Are You Secretly the Entire HR Department?
Healthcare HR and TA leaders are asked to do too much simultaneously.
On any given week, a VP of HR or AVP of System Recruitment is managing clinical vacancy rates, fielding escalations from nursing leadership, trying to hold a travel nurse budget together, building a pipeline for hard-to-fill specialties, coaching an overloaded internal team, and somehow finding time to think strategically about workforce planning.
The job isn't just recruiting. It's managing the tension between today's open requisitions and tomorrow's workforce strategy while keeping executive stakeholders, unit directors, and the candidate pipeline moving in tandem.
Most health systems try to solve this with more hands. More recruiters. More vendor contracts. More tools. What they get instead is greater complexity, a fragmented vendor network, inconsistent candidate experiences, and a TA function that's reactive by design.
The Ways Health Systems Try to Cope
Adding internal headcount can address capacity in the short term, but it doesn't fix processes, accountability, or the structural gaps that slow hiring. When volume spikes or a key recruiter leaves, the whole system wobbles.
Travel nurses and premium labor fill beds today, but they steadily erode budgets. They're a symptom solution — expensive, temporary, and self-reinforcing. See how Hueman's healthcare RPO partners have reduced travel nurse dependency →
Traditional staffing agencies offer speed but little accountability. They don't embed into your culture, they don't build pipelines, and they're gone when the contract ends.
Bolt-on RPO engagements can bring structure, but most are designed to run parallel to your internal function, a separate team operating under a separate set of priorities. Coordination becomes its own job. Learn how Hueman structures its RPO partnerships differently →
The health systems that get out ahead of their talent challenges aren't the ones with the most vendors. They're the ones who found a partner and gave them a real seat at the table.
What a Real Partnership Looks Like
Our Partner: Adventist HealthCare
Most RPO relationships have a clear boundary: the client owns strategy; the RPO provides execution. Two teams, working in parallel, each staying in their lane.
The Adventist HealthCare–Hueman RPO relationship doesn't work that way.
Over nearly a decade, the two organizations have built what Adventist's own clinical leadership calls a hybrid leadership model — in which Hueman's TA Director functions simultaneously as an operational leader within Adventist's HR function and as a senior leader within Hueman's RPO practice.
The result: one talent acquisition team. One culture. One unified strategy.
How It Started
In 2017, Adventist brought in one Hueman recruiter to address nearly 40 open ED nursing vacancies. That single engagement became the foundation of something much larger. Read the full origin story: How Hueman Future-Proofed Adventist HealthCare's TA Strategy →
When COVID hit in 2020, Hueman's RPO management stepped in to provide daily operational leadership for the full team. What began as emergency coverage became permanent by design. Read the full COVID-era story: How Hueman Built Adventist's COVID Surge Float Pool
Hueman's director owned day-to-day execution and process accountability. Adventist's AVP focused on the clinical programs, pipelines, and strategic initiatives that would define the organization's talent capabilities long-term.
They weren't doubling up. They were dividing and conquering, each focusing on what they do best.
The Model Today and Why it "just Works."
The hybrid leadership model. It's so unique, it's so special, it works. Sarah brings so much to the table that we just don't have. That partnership and that outside knowledge, that's the biggest thing for me."
— Jennifer Bergman, AVP of System Clinical Programs and Recruitment Services, Adventist HealthCare
Most outsourcing relationships ask two organizations to coexist. This one asks them to integrate.
Adventist's AVP brings deep clinical expertise; her background is in nursing, and she understands patient care, unit dynamics, and staffing in ways that directly shape how programs and pipelines are built. She holds the institutional knowledge, the clinical relationships, and the long-term organizational vision.
Hueman's TA Director brings RPO operational expertise, access to Hueman's practice knowledge across dozens of national partnerships, and the recruiting infrastructure to execute at scale. Learn more about Hueman's RPO model and what an embedded partnership looks like →
Neither could deliver the full picture alone. Together, they cover the whole game without either trying to do the other's job.
This is the difference between a vendor relationship and a partnership. In a vendor relationship, you manage the handoffs. In a partnership, there are no handoffs because the work never leaves the table.
What This Partnership Has Enabled
The hybrid leadership model isn't an abstract concept. It's the reason Adventist has been able to execute on programs that most health systems still have on their wish list:
- Behavioral interview standardization across 4,000+ job profiles — from frontline clinical roles to C-suite panel searches.
- Full centralization of recruitment operations.
- A nurse residency program with some of the highest cohort numbers in Maryland
- A certified nursing academy — among the first in the state
- A robust international nursing pipeline now serves as a primary supply channel
- An academic partnership program expanding into imaging, radiology, surgical, and post-acute roles
- A recruitment EVP that executive leadership credits for measurably improving new hire cultural alignment at orientation. Learn more about Hueman's EVP creation and talent marketing services →
- Near-zero travel nurse dependency — down from 600+ at peak COVID, generating more than $8M in travel nurse savings. Read the full traveler reduction story →
- Monthly CNO rounding that keeps recruitment and clinical leadership aligned in real time. Explore Hueman's APP and advanced practice provider recruiting capabilities →
The Lesson for Health Systems
When Adventist's AVP is asked what she would tell another health system trying to achieve similar results, her answer is the same every time: the hybrid leadership model.
Not because it's complicated. Because it requires something most organizations aren't willing to do, extend real trust to an outside partner, give them a genuine seat at the table, and treat integration as a design principle rather than a hoped-for side effect.
The health systems winning the talent game aren't trying to do everything themselves. They've found a partner who's genuinely focused on what they do best — and cleared the space to let them do it.
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