A PSL, or Preferred Supplier List, plays a significant role in the way many healthcare organisations recruit top healthcare professionals and curate a high-performing team.
Choosing the right agencies for your PSL isn’t just about cost—it’s about partnership, quality, and long-term success.
Being such a vital part of acquisition, knowing how to approach the selection process effectively, efficiently and in a well-informed manner is the most crucial component to achieving the best outcomes and desired end goal.
As a long-standing healthcare recruitment agency across several regions, supporting a variety of facets of the wider healthcare industry, we have uncovered some of the non-negotiables to look for in your recruitment partner.
What should you look for in your Preferred Supplier List (PSL)?
If it’s coming up to the time when you need to review your PSL, follow our guide below to make sure you source the right healthcare recruitment partner for you.
1. Experience, Knowledge & Expertise
When you are cultivating your PSL, it is imperative that you do your research on recruitment agencies to familiarise yourself with their organisation, years of experience, recruiters’ expertise, and more.
You want to ensure your recruitment partner is well-versed in the industry, knowing everything there is to know about ongoing challenges or changes, especially in healthcare, where compliance is non-negotiable.
This research will help you to ensure that the agency aligns with your organisation and meets your expectations.
2. Recruitment Capabilities
Second to knowing who you’re working with is being confident in whether your current partners are supporting your specific needs.
Every organisation will have different requirements, so having a recruitment partner that can prove they can meet your staffing needs, but also, have the results to back up the claim is a must, particularly in the current stringent staffing crisis.
Take a step back and think about the results your current agencies are delivering, is it the quality and standard you set for yourself?
You could have an extensive and wide-ranging register of suppliers, but assessing their contribution to achieving your staffing goals will help you to review the value you are getting and if it’s enough for you.
3. Effective & Reliable Recruitment
Learn more about how your chosen recruitment agencies are handling the recruitment process and make sure it’s the right fit for you.
We would suggest asking yourself two key questions:
- Have your recruitment partners met their SLAs?
- Are they consistently filling roles with the right talent, on time?
For example, if you know you will be building a large team of healthcare professionals, decipher if you think your agency will have the ability to handle and secure top-quality candidates at a high volume.
You should also try to uncover the average lead time on getting candidates from application to interview because if the speed of attaining staff is a high priority, you should have a partner who can match your pace.
If your current recruitment partner is not meeting their SLAs or is not filling your vacancies with the right talent at the right time, this could be a warning to reevaluate.
4. Network & Reach
Take some time to evaluate the recruitment reach of agencies, because again, at a time in the industry where staff shortages are at some of their highest levels, the ability to source and recruit talent on a large scale is going to play a significant role in achieving your unique recruitment needs.
You should consider if your current partners are actively evolving with the industry, being proactive in their approach to emerging technological advances, changing best practices and developing innovative staffing solutions.
If you can land a recruitment agency that can pull from a local and international database of candidates, you can be reassured that whatever position you are hiring for, will be filled.
5. Empathetic Recruitment
Above all, never forget that empathy should remain at the heart of your recruitment process.
Finding and retaining top talent requires empathy & compassion as much as it requires speed and efficiency.
Sourcing a recruitment agency that takes the time to get to know you, can anticipate your needs and strives to achieve your goals is the key to a successful partnership and acquiring the best of the best talent out there.
The hard skills of recruitment are important, but an agency skilled in achieving results in an empathetic way is the ticket to building a solid, long-lasting team of healthcare professionals.
Selecting the right healthcare recruitment partner for your PSL is a critical decision, but when you focus on the key requirements to look for in an agency, you can ensure you find a partner that meets your needs and helps you build a strong workforce.
At AA Euro Healthcare, we recognise the importance of selecting the right agencies for your PSL, they represent your organisation and play a vital role in attracting top talent within your sector. A well-structured PSL should cultivate genuine partnerships while providing all agencies with a fair opportunity to showcase their added value, ensuring the best results & outcomes for both clients and candidates.
Let’s work together in Creating Empathetic Partnerships.
Get in touch with us today to discuss how we can be your dedicated recruitment partner and cater for your unique recruitment requirements:
- [email protected]
- +353 (0)51 355 704
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