German hospital uses TikTok to recruit new trainees

For some health practitioners at Klinikum Dortmund, a municipal hospital in the western German Rhine-Ruhr metropolitan region, activities such as Skeleton dances, stethoscope karaoke, and even reanimating rubber chickens for the hospital's TikTok account are actually part of their official job. The hospital staff's typical performances for the platform that features people lip-syncing their favourite songs or showing off their creativity include reanimating the aforementioned rubber chicken to the Bee Gees Staying Alive, grooving to 80s music while squeezing out disinfectant, or just plain dancing. 

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Also uses other social media

It’s not just TikTok but, Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, WhatsApp which are used just as much as a Blood Drive app for their employer branding. The hospital has a heavy social media presence.

Though the majority response is positive, not all patients are enthusiastic about the new vibe in the hospital. However, the key audience of these videos are not patients. The TikTok videos are aimed at other health workers and hospital staff, and it helps boost staff morale.

The TikTok videos are, more importantly, used to target potential recruits. Germany has a dearth of skilled labour for hospital staff. A local consulting agency estimated that about 20,000 positions would remain unfilled in German hospitals in 2019. So the TikTok videos work as a great recruitment tool.

Marc Raschke, who is the head of communications at the clinic revealed that they get a lot of their trainees from social media. It always comes up at job interviews. He added the recruiters do not visit fairs or distribute flyers. All the applicants find them through social media, without exception. Social Media has become the hospital’s sole recruiting tool.

Currently, Facebook-owned Instagram is the platform of choice for the clinic, but TikTok is gaining momentum as a recruiting tool for the hospital. The TikTok channel was created in the year 2019 after Raschke learnt about it at a conference in New York. Raschke has a piece of advice for those who hope to find similar success on the platform. He told a local news agency that on TikTok, a potential content creator has got to be even more quirky, weird, more superficial than on the other platforms.

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(With inputs from agencies)