In an era where digital platforms dominate the recruitment landscape, direct candidate acquisition stands out as the superior strategy for medical staffing firms. The cases of popular clincician job marketplaces illustrate the pitfalls of over-relying on intermediaries. With their aggressive tactics and shifting business models, these platforms underscore the importance of maintaining control over your recruitment process.

The Downfall of Dependence on Clinician Job MarketPlaces 

Some of these platforms have taken on venture capital investments during periods of explosive growth in the healthcare staffing market. Now, as the we’re in today’s current state, they find themselves under pressure to produce. This has led to several concerning practices that my clients and other firms that I’ve spoken to are mentioning:

1. Sharing Your Candidates with Too Many Other Firms: Platforms often distribute your candidates to multiple staffing firms, creating unnecessary competition and reducing the chances of securing top talent.
2. Manipulating Clinician Attribution: Many of these platforms have been known to change clinician attributions in ATSs, falsely claiming placements they did not secure.
3. Competing Directly with Facilities: These platforms have begun forging direct relationships with healthcare facilities, acting as staffing companies themselves. This shift marginalizes their customers and threatens to cut them out of the recruitment process entirely.

These practices highlight a significant risk: platforms prioritizing their survival and growth over the interests of their customers. For medical staffing firms, this means losing control over their most valuable asset – their candidates. As these platforms maintain extensive databases of candidates and own all the associated data, they hold the power to bypass staffing firms and work directly with healthcare facilities.

The Ideal Solution: Direct Engagement through Your Website

The only effective solution to these problems is to ensure candidates find you directly through your website, primarily by leveraging Google Ads. This approach fast-tracks visibility, unlike SEO, which can be a long, drawn out, and expensive task to rank for the most lucrative keywords, something that is out of reach for many firms. Here’s how direct engagement alleviates the problems mentioned:

1. Maintain Control: By attracting candidates directly to your website, you keep control over the entire recruitment process. This prevents platforms from gaining access to your candidate database and manipulating attributions or placements.

2. Eliminate Candidate Sharing: When candidates come directly to your site, they interact solely with your brand. This prevents the dilution and sharing of candidates across multiple platforms, ensuring they remember your name and not just a job listing.

3. Reduce Competition: Direct engagement eliminates the race to the phones. Candidates who find your firm directly are more likely to engage with you first, reducing the competitive frenzy for top talent and ensuring your company isn’t just another name on a list.

4. Strengthen Brand Identity: A direct relationship allows candidates to get to know your firm personally. This strengthens your brand identity, making your firm memorable and distinguishing you from competitors who rely on third-party platforms.

5. Build Trust and Transparency: Direct interactions foster trust. Candidates appreciate knowing who they are dealing with, and this transparency can lead to stronger, more reliable relationships. It also helps in avoiding the confusion and mistrust that can arise from indirect engagements.

By focusing on direct engagement through your website, using tools like Google Ads, you can maintain control over your recruitment process, strengthen your brand, and build trustworthy relationships with candidates. This approach not only alleviates the problems associated with platforms like Vivian, Wanderly, and VettedHealth but also positions your firm for long-term success in the competitive medical staffing industry.

The Benefits of Direct Candidate Acquisition

1. Control and Ownership: Direct candidate acquisition ensures that you have full control over your recruitment process. By engaging with candidates directly, you maintain ownership of their data, interactions, and the overall relationship. This control is crucial in building long-term connections with clinicians, enhancing both retention and loyalty. Without direct engagement, you put control into another party’s hands, which can lead to significant losses.

2. Brand Recognition: When candidates interact directly with your firm, they become familiar with your brand. This recognition is vital for creating a lasting impression. In contrast, the job marketplaces dilute your brand identity by presenting job listings under their umbrella, reducing your firm to just another name in a long list of options. Candidates visiting your website get to know your company and remember your name, rather than associating you with just a job listing.

3. Quality of Interaction: Direct engagement allows for personalized interactions with candidates. You can tailor your communication, understand their unique needs, and provide a candidate experience that aligns with your firm’s values. This personalized approach is often lost when relying on third-party platforms, where your candidates are shared and distributed across multiple listings.

4. Competitive Advantage: In a competitive market, being the first to connect with a candidate can make all the difference. Direct acquisition eliminates the race to the phones, where multiple staffing firms vie for the same candidate’s attention. By being proactive, you can secure top talent before they are inundated with offers from competing firms. This approach also prevents your company from being reduced to just a pay rate.

5. Transparency and Trust: Direct relationships build trust. Candidates appreciate transparency in their recruitment process, and knowing that they are dealing directly with the staffing firm fosters this trust. This is particularly important in the healthcare sector, where trust and reliability are paramount. Platforms can obscure this relationship, leading to confusion and mistrust.

In Conclusion