Leading with candidate experience helps Wellstar transform the TA function

Challenges

Building trust & relationships with candidates

Wellstar was in uncharted territory with historically low hospital unemployment rates and a shortage of experienced healthcare professionals. As one of the leading healthcare systems in Georgia, it was essential to build a robust passive and active talent pipeline in this competitive workforce environment.

“Healthcare professionals today have many options, so we must ensure we create national awareness of Wellstar as an employer of choice through targeted brand and recruitment marketing that is relevant, valuable and consistent,” Sonya Aldy, Vice President of Talent Acquisition at Wellstar. “It is imperative that we build trust and cultivate relationships through continued connections and understanding of candidate motivations to demonstrate why Wellstar is a nationally recognized employer of choice."

Solutions

Better candidate experiences

Starting in 2016, Wellstar embarked on a full transformation of service delivery in candidate generation in partnership with Cielo. For a company with a strong community presence, this included updating Wellstar’s employee value proposition in conjunction with its consumer brand, building a new careers website, and investing in social media outreach. Other components included improving sourcing functionality by adding staff and strengthening the partnership with IT to implement new technology solutions that reach more candidates and communicate with them more efficiently.

Keeping the candidate experience front and center is essential to Wellstar’s candidate generation efforts. “We look at the candidate experience as the first part of the employee lifecycle journey,” said Aldy. “We want to ensure there’s a consistent feel to their journey as a Wellstar team member.”

A close view into the metrics helps Wellstar accomplish its goal of reaching the right candidates at the right time with the right message. Proactive sourcing with targeted messaging as well as retargeting has helped fill the talent pipeline. “The data will tell you that being on every job board is not always the best approach,” said Aldy. “Sourcing needs to be targeted and personalized.”

Results

Candidate generation that shines

In healthcare, employees – and a strong pipeline of potential future employees – are central to delivering on the organization’s mission to provide world-class healthcare to every person, every time. Integrating communications through a strong EVP and a proactive sourcing strategy supported by technology has helped Wellstar increase its careers website traffic and nearly double completed applications since 2016.

“The three pillars – sourcing, employer branding and technology – are table stakes in a candidate generation strategy,” said Aldy. “If you're missing one of those, you’re not going to be able to keep up in today's competitive market.”