Starting a Healthcare Recruiting Firm as a PA

[tristatepac]

So I’ve been a PA for about 15 years and have made numerous contacts over time.  I’ve worked in Urgent Care, Emergency medicine, & Family Practice.  

I’ve become very good at what I do but I am feeling rather bored these days.  I need a challenge.  On a personal note, I’m in my fourties so there is also a bit of a midlife situation which I’m addressing through a therapist.  

With that being said I had some sales experience in my early 20’s and sometimes I miss the daily uncertainty and the adrenaline rush when you do finally close a sale.

Something I’ve been considering is starting my own Recruiting firm specifically for Healthcare.   I know I could charge less than the larger firms and I have an office at my house. I’d recruit Physicians, PA’s, NP’s, nurses, X-ray techs etc.

So my questions to those in the know here are:

1) is there a market for this? 

2) could I break even with what I’m making as a PA?  I’d probably work 20 hrs/week clinically and 20 hrs/wk as a recruiter. I make about $150k annually as a PA so I’d need to make about $75k annually to monetarily justify recruiting.  

3) how much should I charge?  My understanding is some recruiters take in anywhere from $10k-20k per client.  I’d be willing to charge less and attempt to make it up on volume.  

4) do I need some kind of license or certification to recruit?

Thank you in advance for your time.  

 

 

[PACJD]

Don't know too much of the details regarding this, but I do know several PAs that have started something like this and are very successful thus far. Some of them work part time under a larger contracting agency, while the few I know that started one from scratch currently work full-time. Don't exactly know if there is a huge demand for this type of work, but I do know that they make less than what they would make clinically (I would say around 80-100k full time). 

Again I do not know the specifics of this type of work, so I am probably not that much help. But I do think its great that you are looking to venture out and find other work as a PA outside of regular clinical medicine. I currently work part-time for a pharmaceutical company that hires MDs/PAs/NPs for analysis of drug prescribing trends, so other markets are definitely opening up aside from clinical medicine. 

Good luck!

[AbeTheBabe]

If you're going to be losing benefits by going to part time you will need more than 75K to make up for that. My wife is a recruiter, maybe we should start our own firm

[sas5814]

I did this semi part time when I had my own one man locums company (me). Mostly I leveraged the organizations and people I knew in the area and turned it into an occasional business. Most agencies I know of charge 10% of the first years agreed salary. I undercut everyone by charging 7.

If you want to do it on a big stage there is a lot of competition. I think it would be tough to break in but probably doable. It sounds like you would need 10-12 placements a year to make a buck.

[cc56]

I don't know anything about this, but God bless you for wanting to do it.  I would not want to try to do recruiting.   One of the Docs I work with got a call at work.  He RIPPED into the person on the other end, made me uncomfortable and I had nothing to do with it.  So many people talk bad about recruiters.   I wish you the best of luck in your adventure.