Cell Your Jobs

Hospitals across the nation are beginning to embrace mobile technology and implement mobile systems of communication within their organizations. One such hospital rolled out an iPhone platform for its’ nurses this summer.  The mobile technology allowed for critical care alarms to be sent to nurses and enabled these employees to make voice calls and send and receive text messages.  Hospital executives say using iPhones as a medium of communication resulted in nurses’ ability to respond to patients faster and reduced the number of overhead pages by 78%.

While it’s certainly beneficial that mobile technology provides opportunities for improved operations, it’s also vital to realize these efforts provide a unique opportunity to enhance recruitment efforts.  If your healthcare organization has adopted new media technologies, it’s imperative to include these initiatives while selling and promoting your vacancies to job candidates.

Tout your organization’s use of technology.  Healthcare employees desire to work for innovative organizations that deploy best in class technology.  Candidates are dissuaded from organizations with outdated equipment and lack of materials.  It’s also important to healthcare employees that they be employed by organizations on the cusp of research and development, providing them with opportunities for training and enhancing their skills.  Your organization’s use of mobile technology demonstrates it is not afraid to try new things and advance.

Promote your organization’s stellar internal communication.  Hospitals utilizing mobile technology receive the added benefit of an increase in and improvement in communication.  For example, nurses equipped with iPhones and Blackberries are provided two-way communication abilities with their co-workers as opposed to one-way communication inherent to pagers. Studies estimate that nurses spend 10 % to 25% of their time tracking down their co-workers. Mobile technology and social media increases the efficiency of communication with co-workers, patients and patients’ families.  This enables nurses and healthcare employees to spend more time doing what they enjoy most, attending to patients.  Because deploying mobile technology platforms may lessen a nurse’s workload, the number of nurses needed to adequately staff a floor may be decreased, possibly cushioning the blow of the nursing shortage and allowing room in the budget for a potential salary bump for employees.

Sell your organization’s superb patient care.  Mobile technology certainly can improve the manner in which patients are cared for.  Not only do mobile initiatives allow nurses more time for attending, they also ensure the reduction of overhead pages, resulting in a quieter environment for patients to heal.  Many smart phone applications exist that are able to house a patient’s medical history, track their progress, their medication dosage, etc.  The applications help to improve a nurse’s performance and accuracy.  Nurses and healthcare employees want to work for organizations providing superior patient care – that’s most likely why they chose healthcare in the first place.

Use mobile technology to communicate and interact with candidates.  It’s important to realize that a vast majority of candidates are accessing the internet via their smart phone are receptive to advertising.  According to Neilson, 28% of the mobile web audience is between 25 and 34 years old while 38% are between 35 and 54 years old. A Pew study found that 32% of all Americans have accessed the internet via their cell phone.  Minorities lead mobile technology adoption with the majority of wireless internet users being African American. Because most people carry their cell phone with them at all times, you’re most likely to reach them in a timely manner.  Candidates may receive your messages even when they are “unavailable”; while they’re in a meeting, traveling, after business hours, etc. Furthermore, the recall rate of ads appearing on iPhones is 41% and 33% for other mobile devices and a third of those recalling the mobile ad will respond to it. Because more and more candidates are adopting mobile technologies every day, it’s imperative to include these initiatives in your recruitment strategy.

Filed under: communications, healthcare, recruitment, retention, Social Media

Combing Blogs to Find Star Candidates

One could argue that the end goal of a recruiter is to hire a star employee for their vacant positions.  The search for star employees involves a solid recruitment strategy with an increasing emphasis on leveraging social media to source and engage candidates possessing star potential for extremely specialized, niche positions and thought leadership vacancies.  Online groups, internet consumers’ ability to produce content and the increasing transparency of communications will forever change the way recruiters interact with job candidates, the “employee-scape” and how employers communicate. 

Any person with a digital device can become a producer of content for the internet.  More and more professionals are defining themselves online with a personal blog relating to their industry, reflected by the increasing number of blog domains appearing on submitted resumes.  Therefore, it is essential recruiters and hiring managers become proficient in determining a blogger’s relevancy.

Bloggers can prove themselves a candidate with star potential via their published content.  A relevant blogger will:

• Publish timely industry news and demonstrate knowledge of industry trends.
• Share their industry expertise through individual thought. A relevant blogger will never parrot what’s already been said.  If they do, they’ll provide a differing perspective.
• Extrapolate and analyze other timely articles while disseminating the information with a new angle.
• Their posts will contain opinion, often backed by research.  These posts are usually divisive and spur conversation among readers.

That said, many relevant bloggers do possess star employee potential. They’re passionate about their industry and are keenly aware of industry trends, most likely, it’s not just a job to them.  You may be able to glean insight to their work ethic; often times, bloggers work well into the night to publish their thoughts, reflected by a timestamp on their posts.  Bloggers are able to learn and accept new ideas from others and are comfortable generating and presenting their own unique ideas.  They often have a network of similarly relevant industry professionals to bounce their new ideas off of.  Relevant bloggers are skilled in articulating these ideas and industry trends, often resulting in them becoming recognized personalities within your organization, able to interface with clients and speak publically about your company.  Similarly, they are easily converted to internal brand evangelists.  Depending on how reputable the blogger is in the blogosphere, they can add instant credibility to your organization. 

The “employee-scape” is evolving as more and more professionals engage in social media. When a candidate engages in social media surrounding their career, in essence they are developing their own personal brand. Every tweet, blog post and LinkedIn status contributes to how they are perceived by their peers within their industry.  A seasoned recruiter knows that a star hire is more than the most educated applicant.  Once they become employed, they must remain engaged for an extended tenure.  Recruiters must hone in on a candidate’s personal brand to determine if they are a best fit for your corporate culture.

While recruiters have taken steps to attract active candidates, it is also wise for them to turn to the blogosphere to fish for candidates who aren’t actively seeking employment.  The sharing of thoughts on the web results in groups of people producing and consuming similar content.  By nature, groups are often smarter than their most intelligent member.  Collective wisdom is greater than the knowledge of any one single individual.   Relevant bloggers often flock to online blogging communities because of the instant network they provide.  These online communities are a great place to start when making efforts to source a blogger. 

The formation of online groups provides an opportunity to enhance your brand as an employer.  Contribute to these online groups, forums and discussion boards to earn respect as a thought leader in your industry.  As a result, job candidates will perceive a job opening at your organization as an opportunity for career advancement.  An increasing number of organizations are beginning to blog, tweet and create social media profiles.  These social media engagements result in increased transparency, providing job seekers insight about how the organization is run and what it is like to be their employee.  With the ever-evolving digital revolution, employers should strive to incorporate social media initiatives into branding, recruitment and retention efforts.

Filed under: communications, Social Media

Facebook – The Social Media Monster

Last night, I was mindlessly perusing Facebook.  And then… I saw it. Two of my sorority sisters tagged each other in their Facebook statuses.  I immediately thought, “That’s it.  We’ve created a monster. A Social Media Monster.”  Why a monster?  It’s not because tagging others is an earth shattering feat.  It’s because in addition to being the number one social media network and being cashflow positive, Facebook now includes the same functionality that Twitter was once unique in providing. It has become an immediate and direct competitive threat to the microblogging site.

In addition to tagging people, users are also able to tag events, groups and Facebook Pages.  Reading between the lines, this means that Facebook users can comment on your brand (positively or negatively) and tag it!

Of course, this is not a new concept.  Twitter users have been able to comment and @mention brands almost since the inception of the site.  In fact, recent research claims 20% of tweets mention brands.  However, it’s a much bigger deal now that Facebook contains this functionality.  First of all, Facebook carries a much bigger network than Twitter.  Tagged statuses on Facebook will be more widely read than those on Twitter.  And, ever since Twitter unlinked @replies, damage done to brands with negative tweets was somewhat minimalized.  Comparatively, all tagged statuses on Facebook will be public to everyone in that user’s network.  Currently, there is no aggregated view of all @mentions a person or brand receives on Facebook.  But, I bet that update is just around the corner.

If we’ve said it once, we’ve said it a thousand times.  It’s imperative to monitor the conversation surrounding your brand taking place within social media networks.  And we’ll also repeat that social media is a wonderful opportunity to engage with users and protect your brand.  Ensure that there are brand evangelists (internal and external) spreading your brand’s overarching message.  Become a producer of content and actively engage with social media users to be sure that potential job candidates hear your message – from you.  Don’t let the only content job candidates find via social media be crafted by former disgruntled employees.

Some believe Facebook’s @mentions could be the end of Twitter.  However, I believe true fans will remain loyal to the microblogging site and those that haven’t jumped on the bandwagon yet probably weren’t ever going to.  Besides, Twitter recently updated its’ Terms of Service to include the usage of ads.  Now that there’s a revenue model in the works, I believe Twitter will prove resilient. Tweeps don’t seem to be intimidated either.  Facebook hasn’t been a trending topic all day!

Filed under: Branding, communications, Social Media