A health care recruiter is someone who looks for health-care professionals like doctors and nurses and places them in jobs that are a good fit for their skills. A hospital or health care center may hire a health care recruiter to find professionals to fill open positions, or a recruiter may work as a freelancer and accept jobs from various hospitals, health care clinics, and other facilities seeking doctors and nurses. While the recruiter does not need to be a doctor or nurse, having a background in the medical field, or at least knowledge of the field, is advantageous.
A health care recruiter who works for a specific hospital or medical facility will look for medical professionals to fill open positions at that facility. Meeting with professionals face to face to talk about the medical facility and persuade them why it would be a good fit for them; describing specific programs or processes at the hospital that will appeal to the job candidate; and ultimately persuading the medical professional to leave his or her current job to come work for the new medical facility.
A freelance health care recruiter who runs his or her own business is occasionally hired by a hospital or other medical facility. At any given time, this type of health care recruiter may work for a number of different institutions, and in some cases, all of them at the same time. Until the positions at each facility are filled, he or she will work on a subcontracting or freelance basis. If the recruiter chooses this path, he or she will be responsible for managing any employees, adhering to local, regional, or federal laws, marketing the company, keeping track of profits and losses, and all other aspects of running a small business.
The health care recruiter may be in charge of managing a staff at some larger medical facilities. At a larger facility, there may be several recruiters on staff, and depending on the department’s structure, some recruiters may be in charge of managing other recruiters. Making phone calls, writing e-mails, contacting potential job candidates, assisting that candidate in filling out the appropriate paperwork during or after the candidate has chosen to work for a particular institution, and possibly even assisting the candidate in making moving arrangements may all fall to the recruiter.