Taro vs job ads
By Sam Gillette, Founder of Taro
A job ad and a headhunting system are not two versions of the same thing. One waits to be found; the other goes and finds. Which one fits depends on who your next doctor is, so start there.
Who your ad can and can't reach
Around 70% of professionals aren't actively job-seeking (LinkedIn Talent Solutions). For GPs, the doctor most worth hiring, experienced, stable, settled, is employed and reasonably content. They aren't reading job boards, because they aren't looking for a job.
An ad, by definition, reaches the other 30%: whoever happens to be actively searching in your area, in the window your listing runs. For metro clinics with strong offers that's occasionally enough. For everyone else it's a slow lottery, and it tells you nothing about the doctors who never saw the ad.
The two approaches, side by side
| Job ads | Taro | |
|---|---|---|
| Reaches | The active minority who are searching this month | Every practitioner mapped in reach of your clinic |
| Who moves first | The doctor has to find you | Your clinic approaches them, by name |
| Cost structure | Per listing, ongoing, repeated per vacancy | One flat fee, tied to the first hire |
| While it runs | The vacancy clock keeps running | The vacancy clock keeps running, but against a mapped, contacted pool |
| Applicant quality | Self-selected; often out of radius | Filtered by geography before anyone is contacted |
| What you own after | Nothing; the listing expires | Map, infrastructure, conversations, bench |
Why ads attract the wrong applicants
An ad broadcasts to whoever is searching, wherever they are. That's why job-board applications so often come from doctors who are out of radius, out of eligibility, or out of step with the role. Your real candidate pool isn't every GP in the state; it's who can realistically drive to your clinic, and the doctor most worth hiring usually has the tightest radius of all. A mapped catchment starts from that constraint; a listing can't.
What the listing actually costs
The listing fee is the visible cost, and it's the small one. The real meter is the vacancy: an average full-time GP writes roughly $6,500 a week in billings (Cubiko practice benchmarks), and a vacant room writes none. An ad that runs for months while the right doctor never sees it isn't cheap; it's the most expensive kind of waiting.
Job boards do have a place. If your ideal hire happens to be in the active minority this month, a listing can find them, and running one costs little beside a mapped campaign. The two aren't mutually exclusive; they're just not the same bet. The ad bets your doctor is looking. The map doesn't have to bet.
What Taro does instead
Taro maps every working GP in realistic reach of your clinic, using drive time in real traffic, not straight-line kilometres. Outreach goes out under your clinic's own name and domain, because doctors answer practice owners and ignore recruiters and listings alike. Interested practitioners reply straight to your inbox, and you hire directly. On the first hire, the whole system, map, infrastructure, conversations and the bench of "not right now" doctors, is handed over to your clinic, free to use for every future hire.
FAQ
Around 70% of professionals aren't actively looking (LinkedIn Talent Solutions), and ads only reach the searching minority. If your ideal doctor is employed and content, no listing will reach them; someone has to approach them directly.
The listing is cheaper. The outcome often isn't: the vacancy costs roughly $6,500 a week in billings that don't happen (Cubiko benchmarks) while the ad waits for the active minority. The right comparison is cost per filled room, not cost per listing.
They don't conflict. An ad catches the active minority; the system reaches the mapped majority who will never see the ad. If the ad fills the role first, you've still kept the map, the infrastructure and the bench for the next vacancy.
Doctors respond to practice owners. Outreach under your clinic's own name, short, specific and honest, is a different object from a recruiter template or a listing, which is exactly why the system sends under your name and not ours.
Further reading
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