(Download PDF)How to Recruit Pharmacists in Less Than 30 Days.

Overview

Despite a national workforce of over 250,000 pharmacists, many organizations are finding that recruiting and retaining pharmacists is a significant challenge. The demand for pharmacists is confirmed by the Pharmacy Manpower Project, which charts demand for pharmacists via its Aggregate Demand Index. The Bureau of Labor Statistics also estimates that pharmacist employment will grow by 17% between 2008 and 2018.

In our experience, we have found that there are three keys to successfully recruiting pharmacists within short time frames:

1. Your message must reach a preponderance (over 50%) of pharmacists who live within a commuting distance of your facility.
2. Your message must differentiate your organization from the prospect’s current employer.
3. Your application process must be user-friendly.

Key #1
Reach a preponderance of pharmacists who live near your facility

According to a January 2011 survey conducted by CareerBuilder/Harris Interactive, 15% of employed workers were actively seeking a new job. This same survey reported that 76% of workers indicated that, while they are not actively looking to change jobs, they would be willing to switch if the right opportunity were presented to them.

Recruiting pharmacists who are active job seekers

Obviously, pharmacists who are actively looking for a job are easier to recruit than pharmacists who are not actively looking. Targeting these active job seekers should be part of your recruitment plan, but doing so is not as easy as it may seem. The "15% of employed workers actively seeking a new job" statistic is an aggregated number of all occupations and does not reflect the percentage of pharmacists who are actively looking for work. More than likely, the number of pharmacists who are actively seeking a new job is significantly less than 15%.

Having an active candidate pool of less than 15% certainly presents a challenge. The second challenge is how to reach this active candidate pool. Job boards may seem to be the obvious solution until you consider the following:

• No single job board reaches a majority of active job seekers. In order to reach a majority of active job seekers, you will need to use several job boards. And, because audiences overlap from one job board to the next, each additional job board only adds a limited number of additional unique visitors.
• The job board market is highly diffused. By comparing the number of pharmacy job listings on Indeed.com with the number of jobs listed on leading pharmacy sites (e.g., AACP.org, AllHealthcareJobs.com, CareerBuilder.com, CareerPharm.com, ElitePharmacyJobs.com, HEALTHeCareers.com, Monster.com, Pharmacist.com or RXinsider.com), we can see that no job board captures more than 7% to 8% of all pharmacist jobs.
• In addition to the low number of posted jobs, most of the job boards (with the exception of CareerBuilder and Monster) have few visitors relative to the number of active job seekers.

Within the realm of pharmacist recruiting, it is only the job aggregation sites, Indeed.com and SimplyHired.com, that have managed to combine large audiences with a large number of job postings. Our recommendation is that recruiters should begin their pharmacist job marketing campaign with sponsored job postings on Indeed and SimplyHired. With both Indeed and SimplyHired, it is critical that you not only post your jobs, but also sponsor them. A convenient way to do this is via our AttnHR Job Marketing service.

Recruiting pharmacists in the "passive job market"

In our experience, the most effective pharmacist recruitment strategy targets the 76% of the job market who would be willing to switch jobs if the right opportunity were presented to them. Your recruitment marketing efforts should focus on pharmacists who live within a reasonable commuting distance of your facility. The best way to reach the majority of these pharmacists is via direct mail or e-mail marketing.

While TalentMap fully supports both e-mail and direct (postal) mail marketing, our preference in recruiting pharmacists is to use direct mail. In our view, direct mail has significant advantages over e-mail marketing:

• For smaller numbers (less than 1,000 recipients), direct mail is often less expensive.
• In almost all cases, postal lists are more comprehensive than e-mail lists, allowing your message to reach a higher percentage of your targeted audience than e-mail marketing.
• Postal mailing lists from multiple vendors can be merged into a single list. E-mail list vendors do not offer this option.
• Due to a combination of spam filters, undeliverable addresses and the fact that many people have multiple e-mail addresses, the number of people who actually view e-mail communications is often a fraction of the total recipient list.
• Overwhelmingly, consumers prefer to receive private, confidential communications via postal mail.

So how many pharmacists can you reach via postal mail? Our Pharmacists - U.S. Metro Areas table provides details for the 50 largest metro regions in the United States. You can also create a customized list based on your zip code and recruiting radius at TalentMap.jobs.

Read our case study about how Doctors Community Hospital has successfuly used direct mail to recruit pharmacists.

For additional information please read How to turn direct mail into your best recruitment option.

Key #2
Your message must differentiate your pharmacist job opening from the prospect’s current position

Communications that promote specific job openings should focus on (1) gaining the pharmacist’s attention and (2) answering the question "What’s in it for me?" While recruitment communications should reflect your employer brand, you should avoid the temptation to make the employer the focal point of your advertisements.

The goal of your recruitment communications should be to provide your audience with enough information about a specific job opening that they can make an informed decision about whether they want to take the next step in the recruitment process. The characteristics that differentiate your job opening from the prospect’s current position include description/requirements, work schedule, location and compensation.

• Description/Requirements – When preparing the job description/requirements, you should be very careful not to inadvertently filter out qualified candidates. One of the benefits of direct mail is that your candidate pool has already been filtered to only include pharmacists, most of whom will meet your minimum qualifications. In tight job markets like pharmacists, we recommend as much flexibility as possible, particularly when describing requirements and qualifications.
• Work Schedule – Finding a schedule that fits a candidate’s unique circumstances is one of the critical factors that influence a pharmacist’s employment decision. With this in mind, recruitment communications should always include detailed information about work schedules. It is also a good idea to indicate the level of scheduling flexibility you are able to provide.
• Location – One of the reasons we focus on reaching a "preponderance of pharmacists who live near your facility" is because location is one of the primary drivers that influences a pharmacist’s employment decision. This fact is so obvious that it is often overlooked in the sourcing process.
• Compensation (Salary/Benefits) – Since job postings and print advertisements are "public" documents, many recruiters are hesitant to include compensation (salary) figures. One of the benefits of recruiting via postal mail (personalized letter) is that you can include information that is confidential in nature. Our experience has been that providing salary information is the single most important factor in driving candidate response.

Key # 3
Your application process must be user-friendly

More than likely, the majority of active job seekers who click the "apply" button on your website will not complete the application process. There are a number of factors that contribute to the incredibly high "abandon rates" found on virtually all Web-based job application processes. But the bottom line is that employers lose qualified candidates because their application process is not user-friendly.

When it comes to recruiting the "76% of workers who are not actively looking to change jobs," Web-based applications are an unmitigated disaster. It is critical to remember that the vast majority of passive applicants are not ready to apply for a job. When recruiters make "Apply Now" the only contact option, they immediately lose connection with the majority of passive prospects who could be motivated to consider your opportunity, but would like more information before they take the next step.

Instead of relying on their Web-based application process, recruiters should provide an informal "next step" where prospective candidates can ask questions and get more information about the job opening. To be effective, you should allow prospective candidates to contact you via the phone, text messaging and/or e-mail. One of the benefits of using a personalized letter (direct mail) to communicate with your targeted audience is that you can provide a phone number and e-mail address without exposing your contact information to the general public.

Contact us

If you are experiencing difficulties recruiting pharmacists or other healthcare professionals, please feel free to e-mail me at ChrisTaylor@TalentMap.jobs or call me at 610-227-0400.

Our website, TalentMap.jobs, provides additional information as well as list counts and cost estimates for direct mail and e-mail marketing. If you are interested in this topic, you may also be interested in reading How to recruit like a search firm without the cold calls and the big fees.