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Children’s Mercy Hospital | High Volume Hiring

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For more than 120 years, Children’s Mercy Hospital (CM) in Kansas City, Missouri has been creating a world of well-being for children and their families.

The CM talent acquisition team fills positions for critical clinical staff. However, they’re also focused on hiring for roles in areas like environmental services and staffing their new research institute. And, they knew incredible employee stories existed throughout the hospital. So, they brought in the Stories Inc. team to uncover those stories and show a culture of love and care to candidates.

Prioritizing content for high volume and niche hiring

Children’s Mercy worked with Stories partner PSC to re-design their candidate experience and deliver better quality candidates. The work resulted in an increase in quality and candidate affinity. The design took a recruitment marketing approach to interacting with candidates and employees. Now it was time to activate and ground with employee stories.

CM identified four high-priority hiring needs:

  • nurses
  • care assistants
  • research staff
  • environmental services team members

Nurses, care assistants and environmental services were CM’s high volume positions. Research staff niche and crucial to the success of Children Mercy’s Research Institute.  

Stories Inc. hit the ground running and planned two on-site interview days to uncover the stories. Our objective was to show how every team member, no matter what their role, connected their work to the mission of transforming the health, well-being, and potential of children.

We interviewed 10 CM team members across the four hiring areas, learning how their personal interaction with patients and families has made a difference to children’s health in the Kansas City area. While we weren’t able to film staff interacting with patients, the CM marketing team shared broll footage they had of approved patient interactions that we were able to easily incorporate into our content. 

LOVE WILL in action

Children’s Mercy believes that LOVE WILL create a healthier world for kids and when you walk into CM’s main campus building, everything from the smiles of their staff to the bright, whimsical artwork tells you this is no ordinary hospital. 

Each storyteller shared how love makes a difference in their work. As one of our storytellers said, “From a research perspective, I think love will find the answers. And as far as seeing love in action here at Children’s Mercy, I see it every time I walk our halls.” 

CM wanted a video for their careers site home page that shared not only their employee culture, but also the care they provide to their patients and families. In their overview video, we incorporated stories of patient care, professional development, and teamwork. 

Shattering myths and showcasing innovation

It was important for CM to highlight employees on their environmental services team, which includes housekeeping and facilities. These team members can often be overlooked, but their work in keeping the hospital clean and safe is vital to the success of Children’s Mercy. 

As one environmental services storyteller put it, “For anybody who’s working in Housekeeping they’ve got to know your job title doesn’t define who you are. Your work speaks value.”

We also interviewed research team members to learn about the new Children’s Mercy Research Institute and what they’re doing to help find answers to problems affecting children’s health. One storyteller demonstrated an augmented reality prototype he created that is now being used by radiologists to help treat patients. So cool! 

How Children’s Mercy Hospital is Using Content to Drive Recruiting Efforts

We heard powerful and moving stories from all of our CM storytellers. We created five videos and a substantial photo library that CM can now use to connect with candidates across all stages of their job search. 

In addition to sharing the videos through social media and showcasing the overview video on their careers site, CM has also embedded links to the four hiring area videos on relevant job postings. For example, nursing job descriptions now start with a call to action, not to apply, but to watch a video to hear the experiences of their nursing staff. In less than a month of releasing videos on their job descriptions and on social, CM has seen more than 2,100 views across all their content. 

A nurse technician ended her interview by saying, “It’s basically the love we have for our jobs.  The love we have for our patients. The love we have for our families.  It’s really what drives us here at Children’s Mercy. I feel like everybody knows that love will make this place amazing.”

We couldn’t say it any better ourselves. 

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