by Jeanmarie Traversi
Whoa, that is expensive!” This is a comment that BCMS Staffing Services hears frequently. When practice administrators compare the cost of using a staffing service versus recruiting their own employees, a few facts about hidden hiring costs usually change the “whoa” to a “wow.”
Let’s take a look at some of the facts about hiring new employees.
Consider what costs are involved, including the salary of the person doing the hiring, the time it takes to locate appropriate advertising venues, gather ad rates and sizes, then design and write the ads for various publications. Factor in the cost of the ads, then the cost to rewrite and rerun ads that didn’t pull any applicants.
Add in the cost of someone to answer incoming phone calls from an array of unscreened hopefuls, whose lack of qualifications may waste a huge amount of your staff’s time.
Once potential applicants are selected, factor in the cost of someone reviewing resumes, setting appointments, interviewing applicants, doing background checks, checking all references and administering the proper tests to applicants.
The national average for these procedures cost about $4,000 per employee hired. And even then, there are no guarantees that the new employee won’t find the job a bad fit and leave in a week or two.
What happens then? The arduous process begins all over, with the employer risking another $4,000 or so in the process. And believe me, the $4,000 is a lowball estimate.
In our research, the costs for hiring one employee varied from study to study, ranging from about $4,000 to $8,000, depending on which source we consulted. See for yourself at these web sites: http://www.mici.com/hiringcosts.html at $8417, http://www.profilesinternational.com/SYC empturnover.aspx; http://weblog.infoworld.com/openresource/archives/2006/12.
Most doctors seeking new staff on their own do not go through the proper steps of hiring. As physicians, their expertise is in medicine, not recruiting qualified new employees. Still, in not knowing which steps to take to ensure the best candidate is selected for the job, the outcome can be very costly to a practice.
One such step is conducting a thorough background check on potential employees. If a practice owner doesn’t know whom to contact or what steps to take to check out the backgrounds of potential employees, they are taking a big risk.
In a medical practice, who needs a drug addict, drunk driver, wife beater or embezzler on staff? Criminal background checks help weed out the bad seeds before they darken your practice’s doorstep.
Going through the hiring process for temporary staff is even more risky from a cost standpoint. At the same cost of hiring a full-time/permanent employee, a bad temp can wreak a lot of havoc in a short amount of time.
In short, any medical practice needs to hire qualified staff members with experience, the right qualifications for the job and a squeaky clean criminal record.
Though there are plenty of medical staffing services popping up all over town, there are several good reasons why BCMS Staffing Services makes sense for your practice.
With 25 years of service to the local medical community, BCMS Staffing Service maintains a huge database of qualified medical personnel. We know how to write ads that pull, and we spare no expense in advertising for personnel to meet the needs of our clients. In fact, our recruitment advertising budget represents our largest annual expenditure, outside of staff payroll.
Once a potential candidate is identified, we interview them carefully, then check their credentials and run criminal background checks-- not just in Bexar County but in all counties in 47 different states.
BCMS Staffing Services employs experts in interviewing techniques who are trained to get the most information from a candidate. Then we thoroughly test applicants, using state-of-the-art equipment and techniques.
And best of all, we do all this before a potential employee takes up even one moment of your practice’s precious time. By the time we send them to you, we know they are likely to be a perfect fit.
When only the best will do, BCMS Staffing Services has delivered the best for 25 years. Please feel free to call for more information at 210 301-4362.
