Power to the people

31 October 2011
Volume 27 · Issue 10

Since the launch of the dedicated dental recruitment website Dental Gateway in January 2011, dental professionals nationwide have been registering their details to find the ideal new staff member or career opportunity.

The team behind the site has also been forging partnerships with respected organisations and, in September, was invited to collaborate on a nationwide promotion with two of the biggest brands in healthcare: GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) and Boots.

The in-store UK-wide promotion involved placing hygienists and oral health educators in Boots stores throughout the country. They were to provide shoppers with one-to-one oral health information and advice.

To add to the challenge, GSK wanted to organise the promotion as a four-day event the following month, from October 27 to 30, to coincide with the half term break.

With Dental Gateway fully engaged on the project, GSK and Boots set in motion planning the event, producing marketing materials, designing the customer experience and briefing the candidates.

Dental Gateway emailed its database of nurses and hygienists about the promotion and they were very keen to get involved, for even as short-term a contract of four days. As a web-based service, the company’s overheads are minimal and those savings are passed straight on to the clients and candidates.

Dental Gateway hit the ground running in terms of very quickly finding a large number of people (100 professionals), at short notice, to fulfil the needs of this organisation.

The website operates similarly to a professional network for anyone in the dental industry. Dental Gateway has built up a range of contacts that spreads further and wider than a recruitment agency could manage. Harnessing the ideas of Facebook and LinkedIn, the company is now proving, albeit on a smaller scale than those brands, the power of people and their contacts, by using a sophisticated IT system.

Rather than dealing with a recruitment agency that sends a handful of CVs with varying degrees of relevancy, Dental Gateway allows employers to search any number of CVs until they find the person with the right qualifications and experience. A fee only applies once the user decides to make contact.

This promotion has enabled Dental Gateway to demonstrate just how effective the site really is: able to fulfil orders of any size, quickly, efficiently and affordably.