Medical Staffing & Health Care Recruiting Network: Health Career Agents

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How are Independent Agents different from other healthcare recruiters?

In four primary ways: our "Agent" approach, our use of advanced technology, our emphasis on marketing, and collaboration with other Agents and independently owned offices through Shared Placements.

As the title indicates, they take an "Agent" approach to healthcare recruiting and medical staffing by first identifying candidates interested in changing positions, and then locating employers in need of practitioners with those skills.

We provide a host of software and technology tools that play a big role in making this happen. These unique products allow Agents to efficiently locate and market to candidates and employers. Our "virtual office" business model is also made possible by the advanced technology we provide.

In addition, Agents use our software to share candidates, employers, and fees with others in the Health Career Agents network. Such collaboration provides a way for every member to generate greater revenue by sharing attractive recruiting fees and staffing revenues. Income they otherwise would not have realized.

All of this is a vast improvement over the disconnected and isolated manner in which old-fashioned recruiters still operate.

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Exactly what does an Independent Agent do?

You own and operate your own healthcare recruiting and medical staffing business, locating and placing medical professionals for either a substantial recruiting fee or a portion of the profit of an ongoing staffing contract.

For example, you might identify a qualified pharmacist, then locate a hospital that needs a practitioner with similar credentials, sign an agreement, introduce one to the other, and you are rewarded when the pharmacist accepts the position. If the employee's first-year income is $120,000, your fee could be in the $30,000 to $36,000 range.

In staffing you may have a nurse that you are paying $40 per hour and collecting $55 per hour from the facility. Once you pay taxes, withholdings, and expenses, you’re left with recurring hourly profits that last as long as the assignment. You can even use Health Career Agents for payroll funding.

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Can I build a sales team?

After working as an “Agent” for one year you can pay to receive help in building a remotely based sales team. After a year of operating that way you can acquire assistance in growing into a brick and mortar business and developing managers. Each “upgrade” is an additional $20,000.

The idea is to start you out as an “Agent” and let you learn the business over the course of the first year. Then you have the “option” of purchasing the right to bring on a sales team, with our help, at that point. Then after another year of working with your sales team you then have the option of buying our advice, guidance and counsel on moving into office space and growing your business with managers, assistants and the necessary equipment.

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Do I need to lease office space?

Not in your first year. You'll be able to conduct your business anywhere you choose -- in your spare bedroom, in a cottage on the beach, in a cabin on a mountaintop, or anywhere else you prefer. With today's connectivity and mobility, you might find yourself working at multiple locations on the same day – but only if you decide to! You will be that flexible.

If you opt to expand with a sales team and grow into a “brick and mortar” model eventually, then of course you will need an office at that point. However, part of our assistance, should you choose that route, is advice and guidance on location, negotiations, office set up, hiring and much more.

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What type of training do I receive?

Health Career Agents training allows entrepreneurs to start their healthcare recruiting and medical staffing business and build it as large as they want. Agents make an investment of $29,900 for the in-depth training, software, and support they need to establish and operate their healthcare recruiting and medical staffing practice.

When a new Agent signs up, they are assigned a training coordinator who works out a training schedule and provides them with an orientation of our training and support portal. A member of our training staff shows them where everything is and how to navigate the portal with its more than 100 hours of recorded curriculum.

"Remote" training includes web-conference training sessions, web tutorials, manual study, conference calls, test exercises and more. It is done at your own pace but can span the first thirty days or more. If necessary, we customize the training to fit a new Agent's schedule. This is especially important if you start out part-time.

Our 90-Day Start-Up Plan includes a comprehensive blue-print of what to do every week, and every day, to get up to speed and operating quickly. If an Agent chooses to start out part-time, the training schedule is simply spread over a longer time period.

Agents can also attend "on-site" training for two days to really jump start their business. As well, anytime after your first 60 days of operations, you can also schedule advanced "hands-on" training at our Training and Support Offices, working right next to the experienced recruiters on our staff.

When you become an Independent Agent, you receive lifetime support from the same Health Career Agents experts and staff who trained you, as well as unlimited lifetime use of our training website and Global Database to help you operate your business. Naturally, our training staff is always available to help with any questions that may arise.

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How will I grow my healthcare recruiting company?

You will grow your business using research, marketing and recruiting. It's a balanced mix of research and marketing technology for both personable and consultative sales efforts. In your first year you’ll learn the whole operation, performing all the recruiting and research functions.

After your first year you have the option of paying $20,000 and upgrading for access to Sales Consultants we recruit and train for you, along with a Researcher who can compile contact information on healthcare candidates and employers.

At some point you may also want to expand into a physical office and build a team of recruiters, managers and “admins”. After at least two years of operations, Health Career Agents has a program to assist you with every aspect of doing that.

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Why can’t I bring on Sales Consultants right away?

In starting a new business, there’s nothing wrong with a sure thing. We’ve learned a fair amount about helping entrepreneurs reach their income goals in healthcare recruiting and staffing. We have offices working solo that are doing extremely well. Doing the work yourself for a while and learning every aspect of the operation, and then building a sales team methodically with our help, based on what we know today, we believe gives you the best odds of success.

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Is this business a franchise?

No. You will operate your healthcare recruiting and staffing company as a corporation under whatever business name you specify. There are no franchise fees or royalties to pay and you're not required to buy any additional materials from us beyond your initial investment of $29,900 to cover your software, training and support.

Our only additional compensation is 10% of all Shared Placement fees, to be paid to Health Career Agents when you successfully collaborate on placements with other offices.

Of course, if you elect to expand your operation with Sales Consultants in the future we are paid an additional $20,000. Also, another $20,000 is paid to Health Career Agents if you decide to move into a conventional office environment and grow with sales talent, managers and admins one year after that.

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Is financing available for the initial investment of $29,900?

Our CFO and President have worked with many of our office owners in acquiring funding for their business. If you qualify as an Independent Agent they will be glad to assist you in any way possible to locate sources for you to acquire the necessary funds.

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Couldn't I just learn the business on my own?

Given enough time, you probably could. But time is money, and if Health Career Agents can help you make only one or two more placements in just your first year, the fee is covered. Actually, some of our members have made the investment after operating their own recruiting companies because, as they've told us, they saw an opportunity to achieve much more than they could on their own. Plus, they don't want to be limited by what they can earn on their own and eventually want a sales team. Affiliation with Health Career Agents allows them all of that and more.

Our Independent Agents don't want to start from scratch. Rather than learn the intricacies of healthcare recruiting and staffing through trial and error, they prefer to "jump start" their businesses, avoid mistakes, and maximize revenue during their first year and beyond. As an Agent, the training and support you receive allows you to reduce the learning curve.

Many feel that "going it alone" is not such a good idea in healthcare recruiting and medical staffing today. Our online network gives Agents an edge because the speed, accuracy, and efficiencies of our technology -- coupled with our unique business model -- are impossible to match. We haven’t seen anything that compares.

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If I pay no royalties or franchise fees, how does Health Career Agents make money?

While we don't lose money on training new Agents, our ongoing revenue relies on Shared Placements between Independent Agents and other members of our network. One provides the job opening, the other supplies the qualified candidate – each receives 45% of the placement fee and Health Career Agents receives the remaining 10%.

As an example, on a Shared Placement that earns a $24,000 total fee, you and the other Agent involved would each receive $10,800, while we receive $2,400 (10%). The more successful Independent Agents are at making Shared Placements, the more Health Career Agents profits.

When a job order is posted through our Global Database, all Agents around the nation are able to view it and present their candidates – and all candidates can be matched with the positions posted by others.

Traditional recruiters and staffing companies haven't cultivated this approach because they fear sharing job orders and candidates with others – and their fear is justified. They're usually dealing with strangers, while our Agents have reasons to trust each other because they are connected by the same training, the same software, the same Code of Ethics, the same agreements, and the same goal -- a higher level of success through cooperation and mutual support.

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Why should I do Shared Placements and split the fee? Why wouldn't I just do it all myself, and keep all the money?

In some situations, you will want to do everything -- marketing your candidates to employers and keeping the entire recruiting fee. The decision is always yours. However, if you limit yourself to placing your own candidates, you'll be leaving money on the table.

There will be candidates and/or job orders hidden in your database on which you could make money with if another Agent only knew about them. Half a fee is always better than none.

With our software, you are able to choose which companies and which candidates you want to keep to yourself. Perhaps you have a hot candidate in the healthcare sector you specialize in. When you secure a job order or candidate outside your specialty, or when you are just too busy to do it all, you can securely place the information in our Global Database with one click and put other members to work for you. Most of our Independent Agents make all their candidates and job openings available for Shared Placements. After all, you can always say "no" to a Shared Placement – and the shared fee.

Fees can be so substantial that an Agent may choose to focus on one side of the Shared Placement equation, or another. They can specialize in securing job orders or providing candidates. Do it all, or do either half. It's your company, your choice.

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How do Independent Agents find healthcare candidates to place in new positions?

The shortages of healthcare professionals in many specialties are severe. According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, the healthcare industry is experiencing a shortfall of more than 120,000 nurses, 10,000 pharmacists, 15,000 lab technicians, 13,000 diagnostic imaging technologists, and thousands of physicians. Month by month, year by year, these numbers will increase due to the aging baby-boomer population.

Many healthcare professionals are working extra hours, and though they are experts in their fields, they're amateurs in the job-search process. If they've been in one position for an extended period, they’re likely to be underpaid. They're seldom aware of all that's available to them and, because the ocean of opportunity is so intimidating, there's a strong need for Independent Agents to step in, inform the job candidates, screen the opportunities, and negotiate on their behalf.

Independent Agents use powerful research tools to locate qualified healthcare professionals. Our advanced online research techniques scour healthcare databases, alumni lists, organizations, news groups, and more. For instance, we have amazing phone number “look up” software that finds home phone numbers for practitioners in seconds. After gathering candidate contact information, the Agent and/or their Consultants canvass the candidates by email and phone to determine their initial interest. This is the key -- there's no substitute for picking up the phone and asking a candidate if they are interested in considering a new position.

The best compensation and the most attractive position -- its work culture, advancement opportunities, schedule, and such -- must be researched, qualified, and negotiated. Nobody does it better than Health Career Agents and our Independent Agents.

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Explain the "Agent" approach to filling healthcare positions?

Traditional recruiters often push jobs onto healthcare candidates, trying to force round pegs into square holes. We don't. Independent Agents take the time to find out what motivates the candidate -- better hours, a different location, more challenging opportunities, etc. – and then they pinpoint one or more positions that match what the candidate prefers.

It is emphatically a candidate-driven market. There is so much need and so many open positions, healthcare professionals are in charge, and quite frankly they know it. Like movie stars and professional athletes, medical professionals can benefit from having an Agent representing them to seek out and investigate opportunities and negotiate job offers on their behalf. That's what we do.

During the IT boom of the 1990s, smart recruiters found that they made more placements when they marketed candidates instead of trying to fill positions. While there are many similarities between today's healthcare industry and the IT boom, there's one very big difference: Baby-Boomers are just the first wave of an aging American population that will place increasing pressure on understaffed healthcare resources for decades to come. And the need for the services that our Independent Agents have to offer will only grow with healthcare reform.

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How does Health Career Agents apply technology to recruiting?

It's a big, complicated recruiting world out there, and we know how to navigate and harness it. Using the most advanced research software available, our Agents are able to locate candidate and employer contact information in volume – then make the resultant mass of information manageable and usable.

Our research software can scan websites and databases in seconds, extracting thousands of contacts. Our email tracking applications tell us who is interested in our services, while our web-content generation software publishes keyword specific healthcare content to your website. Our recruiting management software handles all of your communications with candidates and employers, while our Global Database pulls it all together, making Shared Placements almost effortless.

All of our software is provided to new Agents and is included in your fee.

The technology is so powerful and impressive; we suggest that every prospective Agent participate in a Sample Training Session with one of our trainers as part of the Evaluation Process before they get involved.

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Do I need a website?

Yes, so we create one for you -- a dynamic yet easy-to-navigate website that tells candidates, medical facilities, and healthcare systems in your specialty that you are established and credible. More than just an online brochure, your website will link to the recruiting software in your computer and allow companies and candidates to do some amazing things.

Candidates will be able to submit their resumes through your site, and automatically be captured without requiring manual data entry. When you enter a job order into your software, it will be automatically displayed on your website so that potential candidates can view it, and if interested, contact you. In fact, you can have jobs from the Global Database displayed on your website and if a candidate applies and it turns into a Shared Placement, 45% of the fee is yours. You'll have complete control of your website and be able to make edits and changes easily on your own too.

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What expenses will I have when I launch my business?

The initial investment to become an “Independent Agent” is $29,900. As an Independent Agent, you receive research, marketing and candidate management software, as well as training in the healthcare specialty you choose, and the ability to do Shared Placements with our existing offices and members.

Other expenses include your ongoing living expenses, and the purchase of any home office equipment you don't already own, including a recent PC or laptop.

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How do I pay the $29,900 fee?

Should you decide, after going through the Evaluation Process, to get involved that is up to you. We can, however, help you identify funding options available to you to cover the initial investment. Depending on your situation, they can range from tapping resources you may already have, to raising capital externally.

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What does an “Agent” need that the fee does not cover?

If you start full-time, you will need to cover your living expenses until you start generating revenue. Some Agents will keep their day job to cover their living expenses while starting their recruiting and staffing business part-time, then phase into the business full-time over a 3-6 month period.

The Independent Agent will have home-office set-up costs (if they don’t have one) and travel expenses -- airfare and hotel -- to attend on-site training. Beyond that, day-to-day expenses are minimal.

The equipment that an Agent needs is very basic: a telephone with headset, a recent workstation or laptop with high-speed Internet connection, fax machine (or web alternative) and cell phone. For correspondence and follow-up, you'll also need letterhead, business cards, and brochures.

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Do I need to have recruiting, human resources, or medical experience to become an Agent?

Absolutely not. You do, however, need solid business experience, sales or management ability, a burning desire to succeed, and a willingness to follow the Health Career Agents system. We’ve found that our most successful Independent Agents have had various business experiences that they can readily apply to healthcare recruiting and medical staffing.

Bottom line: demand is so high in the healthcare field that if you and your team just execute the fundamentals, you can be successful. Our special training and materials will get you up to speed quickly and provide you with everything you need to do.

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How can you teach me everything I need to know in 30 days of remote training and two days on location?

Our goal is really to get you off to a good start within a few weeks and make you "operational" within the first few months. Expertise will come later. The initial training is designed to get you up and running, fast. Our focus is to guide you on the path to making money ASAP.

Most of us learn best by doing, and as you refine your knowledge of healthcare recruiting and medical staffing during the first year, you'll be able to benefit from supplemental training on-site, like coming to our Training and Support Offices for a week and working side-by-side with our experienced recruiters. Over time, you will recognize how crucial our comprehensive materials, manuals, software, portal, and ongoing support will be to your success.

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How does “Accelerated Start-Up” work?

If it is crucial to your plan to generate revenue as fast as possible, you can participate in Accelerated Start-Up. In doing so, you will defer some of your initial start-up and instead be assigned to work with existing members in marketing their candidates or filling their openings. Because you are starting at the half way point and focusing on one part of the process you are able to generate revenue much faster. The downside is that you are putting off some of the initial start-up activity. Participating in Accelerated Start-Up is strictly voluntary.

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How does the "Mentor" program work?

The Mentor Program is different from Accelerated Start-Up. New Agents are assigned to a Mentor once they complete some basic portions of initial training. Your Mentor is a successful Agent, committed to helping you to achieve your goals. You will need to participate in regular conference calls with your Mentor and will need to report the outcome of your daily and weekly activities. This will really help you stay on course toward reaching your income goals.

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What does the future hold for Independent Agents affiliated with Health Career Agents?

Statistics and demographic studies document growing shortages of qualified healthcare employees over the next decade. Seven of the twenty fastest growing jobs are in healthcare according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. The BLS also says that healthcare will generate 3 million new jobs in the next 8 years, outpacing every other industry by far.

Even with massive layoffs during our economic crisis, healthcare is hiring. Plus with 76 million Baby Boomers now reaching retirement age, even more pressure will be put on an already under-staffed healthcare system. Increased healthcare demand will collide with decreased supply, making it harder than ever for employers to find and hire the talent they need. Our Agents are more than qualified to address these shortages solutions that can ensure their prosperity for years to come.

Health Career Agents, Inc. is the only company in the world with a healthcare recruiting and medical staffing model focused on an “Agent” approach. There is also no other entity on the entire healthcare recruiting and/or medical staffing landscape whose advanced use of technology is comparable to ours.

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Can I operate this business part-time?

Definitely. You can add significant revenue to your personal income and launch your recruiting and staffing business too, before leaving the security of your full-time job. However, sacrifice and determination are required.

In evenings and on weekends, when individual professionals are most reachable, many new Agents focus on locating healthcare candidates, while all but ignoring job orders from employers. This allows them to do Shared Placements and be in a position to generate revenue before going full-time.

Once a candidate makes his or her employment objectives clear, it's time to find an employer who is in need of a practitioner with that candidate’s skills. Because most employer contacts are made during business hours, you can take a Shared Placement approach and allow other Independent Agents to make those phone calls. But of course, if your time is flexible during weekday business hours, you may choose to make these employer contacts yourself. After an interested employer is found, agreements are signed and interviews take place; then, if your candidate is hired, you will receive an attractive placement fee. Whenever the timing seems right, you can go full-time.

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How will I identify hospitals and other medical facilities that are in need of employees?

They're everywhere. They may carry the name of a company, a hospital, an institution, or a clinic. They provide the opportunities that healthcare candidates find attractive. You may discover that many of the facilities where you place candidates do not have active postings, but rather make room for your candidate once you present them. The demand in healthcare is that high.

Our Independent Agents can identify these opportunities by using research tools and software that we supply. When combined with our "Agent" approach to representing candidates, the process identifies the healthcare facilities where medical and healthcare professionals prefer to work.

When it comes to staffing services, you will find that many healthcare employers either prefer or have to hire temporary employees, instead of permanent.

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Is there much selling involved?

Our Independent Agents take a consultative approach to recruiting and staffing. In effect, you will advise healthcare professionals as to what positions are available to them and place all their options before them. We believe it would be counter-productive to try and "sell" individuals on the idea of thoughtlessly quitting one job to take another. The candidate must want to explore a new career opportunity and, when that's the case, you are the conduit through which it can happen, providing the services of an Agent at no cost to the candidate.

In fact, a "hard-sell" approach usually has a negative effect when dealing with healthcare practitioners. They tend to be thoughtful and caring individuals who are repelled by any type of selling pressure. Employment facts and career-advancement information are far more attractive to such candidates.

Online marketing and email marketing work to drive traffic to our website and create inbound candidate activity.

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Can you explain medical staffing?

Let's say that a facility has a need for ten nurses. It may be due to fluctuations in need, budget, or simply availability, but the facility wants to use temporary employees. They pay a staffing company a premium hourly fee to provide them with nurses on a contract basis. The staffing company employs the ten nurses and pays them more than they would make in regular positions, but less than the facility is paying the staffing company. The difference is called the "gross margin". The staffing company has to pay taxes, withholding, social security, malpractice insurance, etc. which is referred to as the "burden." What’s left over is the "net profit."

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Can you give me an example of a medical staffing project?

Ten nurses are paid $40 per hour and the facility pays the staffing company $60 per hour. The difference, remember, is the gross margin. But the staffing company has the "burden" of tax, withholding, insurance, and once that and the "cost of money" is deducted, the balance represents the net profit.

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What if I don’t have money to fund payroll for staffing?

Most don't. It can require $300,000 - $400,000 or more to start a small local medical staffing company. The reason being that "the float" or the payroll you have out while you wait to get paid by a facility can be high. If you have ten nurses working full-time at $40 per hour, you are paying $16,000 per week to those nurses ($40 x 10 x 40 hours).

It may take 4-6 weeks, or longer, before the facility pays you for the first week. Meaning you would have $64,000 to $96,000 out before getting paid for the first week of payroll you funded. Health Career Agents can help you solve this problem by handing your payroll funding. Meaning, we will pay your nurses, take care of taxes, etc. and share a portion of the profit with you.

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How much can I realistically earn in healthcare recruiting and staffing?

Your earnings depend on many factors we can't control – how hard you're willing to work, your communication skills, your aggressiveness and motivation, whether you start full or part-time, and how well you follow our system. Health Career Agents does not make income claims or guarantees. We will provide you with the training, technology, national network, and support we commit to. Your level of earnings is difficult to quantify, but we believe the potential is high.

Consider this: according to a Fordyce Letter survey, healthcare recruiters (industry wide) averaged more than $217,000 a year in revenue. We firmly believe that our Agents are better trained and networked, and use far more advanced technology than the average healthcare recruiter.

Typical recruiting fees in the industry are equal to 20% to 30% of the candidate's first-year salary, the placement of one diagnostic imaging technician might prompt an $18,000 fee and a single pharmacist placement could bring in $30,000. At that rate, how long will it take you to reach your goals?

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Are there protected territories? Do I need to be located in a large metropolitan area?

There are no territorial restrictions whatsoever. You may contact healthcare candidates anywhere in the United States -- anywhere in the world, for that matter. You could just as successfully operate your healthcare recruiting company on a mountaintop as in a major city. Normally, neither the candidate nor the employer cares where you’re located. It just isn’t relevant to them.

That's one of the great benefits of our business: the absence of geographic limitations or restrictions. You can operate your business anywhere, and move it anywhere else you may choose, without missing a beat or losing touch with a single candidate or employer.

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Why does Health Career Agents require that I pay a fee at all?

The initial investment of $29,900 that a new Independent Agent pays goes to cover our costs in providing you with all the software and technology resources required for research, marketing and candidate management, as well as remote, on-site and ongoing training in the healthcare specialty you choose, access to staffing support, payroll funding and the ability to do Shared Placements with our existing network.

When you consider this opportunity's income potential, we believe the fee is small when compared to the value of our program and what it could allow you to earn year in, year out. A few placements can more than cover the fee.

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What is the "Evaluation Process"?

It's a basic screening and due diligence process that we require every Independent Agent go through. First, you must complete a Qualification Summary telling us more about yourself, your background and skills. Next, to help you better understand this opportunity we ask that you read our 39 page “Business Plan” on recruiting Nurse Practitioners and staffing Physical Therapists.
We also request that you sit in on a live web-conference Sample Training Session to learn how our various software tools work.

Finally, we require that every prospective Agent speak with, and be recommended by, at least three members of our network serving on our Evaluation Board.

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What is the cost of training for a second person?

A new Agent may bring one guest -- either a business associate or spouse -- through training at no additional charge. Any travel expenses for attending onsite training events are not covered. However, they must sign a “partner” agreement with Health Career Agents in order to protect our intellectual property.

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I'm interested. Where do I go from here?

First, carefully review all the information that's available to you in print and online. Then complete the Agent Qualification Summary online by taking the next step, below.

Once your completed Qualification Summary is received, we will schedule a confidential telephone interview to answer any initial questions you may have and to learn more about your background and experience. We will also go over the Evaluation Process that we ask prospective Agents to go through, including: your review of our Sample Business Plan, your participation in an online demonstration of our software, and your interviews with members of our network serving on our Evaluation Board.