidate communication and setting up interviews is reduced and lead to more time available for sourcing.
Ready for Onboarding: Now the onboarding process can be one which focuses purely on the career start and moving to the hospital billing by a motivated employee or doctor and not an “after-the-placement information gathering quest” by anxious new ones. For our clients, among many recruiting cost savings, the placements are made in far less time which means physicians start far sooner which yields tremendous financial returns.
Turnover reduced Naturally by Online Job Tour: Online Job Tour not only advances the assimilation process with new employees already informed, they also move to an area comfortably with far less worry.. Also, we all know that a physician invested into his or her community in the form of memberships in organizations or in financial and business partnerships, is very difficult to recruit away. Online Job Tour gives our clients a huge head start onto that path because by the time they relocate the physicians are already immersed into their new areas, and have met and started new relationships vs. moving to a new location “cold.” Ultimately, onboarding can be reduced, as it should be, to helping physicians start on time and fostering relationships that have already started that will lead to doctors investing in their communities – this is the true, ideal long term physician recruitment outcome.
US Patent #8,200,584
If your hospital or health system is instituting an onboarding program, consider that you may be “putting the cart before the horse” by not first focusing on better educating and motivating your candidates with a modern recruiting tool like patented Online Job Tour.
Carl Brickman
Founder & Creative Director
Promo Web Innovations, Inc.
Tampa, FL
Studio: 813-992-2299
Contact: admin@hrfemail.com
Carl Brickman is the Creative Director at Promo Web Innovations, Inc., located in Tampa, the exclusive provider of Online Job Tour®, a 2012-patented hospital recruiting innovation which we refined over a 7 year test market with primarily rural and mid-market hospitals in 15 states. Through that time we have become intimately aware of the personnel, practice and logistical and uncontrollable shortcomings of traditional in-house healthcare recruiting (physician and staff). Our sole focus is empowering hospital company clients who acknowledge the huge financial benefits possible by maximizing their recruiting efforts with advanced technology and motivated, proactive in-house staff.
Mistake #1: Many hospital corporations do not have a truly “competitive approach” to their recruiting
Many “leaders” of recruiting, either at the corporate or individual hospital level, do not view their positions as being the head of an extremely competitive team as opposed to believing their job is more of an administrative, process-driven one. Numerous times I have been told by Directors of Recruiting, as well as by HR and Marketing leaders placed over recruiting “I don’t believe in selling (our jobs).” With the shortage of physicians and many different types of hospital staff positions, this passive, “let them sell themselves” orientation is dangerous regarding the company’s development of a strategic, effective, lasting protocol that will continually land the very best professionals and in a timely, thorough manner with good retention numbers, much less having any plan to track results.
Having the understanding that your organization not only has to compel and sell the candidate but also out-sell as many as 5-6 other places, sets in motion an orientation that directs everything; specifically an approach that is mindful of what other organizations are doing to compete for the same candidates as you are and never being totally satisfied with results.
This is a big subject. Basically, those organizations who are aggressive in their approach and question their protocol, tools, technology, probe their candidates, etc., better learn how they stack up vs. other organizations. A competitive approach also breeds having an interest in detailed record keeping regarding results – from time-to-fill statistics, costs, use (or over-use) of third party recruiting candidate sourcing companies, retention statistics, and more. Incentivized in-house staff recruiters want stats kept to monitor their results because their pay and bonuses are based on pre-set strategic goals and accountability.
The best in-house recruiters are bred from the competitive background of professional sales, particularly commission-based selling and dealing with high-caliber consumers with incomes like physicians have, where the more success they have, the more money they make (and better professionals are hired faster with better long term outcomes). Many multi-year, in-house recruiting professionals do not have extensive annual breakdowns of their personal statistics to determine their effectiveness and ability to examine ways to improve – this is more proof the organization has not identified accountability based on a “persistent vs. a passive” recruiting approach.
By no means is it a requirement that an in-house recruiter have a prior successful professional sales career, but it helps because they are familiar with using their efforts to close business and they are comfortable in an incentive-based job. Any person willing to work hard and be paid and rewarded for their results, who wants to be in a position that holds them accountable and pays them what they are worth, would be at least a good “raw” fit for in-house physician recruiting (just as most third party recruiters are commission-based).
Mistake #2: In-house recruiters follow vs. lead candidates
In what is an extension of the passive approach above, that in-house recruiter who almost immediately attempts to get the physician or candidate to commit to an interview without any exclusivity or pre-educating, who does little more than set a visit itinerary while keeping no detailed statistics, who then with a clip board follows the candidate, who arrived on-site unprepared and unable to acquire the necessary information they need to make a decision. This is not professional selling and in the famous words of John Wooden, hospitals and their recruiting staff have to stop “mistaking activity for achievement.”
The in-house recruiter can go a long way to influence the outcome by acting as a “go-to” person who is an encyclopedia of knowledge on all the topics the candidate needs to understand in order to make a decision – a trusted ally candidates confide in and take seriously, especially vs. competing hospitals who are doing this “run of the mill” coddling of candidates, which with extremely intelligent candidates insults them by not being an advocate of their candidacy by being prepared.
Hospitals must make the choice to enlist proactive in-house recruiters who want to do far more than be “busy bodies” who are satisfied with a day of coordinating interview trips who have few skills or tools that advance the process or influence the recruiting outcome.
Mistake #3: Many in-house hospital staff have no proprietary recruiting tools and many resist change and technology
The “new frontier” in healthcare recruiting has been revealed in studies which show how much money hospitals lose by having UNFILLED physician jobs – a Merritt-Hawking study in 2006 and then the Advisory Board Company, Inc. in 2008, they reviewed that each month lost equals $150,000-200,000 lost, and combined with poor retention numbers, companies often face restarting very expensive processes.
All superior sales professionals have a “go-to” sales tool and other resources designed – as in any competitive sales environment, are designed to compete, do a better job than competitors, and influence the outcome; these tools are often used as leverage by sales people to offset their own limitations. In sales, and arguably more so with physician recruitment when a specialist can have a huge impact on a hospital’s patients, it’s perfectly acceptable to have a powerful tool that serves to help the recruiter, the hospital, and the candidate come to decisions better and faster.
Online Job Tour has already proven to be a phenomenal tool that not only influences outcomes but promotes faster placements. Whether you consider our work or any other, it is important to investigate proven ways to improve results and make faster and better placements by better informing and competing for candidates.
Hospitals must invest in a tool their staff can believe and lean on for many reasons. The new focus born through technology and how jobseekers are online, are online resources that impact and make the process more efficient, and provide a consistency in the delivery of the message that transcends the talent of the recruiters and instead promotes a “protocol” where the team focuses hustling and working to improve efficiency and the numbers.
More technology needs for in-house recruiters: Technology should be used to attract proprietary candidates when possible during this time when hospitals are “over-relying” on outside sources to provide candidates – who are being exposed to numerous jobs by opportunistic vendors. The latest computer and mobile tools, as well as social media, need to be engaged and investigated because they are the “playground” of your prospective candidates and their families. Resisting involvement in Social Media – to both brand the organization as well as to develop and grow direct and referral relationships, and not having the latest wireless technology tools, ultimately costs more money to the hospital than the investment in providing them to the in-house recruiting staff.
Carl Brickman can be reached at OnlineJobTour.com as well as on Facebook at OnlineJobTour and Twitter @OnlineJobTour.
Studio Phone: 813-855-5185
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Carl Brickman 