Monday, April 9, 2007

Recruiter marketing: Trying to sneak in under the radar (2)

The following article in MomMD is an excellent example for insidious recruiters marketing - sneaking in their sales pitches into non-recruiter websites such as MomMD.
Note that the author is Rebecca Gresham. Note that nothing in the article says who she is or what she does. After reading this article I first I assumed that she is a journalist or a female physician or medical student like most members of MomMD.

Read the article:

By Rebecca Gresham
You're a busy woman; juggling everything from patients and insurance reimbursements to soccer games and family vacations. With a list of to-do's a mile long, it can be difficult-if not down right impossible-to make time to find a new and better practice opportunity when you're ready to move on from your current one. "Working with a recruiter can help you conserve what often feels like your most precious commodity: time," says Kelly Marsh, Director of Marketing for Seaboard Health Care Search in Nashville, Tennessee. Marsh also points out another important incentive working with a recruiter offers. "Search firms generate income by placing physicians at facilities they've contracted with. Since these fees are paid by the facility, the work done on the physician's behalf is free of charge to them." Below are three ways in which working with a physician staffing firm can make you feel like time is definitely on your side.

Very well written, really convincing, it really hits home. Here we have a woman who knows how it feels to be an overworked mom, a woman writing to support other women. The author might be a female journalist, who writes about "career transition", maybe based on her research, maybe based on her own experience. Truly well written, it could be a textbook example right out of the marketing classic "Marketing to Women".

It surprised me that any journalist would promote recruiters as obviously and blatantly as this article does. It surprised me that she did not mention any other methods of finding a job, any other approaches. She does not mention networking, something most women excel in. She does not write about specific tips for networking, whom to contact, what to say, what to look for, how to follow up. She does not mention approaching hospitals directly, she does not mention mailing your CV, she does not mention that there are companies that actually write or rewrite your CV for a low fee, she does not mention that there are companies that mail, fax or email your CV to potential employers, she does not mention anything except "recruiters". I wondered why...So I clicked on her name. By clicking on "Rebecca Gresham" a link to a dot-org website comes up. Harmless enough. Following this dot-org link I landed at "Seaboard Healthcare", which turned out to be a "joint venture" of a hospital and - look at that, who would have thought so ! - a recruiter company! Not enough surprises though - by clicking further onto the page that lists the staff or board of this recruiting company, I find three names, one of them Rebecca Gersham, the director of research of said recrutier company.

So, we have an article written by a recruiter, who acts somewhat like a journalist and quotes a fellow staff member at her own (!) recruitment company. She never mentions that she is a member of the same recruitment firm or a member of any recruitment company for that matter. She tries to sell the reader the usual recruiter sales pitch under the guise of a "objective and neutral" journalist. This is truly shameless cloaking of your own identity for a very clear purpose - to appear more credible. This is truly shameless product placement and abuse of the trust the directors of MomMD have placed in someone.

In my opinion this is misleading and unethical. The lack of ethics apart, the whole sales pitch is dangerous misinformation. Followings these "recommendations" would delay the physician's job search significantly or derail it completely. These "recommendations" only, but only benefit the recruiter - as I have shown in previous posts on this blog.

This shows that recruiters publish articles in the guise of neutral writers to lend credibility to their sales pitch. MomMD has a policy that no direct or indirect advertisements be published in the messages section. Does this apply to the articles as well? It should. Members of MomMD deserve not be be mislead.

Your Matthias Muenzer, MD
Proud MomMD member

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