The Power of Real Voices: How Baylor Scott & White Wins Talent

Healthcare hiring challenges aren't new, but they're hitting harder than ever. Burnout, an aging workforce, and rising patient demand are squeezing talent pipelines. Today's candidates aren't just scanning job boards — they're evaluating culture, authenticity, and long-term fit. Traditional recruitment tactics are falling flat.

Baylor Scott & White Health (BSWH) — Texas' largest not-for-profit healthcare system — took a bold approach: they put their employees' voices at the forefront, turning authentic stories into a scalable strategy across 57,000 employees, including over 7,200 physicians and 1,300+ care sites.

Read on for the highlights!

Friction in the Talent Journey

For BSWH, the candidate experience gap wasn't abstract — it was playing out in real time. Despite being a leading healthcare system, job seekers weren't connecting with their brand. "Our candidates were looking at our jobs, but they couldn't see themselves working here," said Whitney Wallace, Talent Acquisition Manager, Marketing and Sourcing at BSWH.

They needed an authentic way to connect with job seekers by showing them the benefits of working at BSWH.

But three critical challenges stood in the way:

1. Poor Video Quality: The existing platform couldn't produce high-resolution content, limiting deployment across digital channels and content reusability

2. Difficult Video Editing: "We kept running into issues… the videos would come back, they weren't great quality, and we had a hard time getting them on our career site. When it's hard to do, you're less likely to get it done, and you're less likely to get it done quickly," Wallace explained.

3. Speed-to-Market Issues: "We don't have four years to wait for a good nurse. We need someone tomorrow and we need a pipeline of candidates to get there," Wallace emphasized.

Related: Navigating Healthcare's Talent Crisis: Trends, Challenges, and Tech Solutions

Key Solutions to Reveal Real Voices with Real Impact

Shifting away from traditional mass-marketing recruiting campaigns, BSWH wanted a more personal approach that would elevate real employee voices across their employer brand. Let’s explore their solutions.

Video Hub for Testimonials

"We switched from our own old clunky platform...over to Video Hub testimonials," Wallace said. "It makes it really easy for us.” 

Phenom Video Hub became the backbone of BSWH's employee storytelling strategy. By making video creation self serve, intuitive and decentralized, BSWH empowered staff across roles and regions to contribute their voices without barriers.

Here's how it worked:

• Anyone, anywhere: Employees could easily record testimonials at their own convenience — no studio setup, no production crew

• Prompt-led participation: The TA team emailed out questions tied to specific roles or values. Staff simply clicked a link, recorded, and hit send

• Faster, cleaner output: Branded intros, trimming, and closed captions were handled in minutes, not days — thanks to built-in editing tools

• Higher-quality, repurposable videos: The final clips were polished enough for career pages, social media, recruiter outreach, and paid campaigns

• Campaign-level visibility: With tagging by theme, department, and region, the team could launch targeted campaigns and track which stories were driving engagement

“It's super simple. You can make each question its own prompt and then link it. I can do a group email with all of our prompts, and employees can just click the ones that they want to complete from there,” explained Wallace. “I love it because we can have a prompt that says, ‘Tell us about your favorite benefit at Baylor Scott and White Health’. I can click that prompt in our system and see everybody who's answered that.” This enables her to easily keep their benefits page up to date with the most recent and relevant testimonials.

To drive internal adoption, BSWH also introduced video 'champions' within teams. These advocates encouraged peers to record stories and helped scale the program organically. Over two years, they built a volunteer base of over 200 employees who completed videos.

Next-Generation Design Studio

With Phenom Design Studio (previously known as the Phenom Content Management System or CMS), the recruitment marketing team took control of the career site. "We were able to use it to relaunch our career site and make it better on brand. Our team could do it. We weren't putting tickets in to edit a word or change a paragraph," Wallace shared.

They could build, edit, and publish directly — and on their own timeline. Finally, no more backlogs of changes. 

Key enhancements included:

• Modular, branded layouts: Customizable templates kept the look consistent while allowing pages to reflect local teams and roles

• Dynamic video integration: Employee testimonials were embedded into relevant pages — ER techs on ER roles, nurse stories on nurse pages

• Faster campaign launches: New initiatives could go live within hours — ideal for reacting to hiring surges or leadership changes

• Regionalized storytelling: Recruiters created tailored landing pages for markets like Temple or Austin, complete with hyper-relevant testimonials and job listings

Employee Voice Campaigns

Beyond individual videos, BSWH developed comprehensive campaigns that leveraged employee stories across multiple channels. The approach extended into newsletters, blogs, social media campaigns, and even sourcer outreach.

"Our sourcers actually use the Video Hub to complete videos to talk to their pipeline candidates or people that they've been reaching out to," Wallace explained. This personalized approach helped maintain warm engagement with potential candidates over time.

The content strategy focused on authentic storytelling rather than scripted messaging. Wallace emphasized: "We don't say, hey, we need you to talk about this benefit and how great it is. If they don't feel like it's a great benefit, I'm not going to ask them to talk about it. They're going to share what they want to share and what makes them feel comfortable.”

Impactful Results

Videos that once took weeks to produce are now live in under 24 hours. "As soon as it’s done, it comes right back to us and we're able to put it on our career site," Wallace revealed. “We try to get it on there within 24 hours of receiving it because we want them to know we appreciate that they spent time out of their day getting a video back to us."

Being able to maximize employee-centered content through Phenom has led to significant improvements across multiple areas of talent acquisition:

• 72% increase in job applications when employee-generated content was included in paid media campaigns

• 103% increase in applications sourced from social media that featured employee testimonials

• 19% increase in internal applications, attributed to relatable, first-hand stories from existing team members

• 25% increase in time spent on the career site blog, driven by authentic storytelling and dynamic content

• 16% increase in completed applications via the career site

"Even though 16% is the smallest number on this slide, I want you to know that was 60,000 additional applications last year alone," Wallace shared. "I am proud to say we did that without increasing our budget at all on any of our paid media."

The success has created a sustainable system where employees actively participate in recruitment efforts. As Wallace described: "Last year, most of our content was employee voice, pretty much 92% of it."

The Biggest Takeaways To Strengthen Healthcare Recruitment Through Authenticity

BSWH's success offers practical direction for teams looking to modernize their talent acquisition strategy with real employee experiences:

1. Authentic voices drive results: Genuine employee stories consistently outperform traditional marketing content

2. Leadership sets the tone: Executive involvement reinforces the value of participation across teams

3. Ease of use boosts participation: Simple, self-serve tools that are part of your company’s talent ecosystem make it easier for healthcare staff to contribute

4. Varied perspectives increase relevance: Featuring voices from different roles and locations build stronger connections with candidates

5. Video supports every stage: Employee content enhances engagement from awareness through onboarding

By empowering their employees to share authentic experiences, BSWH's journey proves that scalable storytelling isn't about production budgets — it's about access, alignment, and a willingness to let real voices lead.

Ready to transform your talent acquisition strategy with employee-generated content? Demo Phenom Talent Marketer Experience!