Hiring qualified, credentialed nursing and allied staff can be an onerous task. Lives are literally on the line when hospitals or outpatient facilities make staffing decisions, so it is vital that the right hire is made on the first try. And the number of RNs available for work is currently at an all-time low, and is expected to continue to shrink as nurses from the baby-boomer generation begin to retire. Not only will there be fewer active nurses, but the aging medical professionals themselves will need to seek treatment at long-term care facilities more and more frequently, and hospitals are already beginning to feel the pressure.
In times like this, it can be tempting to turn to an external nursing recruiter to seek out staff for your healthcare facility. It promises to be an easy solution with quick results, allowing you to focus on the day-to-day aspects of running your organization. But using nursing recruiters comes with a bevy of hidden costs, both financial and practical, which can outweigh the benefits they provide. Luckily, there are alternatives.
The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly of Nursing Recruiters
The Good
Like we said, there are benefits to using a nursing recruiter. Namely that the sourcing and outreach aspects of hiring are handled by an external professional who presumably has access to unique contacts and talent pools. It is a nursing recruiter’s job to make and maintain connections with both healthcare staff and facilities, and chances are they will be able to find and recommend talent more efficiently than HR operating on their own.
They are also a benefit to many job-seeking nurses who can afford to hire a recruiter. Operating more like a personal agent in this case, recruiters will assist nurses in finding and getting placed in jobs in the healthcare industry, as well as peripheral tasks such as assembling a resume, preparing for an interview, or responding to communications by a hiring organization.
The Bad
Recruiting takes time. Often, more time than a healthcare facility can afford to spare. The hiring process lasts on average about 23.8 days in the US. Usually, half to three quarters of those days are spent on communications between the recruiter and talent, from initial outreach to first interview. Seems a little bit lengthy, right?
Using a traditional external recruiting method may take some of the work away from your organization’s HR department, however it does not guarantee greater efficiency in the hiring process. In fact, it adds another step which may or may not be necessary depending on your current hiring needs. Including a middleman in your recruiting operations slows down and complicates the entire communications process through the addition of a third party. You don’t have to be a mathematician to know that that means more emails sitting in inboxes, more missed phone calls, and a longer wait for onboarding new nurses.
The Ugly
Recruiters are expensive. Whether you’re using a freelancer or going through a medical recruiting agency, using a recruiter will add thousands of dollars to your hiring costs, between salary, and expected commission should you choose to hire a nurse being recommended.
And recruiters are people, after all. Some of them have your best interests as an organization at heart, while others are simply in it to make as much money as possible, no matter the cost to you. Individual nurses have been warned to heavily vet recruiters before they work with them, as many have been foisted into undesirable positions, or work for which they are over-qualified, so that their disreputable recruiter could collect commission quickly. For facilities, a recruiter may similarly recommend under-qualified or poor-fitting nurses just for the sake of their own salary.
How Medely Can Help
For the modern era of healthcare, Medely offers a solution which speeds up and smooths out the hiring process and gives you better control over sourcing, communications, and vetting of your new nurses.
Efficiency
Medely allows organizations to fill open positions in minutes, rather than days. Our unique platform connects facilities directly to thousands of qualified nurses, who have already been vetted by other Registered Nurses, so you can trust that the nurses you hire through Medely are qualified and ready to work.
Your facility can post a per-diem job for free on our platform. Medely then automatically matches you with a highly skilled professional who meets your unique needs, enabling you to hire a new nurse the same day an open position is posted.
Affordability
Flat-rate pricing for our services allows facilities to cut the cost of the hiring process; and faster hiring means you save even more by quickly onboarding per-diem nurses. In addition, insurance and payment for per-diem nurses is all handled through the Medely platform as a further cost-cutting measure. Using Medely can save you 40% of what you would have spent on a traditional staffing agency or recruiter.
Plus, an account with Medely is always free. You only pay us when a temporary shift is booked and completed.
Ease of Use
As stated above, Medely allows you to automatically connect to ideal job-seeking nurses who are a perfect match for your current needs as a hospital or out-patient care facility. Vetting by qualified RNs saves you the trouble of needing to do your own detective work, and you can easily access your hire’s credentials anytime you need via our platform.
Finally, facilities can easily track and manage jobs in real time, from start to completion. This feature allows you to stay on top of your hiring needs and find qualified nurses when you need them.
Final Thoughts: Why You Should Avoid Nursing Recruiters:
Recruiters may be able to dig up nurses from inaccessible talent pools, but using a traditional agency costs more time, money, and energy than your facility should have to spare. Medely is a platform for the modern age which allows you to hire qualified, vetted nurses when you need them, at a fraction of the cost.
Medely is a healthcare staffing platform designed to help facilities find qualified nurses for per diem and temporary hire at a moment’s notice. To learn more about how Medely can help you hire your next nurse, sign up for free today.