In this episode of Elevate Care, host Kerry Perez dives into the evolving landscape of healthcare recruitment with JB Tanner, Vice President of RPO at AMN Healthcare. Together, they explore the challenges healthcare organizations face in hiring, the benefits of Recruitment Process Outsourcing (RPO), and actionable strategies to modernize hiring practices. JB shares insights from his 20+ years of experience, including real-world success stories and practical advice for healthcare leaders navigating today’s hiring complexities.
In this episode of Elevate Care, host Kerry Perez dives into the evolving landscape of healthcare recruitment with JB Tanner, Vice President of RPO at AMN Healthcare. Together, they explore the challenges healthcare organizations face in hiring, the benefits of Recruitment Process Outsourcing (RPO), and actionable strategies to modernize hiring practices. JB shares insights from his 20+ years of experience, including real-world success stories and practical advice for healthcare leaders navigating today’s hiring complexities.
Learn more about RPO - Streamlining Healthcare Talent Management
Chapters:
[00:00:33] Welcome & Introduction
[00:34:92] Current Challenges in Healthcare Recruitment
[01:53:52] Post-Pandemic Hiring Realities
[03:01:18] What is Recruitment Process Outsourcing (RPO)?
[05:01:12] Episodic vs. Full-Time RPO Solutions
[06:37:54] Real-Life RPO Success Stories
[07:47:12] Modernizing Healthcare Hiring
[09:25:43] RPO as a Consultative Partner
[10:47:76] When to Engage an RPO Partner
[12:26:54] Beyond Clinical Roles: Full-Service Recruitment
[13:45:25] Why Invest in RPO During Economic Uncertainty
AMN Healthcare Podcasts (00:00.33)
Welcome to Elevate Care. I'm your host, Kerry Perez, and today we are talking rethinking recruitment, a modern approach to healthcare hiring. I'm really excited to have our guest here today. It's JB Tanner, Vice President of RPO at AMN Healthcare. JB, welcome to the show. Awesome. Before we get into it, maybe a little bit of an intro on who you are.
Thanks for having me.
AMN Healthcare Podcasts (00:21.432)
Great, I actually started with AMN. I celebrated my 20 year anniversary last month. as a frontline recruiter in our physician business and about five years ago transitioned over to RPO.
Congratulations.
AMN Healthcare Podcasts (00:34.922)
Excellent. Let's first start with setting the stage of what is going on right now in the landscape. What are some of the challenges that healthcare organizations are facing from a recruitment lens?
Well, I'm going to spend most of my time talking about permanent recruiting and I lead the RPO division. So I'll talk about what we're doing with RPO and permanent recruiting. So really the hot topics right now are around the hard to fill roles. So what is hard to fill? Radiation technologists, lab technologists, OR technologists, and then up into nurse managers. Some of those probably non-traditional, not as high volume.
roles are really tough for healthcare organizations to fill right now. Now the problem with that when they're not able to fill those roles is it extends the time to fill, increase the cost, both the cost of acquiring that new talent, but also the cost of not having them. And then it creates these gaps in clinical care that directly impact the patient.
So why in particular are these specialties and disciplines harder now than maybe before?
You know, I think I hate the word post pandemic, but so much of it is post pandemic. So this is my personal.
AMN Healthcare Podcasts (01:53.526)
everything is post pandemic.
Well, yeah, that's life now. So it turns out that in a lot of these used to it was a training situation. We couldn't bring enough nurses in enough doctors and actually fill the need as the population aged out. There's probably a little bit of that. But in the post pandemic world, there became so many opportunities to work remotely and earn a good income without actually having to go in and get certified and then be in a
healthcare setting, work nights and things like that. So I think some of these more entry level frontline roles just became more difficult. And then supply and demand, it becomes more expensive to acquire that talent and they tend to then step into becoming an MA or becoming a nurse. So there's always churn within those roles.
RPO, you talked about it in the perm space, maybe a little bit more definition around like what is recruitment process outsourcing? How does it sort of work? And maybe it's relevant healthcare.
Yeah, absolutely. Well, you said what it is. we're focused on per recruitment process. Outsourcing is exactly that. An emphasis on process. So.
AMN Healthcare Podcasts (03:01.186)
Podcast is over. We're done.
AMN Healthcare Podcasts (03:10.982)
In an RPO, AMN Healthcare will come in and actually, our recruiters will actually step into and embed themselves with your internal recruiting team. So, two candidates, there won't be a lot of confusion because they'll be using the organization's email address, they'll be using the organization's resources, and really RPO augments the internal recruiting function. So, we're talking about some of these hard
to fill roles. Right now, entire departments may be filled with temporary staff. Well, we need to build some core staff within these departments. so RPO can be used to target these high volume, high need roles. Another way that RPOs used in the industry commonly is to help staff new builds. hey, we're opening a new tower. We're not going to hire up a lot of internal TA staff.
to find everyone that's going to work in that tower, but we're going to pull in an RPO partner who can help augment and build that internal resource to fill the need.
So is the idea that it is episodic and product project based or more that this can be a full time solution?
Yeah, it's a little bit of both. So it depends on the size of the healthcare organization. So a very large national healthcare organization might keep an RPO kind of on retainer or add arms length for, so they can expand their internal TA with an organization that already is familiar with their roles, with their compensation, their procedures. For a smaller organization, it may be a little bit more episodic where
AMN Healthcare Podcasts (05:01.12)
opening a new hospital and we need to bring in a partner who can help. The good thing is as they expand, as they acquire new facilities, they can bring RPO in to help standardize those hiring practices and the processes. So we get it ready a lot of times so internal TA can step in to an optimized recruiting.
Oh, that's great. Just already walking into something already set up for you. That's a nice thing. So you started alluding to some of the benefits, know, around costs, around the processes, you know, kind of solution on, not on demand, but kind of at the ready to serve. Do you have any other real life examples of, you know, a successful RPO engagement?
Yeah, well, I've got a lot, but one that comes to mind, it was kind of a short story, but it was a large health system in the Midwest that we supported who was seeing, specifically they were seeing their time to fill. So the time it actually took from when a requisition was opened to when someone walked in the door, might not sound like a long time of 60 days, but that was 60 days on average. So there were many that were more that it was taking to fill a role. We were able to partner with the organization
and start with really evaluating their process. How can we cut down some of these time wasters in the process, tighten that up a lot, also bring in new sourcing tools and help them, ultimately we help them drive down their time to fill in just a few months to under 30 days.
impressive.
AMN Healthcare Podcasts (06:37.546)
And coming from the physician world where it takes a little bit longer, it's surprising to see in that allied and nursing function where you can fill a role, actually have them start in 30 days or less.
Yeah, to even diagnose where some of those bottlenecks are in 30 days is impressive, let alone actually see some improvement. Yeah, that's great. Okay, so, you know, the topic we're talking about is a modern approach to healthcare hiring. You started maybe mentioning some new tools, things like that, but what does it look like and what are some of the steps that healthcare leaders can take to modernize?
Yeah, it starts with data. that's one thing that we bring to the table, an RPO will bring to the table that an internal talent acquisition function may not have. Sometimes they actually have an applicant tracking system that has the ability to generate regular reports, customize reports, but oftentimes they don't have the support to customize the report. So they're stuck with whatever was built during implementation. And that's what we do. So the main thing that we're bringing for data
we double chart so we keep track of everything that's happening.
That was double chart, not double charge.
AMN Healthcare Podcasts (07:47.126)
It was, yeah, double chart. So we double chart. We keep track of the information real time as we're working within the client systems so that we can generate custom reports in real time. And you alluded to this, but where are the bottlenecks? That's the main thing to speed up recruiting. So what's going on in a specific department?
and how can we speed that up or how can we introduce new processes kind of to work around the bottleneck. So it's data.
And are there common culprits you often see or is everything kind of unique?
Everything's unique, but there's common culprits. So we look, we'll focus in on the time to metrics a lot of times. The ratios are valuable too, but a lot of times that's in looking back at a year's worth of data. So time to, one thing that I would suggest is don't just look at your time to fill, but go a little bit deeper. Look at the time it takes for a recruiter to make first contact with a candidate after they've made the application. Look at the time between
Okay, identifying this is a good candidate, and when the interview actually occurs, or after the interview, how long is it taking to get the offer? Those are the bottlenecks that happen that oftentimes we're not noticing because of PTO, or in the case where a nurse manager's actually having to work the floor, and so two or three days go by, maybe a whole shift goes by, and we haven't followed up with that candidate. And that's where we can step in and help tighten up that process a lot.
AMN Healthcare Podcasts (09:25.43)
You know, I guess I should have known by the name, but I didn't realize how consultative it was, know, as opposed to, we're going to go out and recruit on your behalf and here's your candidates. No, it is a very integrated sort of engagement. Yeah.
Yeah, absolutely. There's a lot of work that goes into implementing an RPO. And in a lot of it, we've actually got a process architect who will map out the current process and will be able to identify those issues within the process that we're looking to tighten up.
Excellent. So speaking of integrated, how does an RPO sort of work alongside existing internal teams?
It's a good point because I think sometimes there's a fear that an RPO is going to replace the internal team. Now in very limited cases there could be, you know, the need to outsource a talent acquisition function. So say a non-hospital healthcare organization who's got a very aggressive national plan to expand, they may need an outsource function and that's fine, we can fill that need. But most of the time within healthcare,
organizations, it's like I said, to augment their existing staff. So our recruiters to the candidate and oftentimes to the hiring manager themselves.
AMN Healthcare Podcasts (10:47.756)
They don't know the difference between an internal team member who actually is employed by the organization or an RPO recruiter. We follow the same processes. We work towards the same goals. We embed ourselves in the culture and really try to promote and extend that internal team rather than replacing them.
So thinking about when is the right time to pull in an RPO partner? it, after you've evaluated, haven't been able to get people in, now let's call out. Is it something people can work with you a little bit in advance? Tell me a little bit more about that.
Well, I think it's a good point. We've talked a lot about RPO, but back to what I said at the beginning, we really are focused on permanent recruitment. So what I would say is anything that a healthcare system uses kind of under that executive or physician level, so nursing manager, all the way down into those frontline rev cycle roles or even
somebody that works in the gift shop or plumber, we focus on anything and everything that works within a healthcare system. And it doesn't always have to be high volume. So.
early. If you need help with a role, it's hard to fill. You know you've got some projects coming down the line. You can still engage us on more of a direct higher level or even a source and screen level where we can come in, customize a solution that fits your need and we can build a relationship that maybe someday turns into an RPO.
AMN Healthcare Podcasts (12:26.542)
full service. I like that. I didn't recognize that we were doing some non-clinical too.
Yeah, absolutely. That's part of RPO and it's little.
So, JB, know cost is on everybody's mind. That might include also hiring. Why should healthcare systems still be thinking about hiring or engaging with RPO in this current environment? That's a little bit maybe uncertain from an economic standpoint.
It's a good point. Cost is not always under the control of talent acquisition or even HR leadership. Sometimes they're told what and when they can spend. And certainly right now there's some concerns around cost and managing costs within healthcare. As hiring slows down, and it's an artificial slowdown of hiring, it's going to create pinup demand.
And rather than wait until the organization says, okay, we're good, we're ready to hire, why not reach out to a partner and begin to vet them? Who's gonna be the right fit for you to help augment your talent acquisition when that increased demand comes? Rather than being very reactive and responding and trying to find the best partner after your team's already overwhelmed.
AMN Healthcare Podcasts (13:45.25)
JB, thank you so much for being on Elevate Care. Great, thank you. Awesome. Thanks everybody for joining us and we'll see you next time. Thank you for joining us today on Elevate Care. If you found this episode valuable, please consider sharing it with a colleague and subscribing to our show on your favorite podcast platform. You can learn more about this episode and our show on our website at amnhelfcare.com and follow us on social media to stay updated on new episodes and the ever-changing world of healthcare.