People4 min read
The real cost of a bad clinical hire
A replacement search is the cheap part. The expensive part is the schedule you could not fill, the referrals that stopped, and the team that absorbed the gap.
Practices usually estimate the cost of a bad hire as the recruitment fee plus the salary paid before the departure. That is the visible number and the smallest one.
The visible and invisible costs
- A schedule that runs at reduced capacity for however long the search takes.
- Referrals that stop arriving while a covering clinician is in place.
- Overtime and goodwill burned by the team that absorbs the gap.
- Patients who reschedule once and then do not reschedule again.
- The second search, run under time pressure, which usually produces a worse hire.
Why our fee structure is deliberately late
We do not charge until a placement is made, and we guarantee the placement. That structure costs us money when a search is hard, which is the point: it means we do not get paid for introducing candidates, only for filling the seat with someone who stays.
The screening that matters
Licence and credential verification is table stakes. The work that predicts retention is duller: structured behavioural interviews, reference conversations that ask about the last six months rather than the whole career, and — for physician searches — a genuine conversation with the spouse about the town, the schools and the commute.
Practices that skip that last step keep losing candidates they believed were committed. It is not a mystery, and it is not about money.
Written by
MBS Talent
