How top hospital ETZ still manages to recruit extremely scarce healthcare staff

23 July 2020

In an extremely challenging labour market, the ETZ hospital has regained control of the influx of scarce healthcare professionals. Thanks to an ongoing campaign, ETZ is always top-of-mind among its target groups and recruitment has become more predictable.

A life-threatening shortage

What do you do if, due to personnel shortages, the continuity of the largest Level 1 Trauma Centre in the Netherlands is endangered? If the current employees are under so much pressure that the dropout and turnover rates are greater than the number of new incoming employees? At ETZ, there was a shortage of A&E, CCU and ICU nurses, anaesthetists and surgical assistants for the acute axis of the hospital.


An insufficient number of available staff meant, for example, that ambulances bringing critical road casualties would have to go elsewhere in the country. The shortage of personnel threatened to close operating rooms and force capacity reductions. As a result, ETZ would not be able to fulfil its crucial regional role in trauma care. The influx of patients would decrease, with adverse consequences ETZ's keeping up its ambition of offering the highest level of patient care.

 

ETZ OR professionals

 

“Working with Jobsrepublic has been very pleasant and easy. We are in constant contact with the customer success specialists who, together with us, do everything to find candidates for us, now and in the long term.”

A new way of recruiting

When it starts to look like you can no longer care for your patients and can't meet your goals, you pull out all the stops. For ETZ, this meant a new way of recruiting. Using old recruiting methods for too long had created a life-threatening shortage of suitable personnel. A new way of recruiting was supposed to breathe new life into the influx of specialised nurses.

The ETZ campaign in numbers

18,412

Page visitors

27

Qualified Job Shadowers

16

Hires

Change. Find. Attract.

The team was gasping for breathing room because the pressure was too high. ETZ employers realised that something had to change quickly and decided to join forces with Jobsrepublic for their recruitment.

 

In order to find candidates that really fit in with the organisation and the team, and to encourage them to sign on, a new approach was necessary. They investigated what drives the ideal candidate, where their passion lies and what tempts these candidates to leave their current employer. That outcome proved to be decisive in attracting new colleagues.

Take a careful breath

The difference came down to identifying and approaching that dream candidate. Now that ETZ knew where to find a candidate and how to attract them, they turned words into action. All knowledge was translated into an attractive and convincing hyper-targeted recruitment campaign on social media. With a tailor-made strategy, Jobsrepublic reached a large group of suitable candidates. The first applications followed a few days after the campaign went live. The candidates turned out to be more than suitable, the recruitment procedures were started, and the ETZ team was able to take a careful breath.

ETZ Radiology department

Portrait healthcare professional

ETZ OR personnel after operation

 

Inflow in order, outflow stopped

By deploying the hyper-targeted campaign, the ETZ has drastically adjusted and improved its labour market position in a few months. Not only has the inflow resumed after difficult years, but the outflow has also been halted. "What we hadn't thought of is how much the campaign would contribute to internal pride," says Corina Eijgelsheim, chair of the Acute As task force at the ETZ. "With a very structured approach, Jobsrepublic has involved employees in developing our story for the outside world. Thanks to the positive approach, our employees remembered how great their work was and the value they bring to the hospital and the patients."

The outflow from the departments was almost completely stopped, partly due to the internal operation of the campaign. Moreover, the quality of the new candidates turned out to be much higher than ETZ was used to from the previous recruitment methods. Of the 63 qualified candidates who responded in the first phase of the campaign, 23 were immediately invited to a day of job shadowing. After rigorous selection, 17 candidates were hired as specialist nurses, operating assistants or anaesthesia assistants.

ETZ landing pages websites

Sustainable cooperation

After the pilot phase, ETZ extended the collaboration and chose to use the campaign power of Jobsrepublic for other hard-to-fill roles, such as doctors.

Due to the large amount of data collected, ETZ now has an optimal campaign machine that is always running.

The hospital has gained a foothold in the labour market, which can easily be adjusted as needed.

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Coen Kooyman
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Coen Kooyman
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