How Two Health Systems Are Rethinking the Candidate Journey

A candidate who doesn't get hired from a hospital system isn't just a lost applicant — they might be a future patient. That dynamic shapes everything about how healthcare organizations think about candidate experience, and it's why the space between someone clicking 'apply' and speaking with a recruiter matters more in healthcare than almost any other industry.

Sutter Health’s Chris Walik, Recruitment Marketing and Talent Systems Consultant, and Baylor Scott & White Health (BSWH)’s Sherri Hamilton, Marketing Analyst Consultant, shared how they’re tackling that challenge from different angles, covering everything from AI transparency messaging to video content strategy to what happens in the 24 hours after someone applies.

Watch the full session here, or explore the highlights below!

Where Does Recruiter Time Get Lost in the Healthcare Hiring Process?

At Sutter Health, which serves over 100 communities across Northern and Central California, and where one in three of its candidates are also patients, the numbers tell the story. With 70,000 applicants per month and more than 100 recruiters, even a highly staffed team can't provide meaningful touch points to every candidate in the funnel. Walik noted the breaking point wasn't recruiter capacity alone. Candidate perception was equally at stake.

Research showed a significant portion of candidates believe AI is determining who advances in the process, not assisting recruiters, but making decisions. That perception was landing on Reddit, on Yelp, and in other public spaces where people share hiring experiences, tying recruiter capacity problems directly to employer brand. Sutter's response is a proactive transparency effort: clear messaging at multiple touch points explaining exactly how AI is being used, and that it is assistive rather than determinative.

At BSWH, which operates 53 hospitals across North and Central Texas, the challenge was familiar but took a different form. Fragmented communication left candidates uncertain about where they stood, which drove calls and emails to recruiters who were already stretched. Location-based content was another gap. With 53 hospitals spread across a large geography, a candidate considering a role in one market needs context about that community, not generic system-wide information. When recruiters had to answer the same orientation questions over and over, they weren't doing the work of matching candidates to roles.

How Can Organizations Improve the Candidate Experience Before Recruiters Get Involved?

BSWH’s approach centers on giving candidates the information they need before they talk to anyone. Their 19 career site location pages go beyond job filters to show community context, awards, and video content from people who work in that location.

A centralized video hub has become a core part of the strategy. Over 150 active prompts have generated hundreds of videos across regions, appearing on the career site, social channels, and in email campaigns. As Hamilton noted, the appeal is practical. "We can put that video on the career site, or we can put that video on socials, or we could send it through an email," she said. "It really has worked for us and it helps to keep our message the same." Internal teams have picked up the same videos for huddle boards and internal communications, extending the content's value well beyond recruiting.

Related: Learn more about Phenom Video Hub

Sutter leaned into a combination of Phenom Talent Companion, Phenom X+ Screening, and Phenom Hosted Apply to address candidate drop-off at different points in the funnel.

Talent Companion has evolved alongside candidate behavior. People are now submitting multi-part questions that older, script-based chatbots couldn't handle, and Phenom's conversational AI is built to accommodate that shift.

X+ Screening introduced a structured follow-up touchpoint roughly 24 hours after application, giving candidates a clear next step and giving recruiters more actionable data in the Phenom Talent CRM. Hosted Apply removed the login requirement that had been creating friction at the point of application.

What Did These Investments Deliver?

Sutter Health saw roughly 40% higher application conversion after switching to Phenom Hosted Apply. "When we flipped the switch, we saw incredible ROI just from that alone," Walik said. X+ Screening improved Talent CRM filtering and gave candidates a clearer sense of momentum. "It helped communicate and made that person feel like they were moving through a process," he added.

On the recruitment marketing side, Walik's team has been beta testing a new custom report-building feature in Phenom Talent Analytics. Many recruitment marketing agencies rely on JavaScript pixel data to track applicant conversions, but privacy settings and cookie rejection can quietly compromise that tracking. By feeding more accurate source data to their agency, Sutter moved from estimates to actual ROI figures and used that visibility to concentrate spend where it was genuinely performing. Walik noted that only about 15-20% of open roles warrant active sponsorship. The rest are better served by nurturing existing Talent CRM candidates than by continued pay-per-click investment.

Walik also flagged Phenom Talent CRM spotlights as worth building out early. Constructing spotlight views within projects and job records makes day-to-day recruiter work measurably easier, and the value compounds as teams build familiarity with filtered views over time. He recommends it to teams new to Phenom and seasoned users alike.

At BSWH, the payoff showed up in what the team no longer had to do. With over 150 active Video Hub prompts generating hundreds of videos, Hamilton's team maintains a consistent brand voice across the career site, social channels, and email campaigns without the recurring cost and coordination of professional video production.

Related: Buyer's Guide to Faster and Smarter Hiring in Healthcare

What’s Next?

Hamilton's roadmap includes expanding Video Hub prompt coverage and taking fuller advantage of Video Hub Pro's automated caption feature. Both teams are also watching how AI perception messaging will need to evolve. Candidates are becoming more attuned to how technology factors into hiring decisions, and the gap between AI assisting and AI deciding is one that communication and content have to close deliberately.

That may be the most transferable lesson from this session. In healthcare, a candidate who doesn't get the job may still walk through the door as a patient. How an organization handles the space between application and answer says something about who they are, not just how they hire.

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