Hospital recruiters count on Facebook and Twitter

Hospital authorities are turning to internet chat sites to recruit more staff.

The Waitemata District Health Board has signed up to social networking services Twitter and Facebook in a bid to fill vacancies.

Recruitment manager Nicole Francis says targeting younger people requires creative methods.

"We need to reach Generation Y," she says.

"These young people aren’t reading newspapers – they’re chatting online and visiting sites like Facebook and Twitter.

"We can reach a much wider potential future workforce that we might otherwise have missed out on."

The health board places a new hot job ad or "tweets" on its Twitter page every day.

Its Facebook page includes recruitment team details, lists latest jobs and encourages people to post questions and chat live online with a recruitment consultant.

Overseas applicants are interviewed face-to-face via web-cameras and the Skype program.

Ms Francis says sites will be trialled for three months.

"It costs nothing to set up a Twitter and Facebook page and interviewing by Skype is not only saving the candidate the cost of travelling to us, but saves us the cost of a phone call too," she says.

"And using these different communication channels helps us be open and accessible to the rest of the world."

Go online to www.twitter.com/wdhbcareers or www.face book.com and search for WDHB Recruitment Centre for information.

- © Fairfax NZ News