Deadline: Monday December 12th, 2022, at 1:00PM EST
Background
The expanding shortages in physician specialties, nursing, pharmacy,and other occupations, coupled with an aging work force, make it imperative that VHA maintain a first-class, competitive recruitment and retention program. As VA continues to expand managed care and primary care, the need has shifted to physicians who are generalists and the mid-level practitioners who support the delivery of care that promotes health and prevents disease, supported by a highly competent tertiary underpinning. Many critical health care occupations within VHA are predominately staffed by a cohort of employees at or near retirement age. The shortage of new professionals entering the workforce in many of these occupations is stimulating intense recruitment competition. Effective marketing efforts, including recruitment advertising in existing and developing media will be a key element in efforts to achieve the approximate mix of healthcare provided to support the change from inpatient to outpatient care. To achieve these recruitment objectives, the VA uses USAJobs and USA Staffing for processing job applicants.
Because the VA currently is not able to place a tracking pixel or cookies on either the USAJobs
or USA Staffing websites, collection of critical tracking and related application data remains a challenge.
3.0 Scope of Work
Contractor shall manage and oversee the VA’s nationwide recruitment, marketing and advertisement for critical medical occupations and associated technical support personnel.
Contractor assesses the return on investment (ROI), effectiveness, and performance of the recruitment, marketing, and advertising campaign using industry standard best practices and a comprehensive metrics/analytics tools and techniques.
Q1. Describe your firms demonstrated experience with managing nationwide healthcare recruitment programs as well as marketing and advertisement for major recruitment initiatives. Provide, at a minimum two (2) and a maximum of three (3) instances of comparable scope and complexity. For each instance, include the following:
- A narrative case study that describes the details of each project and why it is relevant to this requirement, including difficulties and successes.
B. Describe your Self-Performed* effort (as a Prime) as it relates to the requirements in the scope section of this RFI.
C. Be specific and provide a complete reference to include, at a minimum the project name (and the government contract number, if applicable), contract award amount, start and completion dates, scope of work, type of media purchased, number of media purchased by dollar.
D. Additionally, provide the Contract Type: Firm Fixed-Price, Time and Material, etc.
*Self-Performed means work performed by the company themselves, NOT work performed by another company for them for any of the project examples provided.
3.1 Contractor shall be responsible for establishing and maintaining an integrated, coherent, recruitment marketing campaign. This includes creating and developing themes, concepts, strategies, and promotional items to maximize VA exposure and foster a positive awareness of VA in the minds of the targeted audience. The contractor will design material such as ads, videos, Public Service Announcements (PSAs), and brochures that promotes VA as an employer of choice. Contractor will design strategies to encourage the targeted group to apply for, and accept, employment with VA and to encourage retention. The effort is a year-round, programmed approach that must be responsive to changing priorities and shifting staffing requirements. The contractor must be immediately available and flexible enough to meet short deadlines (24hr) that may arise from the VA mission requirements.
Q2. What are the innovative approaches currently in the marketplace, or under development, for highly-effective recruitment marketing?
Q3. Discuss marketing and promotional strategies your firm recommends to target qualified applicants to pursue career opportunities with the VA?
Q4. What promotional strategies will be employed for the following marketing fundamentals:
– VA Brand Marketing
– Lead Generation
– Lead Nurturing
RFI, 36C77623Q0058
Q5. How will your firm provide the availability and flexibility necessary to ensure expeditious responsiveness to emergent deadlines and requirements?
3.2 Contractor shall develop and maintain the VA Recruitment websites on the Internet and Intranet. This includes all aspects of site development, maintenance and management. Contractor will design dynamic web pages that are aesthetically pleasing yet functional. Pages will not be static and will be maintained on state-of-the-art platforms that include sophisticated database capability, including the ability to accept electronic applications, remote vacancy posting, and remote updates. Contractor will develop all necessary electronic underlying databases, forms for electronic applications and management reports. Contractor shall design pages, logos, banner ads, and any other element of a successful recruitment website. All web pages and web sites developed by the contractor shall comply with the VA Tier-1 graphic standard and all applicable government and VA standards, such as meeting privacy standards, accessibility standards (i.e., section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act), etc.
3.3 Contractor shall integrate VA Recruitment websites with the Choose VA website (https://www.choose.va.gov/). Contractor will integrate all components of the Choose VA website that promotes the VA as an employer of choice.
3.4 Target audience is health care professionals and associated technical support personnel.
Coverage may be expanded to include other occupations as the needs of VA require.
Q6. Describe your firm’s experience with recruitment of health care, allied health professionals, and associated technical support professionals.
3.5 Target area is nationwide; however, VA needs will also require streamlined approaches on a regional, statewide, or local level as demands arise.
Q7. What marketing and promotional strategies are recommended for satisfying the VA’s recruitment efforts at national, state, and local levels?
3.6 When feasible, each advertisement must reflect, and contain, a specific reference to VA’s policy for providing equal employment opportunity without regard to non-merit factors (race, color, religion, sex, age, national origin, or handicap). All advertising material must be supported by the facts. All materials developed either print or electronic must comply with governmental and VA policy regarding accessibility and privacy. All web development activity must comply with section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act.
3.7 Contractor will establish measurements to maximize the effectiveness and assess the return on investment (ROI) for select media channels and recruitment marketing media best practices.
Contractor will ensure effective monitoring, evaluation, and optimization to enhance the VA’s nationwide recruitment, marketing and advertisement for critical healthcare and associated technical support occupations.
3.7.1 Monitor. Contractor will ensure sufficient collection of data to effectively monitor the performance of select media channels and recruitment marketing as per industry best practices. Baselines for each monitored metric will be established, which become the basis for an effective alerting method.
3.7.1.1 Contractor will monitor the hiring pipeline (the VA uses USA Staffing and USAJobs) to provides a snapshot of each major step in the recruiting funnel for a selected timeframe. The following are examples of key performance indicators (KPIs) that may be used in the hiring pipeline: