Internal Recruiters vs. Contingency Recruiters

They say only two things in life are certain: death and taxes.  Another April has come and another tax season has ended.  Now it’s time for budgets to be created and money to be allocated for the 2017 tax season.  As your practice grows, one of those budget items will be for recruiting new talent - whether that means paying for ad space to recruit more office staff and administrative personnel or hiring an internal or contingency recruiter to find mid-level providers and physicians.

Internal Recruiters

Hiring an internal recruiter makes sense when you need to onboard a high number of providers on a regular basis.  According to salary.com, the median physician recruiter salary is $72,844 per year, with the national range being $63,978 - $84,443.  Now, let’s not forget about those taxes!  A recent article by CNN Money asks, “How much does an employee really cost?”  While that depends on benefits and several layers of taxes, it typically ends up being 18% to 26% more than an employee's base salary (and even higher for large companies).  This means that if you hire a recruiter at $70,000, that employee will actually cost you closer to $88,000 per year.

Contingency Recruiters

Alternatively, opting for a contingency recruitment firm like Creative Healthcare Solutions is much more cost-effective, especially if you are hiring at a lower volume or have intermittent needs.  Our rates are far lower than the typical contingency recruiter, who charges 15-20% of an employee’s first year salary.  With the average physician annual salary at $189,000, many contingency recruiters are charging $28,000-$38,000 per placement.  Being a small, streamlined firm, Creative Healthcare Solutions is able to charge a flat placement fee of $8,500 for a full-time physician.  Again, let’s not forget taxes … but, this time, you’re using a vendor and your recruiting expenses are a deduction.  At $8,500 per full-time physician hire, it only makes sense to hire an internal recruiter if you plan to bring on more than 10 full-time physicians per year.

In conclusion, we’d like to leave you with this handy image to illustrate the internal vs. contingency recruiter decision-making process: