Locum Recruiting 101: 10 Takeaways After 10 years

Let me start this off by saying that as much as I love the thought of writing from time to time, I never really have the chance to do so, so if you are looking for a pristine, smooth flowing, grammatically correct article, then you are in the wrong place.?But, if you are able to overlook the writing imperfections then there may be some good information within this article that I can share with you.

Next thing to get out of the way before I kick this off... Who am I??Why should you listen to any advice I have to give??As you can read in the title, I have a decade of experience in this industry, 100% of it as an "in the trenches", on the floor recruiter and recruiting manager.?I have managed well over 250 employees everywhere from day 1 hires that need to be trained on how to dial a phone, to senior tenured employees that well exceeded my tenure.?What I am trying to say is, I have seen A LOT. I have dealt with A LOT. With that being said, I guess the previous sentance kind of bridges me into my 10 takeaways and allows me to kick this off.

1. I Don't Know Anything and Neither Do You

Ask me how much I knew about this industry and physician recruiting when I was 2 years into the job.?I would of told you more than most. 5 years come and I can promise you I am one of the most knowledgeable and skilled recruiters you can find. 8 years comes, just two years ago, and there is not a doubt in my mind that I am know everything there is to know?about this game, and that there is nothing new you can teach me...

Well, somewhere between 8 years and today I mentally matured a little.?Maybe it was part of me just growing up and becoming more wise with age.?Maybe it was my mentors finally cracking through my thick headed skull, I honestly don't know.?But as of today, the one thing I can give you for advice is that you can never ever ever stop learning in this field.?If you keep an open mind, you will learn how to improve your personal skillset on a daily basis. You will continue to better educate yourself on the industry.?You will continue to educate yourself and learn from market trends.?The moment you decide that you know everything and that you are as good of a recruiter as it gets is the moment your career stops growing. Mentally engrave this in your head: No matter how much you know, you still have so much you can learn.

2. Relationships. Relationships. RELATIONSHIPS!!

Building relationships with your providers is everything.?Becoming good at building strong and lasting relationships with your providers is the single most effective thing you can do on the road to becoming a high producing recruiter. Why??First of all, return business.?When you develop relationships, the provider you are working with will want to return and give you first crack at any future opportunities.?Trust me, I promise you that these locums out there do not love having to re-introduce themselves to new recruiters 10 times every week. Second of all, referrals.?I highly doubt you like cold calling.?It's a necessary evil in the beginning, but the moment you can break free from that is the moment your career starts to take off.?When your database is doing the recruiting for you, all you have to do is look figure out who is currently available and where can you get them a solid opportunity. There are many more reasons, but it would take me days to write them all, so just trust me on this one and see for yourself.?So moving on. How do we create a strong relationship??Well, for starters...

3. The 80/20 Rule is a Real Thing!

One of the first things that any of us learn when partaking in any sales or recruiting training is that we should be listening 80% of the time and speaking 20% of the time.?I cannot begin to stress how important it is to just shut up and listen to your providers.?One of the biggest complaints I hear on a daily basis from locums that I speak with are that their recruiters seem to have their own agenda and don't have any clue about what the locum actually wants.?Translated into a real world situation, you just met the man/woman of your dreams, completely hit it off and decide to go out on your big first date.?They have spent the last two days telling you how much they love pizza and pasta and then you decide to take them to a barbeque joint.?YIKES, not quite a home run start, right? Well that is what a lot of us are doing when we don't sit back and truly listen to our providers.?That is why a lot of us struggle to build good, strong, solid relationships. Formulate a few open ended questions and let your locums speak.?Listen! Take notes! Truly process what they are telling you.?Don't try to shove them into nights if they want days.?If they want West Coast only jobs, stop calling them on Tupelo, MS.?If they open up to you about the marriage, or pets, or past assignment, or whatever it is, then take some interest. The best locum recruiters don't push their agenda onto their locums. They listen, process, and understand every bit of their locums agenda and function against that information accordingly. Unfortunately, just listening and understanding your locum isn't going to seal the deal, there is much more to a relationship than just listening.?Onto my next takeaway!

4. The Best Relationships Are Forged In Fire

STOP running away from hard conversations.?It's probably the second most frequent complaint I hear about. A locum is not going to get every job... they know this.?Why ghost them when a submittal gets declined? The assignments are not always going to go as planned. Why get scared to take a call and discuss what is going wrong and how it can be fixed? You screwed up, it happens.?Pick up the phone and own your mistake. In the real world, it's so easy for us to get into an argument, stand our ground, own up to a mistake, have a bad news conversation with a friend. Why do we treat it any different here??When you begin to do this, there is going to be 1 of 2 outcomes.?The first outcome is you and your locum work together as a team and get through what you need to get through. You communicate well, bounce ideas off each other, and resolve the issue and BOOM, you now have a relationship that is twice as strong, a level of trust that is twice as strong, and a great future together. Or the second outcome, the one that everyone is afraid of and the reason we tend to avoid these conversations... your locum is going to rip you a new one and then never talk to you again. Well folks, I am here to tell you that when that happens (I say when because it will, it's not an "if") you were probably never going to have a strong ongoing relationship with that provider in the first place.?It is no skin off your back.?Transitioning right into my next takeaway!

5. Not Every Locum is for You.

You are not going to get along with every person you reach out to.?You can't be friends with every person you meet... you can't date every person you crush on... so why do we try to force ourselves to work with providers we just don't get along with? Or with providers that are not good clinically (Yes, there are ALOT of bad physicians/midlevels out there believe it or not)? Oh, that's right, because there is a small chance that if you can push through them wasting your time or it’s by a miracle chance you can put them to work without them getting fired then you can make money off of that provider.?You have to recognize who is a good fit for your book of business, for you and the locum on a personal level, and who is not! It's crucial to your ability to function at a high level, your reputation within your company, and your reputation to your clients.?If you can't find a way to work well and get along with one of your providers, I am willing to bet you that they back out on your assignment before credentialing even finishes.?That’s a ton of wasted time, energy, and emotions for both of you, all for nothing.

Slow down. Do not force things that are not meant to be.?It is so easy for us to understand who we get along with and who we want to hang out with when its on a personal friendship level... when there is no money involved.?Bring that mentality into the recruiting space. Walk away when you have to.?Pass a provider to a colleague, see if they can connect better. If they are a bad provider, then get rid of them altogether (please don't pass them to a colleague).?Save yourself the pain and energy of trying to force a square object into a circle hole.

6. I Am Better Than You Are

No, not you reading this silly. Well, maybe you reading this.?Are you a locum provider? Then yes, yes I am definitely better at this then you. If you are a recruiter, then that was a very misleading title. The point I am trying to make is that you are a recruiter. You were or are trained as a recruiter. You recruit day in and day out. This is what you do.?You don't tell your locums what they need to do in order to treat their patients, do you??So why do you take orders and let them tell you how to do your job? It is OK to be the expert you are, to tell the locums how it needs to be done, to tell them they are wrong or being unreasonable and explain how so.?In all of my years of managing, I find this to be the biggest hurdle for the majority of recruiters to get over.?Stop being an order taker, start being a consultant. Again, you want to build a strong relationship with your providers.?This is something that will gain you respect and inspire trust and confidence from your locums!

7. Your Company and Organization Matters

?So let me start this off by saying I am not here to slander anyone. It's not very professional, nor does it do anything to benefit anyone reading this.?With that said, facts are facts and I cannot really make my point here without putting out my experiences.?I have worked for two organizations, two organization that are about on opposite ends of the spectrum as they come.?One organization had the mind set that everyone, employees and locums are expendable.?There will be an infinite supply of employees and an infinite supply of locums.?The other organization was started on the belief of an internal family environment and to truly believe in taking care of our clients and locums.?I am sure you can take away which one I personally prefer.?But the reason I bring this up in this article is for two reasons.?Firstly, when you take care of your employees and treat them correctly, then they extend that courtesy to their locums. They tend to care more. They are happier.?The enjoy their job and give that extra 15%.?If you are reading this as a base level employee starting out, trust me, you will give a lot more effort when you feel appreciated and are being treated well.?Secondly, your reputation in this industry goes a long way.?It was mind blowing to me to see just how much business I was missing out on at my previous organization just due to the fact that I wasn't even being given the chance as a recruiter based off of the name of the company that I was associated with. When your company doesn't take care of their client base, word spreads and it trickles down into your own pockets. Make sure your organization supports you. Make sure their mission statement (their real mission statement, not just the words they print on their website, but through their actions) is quality. Reputation goes along way and can open or close a lot of door for you!

8. Your Credentialing, Licensing, Travel, and All Other Back Office Teams Matter

If you don't appreciate and love your back office teams, it is time to start doing so.?A good back office makes your entire life so much easier, and will make your entire company function much smoother and more efficiently as a whole.?It is also responsible for making life easier for you and more importantly, your locum. If you are someone in charge of hiring and reading this, I cannot stress to you enough how important it is to make sure that you nail your back office hiring on the head. If you are a base level employee reading this, I cannot stress to you enough how important it is to appreciate and treat your back office teams like the hero's they are.?I can promise you, you don't want to be on their bad side, and you are going to be much more successful and have a happier clients/locums.

9. There Is No Such Thing As Coasting In This Industry

Let me start this one off with a story.?

Back when I first started, my company’s policy was that you do not make commission until 6 months from your hire date.?So I had 6 month to make a placement and start making commission. I POUNDED that phone. I got there early. I stayed late. I worked from home on Saturdays. I worked my ass off. And about 3 months into the job, I had 4 placements and 4 locums to be on assignment for me when I hit my 6 months and my commission kicked in.?Rookie of the year, here I come. Presidents club, sure, I'll be a shoe in. I was king of the locum world in my eyes, so I kicked my feet up, backed down my dials, showed up 5 minutes late, shut my cpu down at 4:59, and why the hell would I ever work on a Saturday? Then my 6 month commission kick in was right there!! Time to start making my money!

I can't even make this up.?All 4 of my providers were terminated from their assignment the week my commission was supposed to kick in. I wasn't able to put my next provider on assignment until my 9th month on the job. All because I got cocky and tried to coast. Thankfully I learned my lesson at an early time in my career, but I have seen recruiters of all tenures make this mistake and many different stages in their careers. I've seen recruiters go from 15 providers on to 1-2 over the course of a month. With our industry it's so hard to see this coming because with credentialing timeframes everything you do is mostly for 3-6 months in the future, so when the downfall comes it hits you like a sandbag to the face. Just like anything else on the planet, what you put into this job is what you get out of it.?If you don't want your book of business crumbling overnight, do not get complacent.

10. Work Smarter, Not Harder

Here we are. My 10th and final piece of advice.?

I know this sounds like common sense to everyone, we hear it daily.?And I am NOT by any means telling you to not work hard.?I just got done telling you the more you put into it the better. But what I am telling you to do is to be smart. If you want to function at a high level, you have to manage your time and stay organized.?How do we do this?

Well, I can't give you guys all my secrets, but here are a few things so you get the gist of what I am trying to instill on you.?Referrals - Ask everyone you speak to for referrals.?Have a great relationship with them? Good, ask them 5x as much as the others.?Referrals save you all the time in the world.?Texts - It's not 2012 any more.?Texting is effective.?Now, don't take this too far, you can't do business solely by texting, nor can you build relationships, but, it is a way more effective means of communication to get someone's attention rather than calling 20 times in a day or emailing. Good Jobs - Recognize good locum assignments within your organization from the bad ones.?Not all jobs are created equal.?Work on the jobs that you can fill. That are long term. That have a client with a history of buying.

This is another list I could build for days.?The point I am trying to make is to maximize your income by utilizing your time intelligently.

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Well Folks, that's about it for now. Obviously at the end of the day, I am trying to beat you?and your organization out on every job opening, so I can only give you so much of my mind! I will say, writing this was actually pretty fun, I wouldn't mind doing a monthly article about different topics within our industry, so if you are still here reading this, feel free to drop a comment below if there is anything you would like to hear (read) my thoughts on!