Beat Medical Blog

Why traditional medical recruitment advertising is like beating your head against a wall, and burning money

Posted by Beat Medical

As medical recruiters, we often hear variations of the same stories from our clients, who come to us after months (sometimes, years) of unsuccessful recruitment:

"I was advertising in Australian doctor, but the applications were no good"
"I had an ad on the division website, but didn't get any resumes"
"We had the job listed with a number of agencies, but didn't get any results"

It is no wonder that in the age of Facebook, Google, and Twitter that traditional advertising is just not working anymore. Think about it - when was the last time you posted an ad, and got a bunch of great applications from doctors?

As an agency specialising in recruiting doctors, we wouldn't ever dream of running a traditional advertising campaign. Not only is it a waste of time, it is like burning money. The solution to this problem is running specific marketing campaigns aimed a so many different media that it creates an overwhelming amount of attention in what you are "selling".

Imagine that GP Practice A decided to run ads through a popular medical publication, and put postings on the division and RACGP website. They sit on these for a few months, hoping that a recruitment miracle will happen. It never happens, and they speak to every agency under the sun. After 12 months, still no doctor.

What has happened in this scenario is that the marketing effort has been concentrated into the local market that doesn't want to move - Australian GPs are an extremely immobile workforce. Unfortunately, just because GP Practice A wants an Aussie-trained FRACGP, it doesn't mean it is going to happen.

The clinic across the road, GP Practice B, ran a more aggressive campaign - promoting the position on social media, relevant international medical employment websites, Google ads, large ads in GP journals in the UK and Ireland, and sent direct mail to the homes and offices of doctors overseas, and used a referral program for other doctors to promote the position for them.

The response isn't instant, but within months, Practice B have a list of qualified candidates ready to move to Australia immediately, within 6 months, and over the next few years. There is a cost to a more aggressive campaign - in both time and money. However, given the greater quality of the candidates, the continuous future stream of candidates, and the fact that the they have started a sustainable recruitment process, there is incredible value in what they have done.

It is clear that traditional advertising just doesn't work, recruitment miracles are just as likely to happen as snow at Christmas in Darwin! By considering a different approach, you will increase your recruitment throughput to levels you would have not previously imagined.

Beat Medical has a solution for Aggressive Medical Recruitment Marketing, which - compared to the DIY approach will save you both time and money. Of course, as part of the package, we take care of the back end - medical registration, visa, provider number, and so on. We will run a very tailored campaign for your practice which will find you a quality candidate faster, with the added value of over 10 years of medical recruitment expertise.

Until 20th August 2010, we are offering a 100% money back guarantee that we will find you a doctor through our Aggressive Marketing Package.  Contact us for a proposal today.

National medical registration system struggling with demand from doctors, agencies, employers in Australia

Posted by Beat Medical

Following criticism levelled by doctors, medical recruiters, and employers, the Medical Board of Australia (MBA) is reporting that they are increasing their capacity.

After failing to respond to enquiries, poor response times, lack of available documentation, and serious mistakes when transferring information about practitioners to the new national database, AHPRA has advised that they are taking action on the emergent issues.

Representatives of the Board have said that: "AHPRA’s focus continues to be on boosting our enquiry response capacity and bedding down our IT systems. By early next week, we will have doubled the number of enquiries staff whose sole priority is to respond effectively to enquiries, in a timely way[...]".

As a medical recruitment and locum agency, we are very concerned that there will be serious after-effects from the lack of preparedness that the Board has shown in the roll-out of national medical registration. Not only are the phones left unanswered, the Board has failed to provide key forms, policies, and documentation to enable us to place doctors where they are needed as quickly as we usually do.

As members of the Association of Medical Recruitment Australia and New Zealand (AMRANZ), Beat Medical are contributing to assisting the MBA to bring their service to the standard expected by the healthcare industry, and the Australian public.

As an AMRANZ councillor, Beat Medical Director Shaun Hughston is playing a key role in exerting pressure on the MBA to meet the immediate demands of medical employment in Australia. We wish to assure our clients and candidates that we are the forefront of addressing the key concerns and issues surrounding the very tenuous implementation of national registration.

Have you had a problem with the new national Medical Board of Australia? Let us know... click on "Comments" below.