How to Succeed with Healthcare Job Boards

HospitalRecruiting has been in the business of candidate sourcing and job advertising since 2012. We've worked with hospitals, health systems, private practice, recruiting firms, advertising agencies, you name it. Across a lifetime of hundreds of thousands of posted jobs, candidates, and applications, we have found what often works best on our site – and what doesn't.

We’ve evaluated the consistent factors between successful and renewing employer accounts and compiled a list of insights. Here’s how to make the most of your job posts and find the best healthcare providers for your open positions.

Make Unique Job Posts, Not Copy-Paste

How many times can you read the same thing?
How many times can you read the same thing?
How many times can you read the same thing?
How many times can you read the same thing?
How many times can you read the same thing?
How many times can you read the same thing?

You probably tuned that out, which is exactly what search engines are doing when you copy-paste the same job title and job description to every job board on the internet. Unfathomable amounts of data are fed into search engines every day, and all that has to be ranked and categorized for us users to view somehow. The tech giants behind our browsers don't reveal everything about how their algorithms work, but we know that identical or duplicate posts fall behind in traffic. Simply put, that data has already been indexed and archived across the web, so by the time you post the same job two or three times, the internet says 'old news.'

Unique job titles and descriptions are the solution. Experimenting with different titles and job descriptions could also catch potential job seekers that the original didn't. Maybe the information is presented to them in a new light or maybe they forgot they'd already seen this job in the first place. Whatever the case, switching it up is a great way to get more eyes on your opportunity.

Personal Candidate Outreach

How many spam emails do you get a day? If you answered anything other than “too many,” you should check your junk folder. Let’s face it, we get harassed with ads every day, most of which we completely tune out. A shotgun approach to mass emailing every candidate in the database is transparently impersonal. It can certainly work, and probably should be a part of your recruiting tool kit, but communicating that you have a hand picked job opportunity for a specific individual is a great way to stand out.

This means reading the candidate’s profile, seeing their experience, and trying to get to know at least something about them before you reach out. Maybe your email subject line references their experience, maybe you mention how their previous job makes them a good fit, or discuss how you found an opportunity in a state they’re looking to work in. A few ideas for adding a personal touch:

• Use Their Name: Address the candidate by their first name to establish a personal connection.
• Mention Their Current Role: Reference their current job title and employer to show that you have done your research.
• Highlight Specific Skills: Identify key skills or experience from their resume or LinkedIn profile that align with your opportunity. You can also use this opportunity to recognize any awards, certifications, or notable accomplishments they've earned in their field.
• Personalize the Job Opportunity: Explain why the specific role you're offering is a great fit for their aforementioned skills rather than using a generic job description.

Better Titles

Most of us are probably familiar with searching the internet by keywords, and this extends to our job searches. The cost-per-click job aggregator industry has made it easy to find entry-level positions by searching with keywords. That industry has also convinced many employers that the best job titles should just contain only a job type (example: Hospitalist) or job type and location (Hospitalist Job in Indianapolis). However, keywords are not always the most effective way to create titles in niche industries like healthcare. In healthcare many different professions share keywords in job titles. For example, Family Medicine Nurse Practitioner and Family Medicine Physician both share the words "Family Medicine" and this is the root cause of problems such as inaccurate job search results on this type of website or unqualified applicants for the companies that advertise the jobs.  

Instead of keywords, HospitalRecruiting has hard-coded categories for every profession. This means the site has dedicated landing pages for all types of healthcare jobs, and pages for every job/state combo and job/state/city combo as well. Every time a job seeker sees results on our site, they are already browsing on a page for a specific profession. Many specialty job boards will operate this way.

For this reason you can focus on more creative selling points in your job titles. Offering student loan repayments, generous retirement packages, bonuses, shift schedules, visa acceptance, or other unique benefits? Put those in the title instead of just a profession.

If you post a Hospitalist job, it’s only going to appear in a list of other hospitalist jobs. So, a job title that just reads “Hospitalist” isn’t going to draw as many eyes as something like “Miami Beach Opportunity - 330k+ Salary With Sign-on bonus + loan repayment options”

In a sea of competition, you have to stand out from the crowd to succeed. Treating the title as an eye-catching hook gets more clicks and applicants than just keyword-based titles. 

Post All Your Jobs - Not Just the Urgent Ones

A common denominator that drives many recruiters to seek new candidate sourcing platforms is a desperation to fill one particular role. This opportunity is often old, having already been copy-pasted to multiple other platforms for a number of months. Some other contributing factors could be a difficult market to recruit for, or maybe the job simply isn’t desirable to many candidates due to salary, workload, etc. The older the job is, the more likely it is all the applicable candidates have already seen it too.

To make the most of your HospitalRecruiting account (or any specialty job board, for that matter), try posting newer jobs. As a repost, search engines will see your job titles and descriptions already archived across a number of other sites and tank your search visibility. To reiterate, the internet doesn't love duplicate content. A fresh job has a much better chance of generating clicks.

We know volume makes a difference, so we built our pricing to incentivize posting the most jobs for the lowest cost. I often use the metaphor of fishing; a bigger net catches more fish, and more jobs attracts more candidates. Having only your highest-priority job posted may seem like a good idea to test a small-scale investment, but it hedges all your bets on one post and closes you off to many potential applicants who could also generate a return on investment.

Publishing your new jobs as they come in can generate exponentially more applications. Having all your jobs posted and making a hire through the platform, even if only on one of the easier to fill roles, can quickly justify the cost of advertising and meet your ROI goals. Meanwhile your harder to fill position will also continue to have a chance at being filled. 

Conclusion

Whatever the state of the industry, your goal is making connections and hires. These tips are how our top-performing clients continue to make hires year after year, not just baseless speculation.

By crafting attention-grabbing job titles that highlight unique benefits, adopting a personalized approach to candidate outreach, and consistently posting fresh job opportunities, you can maximize your chances of finding the right healthcare professionals.

If you're looking for a new healthcare recruiting platform click this link to see options for advertising jobs at HospitalRecruiting. New clients with 10 jobs or more should contact us to ask about a discount!