Promotion Activities
Effective promotion of your practice opportunities and your community involves a variety of activities from multimedia marketing and communication to facilitating, hosting, and/or participating in in-person events to connecting one-on-one with candidates. For these promotional activities to be successful it’s important to timeliness and appropriateness.
The following quick tips can help to promote your community and communicate with candidates.
Posting advertisements
- Consider several media options including social media (e.g., Facebook, Twitter).
- Select appropriate media for the greatest impact.
- Explore costs.
- Free sites include Health Match BC, division and health authority sites, SGP locums site for SGP members.
- Locums.ca and the SGP locums site charge a fee (SGP charges for divisions, not members).
- Medical journals (online and print) and general job sites (e.g. Monster.ca) charge a fee.
- Face to face and word of mouth within your division, family medicine residency program, and physician conferences are other ways of marketing.
- Consider collaborative marketing with other divisions, the health authority, Health Match BC, and other partners to optimize impact and resources.
Responding to expressions of interest from candidates
- When a candidate responds to a posting they expect to receive a prompt reply.
- Aim to reply within 24 hours.
- Remember candidates usually inquire reply to postings in many different communities.
- Be prepared to answer general and specific questions about the posting and the community.
- In addition to email and phone, remember Facetime, Skype, and GoToMeeting as options for communication.
Following up
- Make sure that you know how best to reach the candidate after the initial contact.
- Ensure the candidate knows how to contact you or a designate.
- Involve designated community GPs in the conversation with candidates, as required.
