Finding a place for social networking sites in residency recruitment
I sit next to several editors who write for HCPro’s sister company, HealthLeaders Media. Lately, I overhead one of them talk about how she wrote an article about how hospital marketing professionals can use the free social networking site Twitter as a marketing tool. Members of Twitter send out short messages, typically describing what they’re doing at the moment, for other members to see. Intrigued, I read the editor’s article. Although interesting, I didn’t really think about it again, nor did I think that it applied to residency at all.
However, Twitter was brought to my attention yesterday when my boyfriend mentioned that he saw a great recipe for warm pear ginger upside down cake from the Whole Foods Market Twitter feed. Later that day, he e-mailed me a discount offer for my favorite online shoe retailer, Zappos. He found out about the discount from Zappos CEO’s Twitter Feed. Since this series of events, I’ve had Twitter floating around in the back of my mind.
This morning, it hit me. Twitter would be a really cool recruitment tool for residency programs. Months ago, I wrote an RPA article about how programs use hi-tech solutions-blogs, videocasts, podcasts- to give applicants an better idea of what the program is all about. Today’s candidates are used to fun, flashy Web sites, why not spice your program’s site up with a Twitter feed?
Perhaps have an intern, chief resident, faculty member, or even the program director start their own Twitter feed cataloging their daily activities. Open it up for potential applicants can check out. Talk about getting insight into what a day in the life of your program is like. Of course, you would have to ensure that you don’t violate any HIPAA rules. I bet there are a lot of interesting little tidbits they can post. It doesn’t take a lot of time to do, and maybe you can even get a few people to contribute so that the burden doesn’t fall on one person. According to the HealthLeaders article, signing up and using it is pretty easy, and it’s free. Why not give it a whirl?
What fun, hi-tech, or innovative things does your program include on their Web site? Videos? Podcasts? Share them in the comment box below. Include a link to your site, so everyone can check out what you’re doing.
PS- If you’re mouth is watering from hearing about that cake, I found a video about it on Whole Food’s Web site. I haven’t made it yet, so I have no idea if it is as good as it sounds.
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Julie McCoy
Julie McCoy is the associate editor for the residency market at HCPro, Inc.
Julie has written 192 posts.
Comments
I would like to read the article you wrote about hi-tech in recruitment-where would I find it? Thanks.
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