Context
Rocket Locums is a healthcare staffing technology company based in Texas. Its platform connects locum tenens clinicians, physicians, nurse practitioners, physician assistants, nurses, and allied health professionals, with the hospitals, clinics, and agencies that need temporary coverage, so a facility can post an assignment and a clinician can find and take it directly. The company works a defined regional area in Texas, finds its most natural fit with small and midsize facilities, and looks outward toward the larger metropolitan markets nearby as it grows.
Locum tenens coverage has traditionally been arranged through staffing agencies, and by 2022 the field was a crowded one, so a facility fielded frequent approaches from firms it had never met. Demand for temporary clinical coverage was climbing at the same time, concentrated in nursing and surgical support roles and moving between specialties with the season, and the pandemic years had pushed clinical staffing further toward software. Rocket Locums had finished building its platform and had clinicians registering on it, so the work in front of the company was on the facility side.
Challenge
Rocket Locums had launched a digital platform connecting locum tenens physicians, nurses, and allied clinicians with healthcare facilities. With the product live and clinicians registering, the open question sat on the facility side: how to get hospitals, clinics, and agencies to register and post jobs. A prior TASK engagement had covered performance measurement, so this second one focused on how the business reached facilities and candidates across organic and paid channels. The constraints were specific: a defined regional area, a fit with small and midsize facilities, demand that moved between specialties by season, and a small team splitting its time across recruiting, business development, and the website. Email, calling, and social posting had each been tried and job boards had not, so the question was which channels deserved sustained effort and what each should be asked to do.
How the team worked
The engagement opened with a follow-up meeting that reviewed the prior semester's work on performance measurement and heard where the business stood: the platform was live, clinicians were registering, and the priority had shifted to bringing facilities onto the platform. From there the team met with the client's business development side on a regular cadence, and each session shaped the next round of recommendations. The client's regional focus, the specialties in highest demand, and which outreach methods had already been tried all fed into what the team prioritized.
The work was delivered as one growth framework in three staged decks. The first covered organic channels the business was already using, with revisions to email format, social media posting, and cold calling. The second added new organic channels: professional networking, healthcare conferences, chamber of commerce membership, locum tenens community groups, and a review of the company's demo video. The third turned to paid growth, comparing advertising platforms and healthcare job boards and recommending a job board service, a posting structure, and dedicated social media support. Each deck restated the framework and the same SWOT so the recommendations read as one plan rather than three.
Every deck was built the same way: the framework and its goals, a block of published background on the channel in question, then recommendations the client could act on. Comparison carried the weight. Advertising platforms, job board services, and demo video producers were each set side by side on reach, fit with a healthcare audience, and what running them would ask of a small team, so a recommendation arrived with its reasoning attached rather than as an assertion.
Recommendations were checked against what the client was seeing week to week. The business development side described which specialties were in demand, took the drafted calling pitch out to a short list of facilities to hear the response, and explained how candidates arriving through a general job board were being carried onto the platform. Those conversations set the final deck's focus on job boards and on the support the company would need to keep a social presence running alongside recruiting.
Workstreams
- Built a growth framework that set out the business's outreach goals and organized recommendations into organic and paid tracks.
- Reviewed email outreach to hospitals and agencies and proposed a clearer message structure, visual formats, and personalization for facility decision-makers.
- Assessed the company's social media presence across Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, and TikTok and recommended posting cadence, content mix, and profile improvements aimed at clinicians.
- Weighed cold calling against other channels and drafted example scripts for reaching facility leadership and medical professionals, each paired with a demo follow-up.
- Identified professional networking channels, including healthcare staffing conferences, chamber of commerce membership, locum tenens community groups, and networking emails, and reviewed the company's demo video with options for producing a stronger one.
- Compared paid advertising channels and healthcare job boards, recommended a job board service and a posting structure, and outlined the case for a social media manager or intern.
What the team found
- Email research showed that naming the specific facility, stating the industry problem before the service, and attaching a short demo did more for a reply than adding length to the message.
- Calling reached senior decision makers more directly than any other channel but took the most time per conversation, which made it a channel to aim narrowly rather than to run at volume.
- Organic reach on the general social platforms had narrowed to the point where steady posting alone was unlikely to carry awareness, and the platforms increasingly expected paid distribution.
- Search advertising suited the facility side, where intent is already formed, while feed and video advertising suited clinician awareness, so the paid channels split along the same two audiences as the organic ones.
- Job boards read less as a way to fill a single role than as a way to build a standing pool of registered clinicians who could be matched to later assignments.
- In-person conferences and local business associations opened relationships that digital outreach did not reach, and locum tenens community groups concentrated the clinician audience far more tightly than general feeds.
What the client received
- Growth framework deck with organic and paid outreach tracks, restated across all three deliverables
- Email outreach guidance and alternative email formats for facilities and agencies
- Draft email templates and social media post copy for the company's own channels
- Social media formats and platform-specific posting tips for the company's five channels
- Cold calling example scripts for facility leadership and for medical professionals
- Professional networking guidance and a shortlist of healthcare conferences and community groups
- Demo video review with the changes to make and a comparison of production routes
- Paid advertising channel comparison with a recommended focus for each platform
- Job board comparison, a recommended service, and a job posting structure
- Case for dedicated social media support and the tasks it would cover
Outcome
Rocket Locums left the engagement with one outreach framework that ties its organic and paid channels together: refined email and social media formats, calling scripts, a shortlist of networking venues and conferences, and a comparison of paid advertising and job board options with a recommended path. The business can now decide where to put its outreach effort with clearer expectations of what each channel is for, which channels speak to facilities and which speak to clinicians, and what it would take to keep a consistent social presence running alongside the daily work of recruiting.
Recommendations
- Rework facility email so each message names the facility, states the industry problem before the service, asks plainly for the meeting or the job posting, and carries the demo with it.
- Post to the company's social channels on a set cadence with a mix of job listings, industry news, and posts about the people behind the business, and consider dedicated social media support so posting does not compete with recruiting.
- Keep cold calling as a narrow channel aimed at facility leadership and at clinicians in the specialties currently in demand, working from the drafted scripts and following each call with a demo by email.
- Add professional networking to the mix: healthcare staffing and health technology conferences, membership in the local chamber of commerce, introductions by email and virtual coffee chats, and the locum tenens community groups where clinicians already gather.
- Remake the demo video around the company's story and the platform itself rather than stock imagery, using an affordable freelance producer or a local film or animation student rather than a full-service studio.
- Put paid effort into search advertising for facility-side intent and into feed and video advertising for clinician awareness, and post through a job board service that carries one listing across many sites.
Next steps
- The client was handed one growth framework carried across three decks, with organic and paid tracks under a shared set of goals, so the recommendations could be worked through in sequence.
- The client was handed example calling scripts for facility leadership and for clinicians, alternative email formats, and draft social posts it could adapt in house.
- The client was handed a shortlist of healthcare staffing and health technology conferences for the year ahead, along with the local and online networking venues worth joining.
- The client was handed a comparison of paid advertising platforms and job board services with a recommended board, a job posting structure, and options for adding social media support.
- The client was handed a review of its demo video with the specific changes to make and a set of production routes at different levels of cost and effort.