It is no secret that the holidays are the best time to boost your physician recruitment efforts, suggests Aime Echevarria, Creative Strategy Manager at MDR HealthCare Search. During this downtime, Echevarria says, physicians have increased availability, experience fewer distractions, and find themselves reflecting on the past year and possibly seeking new and more exciting opportunities.

According to LinkedIn Talent Solutions, today’s top healthcare challenges include: facing increasing in hiring with no increase in budget; finding the right talent for niche roles; and positioning company as a great place to work.

“Social is a key tool for promoting jobs, building brands, sourcing candidates, creating relationships, and vetting applicants,” says Meghan Biro, founder and CEO of TalentCulture. “Recruiters know it’s the culture (or the now), and they’re investing their time and money accordingly.”

To aid in your organization’s recruitment efforts this holiday season, consider the following three tips to help you attract and retain top healthcare talent.

1. Know Where to Start

As you plan your social recruiting strategy, you must first recognize where your industry leaders and peers are sharing their information and ideas. LinkedIn, specifically, has over 4.4 million healthcare practitioners, executives, channel followers and opinion leaders, according to the network. Not only is LinkedIn a valuable tool for online job seekers, but it’s also a powerful networking platform that enables healthcare professionals to stay abreast with the latest industry trends, establish themselves as an expert in the field, and connect with former and future colleagues and peers.

Although many employers have found great candidates through online job boards like Monster and CareerBuilder, it’s still not enough today as the online social networking world is expanding and there are better ways to recruit top talent, states Susan M. Heathfield, Human Resources Expert at About.com. She includes examples such as joining industry-specific groups and actively searching for candidates among LinkedIn members by searching on keywords for niche roles. You don’t have to be everywhere to be successful; you just have to be in the right places on social media. According to iCIMS, sharing a job posting onto your company’s LinkedIn or Twitter profile can increase candidate applications by 30 to 50 percent.

2. Cultivate a (Positive) Company Culture

Hiring is more than just filling up an open job position; it is about hiring for the right cultural fit. Recruiters want to make sure candidates fit in with the organization’s culture and believe in its vision from day one because studies reveal that 32 percent of physicians who leave a job do so due to a lack of cultural fit.

Thus, by sharing content about the organization’s culture, current employees, and accomplishments on social media, an organization can attract and engage with prospective candidates with whom those messages resonate, states Echevarria.  Instagram, for example, is a great channel to display photos and short videos from company gatherings, celebrations and outreach events.

Also keep in mind, however, to ensure your company’s message is consistent across all social media platforms, suggests Joe Budzienski, Vice President of Product and Technology at Monster. Your social media channels are essentially a sneak-peek into your organization’s culture.

3. Engage Your Employees

One of the most effective ways to draw candidates to you is to enable employees to spread the word that your company is a great and fun place to work. Additionally, having employees help announce job openings on their LinkedIn and Facebook status updates expands your reach to people who aren’t directly connected in your network, states Roco Sannelli, Director of Marketing at 1-Page.

According to a 2014 Monster survey, 65 percent of respondents would consider a new job opportunity if it was through a personal connection. Moreover, Glassdoor’s Chief Economist, Andrew Chamberlain, says employee referrals have long been a preferred hiring method among employers because it allows companies to tap into the personal networks of current employees as a talent pool for recruiting.

“If you’re not building social media in your recruiting efforts at this point, you’re not really recruiting on par with the industry standard,” Biro says.

What trends have you seen succeed and which best practices have you seen fail the last few years? I’d love to hear from you.