Your Mid-Year Hiring Check-In: Are You Where You Thought You’d Be?

We’re halfway through the year.
Back in January, most healthcare organizations had a plan. Positions to fill. Teams to build. Goals to accomplish.

Now is a good time to ask a simple question: Are you where you thought you’d be?

If not, you’re not alone.

One thing we’ve learned after decades in healthcare recruiting is that hiring challenges rarely solve themselves. The longer a critical role stays open, the harder it becomes to ignore the impact.

Before summer slips away, here are five questions you should be asking

Which critical roles are still open?

Not every vacancy creates urgency, but some do. Some are minor annoyances.  But others are ticking time bombs that can blow up a department or leadership team. 

If you’ve had a key leadership, clinical, operational, or managed care position open for months, it’s worth asking why.

• Did you really need it in the first place?
• Has the market changed?
• Are candidate expectations different?
• Has the search strategy become outdated?

The answer is rarely “we just need more time.”

Are candidates the challenge, or is the process?

We hear organizations say all the time that they can’t find talent.

Sometimes that’s true. Are you looking for something that doesn’t exist (the recruiter’s dreaded purple squirrel)?
Other times, strong candidates are entering the process but not making it to the finish line. Or the most common problem, companies do not have internal process to recognize talent.

Long interview timelines, delayed feedback, and slow decision-making can all create obstacles. Especially when top candidates are often evaluating multiple opportunities at once.

Is your team carrying more than it should?

When a position stays open, the work doesn’t disappear.
Someone else absorbs it.

For a while, good employees step up. Eventually, even your strongest performers start feeling the strain.

One open role can impact productivity, morale, retention, and team performance far beyond a single department. One open role may create a domino effect where someone leaves because they are overworked. (See “ticking tomb bomb”)

Are you thinking about 2027 yet?

The organizations that consistently make strong hires are usually planning ahead. They aren’t waiting for a resignation to start thinking about succession planning. They aren’t waiting for growth initiatives to be approved before evaluating talent needs.

They’re having those conversations NOW.

If a key leader gave notice tomorrow, what happens next?

It’s not a pleasant question, but it’s an important one.

• Do you have internal successors identified?
• Do you know what the market looks like for that role?
• Do you have a plan?

The best succession strategies are built before they’re needed.

The Bottom Line

Mid-year is a good time to evaluate more than budgets and business goals. It’s also a good time to evaluate your talent strategy.

Our metrics tell us that if you need new candidates NOW – You should have called us during your kid’s spring break, but we’re here to help.  Need them by the time the leaves turn – call us right now!

At Executive Staffing Solutions, we’ve spent years helping healthcare organizations navigate leadership transitions, fill critical vacancies, and build stronger teams.

Sometimes that starts with a search. Sometimes it starts with a conversation.

If you’re looking at the second half of the year and wondering whether your hiring strategy is where it needs to be, we’d be happy to talk.