Top Five Tech Tools to Successfully Recruit Physicians

If you’re hoping to hire a new physician at your practice, there’s good news and there’s bad news. The bad is that it’s more competitive than ever to recruit physicians. The good is that due to technological advances, there are more ways than ever to recruit them.

Vivian M. Luce, regional director of physician recruitment firm Cejka Search, recently spoke to Physicians Practice about five technological tools that can improve the physician recruitment process at your practice.

1. Mobile-Friendly Website

A practice website is a great way to reach potential candidates, says Luce. If you do have a website, post job openings there and make sure they are easily located.

She suggests adding a “physician-perspective” section to your website, which includes information about your current physicians, the technologies your practice uses, and the key benefits of working there. This should not require a login and take only one or two clicks.

But using your website to advertise physician job openings is only half the battle. If physicians can’t easily access it via a smartphone or tablet, they are less inclined to visit it, Luce says.

“According to Manhattan Research, 80 percent of physicians will own a smart phone or tablet in 2012. Therefore your practice’s website has to be compatible with these mobile devices or potentially lose on out physicians looking for opportunities,” she says.

If your website is not yet mobile-friendly, there are a few ways to convert it. If you built the site with a content management system, such as Wordpress, consider using a “plug-in” application, says Luce. And she notes, other Web hosting services offer additional tools or services to make sites mobile compatible.

If you can’t or don’t want to use a plug-in or other conversion, keep your site as uncomplicated as possible with simple text, easy navigation, few images, etc., she says.

2. HTML E-mail Marketing

When it comes to recruiting methods, mobile-friendly e-mail marketing has replaced cold calling. In fact, besides networking with colleagues, physicians cite e-mails as one of the top ways they find jobs, says Luce.

E-mails targeted to physicians need to be short and concise. They “don’t have time to sit down at computers and check e-mails and sort through things,” Luce says. In addition, she urges, don’t add attachments to e-mails or include heavy graphics because they will take too long to download.

And like your website, Luce says, e-mails need to be mobile compatible. “If you can’t get through to them on a smartphone or tablet, your e-mail is less likely to get opened,” she says.

How to get started? Online e-mail marketing programs like Constant Contact and MailChimp are user-friendly and inexpensive, Luce says.

3. Social Media

Practices should take advantage of social networking sites when attempting to showcase job opportunities, Luce says.
These sites can help job openings go “viral,” she says. For instance, if you post a job opening and a physician sees it, even if he does not find it useful, he may still share it with his friends or post it on his own Facebook page. That way his friends will see it and again, even if they do not choose to pursue it, they may share it with their friends.

“Somebody who may not have even been initially looking for an opportunity, who’s been a passive candidate, all of a sudden sees this great opportunity,” says Luce.

When using LinkedIn, Luce suggests posting job openings to specific group pages such as the American Academy of Family Physicians, American College of Physicians, or Medical Group Management Association.

4. Online Interview Technology

Instead of inviting each candidate to physically visit your practice, consider using online interview technology such as Skype or Facetime, says Luce.
This is a low-cost way to meet candidates, and it shows them your practice is using “state-of-the-art” technology, she says.

When meeting candidates online, the interviewer should keep the encounter casual and, if practical, be prepared to walk around the office with the technology to show the candidate the rest of the facility, Luce says.

If the practice is really interested in a candidate, Luce suggests using the online meeting as an opportunity to invite him into the office for an in-person visit.

5. Online Feedback Tools

If you’re posting jobs on your website, include an opportunity for physicians to provide feedback related to your recruitment process, Luce says. Use that feedback to constantly improve your recruitment strategy.

How to get started? Luce says online feedback tools like SurveyMonkey are easy and free to use.

Recruiting physicians is only half the challenge. In two weeks, we’ll post Vivian’s tips for how to retain them.