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.