7 Ways to Sell the Community to Physician Candidates

Physician recruiters know that when it comes to recruiting physician candidates, location matters. Many candidates have a clear idea of the type of community they want to live in, and it’s up to the recruiter to show them that their community is exactly what their looking for if they want their physician recruitment effort to be successful.

But actually selling your community to prospective candidates can be tricky. What do you mention in your community description? Does is vary depending on who you’re addressing and where? How do you display the information? Who else can you enlist in your efforts?

All of these questions can make creating a community description and talking up your town difficult. To help, we’ve listed seven ways you can help sell your community to prospective candidates through job descriptions, conversations, and multimedia.

1. Emphasize Your Strengths

There is a candidate that is looking for a community just like yours, whether you live in a rural or urban area. To take advantage of this, make sure to emphasize your community’s unique strengths. Whether it’s a strong sense of community, fantastic outdoor activities, or a great nightlife, every community has something to offer that would attract a candidate that will fit in with your community’s culture.

Tip: Make sure to think outside the box! Some candidates want the opportunity to live a slower lifestyle or own large tracts of land. If your community would make these things possible, go ahead and highlight them when talking about your community.

2. Highlight Regional Advantages

Your community has more to offer than just what it has within it’s city lines. Look at neighboring states and the entire region when looking to market your community. Top tier universities, vacation spots, and national parks that are only a few short hours away can be a draw for candidates who want easy access to these attractions or educational options for their children, but don’t necessarily want to live in those communities.

3. Make Use of Pinterest

Humans are visual creatures – we’re more likely to become engaged when we can actually see what we’d have access to and where it all lands in relation to where we would be. Utilizing Pinterest and it’s map feature allows you to show where your practice locations are in relation to top schools, cultural centers, attractions, and recreational activities.

Tip: Have a ton of golf courses in your community? Make a specific Pinterest board complete with a map of all the golf courses in your area, showing a candidate who is a golf enthusiast that they can easily get in a round before work.

4. Create a Video Tour

Like we said, candidates want to be able to see what they’d have on hand. Another great way to do this is by creating a video tour of your community as a bit of a highlight reel. Shots from local festivals and fairs, outdoor activities, community events, and bustling town centers can help show a candidate what life in your community is like – and make them more likely to choose to settle down in your community.

5. Talk Up Low Cost of Living

If you’ve got it, flaunt it! Physician candidates are just like the rest of us when it comes to appreciating how far they can stretch a dollar. Use tools like Sperlings to show how your community rates against the US average cost of living, and for individual candidates, how it ranks compared to where they will be coming from. This is an especially useful tool if the compensation package is lower than average as candidates will see that their salary will go much further.

6. Tailor Your Talking Points

Whether you’re talking up your community on the phone or articulating it in a job description, it’s important to tailor your talking points to your audience. Find out who you’ll be addressing and what they’re likely looking for in a community. Then, you can tailor what you include about your community towards what the prospective physician candidate is most interested.

7. Utilize a Local Realtor

When a candidate comes for a site visit, it’s important to make sure that they get shown around the town by a local realtor. Not only do they know the best neighborhoods for different types of individuals, they also know where all the hidden gems are in your town. Additionally, they can show candidates different homes that are for sale or rent, helping the prospective candidate imagine what it would be like to build a life in that specific home.

Tip: A perspective from someone who isn’t a part of your organization can be helpful for candidates in making a decision. Getting a fresh viewpoint from someone who isn’t trying to hire them can help put their minds at ease and make them more likely to choose your community.

Key Take Aways:

• Make sure to think outside the box! Not every candidate is the same, and what your community and region have to offer will appeal to certain candidates. Highlight these unique aspects to help attract someone who would fit into your community.
• Appeal to candidate’s visual inclinations by utilizing Pinterest and video to show them what life in your community is like, what attractions and activities are nearby, and where everything is in relation to each other.
• Use your candidate profile and knowledge of your audience to select what you discuss about your community and how you present it. Appealing to what your target candidate is looking for will make them more likely to express interest in relocating to your community.