Imagine this: you’re a healthcare professional looking for a new job. It should be easy, right? Everyone knows healthcare professionals are in high demand, and facilities and providers are always searching to fill roles. 

Your first step is likely to grab your phone and search for healthcare jobs near me based on your specialty. The results will come flooding in, and you’ll be instantly presented with dozens of job boards offering great jobs. Which one will you choose?

The job board, app, or website you choose to search and apply for jobs can significantly affect your chances of getting hired and may even influence your long-term career path. As a job seeker, it can be challenging to discern which job boards are legitimate and which ones exist merely to generate leads and collect your data.

What’s the problem?

Since not all healthcare staffing agencies operate the same way, some pay little attention to actually helping you secure a job. Healthcare recruiting and staffing companies may claim their business is focused on healthcare recruiting, but many act merely as lead generation services that are misappropriating your data.

You’re wasting your valuable time and energy on fake job listings while unknowingly handing over your personal data to random companies. Many of the staffing companies you encounter online aren’t legitimate. In reality, these companies are just selling your data or passing it along to others. What seems like a genuine job application is often nothing more than a ploy to profit off your information.  

It’s a frustrating and unfair practice for job seekers. Job hunting is already stressful—whether you’re employed and looking for a better opportunity or unemployed and urgently in need of work. Regardless of the circumstances, finding a job is stressful overall, and some staffing agencies only add to that stress, making the process even harder.

A flawed system

How does this happen, and why are staffing agencies hiding the fact that the jobs they list aren’t positions they have any direct control over? To begin with, it’s well known that the healthcare job market is a consistently expanding sector. Healthcare professionals are in high demand as shortages persist due to skill gaps, geographic disparities, and evolving patient needs in both short-term and long-term care, including the management of chronic diseases over time.

In any industry, growth brings opportunity, but not all of it is positive. To take advantage of the increasing number of healthcare facilities and hospitals seeking to staff their organizations, hiring agencies that pose as legitimate have flourished. The number of employment, staffing, and recruiting agencies in the U.S. has risen by nearly four percent over the past five years. However, not all companies share the same values and standards.

What you see isn’t always what you get

Staffing agencies in healthcare—whether large corporations or small firms—can be deceptive in their hiring practices in various ways. Let’s explore a few of them:

1. Bait-and-switch job boards. When you apply for a job on a job board, you assume you’re applying directly through the agency that posted it. It appears as though that agency owns and manages the job and collaborates directly with the facility to find candidates. However, behind the scenes, the job doesn’t belong to them, and they’re forwarding your information to a third party. This practice is misleading because you think you’re working with a reputable healthcare staffing company, but the reality is quite different. Your best chance of securing a job is to work with a staffing agency that has a direct relationship with the hiring facility.
2. Fake job listings. Some jobs online simply aren’t real. They’re created by agencies that don’t actually hire; they just collect data to sell for consumer marketing purposes. You find yourself applying for a job that sounds fantastic but doesn’t actually exist. Not only does this waste your time, but it also means your data is circulating among companies where you don’t want it to be. Additionally, it exposes you to data breaches and results in all sorts of spam emails, texts, and phone calls.
3. Outdated job listings. In this scenario, the job you’re applying for has already been filled, but it seems that the facility is still hiring. Staffing agencies do this to create the illusion that their platform is active and has many job listings. You end up applying for positions that may have already been filled for weeks or months.
4. Poor employer screening. Most staffing agencies don’t do their homework and screen the employers posting jobs. Some healthcare facilities are located in unsafe areas or have poor employee reviews. Job descriptions can be misleading and make the job sound better than it really is. Staffing agencies that know their clients and have the resources to confirm job posting data will screen out jobs that aren’t appropriate or worthwhile for job seekers.
5. Pay-to-apply schemes. Some companies and agencies that specialize in healthcare staffing often charge job seekers for access to what they falsely claim are ‘hidden’ jobs that aren’t available to everyone. To generate profit, these companies typically require monthly or annual subscriptions to their site to access jobs that can be found for free on other job boards. If you encounter a paywall requesting your credit card information and payment to access hidden jobs, you should navigate away from that site.

Where job seekers should turn instead

Thankfully, there’s a better way to find real jobs in real time: StaffDNA®. StaffDNA is an unbiased source of jobs for healthcare professionals. We never post fake jobs and don’t sell your data. Once a job closes, it’s immediately removed from our database, so you’re not wasting time applying to jobs that are already filled.

StaffDNA’s easy-to-use app gives you direct access to thousands of positions in nursing, allied health, therapy, physician and advanced practice. We work directly with facilities that are actively hiring for open positions and there are no fees and job postings are vetted by our team of recruiting experts.

StaffDNA offers clear advantages for job seekers in healthcare. One key benefit is pay transparency, an essential factor for any job seeker. Knowing what you’ll take home each week provides the clarity you need in your job search. As one of the first companies to collaborate with facilities to include take-home pay in job postings, StaffDNA ensures you have the details about a job upfront. And if you’re in travel, that means showing housing stipends, too.

Second, our platform is built on proprietary technology that matches a job seeker’s credentials and job preferences seamlessly with available jobs. The search tool in the StaffDNA app allows you to choose from hundreds of specialties, settings and locations. By creating job alerts, you can spend less time searching and more time applying to jobs that suit your experience and match your preferences.

And, what’s more, we’re adding new features all the time to help you manage your career. Our recent addition is a feature where you can see your pay stubs right in the app itself.

At StaffDNA, we believe it should be easy to find a job you love. Download our app today in the Apple App Store or Google Play Store.