RECRUITMENT

Recruitment Marketing as a Strategic Solution to Hiring Challenges

Health systems across the United States are struggling to recruit new staff amidst a national shortage of an estimated 4 million health care workers. One solution to this emerging crisis may be recruitment marketing, a strategy that helps organizations stand out from other employers by strategically showcasing unique culture, values, and employee experiences to attract the right talent.

Sheppard Pratt, a national behavioral health system serving individuals from 43 states and seven countries, has used recruitment marketing to bolster its hiring efforts. The result has been a nearly 25% reduction in vacancy volume and more than 3.6% increase in new-hire volume systemwide.

“Our director of recruitment, who’s been with Sheppard Pratt for 25 years, has never seen the vacancy numbers this low; a true testament to the importance of this initiative,” notes Maria Belli, Sheppard Pratt’s Recruitment Marketing Manager.

Belli and her colleague, Kristina Schiller Chaki, Sheppard Pratt’s Director of Content Strategy, shared their experiences with recruitment marketing during the SHSMD Connections Conference in October 2024.

Why Recruitment Marketing Matters

In 2020, Sheppard Pratt underwent a major rebrand and reorganization, combining four entities—each with its own name and branding—into a single, unified organization with more than 380 service sites and 5,000 employees. While the rebrand helped unify the organization, leadership was simultaneously facing the effects of the national health care worker shortage.

“This [reorganization] was not only causing confusion internally for our own employees, but externally in the marketplace as well,” Schiller Chaki says. “The lack of understanding of the full breadth of services Sheppard Pratt provides was contributing to a lack of understanding of our broad range of employment opportunities.”

That’s where recruitment marketing—a strategy that bridges recruitment and marketing to promote an organization as an employer—comes in. Effective recruitment marketing focuses on three goals (Figure):

Through these three goals, an organization can build awareness, nurture relationships, and reduce friction throughout the hiring process.

Beyond the national shortage of health care workers, Sheppard Pratt faces unique challenges to the organization. Hiring needs cover a comprehensive range of roles, from school staff and psychiatric nurses to facility workers, shared services, and residential counselors. And, because Sheppard Pratt provides behavioral health care services, many of the positions are highly specialized.

“Reaching qualified candidates who meet our requirements and are eager to grow with us can be a challenge,” Belli says.  

To address this, the recruitment marketing function is embedded within the marketing team while maintaining strong collaboration with the entire recruitment team. This partnership allows for a deep understanding of recruitment challenges through a marketing lens, enabling a marketing-first approach that has been effective in addressing recruitment issues.

Mapping the Recruitment Marketing Funnel

Schiller Chaki and Belli describe the recruitment marketing process as a funnel, similar to a traditional marketing funnel, with six phases: awareness, consideration, interest, application, selection, and hire.

Awareness: During the awareness phase, marketing efforts are focused on what it’s like to work at an organization and the qualities that define its employees. To gain these insights, Schiller Chaki, Belli, and their partners conducted focus groups with current employees to learn how they perceive the organization, its unique strengths, work environment, and opportunities for growth. Using this feedback, they identified several employee personas representing shared traits and developed a compelling employer brand campaign titled “your why” to anchor their storytelling. For Sheppard Pratt, the employer brand needed to accomplish three key goals. First, it needed to dispel myths about psychiatric care while providing an authentic view of working in behavioral health care. Second, it had to connect with what motivates individuals to pursue careers in the field. And third, it was designed to inspire a sense of purpose and highlight clear pathways for career advancement within the organization. “During the focus groups, we often heard that Sheppard Pratt is a great place to start your career and then move on,” Belli says. “But, we have countless employees who have started in entry-level roles and grown into leadership and even executive positions. We wanted to highlight those success stories and outline a clear pathway for those who want to grow with us.”

Consideration: With the employer brand established, this phase is focused on bringing the employer brand to life by highlighting what sets the organization apart from competing health systems. To do this, they launched external communication initiatives that highlight career growth opportunities, packaged employee benefits to “present them in a way that is compelling and attractive, and created employee spotlight videos to amplify the voices of our team members,” Schiller Chaki says.

Interest: The next phase of the recruitment marketing funnel, interest, is designed to enhance the appeal of the organization to potential candidates. As part of this effort, the team worked to “standardize and optimize job postings” to align with the employer brand, while emphasizing the benefits of working for Sheppard Pratt, Belli notes. Now that job postings were truly engaging for potential employees, “we empowered our recruiters and hiring managers to embrace proactive, organic talent acquisition strategies,” Schiller Chaki explains. “We offer social media training to help employees become familiar and comfortable with platforms like LinkedIn as a part of our recruitment strategy.”

Application: With refined job postings and social media strategies that are attracting more potential candidates, it’s essential that organizations embrace the fourth phase of the recruitment marketing funnel, application. To support this, Belli and Schiller Chaki continued collaborating closely with the recruitment team to streamline the application process, aiming to reduce friction and boost application volume. While the recruitment team primarily leads this phase, a dedicated recruitment marketer can bring a valuable marketing perspective, partnering with recruiters to regularly review and optimize application requirements and candidate communication tactics.

Selection: During the fifth phase of the funnel, hiring managers and recruiters work together to assess potential candidates and identify potential fits for the role. It’s their responsibility to continue promoting Sheppard Pratt as an employer throughout this process. Consistent, standardized communication between recruiters, hiring managers, and candidates is vital at this stage. Sheppard Pratt continues to build on and reinforce these communication standards across the organization, ensuring alignment with our employer brand.

Hiring: Finally, in the sixth phase of the funnel, hiring, the goal is to convert a strong candidate into a fully engaged employee while reinforcing the organization’s brand and values. At Sheppard Pratt, enhancements to this phase included standardizing offer letters to make them more “compelling and aligned with our employer brand,” says Belli. Efforts extended to preparing new employees for their first day—what Sheppard Pratt calls “Welcome Day”—with updates to content focused on helping new employees live the brand from day one. A key component of this approach is ensuring managers are equipped to support new hires. To that end, a centralized suite of resources is housed on the organization’s intranet. This one-stop-shop approach helps to maintain a unified, welcoming experience.

The Journey Doesn’t End Here

Today, Sheppard Pratt continues to build on and advance its recruitment marketing strategy. This includes refreshing its career microsite to align with the employer brand and strengthen its partnership with job search and career platform, Glassdoor. So far, Belli has worked to optimize Sheppard Pratt’s Glassdoor profile, encourage current employees to leave reviews and monitor feedback to identify trends and areas for improvement.

“This isn’t just about attracting candidates,” Belli explains. “It’s about showing up where job seekers are already looking and ensuring what they find reflects who we are.”

Looking ahead, the team plans to go beyond recruitment by enhancing internal engagement programs that support staff throughout the entire employee lifecycle, further fostering an inclusive, welcoming culture.  

“Because that’s where recruitment starts,” Belli adds. “It starts inside. It starts with what we’re actually selling.”