Does My Trust Need a Recruitment Site?
There are many reasons for which we advocate the design and build of stand alone, bespoke Trust recruitment websites. Here are your biggest questions, answered.
In today’s world, recruitment doesn’t just happen when a vacancy arises. It’s a constant, ongoing cycle and the NHS should know this more than any other organisation.
Smart employers face this by always being on the lookout for strong potential candidates, resulting in individuals being bombarded with opportunities from all angles.
In the clinical world, this would traditionally have been through headhunting, with nurses, doctors and AHP’s being coaxed away by colleagues at neighbouring Trusts or lured with incentives from recruitment agencies. The temptation away from positions now seeps into every area of life, through the ability to reach prospective candidates digitally.
Whatever the profession, be it Medic, Clinical, Admin or Estates, the majority of NHS people are reachable and therefore influenceable online.
The growing list of social platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn and TikTok enable targeted reach of individuals, wherever, whenever. Candidates expectations are also so much higher, by 2030 an incredible 30% of the workforce will be digital natives. If your Trust’s recruitment site isn’t up to scratch, you will be missing out on this younger audience.
A dedicated recruitment site, designed and built with your ideal candidate in mind, acts as the shop window for your organisation. The experience should be seamless, built with a positive user journey in mind. It is no longer good enough to have to search for content, people today expect websites to be easy to use and if they can’t find what they are looking for quickly, they will simply give up and go elsewhere.
This leads to the need for NHS organisations to establish stand alone recruitment focused websites rather than relying solely on pages within a company site, not creating the ‘shop window’ effect that a careers website achieves. There are many reasons for which we advocate the design and build of stand alone, bespoke Trust recruitment websites. Here are your biggest questions, answered:
We already have a Trust website, why do we also need a recruitment site?
- The Trust’s website audience is primarily patients and the community. Its purpose will never serve enough opportunity to sell your Trust to a potential candidate, and the career opportunities within the organisation. The two sites should absolutely be linked, but recruitment is extremely important and needs to be treated as such.
- Develop and showcase a Trust’s unique employer brand – appealing to candidates who truly align with your values.
- Control the narrative and celebrate successes, showing the Trust in its best light. Your recruitment site should be full of information on benefits, culture, teams and the things your Trust does that goes beyond the salary.
- Widen participation from candidates enabling your Trust to appeal to people from all backgrounds, ages, ethnicities, etc. achieved creatively through photography, content, videos, etc.
- You can have a personality! It’s not unusual for Trust sites to be, let’s face it – dull and difficult to navigate. Experiencing your Trust online is a reflection of your organisation, make it a great one.
- You have full control of updating it as and when you need, adding engaging, reactive content to attract candidates.
How can recruitment sites help fill my vacancies?
- Sell your company culture – work-life balance, benefits etc
- Engage passive candidates – some of the best candidates are ones who are not actively seeking jobs. According to LinkedIn reports, 73% of candidates are passive job seekers. It is unlikely they will visit a careers page on a company website, they are more likely to stumble across a recruitment site, in which you can push company culture and put yourself in a better position to influence them
- Reputation – 75% of people base a company’s credibility by how their website looks, feels and responds to user journey / user experience
What’s the difference? Microsites vs websites
- Mainly, size. A microsite is smaller – it usually has 4 or less pages, whereas a website has more than 4 pages
- Microsites are usually focused on a specific need, decided by the organisation – for example career development/progression or to showcase a specific department with a specific need
- A microsite is a great place to start, the task of planning the structure and content of a full website can be very daunting. Even with an expert partner agency there will be an expectation on the Trust to understand what they need and until you start working on your online presence it can be difficult to know. Microsites are a great starting point, which can be expanded and developed over time as experience and understanding what is possible is understood.
- Careers websites are well-rounded and informative for all recruitment needs and offerings of the Trust
- Often the depth of a website is dependent on the scale of the Trust – i.e. number of locations, positions etc.
Why should we work with Just R to create our site?
Another useful thing about recruitment microsites and websites is the benefit in collecting information from potential candidates through data capture forms to create a recruitment pipeline for the organisation – regardless of their passive/active status
- The Trust has a bespoke talent pipeline of candidates interested in working at their Trust and it can be used to notify candidates of new opportunities, thus creating a strong and diverse pool of potential candidates.
- At Just R we have a bespoke solution to manage these NHS talent pipelines and talent pools through our RPM system. Allowing us to track each candidate on their recruitment process – and enabling Trusts to easily manage candidates and a strong continuous pipeline of opportunities.
We have dedicated web designers and developers at Just R who work closely with you on the creation of your brand new recruitment site – meet Zoe
The success of a microsite/website is achieved through the collaboration of the Trust and the delivery team here at Just R. Our Project Managers, Web Design team and Photographers ensure the objectives and key messages, decided by the Trust, are translated perfectly.
Just R specialise in working with NHS Trusts to attract and retain brilliant people. We work closely with healthcare organisations to help them recruit the best candidates, following values based attraction techniques, in order to help fix the huge gap in the healthcare industry.
