Let’s Make a Connection
Recruiters’ Site Visit Experience Capturing Video Content
Page Bradham, Summer Musick and Sara Yano recently had site visits where they wanted to take advantage of getting content from the practices and educating them on the importance of video. While their approaches and experiences varied, they had some positive takeaways and things they may think about for next time. Since it was a good learning opportunity, we wanted to turn the spotlight on them and asked for them to share it with the entire recruitment team.
Page had the chance to attend a regional meeting for the Carolinas where he also made some time to conduct site. During each visit, he spoke with the practices about taking some videos while he was there. He took advantage of the hospital tours by taking picture and video snippets of the hospital that could be stitched together into one piece of video content per practice. He received some buy-in from the practices and one hospital team members said, “I didn’t expect a recruiter to do that!” Page saw seven locations in North Carolina and four in South Carolina – capturing pictures and video from all of them with two already have Altru videos that are being actively used for recruiting, and nine Altru videos are “in process” of completion and close to final approval to use. He plans to have six new site visits completed in July with more content to come.
Raw content:
Finished Product
Summer and Sara had a few packed days and planned to visit over 14 sites. They were initially focusing on the opportunity to educate the practices about Altru and the value of video for recruitment, so they tapped the Talent Attraction team for a plan to gather content and provide the sites with tangible resources to create videos.
During their site visits, they realized that the focus needed to change a bit. Not only did the sites need to find doctors and staff, but they needed to take a new look at their facilities, staff, and overall presence in order to host any type of candidates. Most of the hospitals were still closed to patients or were just beginning to open their doors again following the COVID shut downs. Summer and Sara realized they could help the teams during this transition by providing authentic video content of the cultural interactions amongst the teams, use social media content to the re-introduce the staff to the clients they hadn’t seen face-to-face in over a year, and provide guidance and benchmarks for re-opening in ways that were comfortable to their individual teams.
They had some good conversations with CSRs, LVTs, HMs, and veterinarians alike and provided them with information and examples of Altru videos and best practices.
Lessons Learned:
There were some real-life hurdles with the in-person approach. A few teams, even with advanced notice about our intentions to capture content, met us with some resistance. Lobbies were not used to hosting people, they were quiet, unresponsive, and awkward. Sara commented that “teams may need to be re-trained from the front of the practice to the back in everyday human engagement, since this hasn’t been the norm in a while.”
Summer also noted, “it was interesting because we could definitely tell that some employees were camera shy and perhaps felt a sense of ‘Corporate coming in.’ So if they could become comfortable with the Altru system on their own and have a few video tips and tricks that they could use as a team, they would probably get more authentic content.”
The busy team at Chambers Creek works well together and takes their job seriously!
The Hospital Manager (Karlene Meyer) at Kitsap Veterinary Clinic took the time to show us an old scrap book of the original clinic and the retro cabinets that they still use today!
We noticed lots of boxes and supplies being “stored” in the lobbies – get those put away!! Spring cleaning is in effect!! People are coming back in!!
When we asked what their takeaways from the experience would be, here’s what was shared by Page, Sara and Summer:
"I plan on doing more frequent but shorter site visits and carving out some of those visits for getting content.”
“It was helpful to tap your (Talent Attraction) team prior to a site visit so that we could provide sites with content suggestions and resources.”
· “Work with the sites prior to going so that they’re aware of your visit and know what you’re trying to accomplish.”
"Be a 'sounding board' for your teams! Let them know that their lobbies need to be spruced up, their CSRs need to be friendlier and there should be a 'visit plan' worked out ahead of time for active candidates. There is too much competition to lose a candidate at any level based on simple preparation and presentation."
We’d also like to offer our assistance and work with you and your practices prior to a site visit so we can provide direction to the hospital managers and be an extra layer of support on the importance of capturing content.
Thank you so much to Page, Summer and Sara for championing our programs and for sharing your experiences with us.
Have you had a good experience getting content during a site visit? Let us know. Email MeganE.McCarthy@nva.com.