Different Needs of Various Staffing Agencies

Many healthcare staffing agencies have gone for the quantity-over-quality approach and have failed miserably and ended up ruining their reputation before they could even get on their feet.

If you are launching a small company, most of the tasks concerning recruitment would be managed by you. While a mid-to-large sized company may be in a position to hire HR staff to do all the recruitment tasks, a smaller company may not have such a budget in its hands.

A recruiter has the responsibility of finding new employees for a company’s vacant positions. They do this in many ways, including by searching online job databases, calling up potential candidates, scheduling interviews, placing ads both offline and online, and performing direct marketing and utilize other methods to draw the attention of potentially qualified candidates.

Your main priority should be to ensure that the candidates you select possess the right credentials and that their availability is acceptable to you. Don’t forget the fact that the healthcare staffing companies generally face a very high turnover rate, and the most effective way of dealing with this is to have a constant pool of potential employees whom you can call when you need them.

There was a healthcare staffing company established by two brothers and their mother. Both the brothers used to cover shifts while their mother handled the requests and scheduled her sons.

When you know your niche as well as the industry that you are serving, you will be in a better position to hire people.

If a certain employee has enough credentials, this alone isn’t sufficient to send them to cover a particular shift. It is no longer as simple as that.

Certain positive qualities are necessary when searching for people to hire. In many cases, you will often get more business or even lose it based on the actions of your employees. Remember that your employees are like your soldiers – out there on the front line – and in this highly competitive industry, you need to have all the competitive advantage you can get. If you don’t do your homework, you may be put into a compromising position by your employee(s).

When hiring an employee, make sure you look for the following things.

• Any prior experience – If the candidates have experience of working for a staffing agency, they will generally already have any idea of how things work in this industry and you won’t have to explain each and everything to them as compared to a fresh graduate from medical school.

Do ask them if they have been placed on a ‘DNS’ list before; and if so, on what facilities and why.

It is always a good idea to hear their side of explanation. It is very important to know this because if you have a contract with that facility, you won’t be able to send this employee to that client, which automatically makes them less valuable for you. • Ask about their skills – Keep a list of questions to ask them during the interview. Some of the questions should help you fully determine their skill level and whether or not they would be able to take up the pressure of working in the medical field. Try to gauge their honesty and professionalism by observing their body language and note whether they make eye contact when speaking to you. That tells a lot about them. The healthcare staffing industry is known for dumping a lot of work on their temporary employees; make sure you tell them about this and ask them how they would feel about it. This is particularly important if the candidate has no prior experience of working in the healthcare staffing industry. • Are they friendly? – During the interview, do they appear friendly to you? This will give you a fair idea of whether they will be friendly when sent out on assignments. Just don’t rely too much on this alone; many of the people who come for an interview would be at their best behavior. • Ask them why they want to work for a temporary service – This is a very important question as it helps clear any confusions right from the start. IT will also help set the boundaries between you and them, and elaborate upon expectations of both sides for each other.

The process of hiring your staff can be very time consuming. Knowing who to hire and who not to hire only comes with experience. You will probably make mistakes, but that’s fine – everyone makes mistakes. Just make sure you learn from them and avoid them in the future. Hiring employees is probably the most frustrating part of running a healthcare staffing company. It is not easy to judge what you will get from an employee in terms of skills and quality.

Here are a few screening techniques you can use during the employee selection process. Keep the following in mind:

• Experienced candidates would be more willing to travel and would have no objections to working odd shifts if they are paid higher. • New graduates would normally have no objection to travelling regardless of what they are paid. • It is important to be upfront with your employees right from the stat regarding your expectations.

This will prove to be very beneficial later on. • If you are the fifth company that a candidate is going to work for in the past six months, the chances are you aren’t going to be the last. • New graduates will, initially, work hard for you. However, their ultimate aim would be to find permanent employment. (You can also make money by offering employment services) • Older or retired people generally do not wish to travel long distances.