What Does a Healthcare Executive Search Firm Do?

The increased life expectancy in the United States has created a higher demand for competent healthcare professionals. Whereas, the healthcare industry is facing a huge talent gap while recruiting compatible employees for healthcare organizations. To bridge the gap faced during talent discovery and acquisition, a healthcare executive search firm does an arduous job of locating talented candidates with compelling resumes.

This article will explain what a healthcare executive search firm is, what they do, and the leading healthcare executive search firms that can help you acquire top talent.

Let’s get started.

What is a Healthcare Executive Search Firm?

A healthcare executive search firm discovers top-tier executives for hospitals, medical centers, clinics – and everyone seeking healthcare leaders for their organizations.

Based on an organization’s priorities, healthcare executive recruiters explore a wide array of candidates and scrutinize the most suitable ones based on their specific qualifications, geographical preferences, professional behavior, etc.

Furthermore, healthcare organizations rely on healthcare recruiting firms for executive sourcing because of their extended networks, profiling techniques, and aggressive research processes.

What Does a Healthcare Executive Search Firm Do?

A good healthcare executive search firm is aware of the primal ins and outs of the healthcare industry. They utilize their vast networks and deep connections in the industry and find ideal candidates for a leadership vacancy.

In general, here’s what a typical healthcare executive search firm does:

Discovers the Best Talent for You

Finding talent is not an easy process – let alone locating top-level candidates for C-suite executive positions in a firm.

Typically, healthcare recruiters utilize the following resources to find a perfect candidate for a particular job description.

• Extensive networks – utilizing their contacts in the healthcare industry – learn about job-seeking candidates, top-professionals working for relevant firms, and companies looking for expansion.
• Enriched databases – healthcare executive search firms maintain their databases with executive-level/top-level healthcare professionals. That makes it easier to find an employee who’s an exact match with the job requirement.
• Employee assessment tools – healthcare recruiters employ job simulation tools, pre-hire assessment tests, personality tests, and other HR assessment tools to identify desired candidates.

Lastly, the expert consultants at healthcare executive search firms conduct intensive interviews to evaluate their skillset and qualifications.

Assess Professionals Based on Strict Scrutiny

The candidates who succeed in the search firm’s aptitude assessment screening phase still have to pass a personality test.

Fortunately, healthcare search firms thoroughly observe the candidate’s personality overlap with the culture, values, and principles of their client’s organization.

That helps them find highly committed and dedicated employees that align with the organization’s goals and objectives.

Help You Find Employees on Market-Competitive Salary Packages

A healthcare executive recruitment firm has ample knowledge of market needs. Therefore, they can easily identify the salary demands for every job position and help employers define competitive salary structures.

Healthcare Executive Search Firm Models – Recruitment, Executive, and Proactive Search Models?

The primary purpose of all three of these models is the same, i.e., discovering talent. However, these three models are based on a different operational approach.

Let’s look at the differences between the three types of recruiting agencies that employ these three models.

	Recruitment Agency	Executive Search Firm	Proactive Search Firm
·	A recruitment agency is a third-party company that takes a passive search approach during the hiring process. In general, they post job vacancies for different organizations on relevant social media sites and job portals, collect CVs, and contact jobseekers.	On the other hand, an executive search firm acts as a third-party entity that actively participates in a company/organization’s recruitment process.	A proactive search firm follows both the active and passive search processes while finding employees for a particular job position in an organization.
·	They attract active job seekers who are searching for better opportunities.	Executive search consultants seek passive candidates who aren’t actively searching for a new job. These agencies look for talented people in a specialized field and tempt them with a better employment offer.	Proactive recruiters connect with active job seekers and nudge passive candidates on social media and via other channels to make them aware of a better opportunity.
·	Recruitment agencies target local candidates for a job posting.	They follow a global search approach and headhunt candidates having vast exposure.	Understanding the job requirements, they hold extensive research for locating the right person for the job, be it a local or an international candidate.
·	Their purpose is to fill a job position. They generally target non-executive positions and seek employees with multiple skills that match different vacancies.	Executive search firms focus on the technical skills of a candidate and specifically target C-suite executives.	Whether you need to fill an executive position in your organization or find non-managerial staff, the Proactive Search model fits all.
·	Recruiting agencies are often hired to fill a large number of positions. They go through a large pool of candidates and find the ones that could be good enough for the job.	They only target the best candidates and meticulously observe their various competencies.	Their process is highly refined. They recognize the strengths and weaknesses of an employee and find exceptional leaders for them.
·	A recruitment agency is replaceable by an in-house HR department.	Due to their efficiency in finding world-class talent, they’re irreplaceable.	You can rely on the Proactive Search to find a perfect fit for every role in your organization. Therefore, they help make your hiring process smooth and efficient.

As shown above, recruitment agencies and executive search firms have their own pros and cons. However, with the Proactive search, you get the best of both worlds.

With the Proactive Search approach, you can enjoy both methods’ benefits and hone your recruitment process.

Keeping that in mind, opting for the Proactive Search is the best (rather a necessary) move while locating top talent for your organizations.

Search Methods Adopted by a Healthcare Executive Search Firm

By now, we’ve established that different recruitment firms employ different techniques to fill a job position. Some focus on quality, and some prefer quantity while searching for ideal candidates.

All in all, recruiting agencies take three approaches while locating talent – retained search method, contingency search method, and proactive search. We’ll discuss these search methods and their attributes below.

Retained Search Method

A retained search method is a technique when an organization hires a single search firm on an exclusive basis. Meaning, the chosen search firm will fill the target job position at the employer’s firm.

A drawback of the retained search approach is that the employers have to make an upfront payment to the search firm.

However, the benefits are far more attractive.

In the retained search approach, employers have to coordinate with only one search firm. Due to this exclusivity, the search firm becomes the company’s brand representative. It’s their responsibility to conform to the company’s confidentiality – which is a critical element during the hiring process.

Contingency Search Method

As opposed to the retained search approach, contingency search refers to when a company contacts multiple recruitment agencies to help them find employees for different job roles.

The good thing about the contingency approach is that employers don’t have to make an upfront payment to anyone. Only the agency that succeeds in finding the right candidate for the employer gets paid.

However, contingency search may make you feel scattered.

When multiple agencies try to find candidates for a single employer, they fail to understand the company’s intricacies or the job role. Therefore, the employers have to brief every minute detail to the recruiting agency, which is time-consuming and stressful.

Lastly, the retained search results are 100% guaranteed, whereas, in case of contingency search, no recruitment agency can be held responsible in case of failure.

The Proactive Search

The Proactive Search is a blend of retained and contingency search methods and leverages both methods’ bright sides to favor the employers.

In Proactive Search, the employer does have to make an upfront payment(engagement fee) to the agency. The engagement fee is the amount that is decided at the contract agreement time and could be a percentage of the expected overall fee.

Lastly, the best thing about the Proactive Search is unlike a retained search, where a full fee would be due upon completion regardless of source. The Proactive Search earns its full fee by being completing the search and delivering for our clients. If we do not, then we should not get paid.

Top Healthcare Executive Search Firms

Healthcare organizations need talented executives to provide excellent services to their customers, build relationships with patients, and grow their organization.

We’ve curated the top three healthcare executive search firms that can help you find competent healthcare executives for your organization.

1.     Proactive Healthcare Recruiters

Proactive Healthcare Recruiters is a renowned executive search firm that specializes in home healthcare recruiting and hospice recruiting. Being the experts in the field of retained search, they seek highly qualified and agile healthcare professionals.

Their extensive network in the home healthcare and hospice industry allows them to locate the top talent for their clients in no time. Up until now, they have successfully placed tons of nursing staff, mental healthcare professionals, occupational therapy, and physical therapy candidates.

They offer a customized search to their clients, ensuring a perfect match of a candidate’s skillset with the organization’s specificities. Furthermore, they vet the candidates keenly and observe a 360-degree view of the candidates before declaring them fit for an organization.

The expert consultants at PHR strategically collaborate with the teams in an organization and elicit the job role’s specific qualifications.

Above all, they ensure the highest levels of integrity and confidentiality throughout the recruitment process.

Get in touch with Proactive Healthcare Recruiters to hire top talent for your firms and transform your healthcare organizations.

2.     WittKiefer

WittKiefer is a global executive search firm with a diverse network of healthcare professionals all around the globe. Their deep-rooted connections in the healthcare industry help them understand the industry’s challenges and unravel the leaders needed to manage them.

Wittkiefer has successfully recruited CEOs, senior executives, directors, and vice presidents in many healthcare organizations.

Get in touch with Wittkiefer to find top leadership that works on the motto of Innovation and Adaption.

3.     Grant Cooper

Grant Cooper is a leading healthcare executive search firm that helps its clients recruit superior executive talent.

They specialize in recruiting academic medicine physicians, community-based medical officers, pediatric specialists, and executives for non-profit and growth-stage organizations.

The executive search professionals at Grant Cooper work closely with their clients and provide face-to-face strategies and real-time troubleshooting.

Please schedule your appointment with them to find the best talent.

Wrapping it Up

Healthcare executive search firms play a vital role in expanding and improving the healthcare industry. On the whole, their holistic approach towards understanding an organization helps them map a perfect employee for their client’s healthcare firm.

Proactive Healthcare Recruiters not only locate world-class executive talent, but they also procure successful leaders for their clients.

Lastly, their strategic approach toward talent acquisition and recruitment helps them populate the world’s finest healthcare organizations with leading healthcare professionals.