Start A Staffing Agency: The Medical Recruiting Process
You will find that the recruitment portion of your medical staffing agency is functional its own entity. Recruiting is what drives your business and many medical staffing agencies create a sub-department. Hiring a recruiter to solely focus his/her energy on recruiting.
All other departments within your medical staffing agency must work in conjunction with recruiting. Obviously if you are a one person operation keeping abreast of what is needed and who to place at any given time is easy. The logistical nightmare becomes a reality when your office has separate recruiting and business development sections. Communication is critical at this stage.
Critical Communication Loop The feedback loop needs to be such to decrease the noise associated with communications between departments. This is critical when a recruiter hires clinicians; the recruiter must at all times have an open communication between marketing and staffing to ensure accurate placement. The placement can be hindered if marketing is pushing for a full time Ultrasound Tech, yet the recruiter is only hiring Nurses for ER. Smaller medical staffing agencies don't usually encounter this problem until the firm grows to the point that the marketing and recruiting are separate. This is a problem, but a nice problem to have because it means that you have grown to a point that you need to separate your departments. This kind of growth marks a positive event for your company.
Can You Recruit Should you use clinicians that have no experience in recruiting to hire your staff? I found that recruiting is a learned process and can be achieved. Clinicians have an advantage that they are familiar with terminology and the industry. This works to the advantage of medical staffing agencies. We find that many medical staffing agencies are begun by clinicians. Those clinicians are at times wearing dual hats, both as marketers and recruiters.
Experience as a clinician within the area you plan on recruiting is much more important than experience as a recruiter. It is easy to have a clinician that is a nurse, recruit a nurse to fill opposition and speak about hourly rates and expectations. It is better to be direct and don't fake nice, don't fake honesty, the people you are dealing with are educated and can tell when you are only trying to recruit them as a warm body. They are aware how the industry is and if they have worked with agencies in the past understand the need you have to hire them. Clinicians are aware that you need them in order to thrive in your business.
Recruiters are sales people and they get to be the people who you often times make a final deal with. You are a sales person and what you are selling is not so much the recruiting process, but you are selling yourself. A lot of marketing and sales people don't really understand this concept. The concept is focused on you first selling yourself and then selling what you are offering. This strategy gained me lots of contracts.
Resources: http://napervillestaffingagency.com/ http://ezinearticles.com/?Start-A-Staffing-Agency:The-Medical-Recruiting-Process&id=8715314
Thank you for reading!