How do I address the Retained Search Dilemma for Advanced Practice Nurses?
How do I address the Retained Search Dilemma for Advanced Practice Nurses?
The argument that you should contract for a retained search to compensate the recruiter to devote 80-100% of their time to your job search and therefore who will find you a competent and qualified candidate quickly is questionable. Particularly when their in-house database of qualified pediatric advanced practice nurses is most likely limited. Because you pay them upfront, generally at a higher fee for their services, and you give up any other candidates that come your way through another recruiter or you pay them for a candidate that you find yourself, you can feel a lot of apprehension to make a retained search commitment. Melnic Consulting Group believes you should feel this way. This has come to my attention lately because of two situations where the children's hospital was "locked" into a retained search and could not look at qualified candidates that Melnic brought to them. Both hospitals were regretting their commitment to a retained search.
As in-house recruiters, you have a lot of responsibility. You perform the combined task of processing a vast amount of resumes whether filtered or unfiltered by your ATS system and managing the work flow of viable candidates. As a result, you have many irons in the fire. Volume aside, you have the responsibility of a working knowledge of all the jobs on your job board including the required qualifications. That is an enormous task. Then the question arises, what should you do with those essential and more challenging jobs that need to be filled. When your options to contact candidates and the time you have available to devote to any one job are limited, you will probably turn to a recruiter for help.
You are in a challenging situation; there can be a feeling of urgency and a desire to have someone take over who you believe is qualified and competent. This occurs on a regular basis. The question can come up, do you want to engage a retained search to “ensure” that all the recruiters’ time and effort is directed toward the successful fulfillment of your job order?
As a recruiter whose job it is to fill your difficult positions, Melnic knows how long and hard we need to work to find competent, qualified candidates. Melnic Consulting Group has approximately 10,000 candidates in their database which is part of a network of pediatric advanced practice nurses, nursing leaders educators whom we contact on a regular basis, so if anyone can “ensure” that a position is filled quickly it is Melnic Consulting Group. However, we believe that a difficult search can take time and requires an extensive network. For all searches, we post the job on our blog and website that receive 1,200 plus hits a month each, we send a monthly newsletter listing our jobs, we call all the potentially qualified candidates from our database, and we still believe that a difficult search can take time. According to NAPNAP, there are approximately 12,000 PNP’s of which about 3,000 – 4,000 are in specialty care. It makes sense that it would take time to find one or, if you are lucky, two PNP’s or nursing leaders who have the experience, who want to move to your location at the time you offer the job and who know that you have the job available.
As you consider whether a retained search is right for your pediatric advanced practice and nursing leadership jobs, consider that a contingency search can be more beneficial and rewarding if it is done by a specialized firm who knows the market, has a number of jobs that they are working on that help attract a large pool of qualified applicants, has established marketing resources in place, and will give you an accurate, ongoing assessment of the time frame. Because of Melnic’s extensive network and marketing strategies, many times we have the candidate you are looking for who is waiting for your opportunity to open up. Just recently, we were taking a tour of Children’s Hospital of Orange County and when we sat down to talk about the organization, structure and recruitment needs, the lead Pediatric Nurse Practitioner mentioned the need for a PNP in electrophysiology cardiology. Ironically, we had just the candidate. We are in the process of setting up the interviews and the candidate and client are thrilled.
There are a few positions such as a CNO that warrant retained searches. In that situation, Melnic Consulting Group is the ideal firm to talk with. Our extensive network within the pediatric nursing world, not only creates an extensive network of potential CNO and high level nursing leadership candidates, but allows us to know their reputation and strengths and weaknesses from the perspective of their peers and those they supervise.
Melnic Consulting Group is the leading pediatric nurse recruiting firm. We would love to discuss your jobs and how we can save you money by finding qualified and quality candidates in a realistically timely fashion while building your brand as a top Children’s Hospital or facility in the nation through our extensive network and marketing strategies.
To inquire about our jobs visit Melnic Consulting Group or contact:
Jill Gilliland
800-886-7906
jill@melnic.com
For questions or recruiting help, please contact Jill Gilliland, President, Melnic Consulting Group at (800) 886-7906, Jill@melnic.com.
