Backstage with Carol McDaniel: Q&A with a 2018 Strategic Talent Acquisition Keynote Speaker

Ever-changing candidate expectations have led to radical shifts in tools and technologies needed to attract top talent. “Posting a job” barely scratches the surface of what it takes for an organization to find the right candidates, let alone provide an engaging candidate experience that communicates the value of a job with that company.

Coming up in June, HCI’s 2018 Strategic Talent Acquisition Conference will take place in Miami. The event features expert leaders and practitioners sharing ways to reinvent and optimize talent acquisition, from talent attraction through onboarding. One of those experts is Carol McDaniel, Director of Talent Acquisition at Johns Hopkins All Children’s Hospital. She will be presenting “Reinventing Talent Acquisition for Healthcare” at this year’s event.

We checked in with Carol to learn about some of the innovative tools she’s using to transform talent acquisition in the highly competitive field of healthcare.

What prompted Johns Hopkins to undertake such a significant talent acquisition transformation?

CAROL: Healthcare recruiting is always a challenge. There's typically always a shortage in certain modalities within the healthcare industry, specifically nursing. We are striving to become the leading pediatric hospital in the country, which means that we need to think differently about recruiting overall if we want to really find the best talent.

One of the new ideas you've deployed to solve your recruiting challenges is geofencing. What is it?

CAROL: Geofencing is a new way for recruiters to go after top talent in very specific niche industries and specialties that are very difficult to hire for.  It’s a lot like consumer marketing, in fact. Consider Nordstrom. I'm a big Nordstrom shopper. I go on to the Nordstrom app on my phone and I look at shoes, or dresses, or whatever I might be interested in that day. Later, I visit one of the many blogs that I read via my smartphone. And ads for that pair of shoes I was looking at continue to follow me. The next time I'm on Amazon, I see the ads pop up for these shoes. Then they begin to show up in my Facebook feed.

If I didn't know what was happening, I'd wonder, why are these shoes following me everywhere I go? For consumers, geofencing is how companies continue to present a product to you repeatedly in all of the places that you visit via your social media platforms.

How has your organization been using geofencing in a recruiting context?

We consider positions or opportunities as “products” in this context. Geofencing allows us to target criteria such as specific areas of the country, or specific certification licenses. We then utilize IP addresses and social media platforms to place ads where ideal candidates will see them. As soon as they click one of our ads, we’ve captured their information and can push out information about the hospital and our job opportunities across platforms. As they go throughout their day, checking Facebook, driving into work, looking at LinkedIn, or any of the other places they might visit, they’ll be reminded of our opportunities that speak very much to their specialty.

In our industry, some of the specialties we seek have very small, limited talent pools. We know how to find them. Geofencing allows us to grow their interest in us an employer via platforms they’re already using every day.

For more from Carol on geofencing and transforming recruitment at Johns Hopkins, register for the 2018 Strategic Talent Acquisition Conference taking place June 5-7 in Miami.

You can also listen to the full podcast of this conversation here: Competing for Top Talent in a Scarce Environment.