find your dolphins

21 Oct

A while back I was chatting with a recruiter who places doctors in clinics around New Zealand. She was telling me how little clinics share about what it's actually like to work there, and the kind of detail she wishes they'd give her instead. Like the GP in Picton who goes kayaking every morning before work. With dolphins.

I haven't stopped thinking about that GP.

Partly because I'd quite like that commute. Mostly because that one detail tells you more about what working there might feel like than any job ad could. It's specific and real, and a doctor scrolling through vacancies would remember it.

Moving clinics means moving your life

The recruiter said something that's stuck with me: "We never fill a vacancy... we find a job for a doctor."

When a GP or nurse practitioner thinks about a move, they're weighing up much more than the role. What's the town like? Does the team actually get on? How stretched will they be by Thursday afternoon? Where will their kids go to school?

A job description answers almost none of that. A video can answer a lot of it.

The mismatch problem

She told me that keeping doctors is just as hard as finding them, and that a placement that isn’t the right fit rarely lasts. When a doctor’s picture of a clinic doesn’t match the reality, people leave, and the clinic is back to square one with a team that’s even more tired than before.

That's where recruitment content can quietly make things worse. The pull is always to make everything look good: shiny reception, a posed team photo, a list of values on the wall. It might get applications. It won't necessarily get the right ones.

Honest content works harder. For her, it's all about managing expectations. When a doctor knows what a clinic and a place are really like, they can make an informed choice, and the right people can picture themselves there. That saves everyone a lot of pain down the track.

Great clinics are often the hardest to sell

She also told me about a small clinic she was working with. Tight team, a genuinely great opportunity, and really hard to sell. On paper it doesn't stand out. You'd only really get it by spending a day there.

Video is the closest thing to spending a day there.

What I'd actually film

If I were making a recruitment video for a clinic like that, I'd be looking for the dolphins. Every clinic has some version of them. A few places I'd point the camera:

· The start of the day. The commute, the coffee, whatever the team does before the first patient walks in.

· The team when nobody's performing. She mentioned a clinic that does a shared lunch every Thursday. That's exactly the kind of moment I'd want on camera.

· Someone who's been there a while. I'd ask them what surprised them when they started, and what they'd tell a friend thinking about applying.

· The honest bits. How busy it gets and how the team handles it. Candidates can smell a sales pitch, and they trust a clinic that's upfront.

· The place around it. The beach, the school, the mountain bike track ten minutes away.

None of that needs a big production. It needs planning, and someone who knows how to get people talking like themselves on camera. (I wrote more about why the planning matters so much in Good video isn't luck.)

One shoot, two jobs

Here's a bonus. If you're already filming your team, you're most of the way to a patient-facing video too. Same interviews, same shoot day, a different edit. One version helps patients feel at ease before their first appointment. The other helps the right doctor decide to come in for an interview.