If you talk to public health departments about their workforce recruiting efforts, you may hear a recurring theme — open positions that remain unfilled for too long. While it may be tempting to conclude there’s a lack of interest in public health careers, there’s often more to the story.
Just ask Nick Tompkins, senior professional in human resources (SPHR) and senior certified professional (SCP), grant director for the Public Health Infrastructure Grant (PHIG) at the Metro Public Health Department of Nashville and Davidson County in Nashville, Tennessee. After nearly 30 years in talent acquisition, management, and learning and development for private sector organizations, Tompkins joined Metro Public Health in 2023 as director of workforce development.
He immediately noted a challenge in recruiting qualified candidates. In fact, it emerged during his own job search experience: lack of visibility for open positions.
“It was pure chance that this position popped up on my radar,” he said, adding that he had never considered a role in public health. His own online job search criteria, which he designed to uncover positions in Nashville with titles he might not typically consider, turned up the workforce development role at Metro Public Health. “I was intrigued,” he said.
Tompkins got the job. Now, he’s bringing creative thinking and lessons learned from the private sector to the department’s workforce recruiting efforts. Tompkins has used the flexibility of PHIG funding to invest in alternative application methods that help make open positions more findable and remove barriers in the application process.
Broadening the applicant pool
Metro Public Health faced a recruiting challenge that many departments face: not enough qualified applicants. Typically, the department has posted open positions on the Metro Nashville government site. Tompkins has used flexible funding to increase online visibility for these positions. He starts with a paid post on Indeed — at a cost of about $200 — to increase the likelihood that job seekers will find the role, he said.
Tompkins also sponsors some job postings using Indeed’s pay-per-click model. He creates targeted keywords to help deliver the posting to candidates searching for certain roles; for example, school nurse positions might include keywords like “work life balance.”
“We set a budget of about $50 per day and we run it Monday through Friday for about two weeks,” he said. “We only get charged if somebody actually hits apply.”
Tompkins said the department has also contracted with recruiting agencies for hard-to-fill roles, such as veterinarians. Previously, Metro Public Health has used temporary agencies to fill these roles, sometimes incurring high agency fees. Tompkins said he made the case that using flexible PHIG funding to recruit permanent hires could offer a better return on investment. “I’m proud to say we’re now hiring two vets,” he said. “We found one ourselves by expanding our search and found one through a recruiting agency.”
Removing process barriers
Metro Public Health also faced another recruiting challenge — the application process itself. To apply, job seekers were required to complete a pre-employment survey with 100 behavioral questions before they could progress through the application.
“Most people were completing the application on their phone,” Tompkins said. “Answering 100 questions on your phone is not easy.”
So, he dug into the data. He checked the workflow of the department’s application platform and could see exactly where candidates were dropping out. About 46 percent of people who started an application left when they reached the survey.
“We were reducing our funnel of applicants by nearly half,” he said. “It may have been a good selection tool to determine if a person could work in government, but it was hurting us.”
Tompkins decided to experiment. He turned off the survey for certain positions where questions about longevity and workplace culture had less impact, such as Metro Animal Control. Those positions, which are under the department’s jurisdiction, require applicants to be at least 18 and have a high school diploma.
“As we turned each one off, we saw the funnel increase,” he said. “Instead of looking at five candidates for 10 positions, we started to see 20 candidates for 10 positions.”
First, make it easy
Tompkins said the first step in better recruiting is “removing the barriers we’re putting on ourselves” in getting candidates through the application. The department now uses Indeed’s “easy apply” feature for some positions, allowing applicants who have uploaded their resume to Indeed to apply with one click. “When we see a candidate who meets our criteria, we reach out,” he said. “We say, ‘We’re interested in talking with you, but we’re a government organization, so I’m going to send you a link and I need you to complete an application.’”
The department still sees some drop-off there, Tompkins noted. “That’s when we’ll say, ‘Can we keep your name in our database?’” he said. Most applicants say yes, which helps create a pool of potential talent the department can reach out to with future opportunities, Tompkins said.
A new recruiting mindset
Tompkins acknowledged that incorporating alternative application methods has required some effort. But he encourages colleagues at other health departments to question whether long-standing practices are best serving the department’s recruiting needs.
“Often in public health, we start with no,” he said. “Sometimes, we need to start with yes and find out if there really needs to be a no.”
Action steps to new application processes
Considering a change to how you collect applications? Start with these steps:
- Examine your data. Analyze all available metrics on how candidates find your open positions and how they move through your application process. Knowing where applicants drop off can help you identify barriers and eliminate processes that create stumbling blocks for candidates.
- Challenge assumptions. Work with internal stakeholders to foster understanding of the changing needs and demographics of today’s public health workforce. “There’s an old mindset that people want to work for the government for the stability and benefits,” Tompkins said. “Millennial and Gen Z candidates often have different priorities, like flexibility and meaning.”
- Know your audience. To find out if your position has good visibility, try searching for jobs in your geographic area the way applicants might. Use different search terms and see what comes up. Consider testing your application on a phone for ease and accessibility, since that’s how many candidates will complete the process.
- Use your flexibility. Finances can be a challenge to implementing creative solutions to workforce recruiting. But Tompkins said health departments may be able to tap the flexibility of PHIG funding for new efforts to recruit public health workers. Talk to your program officer and grant specialists to see how these funds may support your efforts.