Choosing a healthcare recruiting firm is one of the few purchases where you cannot inspect the product before you buy it. Every firm describes itself the same way: specialized, relationship-driven, deeply networked in South Florida. The websites are interchangeable. The agreements are close to identical. And the difference between a firm that fills your Director of Nursing seat in eight weeks and one that forwards you the same four resumes you already rejected is invisible until you have spent a quarter finding out.

So vet the firm the way you would vet a candidate for a seat you cannot afford to fill twice. The questions below are the ones that actually separate them, and in most cases the way a firm answers matters more than the answer itself.

Who personally runs my search, and how many do they have right now?

In a lot of firms, the person who sells the search is not the person who works it. You meet a principal, sign an agreement, and your requisition lands with a junior recruiter carrying eighteen other openings. Nothing about that is unusual and nothing about it is disclosed.

Ask for the name of the person doing the sourcing and calling candidates. Ask how many active searches that person is carrying. There is no magic number, but a recruiter running twenty simultaneous searches is running a queue, not a search, and your MDS coordinator role is going to sit behind whatever is closest to closing.

What happens in the first week, before I see any resume?

This question is the fastest way to tell a search firm from a resume broker.

A firm that works healthcare will describe an intake conversation about census and acuity, shift coverage, who the hire reports to, what happened with the last person in the seat, your survey history, and your realistic timeline. Then a mapping step: who in your market is doing this job today, at which buildings, and which of them are reachable.

A resume broker will describe posting the role and searching a database. Both are activities. Only one of them produces a candidate who was not already applying somewhere.

That distinction matters most for the roles that stay open longest, because the people qualified to fill them are employed and not looking. We wrote about why that pool never sees your posting in why your healthcare job post gets no qualified applicants.

Where do your candidates come from?

You are entitled to a real answer. Not names, but a method. Direct outreach to clinicians currently employed in comparable buildings is a different product from a database of people who uploaded a resume eighteen months ago, and it is priced the same.

Ask the follow-up too: how many of the candidates you send are people who were actively job hunting when you called them? A firm doing genuine search work will tell you most of them were not. A firm that has to think about the question is telling you something.

Who will you not recruit from?

Every firm has off-limits agreements with its existing clients. That is normal and it is a good sign, because it means someone is protecting their placements. But it also means the firm's client list is a map of the buildings your candidates cannot come from.

If a firm already works with four of the six facilities you compete with for nurses, its usable pool in your market is much smaller than it sounds. Ask directly, before you sign, whether there are competitors in your immediate area they cannot touch.

Read the guarantee like a contract, not a reassurance

Almost every firm advertises a guarantee. Almost nobody reads the clause until they need it. The details that matter:

  • Replacement or refund? Most guarantees are replacement-only. If you no longer need the seat filled, or you have lost confidence in the firm, a replacement credit is not worth much.
  • What voids it. Layoffs, restructuring, a change in reporting line, and a role redefined after the hire are common carve-outs. Some agreements also void the guarantee if your final invoice was paid late.
  • How long the clock runs, and from when. Start date or offer acceptance changes the window by weeks.
  • How many replacements. One, or until the seat holds?

We broke the whole clause down in what a 90-day placement guarantee actually covers. The point is not that a short guarantee is disqualifying. It is that a firm confident in its screening will talk through the exclusions without getting defensive.

What do you do when my range is too low?

This is the question that predicts the next six months better than any other.

Some firms will take the search anyway, work it for eight weeks, send you candidates who decline at offer stage, and then start the conversation about compensation from a position where you have already lost the quarter. Others will tell you in the intake call that the number will not clear the market, show you what the seat is actually paying in your sub-market, and let you decide with the information in front of you.

The second approach costs the firm a signed agreement now and saves you a failed search later. Ask the question and watch whether the answer is comfortable. Our 2026 nursing pay guide for Miami-Dade and Broward exists so that conversation can start with numbers instead of opinions.

Does the fee structure match the search?

Contingency is the default in healthcare staffing and it fits plenty of clinical openings: several firms can work the requisition, and you pay only when someone starts. It fits leadership searches and confidential replacements much less well, because the firm carrying the most risk on a hard search is the one least able to justify the hours.

A firm that recommends the same structure for every seat is selling a structure, not a search. We laid out where each model earns its keep in retained vs. contingency healthcare search in Florida, and what the fees typically look like here in what healthcare talent acquisition partners cost in Florida.

Watch what they do before you sign

The evaluation is already happening during the sales conversation, and it is more reliable than references the firm picked for you.

  • Did they ask about the building, or only about the job description and the budget?
  • Did they push back on anything, or agree with everything you said?
  • Did they give you a timeline with a range and a reason, or a number designed to sound fast?
  • Did they follow up when they said they would? That is the same reliability your candidates will experience.

If you want a reference, ask for a client who had a placement fall apart, and how the firm handled it. Every firm has one. The ones worth hiring will tell you about it.

How we answer these

At Vyla, the person you talk to is the person who runs your search. Our permanent placement work starts with mapping who is doing the job today in your specific corridor of Miami-Dade or Broward, and most of the people we present were not looking when we called them. As a healthcare talent acquisition partner, we will tell you before you sign if the range will not clear the market, because a hire that unravels in month five costs us as much as it costs you. When the seat is still occupied, we run it as a confidential search so your building stays stable while we work.

Bring us the opening you are least sure about. We will give you an honest read on the range, a realistic timeline for your market, and a straight answer on whether the candidates you need are reachable through a posting or only through a phone call. We respond within one business day.

Frequently asked questions

What should I ask a healthcare recruiting firm before signing an agreement?

Ask who personally runs your search and how many they carry at once, what happens in the first week before any resume reaches you, how they source candidates who are not applying to postings, what the guarantee covers and what voids it, who they will not recruit from because of an existing client relationship, and what they do when the market says your range is too low. Vague answers to any of those are the answer.

Is a contingency or retained search firm better for a Florida facility?

It depends on the seat. Contingency works for clinical staff roles where several firms can work the same requisition and you pay only on a hire. Retained or engaged search makes sense for leadership roles, confidential replacements, and any search where the qualified pool is small enough that it has to be worked deliberately rather than raced. The structure matters less than whether the firm can explain why it fits your specific opening.

What is a normal placement fee for healthcare recruiting in South Florida?

Most permanent placement work in Miami-Dade and Broward falls between roughly 18% and 25% of first-year base salary, with leadership and hard-to-fill clinical searches at the higher end. What varies more than the percentage is what is included: guarantee length, replacement terms, reference and license verification, and whether you are paying again if the first hire does not last.

How can I tell if a recruiting firm actually knows healthcare?

Give them a real opening and listen to the questions they ask back. A firm that works healthcare will ask about census, acuity, shift coverage, your survey history, who the hire reports to, and why the seat is open. A generalist will ask for a job description and a salary range. The first conversation tells you more than any capabilities deck.