Every facility leader in Broward and Miami-Dade has had this conversation. A charge nurse from the building down the road would be perfect for an open supervisor seat. Everyone knows her work. Nobody wants to be the one who called.

The hesitation is understandable, and mostly misplaced. In a market this dense, where a candidate can change employers without changing their commute, recruiting from nearby facilities is not an aggressive tactic. It is the market. The facility you are worried about offending has almost certainly hired two of your people in the last year.

What matters is how it is done. There is a version of this that is routine and a version that costs you a referral relationship, a discharge partner, and a reputation among nurses who talk to each other constantly.

Why the best candidates are employed

Start with the uncomfortable fact underneath all of this. In healthcare, and particularly in nursing leadership, the strongest people are rarely on the market. They are performing well, they are known internally, and they are not scrolling job boards on a Tuesday night. Postings reach the people who are actively looking, which is a real pool but a systematically different one.

That is the entire argument for passive recruiting, and it is the reason a posting-only strategy produces the results described in why your healthcare job post gets no qualified applicants. If you are only interviewing people who applied, you are choosing from the segment of the market that is available, not the segment that is good.

The lines that actually matter

Three constraints are real, and they are narrower than most people assume.

Contracts. Ask every candidate, in the first substantive conversation, whether they signed a non-compete, non-solicit, or repayment agreement, and ask for the document. Sign-on bonus clawbacks and tuition repayment terms surprise people at resignation more often than non-competes do. For a Director of Nursing or an administrator, assume there is a restrictive covenant until you have read otherwise.

What comes with them. A candidate brings their skills, their judgment, and their professional relationships. They do not bring documents, patient information, referral lists, staffing files, or a group of colleagues recruited on the way out. The last one is where facilities get themselves into genuine legal trouble, and it is also the thing most likely to escalate a quiet departure into a dispute.

How you make contact. Personal channels only. Not the facility switchboard, not a work email address, not a message passed through someone who still works there. This is partly a legal instinct and mostly a professional one: an approach that could expose a candidate to their current employer is an approach that will be declined.

What a good approach sounds like

Short, specific, and honest about what it is. Name the role and the facility type. Give the schedule and a real range. Acknowledge that they are probably not looking. Offer a fifteen-minute call at a time that works for someone who is on the floor all day.

What does not work, reliably: vague outreach about "an exciting opportunity," anything that requires the candidate to apply through a portal before learning what the job pays, and pitches built on criticizing their current employer. That last one is a specific mistake. Nurses are loyal to their teams even when they are frustrated with their administration, and the fastest way to end a conversation is to insult the building where their friends work.

Expect most answers to be no. The goal of a first approach is not a hire. It is a person who takes your call again in eight months.

Be ready for the counteroffer

When you recruit someone who is performing well, their employer will try to keep them. Plan for it before the offer, not after the resignation. Ask the candidate directly what they will do if their current facility matches the money, and listen to how quickly they answer.

Counteroffers succeed less often than people expect and cost more than they look like they do, which we worked through in the counteroffer trap. The candidates who accept them are usually the ones who were negotiating rather than leaving, and that distinction is visible in the interview process if you are watching for it.

When it needs to stay quiet

Some of these searches cannot be run in the open at all. If you are replacing a leader who is still in the seat, or filling a role whose existence would signal a restructuring, the mechanics change: no posting, controlled information, a small interview panel, and candidates who are told the facility name only after a confidentiality conversation.

That is the work our confidential search practice exists for, and the sequence matters more than most facilities expect. We covered the full process in how to replace a Director of Nursing confidentially.

Why facilities use a third party for this

There is a practical reason the outreach usually goes better when it does not come from you directly. A recruiter can approach a nurse at a neighboring facility without either party being exposed. The candidate can express interest without their employer learning it from a rumor, and you can pursue someone specific without a phone call that gets discussed at the next regional meeting.

That is most of what a healthcare talent acquisition partner does in a dense market: run the conversations that are awkward to run yourself, verify what the candidate says about their contract before you make an offer, and keep the search from becoming public before it needs to be. We do this across Fort Lauderdale, Miami, and the rest of Broward and Miami-Dade, on permanent placement terms with a 90-day replacement guarantee.

Tell us who you are trying to hire, including if the person you want is currently working four miles away. We respond within one business day.

Frequently asked questions

Is it legal to recruit nurses from a competing facility in Florida?

Yes. Recruiting employed professionals is ordinary and lawful, and Florida has no rule preventing a nurse from taking a better job across town. The limits are contractual and behavioral: a candidate may have a valid non-solicit or non-compete provision, and no one should be asked to bring patient lists, proprietary documents, or colleagues out the door with them. Ask every candidate early whether they signed anything restrictive, and get a copy before an offer rather than after.

Do non-competes hold up for nurses in Florida?

Florida enforces reasonable restrictive covenants more readily than many states, but the agreements most clinical staff sign are non-solicitation clauses rather than true practice restrictions, and they typically bar recruiting former colleagues and patients rather than working elsewhere. Leadership contracts are the ones that deserve real attention. The practical rule is simple: read the document, do not rely on the candidate summarizing it from memory, and involve counsel when the role is senior.

How do you approach a candidate who is not looking for a job?

Briefly, privately, and with something specific. A message that names the role, the facility type, the schedule, and the range, and that acknowledges they are probably not looking, outperforms anything generic. Never contact someone on a facility phone line or work email, and never through a colleague. Most passive candidates will say no, and a meaningful minority will say they are not interested now but would like to hear about the next one, which is the outcome worth playing for.

Will recruiting from a nearby facility damage our reputation?

It can, if it is done clumsily: mass outreach to one building, approaching people on site, or pitching by criticizing their current employer. Done normally, it is simply how healthcare hiring works in a dense market, and the leaders you would be recruiting from are hiring from you at the same time. What actually damages a reputation is being known for aggressive outreach and weak follow-through, where candidates leave a stable job for a role that turns out to have been described optimistically.