Some questions we've been asking is:

• What technological trends have you seen emerging over the past few years in physician recruiting?
• What are the trends for the next couple of years?
• How do you envision recruiters will be using technology in 10 years time?
• What is your company doing to be innovative in the marketplace?
• What is your company doing today to help physician recruiters succeed?

Here's what a couple of industry leaders had to say:

From Bryan Bassett, CEO of the HEALTHeCAREERS Network:

1) What technological trends have you seen emerging over the past few years in physician recruiting?

Niche job boards are all the rage today. The big Internet job banks have not lived up to their billing, especially in healthcare. So physician recruiters are looking to specific niche boards that actually have an audience of electrophysiologists or gastroenterologists, for example. Medical societies and associations are rapidly capturing their own share of recruitment advertising dollars because they offer exclusive access to targeted niche markets.

2) What are the trends for the next couple of years?

This trend is countered by the ever increasing pressure for recruiters to be more productive with fewer resources. Niche job boards require recruiters to research and manage multiple online resources. Multiple contracts means less bargaining power and higher overall expenses, let alone the time commitment necessary to manage job postings across multiple sites. Many recruiters are turning to robotic job posting or bulk distribution services to handle the administrative burden. All of the major advertising agencies now operate online distribution services.

3) How do you envision recruiters will be using technology in 10 years time?

While I don’t see technological advancements growing at near the pace of the past decade, I do see adoption rates among recruiters accelerating to the point that Internet recruitment expenditures meet or even exceed print advertising expenditures. Bulk distribution services will slowly earn physician recruitment market share as the services begin to gain enough industry-specific knowledge to provide real value.

4) What is your company doing to be innovative in the marketplace?

HEALTHeCAREERS Network has integrated the online job banks of nearly three dozen healthcare associations onto a single platform. The Network serves as a gateway for physician and nurse recruiters to access all participating association job banks – along with their targeted candidate pool - under a single discounted contract. Recruiters get the best of both worlds; access to the best niche job boards and the competitive pricing and convenience of the big broad job boards. Coming this fall, recruiters will also be able to place and manage print advertising campaigns online.

5) What is your company doing today to help physician recruiters succeed?

In addition to helping recruiters leverage their resources across multiple associations, we are leading the way to develop online recruitment metrics. These metrics are currently used to monitor association partner sites and to fine-tune the effectiveness of their promotional efforts. We expect that the metrics will soon be available to recruiters who may use the data to evaluate their own online recruitment results.

We also spoke with Jack Johnson, President of Profiles, the graduating physician database company:

According to Jack, the biggest trend has been related to internet technologies and more specifically email. However, as more and more recruiters are utilizing email to contact physicians, the potential for abuse has also increased, with physicians becoming more cautious about giving out their email address.

For now, email is by far the most cost-effective means of communicating directly with a physician, but to ensure you are reaching 100% of your target audience, it must be backed up with the traditional direct mail campaign and phone calls.

Companies like Profiles are integrating many features to help recruiters become more efficient and succeed, like integrated mass email capabilities, where you can conduct a detailed search of the entire database and email a specific offer to hundreds of candidates at once. The web-based Profiles database also has the capability to generate and mail merge letters for a direct mail campaign, all online from within the application, saving hundreds of dollars over third party vendors.

Check out the next edition of the KontactIntelligence eWIRE for more comments from other industry leaders.