Most physical therapy job ads are written to attract as many applicants as possible.
That might be exactly backwards.
In this episode of PT Breakfast Club, Jimmy McKay and Tony Maritato break down a better way to recruit physical therapists using ideas from advertising legend David Ogilvy, direct-response marketing, AI, psychology, and years of actually hiring clinicians.
00:00 AI Meets David Ogilvy
06:08 The 12 Hiring Questions
16:49 Recruiting Through Media
22:04 Make Applying Easier
25:03 One Idea, Many Formats
30:32 The $9,000 YouTube Course
37:27 Rethinking The Job Application
41:01 Remove More, Add Less
Tony asked AI a simple question: If David Ogilvy were writing a job ad for a physical therapist, what would he need to know first?
The result was 12 questions every clinic owner should be able to answer before posting another opening.
We get into:
• Who exactly you’re trying to recruit
• Why “everybody” is a terrible target audience
• Salary, flexibility, autonomy, hours and compensation
• What a clinical hour actually looks like
• Why telling candidates what they WON’T have to do matters
• Showing the negatives instead of hiding them
• Why three perfect applicants may be better than 300 mediocre ones
• Josh Funk and Rehab 2 Perform’s approach to recruiting through media
• Why simply spending more money on Indeed may not solve the problem
• How short-form video could change healthcare recruiting
• Why job applications create unnecessary friction
• Using AI to audit your current recruiting message
• Turning one idea into video, audio, images and text
• Why people sometimes pay for accountability rather than information
• The $9,000 YouTube course Jimmy told a PT NOT to buy
• Why better systems often come from removing things instead of adding more
The bigger idea: candidates don’t know your clinic the way you do.
Your job is to eliminate uncertainty.
Tell them who the job is for.
Tell them what the work actually looks like.
Tell them what’s great.
Tell them what sucks.
Then make the next step ridiculously easy.
Featuring Tony Maritato.
TONY MARITATO:
https://www.youtube.com/c/MedicareBilling
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If you own a physical therapy practice or hire clinicians, send this episode to the person writing your job ads.
Then ask one question:
Are we actually telling candidates what they want to know?
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PINNED COMMENT:
Clinic owners: If you could only put ONE thing at the top of a PT job ad to make the right clinician stop scrolling, what would it be?
