This is a guest post by Amber Riviere. If you want to guest post on this blog, check out the guidelines here.
EMS managers, take note. If your website serves (or should serve) as a recruiting station for employees, here are four Everyday EMS Tips from Amber Riviere, BrownBugProject.com, to get your website in shape and help you get their attention.
It’s important to remember that new EMTs are generally tech savvy. Most often, you’re looking for people between the ages of 18 and 24, who depend on the Internet (along with text messaging) almost exclusively to stay updated . You need to make sure your website is keeping up with the times.
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First, does you agency have a blog?
A blog, the most basic requirement of a website nowadays, serves two purposes. One, it’s a regular stream of timely and relevant information for your audience. Two, it’s the “Google juice” that helps your site get discovered by prospective recruits.
Second, does your blog have subscription options?
You have a blog in hopes of it acquiring followers, right? Then you need RSS and email subscription functionality to make that possible. Although some people will prefer to simply bookmark your site and return at their leisure, others will want to have your content “fed” to them automatically. Make sure your blog offers the ability for readers to sign up for automatic updates via RSS feed and via email (learn how EverydayEMSTips uses AWeber to sign-up email subscribers).
Third, take RSS a step further.
If you post new employment opportunities on a regular basis, then it might be helpful to set up a secondary blog strictly to communicate this information. If you do, consider setting up RSS-to-SMS (aka text message) functionality. Basically, this is how it would work. You post a new employment opportunity to the secondary blog, the RSS feed is updated, and people who have subscribed to receive SMS notifications will be automatically notified on their cell phones (via SMS/text).
Finally, are you tweeting?
Many of your candidates are hanging out on Twitter for a good portion of their days. They communicate through Twitter while online and while on the go (through their cell phones), so be sure to be where the action is. Post important updates (like new job opportunities, information about training, etc.) on Twitter and also post links to your blog updates.
If part of your website’s purpose is to help with recruiting new employees, make sure it’s accomplishing that goal. Provide regularly updated content and then give prospective recruits an easy way to stay in the loop.
Amber Riviere is a web designer with BrownBugProject.com. You can follow her work through her blog and through her newsletter, Inside Brown’s Brain. You can also keep up with Amber on Twitter, @brownbugproject.
