Marketplace is a one stop shop for healthcare travelers and staffing agencies to connect with one another. As a partner agency, your staffing company receives access to top-tier healthcare talent, plus puts your staffing agency at the forefront of a traveler-driven Marketplace.
As the sixth and newest partner agency, Lead Healthstaff shared insight into healthcare industry trends, exclusive agency details, common traveler questions, and more. Check out what Marketing and Media Manager, Ariel Mangum, had to share.
Like Marketplace, Lead Healthstaff has a mission to provide the “highest quality nursing and allied professionals to healthcare facilities,” and the way they accomplish this goal is through advanced technology and genuine human-to-human contact.
With an experienced team of senior leaders and travel partners, the Lead Healthstaff team uses their wealth of knowledge to help both healthcare facilities and healthcare workers, which makes them the perfect fit as a Marketplace partner.
Megan Bebout: Why should travelers choose to travel with Lead Healthstaff?
Ariel Mangum: We're doing things differently. We're small and we think that's to our advantage because it really allows us (not forces us) to maintain genuine human interaction. Our recruiters are not just good at their jobs but they're good people. They value nurses for their skills and they value the person behind the scrubs. Our goal is to give more than we take in our relationships and encourage gratitude and empathy always.
MB: Tell us about your traveler benefits.
AM: Our benefits include weekly pay, 401K, Medical/dental/vision benefits, travel allowance, license and certification reimbursement, loyalty bonuses, referral bonuses, housing discounts through a partnership with Landing, career mapping, and a truly kick-a** group of people that will be in your corner.
MB: What trends are you seeing in the healthcare staffing industry?
AM: The obvious ones are the pandemic pay rates and insane staffing shortages. Another trend is technology, which is becoming a bigger part of the clinician experience. Tech will continue to grow in our space with more Health Tech companies getting into the game every day, more platforms being built, and more apps available on smartphones. Video is growing too, not just for content but incorporating it into the hiring process as well. Lastly, and most importantly, transparency is becoming the standard.
MB: How do you think the industry will evolve in the next five years?
AM: The role of the recruiter will evolve to where they can be more focused on the relationship than the manual part of the job search, profile building process. Automation is key to this. It sounds backward, that adding tech will make it more human, but rather it'll give us time to add the human touch back in a genuine way.
MB: Where across the U.S. are you seeing strong demand for healthcare workers?
AM: California, Idaho, and New York to name a few.
MB: What types are you seeing a high demand for?
AM: Registered nurses (RNs)—ICU, tele, ER, and L&D are the most in-demand right now.
MB: What advice would you give to first-time healthcare travelers?
AM: Figure out why you are traveling to start. Is it an adventure, is it experience, is it autonomy, is it money? Money is a huge draw right now, but first-time travelers are so uneducated when it comes to what they are signing up for and the expectations of a travel nurse. I'd also say flexibility is arguably the most important factor of a long-term successful travel career. Being able to bend at the beginning sets you up to really negotiate later and truly gain the flexible lifestyle they want in a lasting way.
MB: Why is transparency so important in this industry?
AM: Our world is more and more transparent now thanks to the internet and social media. I think transparency is positively impacting our industry and it builds trust and credibility a lot faster. Companies are stuck in the past, but with information there is power and the trend for transparency is helping nurses achieve that. It's taken a little longer for the "conscientious consumer" trend to reach and adapt to our field but it's here and we're all for it. If you are transparent with your clinicians or clients, the game will change drastically.
MB: Why do you think a traveler-driven Marketplace is beneficial for the healthcare staffing industry?
AM: Competition, transparency, speed to market, speed to submission. The efficiency of the process. They provide value to both the clinician and the agency. Also, they give time and power back to the nurses, which is where it should be.
MB: Would you recommend a Marketplace partnership to other agencies?
AM: If they are being run by exceptional humans with good intent and values, YES. We've been lucky in finding partners who align with our values. It may seem like jumping from one pond to another, and it may seem ineffective as it grows, but that's when an agency looks at it from an agency point of view. We like to look at it from the nursing point of view, we hope that, to them, they see our partnership and choice to be included in a marketplace in an effort to make things better and easier on them as indicative of the type of company and team that we are. If it's best for them, that's best for us.
The healthcare staffing industry continues to change and grow, so it’s crucial your agency keeps up with the evolving trends of the market. Join a traveler-driven Marketplace and put your company in front of thousands of highly qualified healthcare professionals.