To help organizations meet the challenge of hiring contact tracers to identify and interview individuals who test positive for COVID-19, the recruitment advertising division of Parsippany-based SCG Advertising + Public Relations has launched a dedicated unit called ContactSCG to focus on helping organizations market and hire contract tracers.
“This is an astounding number of potential openings for a job that until now hasn’t even been researched by the Bureau of Labor Statistics,” said Mike Gatta, SCG’s vice president, National Development. “It’s a major recruitment challenge for all 50 states, 16 territories, and thousands of local health departments – not to mention large corporations that may want their own to ensure the safety of their employees.”
The 60-year-old, New Jersey-based firm – which also has offices in Atlanta, Philadelphia, California and Florida – has provided talent acquisition and recruitment advertising strategy and services to a wide range of health care, government, first responder, and nonprofit clients for decades.
Gatta said that SCG has extensive experience in recruitment marketing, handling millions of jobs in all industries, including health care and government. By using the PESO model of Paid, Earned, Shared and Owned media, Gatta said the agency has the tools to work with marketing and HR departments to quickly scale up and deliver results.
In 2003-2004, contact tracers played a key role in defeating SARS, and are used regularly by health departments around the world to combat HIV, measles, H1N1, and even Ebola.
Among those companies and organizations already active in the burgeoning contact tracing technology sector are a partnership between Apple and Google, Bloomberg Philanthropies, Contrace, and Partners in Health.
In addition, several former health officials are calling for contact tracing support to be prominently featured in the next COVID-19 aid package.
SCG’s recruitment marketing campaigns include a broad range of tools: job-posting optimization for aggregators; digital and mobile strategies that include the Web, social, and shared media; and sophisticated programmatic advertising.
Also featured are broadcast, out-of-home, and other traditional forms of advertising, plus diversity efforts, public relations, influencer outreach, special events, including virtual job fairs. SCG is currently an approved vendor for government entities across the nation.