It’s a candidate’s job market. There are lots of jobs out there, and staffing agencies today are competing fiercely for talent. This is especially true in some of the most in-demand fields, and nursing is one of them. The American Association of Colleges of Nursing projects a shortage of staff through 2030. The data suggests we’ll need 1.2 million new nurses to come into the field in the coming years, just to counteract the retiring baby boomer population that will leave many hospitals struggling with patient care demands.
If you are a staffing agency that supplies nursing talent, in some ways, you are experiencing the perfect storm. If you have a track record of building relationships with nurses and then providing them to healthcare organizations, you’re looking at a lucrative market for your business. But how will you go about getting actual staffing contracts? This blog will help you identify new healthcare clients and land lucrative staffing contracts to build your business.
What is the Key to Finding Staffing Contracts?
In the same way, you build your network of nursing talent; you need to spend an equal amount of time building your client relationships. Get used to this struggle; you will have to balance building talent against building client contracts for the entire tenure of your firm. How can you build a new client base? Here are five ways.
- Build relationships.
Mine your candidate relationships. As you are building strong pipelines of nursing candidates, keep in mind that these nurses came from somewhere. One tip is to ask the nurse if they used a recruiter in the past to place them at a particular job. This will help you identify healthcare organizations that are comfortable working with staffing agencies.
- Use job boards.
Job boards are an old standby if you’re prospecting for client leads. When a hospital posts jobs on their job board, you can certainly cold call the facility to find out if they’d consider working with your firm. But here’s a better way. When a recruiting firm posts a job, they usually don’t alter it very much from the original job posting that came from their client. Copy a snippet from the recruiting firm’s ad and search to see if you can find the same job posted on a healthcare organization’s website. This reverse engineering can lead you straight to the client!
- Ask for referrals.
Don’t forget to ask your current clients for a referral. You don’t have to just focus on current clients, either, but what about the ones that got away? You can and should reach out to them periodically to see if their time to hire has improved since you last spoke.
- Research the competition.
Check out your competitors. Do they have testimonials from clients on their website? Can you glean any details of who their clients might be?
- Network and build relationships.
Networking is key to finding new clients, just as it is for finding great candidates. Use your candidate relationships to connect you to leads. Go to or participate in virtual events. Reach out to your networks on LinkedIn. Set up free webinars for current, past, and future clients. Leverage marketing content to build your brand.
How do we know so much about helping you find new clients?
FoxHire is the nation’s leading Employer of Record service that provides contract employees to our customers. We work hard to bring you talent without the hassle of actually managing their HR. Call on us to find out how we can streamline your hiring and payroll.
