HireMe Healthcare Is Fighting the Nursing Shortage with a Better Matchmaking Experience
Co-founders Trey Ennis and Ryan Lee are working to make the job search more efficient, personable, and pleasant for both nurses and their would-be employers.
HireMe Healthcare would like the hiring process for nurses to feel a lot more like online dating. Ryan Lee, CEO & Co-founder, is full of romantic analogies for a process that many associate with drudgery. He describes the company as if Match.com and ZipRecruiter had a baby and he hopes the candidates using the site feel some reciprocity. “They control where the conversation goes,” Lee says, likening the process to the way Tinder pairs people and then opens a door for conversation. Here, chatting with a hiring manager is as easy as swiping left or right.
The Challenge
HireMe Healthcare (HMH) grew out of a frustration with inefficiencies in healthcare hiring. Trey Ennis, Chairman & Co-founder, designed HMH after working in an operational role for a major healthcare system. He watched highly qualified candidates apply for positions and go nowhere because of staffing software with flawed algorithms that disqualified candidates for minor reasons, like not having the right keywords in their resumes. Meanwhile, the hiring managers working with Ennis were desperate to find employees as nurse-to-patient ratios began declining to dangerous levels.
The nurse staffing crisis is a national problem. HireMe Healthcare points to a 17% national RN vacancy rate in 2022; 81% of hospitals are struggling with RN vacancy rates of 10% or higher. According to their numbers, Covid exacerbated the nursing shortage — a period in which agencies dramatically increased the hourly rate for travel nurses. “It has really thrown this industry into a bit of a tailspin,” says Lee. Hospitals were often forced to pay inflated rates for travel nurses, adding to their existing financial woes from staffing vacancies and high turnover rates among nurses. Presently, 83% of hospitals are now operating in negative margins. “We’re watching critical access hospitals shut down,” says Lee.
Lee thinks that the solutions to these staffing problems are inadequate. “It’s a full-time job just applying to these jobs,” says Lee. Applicants are required to input their resume into a different system each time they apply to a job. “It’s utter madness,” he says, adding that “there currently isn’t a space for the human aspect of the process.” He hopes that HireMe Healthcare will function like a one-stop shop for nurses seeking employment and a more trustworthy, efficient resource for employers trying to fill vacancies. And he wants the process to feel good for all parties, even if sparks aren’t flying at the same velocity as they may on Tinder or Match.com.
The Origin Story
After Ennis’s first-hand observations of staffing inefficiencies, he began building HireMe Healthcare by creating a beta app, testing the concept, and conducting market research. He soon started gathering a team to help realize his vision.
One of Ennis’s first phone calls was to Lee, a childhood friend from Charlotte, North Carolina. “I went to an investor meeting with him and I walked away as a co-founder,” says Lee, who has a background practicing entrepreneurial law and a master’s degree in human rights. Lee was enthusiastic about the viability of the business from a logistics standpoint. “Anyone can have a good idea and Trey has brilliant ideas but this could be carried out logistically,” says Lee. Ennis, like Lee, felt an affinity with the healthcare industry as many of his family and friends work in the field and he saw the opportunity as a pathway toward his lifelong dream of creating a startup in the humanitarian space. “Figuring out how to improve access to healthcare in my own homeland, beforehand, was an opportunity I wanted to be a part of,” says Lee.
The Product
The platform is an online marketplace and career development resource, designed to supply healthcare providers with nurses that are high-quality, local, and permanent. The intake process for nurses is “quick and one time.” Once in the system, nurses are able to search for jobs in an interface that looks a lot like Zillow, with jobs displayed geographically. Hiring managers are encouraged to bolster their jobs with tailored descriptions about their workplaces and if a match looks enticing, HMH’s app and messaging function allows for easy communication between hiring managers and job seekers.
HireMe Healthcare boasts of their proprietary technology — a precision staffing algorithm which allows for better results than the blunt software tools Ennis encountered while working in the healthcare industry. “Our algorithm scores candidates based on job descriptions with every aspect of the description bifurcated into whether it’s required or desired,” says Lee. Candidates are then ranked for best fit according to listed positions. Once a candidate is placed, HMH earns a placement fee or larger facilities can choose to pay for the service through a monthly subscription-based fee.
In order to build candidate profiles, HMH doesn’t merely rely on data from one’s resume, which Lee describes as “an outdated document.” “We’re working to make the hiring process a human experience by considering factors beyond what the resume holds,” says Lee. These factors — the qualitative, intangible qualities of a person — can make the difference between a decent fit and a great fit and identify candidates that might best complement the culture of a hospital or community.
Lee and his colleagues at HMH are experimenting with pickup lines to ask candidates. Lee has a favorite: What are you most passionate about in life? “You can gain a lot from a person by asking them this,” he says. He hopes that answers to questions like these put a more human face to their candidates.
Our Take
While speaking with healthcare professionals about HireMe Healthcare, Lee encountered an orthopedic surgeon who said if he had access to this technology and could keep up with staff needs, he would be able to nearly double his output and complete up to 15 surgeries a day. A hospital fully staffed with capable nurses results in a workplace where other staff — like the orthopedic surgeon — can work to their potential. It’s also a win for patient care and the financial health of hospitals. For nurses seeking the right placement, HMH simplifies an arcane and frustrating process.
With the staffing needs of healthcare facilities in crisis mode, we are enthusiastic about standing behind HireMe Healthcare. It’s a smart platform to make things easier and more efficient for job seekers and employers alike. We’re looking forward to seeing some of their matches yield long-term commitments — and transforming healthcare hiring along the way.
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