Orillia Doctor Recruitment Campaign noted in Medical Post

The City of Orillia’s Economic Development Office in partnership with the Orillia’s Community Physician Recruitment created a marketing campaign that has been recognized by The Medical Post’s November 2013 issue.

See story below.

Seven tips for a successful grassroots recruitment campaign
Written by Wendy Glauser on November 5, 2013 for The Medical Post

Emphasize your strengths and tap into local doctors as a resource to direct your efforts

Give staff recruitment information to help them answer questions when meeting with a candidate. The city of Orillia, Ont., played up outdoor lifestyle opportunities in its recent recruitment effort (below).

Physician recruitment can be a nearly constant activity for community clinics, especially in rural areas. To be successful, a recruitment campaign needs not only to use strong images and slogans, but also to be placed in the right venues and to speak to recruits’ desires and needs. Here’s what experts have to say on launching a successful recruitment campaign in your region or community.

1) Go where the doctors go

Rather than advertising on generic job boards and going to the same events as all the other recruiters, target your audience, recommends John Sullivan, a recruiting expert from California’s Silicon Valley who has provided human resources consulting to companies around the world. “If doctors read newspapers, you want the story to appear in the newspaper,” said Sullivan. “Facebook can be a great recruiting tool, but doctors may not use Facebook because they don’t have time.”

You can also go further by targeting the type of physician to whom your clinic will appeal, said Sullivan. If you’re offering a position that will attract humanitarians, you may want to contact organizations such as Médecins Sans Frontières or Volunteer Canada to find out about relevant forums or events.

2) Find out what’s important to your doctors

When launching a new campaign three years ago, the physician recruitment committee for Orillia, Ont., presented the town’s existing doctors with a checklist and asked them to rate the importance of various factors. They indicated a top priority was the quality of life outside of work. Doctors said, for example, “I like that I can be working in the emergency department and 20 minutes later, I can be out on the lake in a kayak.”

The answers set the tone of Orillia’s recruitment campaign, which received an honourable mention from the Economic Developers Council of Ontario’s annual marketing awards. The campaign included posters, pamphlets and a website that featured people enjoying the area’s natural setting. The accompanying slogans were: “Be a tree doctor,” “Be a snow doctor” and “Be a beach doctor.”

The campaign has been hugely successful. “Over the past two and half years, we’ve recruited 14 family doctors,” noted Pat Thor, Orillia’s community physician recruitment liaison.

3) Collaborate with similar clinics

Sometimes there’s little that separates you from the practice 30 kilometres down the highway, and in these cases it may be better to collaborate rather than compete, suggested John Mabbott, executive director of Health Match BC, the British Columbia government’s health professional recruitment service. “You might advertise your community and a doc comes, and the next thing you know he’s going down the road,” said Mabbott. By working with other communities to promote the larger region, you can come up with a far-reaching approach that gets the attention of more physicians than if you went it alone.

If it doesn’t make sense to collaborate locally, Sullivan recommends reaching out to other clinics that aren’t competing with you but have attracted employees to a similar type of location. “Ask them what worked and what didn’t,” he said.

4) Play to your strengths

Talk to people in the community about what makes it a great place to live, said Mabbott, and highlight as many strengths as you can in brochures and on websites. These may include great employment options for family members, good schools, a short commute to work, low crime rates, and ideal weather for winter and summer sports.

Some companies give potential recruits a checklist and ask them to indicate what they care about the most, added Sullivan. Then a manager can tailor a talk that addresses those attributes. If money is a top concern, the manager could talk about the area’s low property prices, for example.

5) Provide campaign materials to staff

Just because you have glossy ads and volunteers to work job fairs doesn’t mean you shouldn’t include current doctors in recruitment duties. “I don’t think anybody could ever overestimate the value of word-of-mouth marketing,” said Thor, who noted the community has landed a few doctors thanks to positive word of mouth from staff members.

In addition to asking doctors to send out postings and talk to colleagues near and far about the clinic, arm them with information. “Medical personnel are not salespeople, so what bigger companies would do is give their staff a tool kit,” said Sullivan. Provide doctors with a file containing information about schools, housing and so on, so they can be ready with answers. In addition, Sullivan recommends giving employees a small training session on how to pitch the area and clinic, what types of questions they might be asked and how to turn any potential negatives into positives.

6) Involve employees in an authentic way

Even major firms such as Google don’t use sleek, PR firm-produced videos to attract new talent, said Sullivan. Instead, they let their employees star in and record recruitment videos.

Featuring local physicians is a great tactic because doctors are more likely to trust their peers, and it lets prospective recruits meet their potential colleagues. But don’t use scripts; instead, let your employees be themselves. “There’s nothing like someone speaking in their own voice in their own experience,” said Mabbott.

7) Add warmth to your campaign

When an advertising agency showed Mabbott a recruitment ad that included a photograph of a pristine lake with empty docks and mountains in the background, Mabbott shook his head. “They said, ‘This shows the beautiful scenery.’ I said, ‘Yeah, but there’s no one win the picture. It looks very lonely and cold.’ ”

Human beings are drawn to faces, so try to include people as much as possible. For example, rather than showing a photo of the school, show a photo of rambunctious kids and parents at the school. “You should be showing a lot of people who are quite happy living there,” said Mabbott.