If you work in healthcare HR or hospital administration, most likely you are involved in recruiting doctors and are actively doing so right now.
Certainly, you’re turning over all rocks, shaking all the trees, and calling every doctor’s phone number you can find, all while hammering out emails too, of course. You’re likely combing databases, attending medical conferences, and reaching out to residencies and fellowships.
When was the last time you recruited physicians at a career fair? If you have been to one, you likely know about the many benefits of participating in a career fair. If you haven’t attended one, you may be missing out on one of your best opportunities to get in front of motivated, active physician candidates, face to face!
Myth #1: “Career fairs take too much time out of my busy schedule.”
Attending career fairs can take you out of your office for anywhere from a half day to a few days, depending on the location, but what recruiter couldn’t use a bit of a break from “smiling and dialing” for candidates? Plus, your time spent at a career fair is as productive, if not more so, than your time at your desk. Especially with today’s technology, you won’t miss a beat, much less a call or an email, even if you travel afar for a career fair.
Face-time with eligible, active physician candidates is invaluable. Every single personal interaction with a candidate is worth hours of phone calls. According to a recent article in Entrepreneur.com, meeting prospects in person always trumps a phone call. When meeting in person, you can build trust, and appeal to the candidate’s emotions much more easily, reading body language and gathering other clues that are less detectable by phone or online.
Additionally, meeting physicians in person may even help expedite the interviewing process, because it’s easier to solidify mutual interest and potential fit in person as opposed to phone or email. Additionally, career fairs offer an opportunity to host a luncheon or dinner after the event, to extend the amount of face-time with potential candidates, enabling you to make the most of your trip.
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Myth #2: “Not enough doctors attend career fairs.”
If you think that physicians don’t attend career fairs, you may not be attending the right ones. As the Director of Career Fairs for a company that supports the physician recruiting industry, I can vouch for physician attendance at career fairs, a thousand times over! For example, our company hosts about 35 fairs annually, with hundreds of physicians in attendance each year.
Unlike medical conferences and trade shows, doctors at career fairs are specifically in attendance for the sole purpose of job searching. At other events, doctors are often reluctant to be seen with a recruiter or potential employer in front of their peers, for confidentiality purposes. Or, they may just be too busy getting CME credits or attending workshops, leaving no additional time at the conference for career networking. Doctors who attend career fairs, however, are typically the most motivated candidates.
Myth #3: “We just don’t get enough leads, even when there are many doctors at the event, to justify attending.”
If you are participating in well-attended career fairs, yet find that solid candidate leads are lacking, there may be ways to tweak your approach when you’re working the career fair, to obtain better results and maximize your ROI from the event.
Being an approachable, informed listener is paramount to successfully engaging the most candidates at a career fair. Consistently getting out in front of your booth, making eye contact, and actively approaching candidates can help spark interaction with more candidates.Also, having a neat, visually appealing booth with a reason for physicians to stop by is advantageous. Some corporations hold prize drawings, but you can also offer free CV writing or editing services, or other valuable information such as current salary data, or anything of particular interest to physician job seekers that will assist them with their search.
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