QualDerm Partners, a prominent dermatology organization spanning 17 states and over 60 facilities, has dramatically transformed its talent acquisition operations through the strategic implementation of Workable’s applicant tracking system (ATS). Facing the complexities of high-volume, multi-location hiring for a diverse range of roles—from specialized medical providers to critical administrative staff—the organization successfully managed an impressive 787 hires within a single year with a lean team of six. This significant overhaul not only streamlined recruitment processes but also established crucial data baselines, elevating the talent acquisition function from an operational necessity to a strategic business driver with direct executive oversight.
The Evolving Landscape of Healthcare Talent Acquisition
The healthcare sector, particularly specialized fields like dermatology, presents a unique and often challenging environment for talent acquisition. A persistent shortage of skilled professionals, coupled with high demand driven by an aging population and expanding services, creates an intensely competitive market. Organizations like QualDerm Partners must navigate this landscape while simultaneously managing rapid growth, maintaining high standards of patient care, and adhering to stringent regulatory compliance. Recruiting for positions ranging from surgeons and physician assistants to medical assistants, front office staff, and call center teams requires a robust, agile, and data-driven approach to ensure both quality and speed. The ability to quickly fill critical roles directly impacts patient access, service delivery, and ultimately, revenue. An unfilled provider chair, for instance, represents not just a vacancy but a tangible loss in potential income. This dynamic underscores the critical need for efficient and effective recruitment technologies.
QualDerm Partners, with a workforce exceeding 2,000 employees, exemplifies these challenges. Their expansive footprint across 17 states and more than 60 facilities necessitates a talent acquisition strategy capable of coordinating diverse hiring needs from a centralized point. Iesha Vann, QualDerm’s Manager of Talent Acquisition, leads the team responsible for all non-provider recruitment. Her six-person team is tasked with managing the entire hiring workflow organization-wide, frequently juggling as many as 150 open requisitions simultaneously. The sheer volume and geographic spread of these demands meant that the underlying recruitment platform was not merely a tool, but a critical determinant of the team’s operational capacity and strategic success.
Navigating Growth: The Pre-Workable Era and Its Limitations
Prior to their transition to Workable, QualDerm Partners found themselves at a crossroads following a period of significant organizational growth, exacerbated by a merger. This expansion exposed critical limitations within their existing applicant tracking system, Paylocity. While Paylocity served as an ATS, it proved inadequate for the scale and sophistication of QualDerm’s evolving recruitment needs.
The primary challenges revolved around a severe lack of data and analytics capabilities. Key performance indicators (KPIs) essential for high-volume healthcare recruiting—such as time to fill, time to hire, and candidate pipeline health—were either entirely unavailable or impossible to track with any degree of reliability. This data vacuum had profound operational and financial consequences. Without accurate metrics, the talent acquisition team lacked the ability to quantify the true cost of open positions, particularly for revenue-generating provider roles where every day a chair remained vacant translated directly into lost revenue. This absence of quantifiable data also hampered strategic decision-making, making it difficult to advocate for resource allocation or pinpoint areas for process improvement. The user experience of the platform was also cited as a significant hurdle, perceived as static and unable to keep pace with the rapidly evolving demands of the modern talent market. Recruiters faced cumbersome workflows, which in turn increased their administrative burden and slowed down the hiring process.
Crucially, some members of QualDerm’s talent acquisition team, including Iesha Vann, had prior positive experience with Workable before the merger. This firsthand knowledge of what a well-designed and functional ATS could offer provided a clear benchmark. When the opportunity arose to re-evaluate their recruitment technology, the decision to return to Workable was, as described by the team, straightforward, driven by a clear understanding of its potential to address their pressing challenges.
The Strategic Imperative: Embracing Workable for Scalability and Insight
The decision to adopt Workable was rooted in a blend of familiarity and a stark contrast to their previous system’s shortcomings. Where the former platform was perceived as limited and outdated, Workable offered a dynamically evolving, genuinely user-friendly solution specifically engineered to support the complex, high-volume, and multi-location hiring requirements of an organization like QualDerm. The transition marked a strategic investment in technology designed to scale with QualDerm’s growth trajectory and enhance their competitive edge in the talent market.
A key factor in this strategic shift was Workable’s ability to manage recruitment at scale. With up to 150 open requisitions active at any given moment, the operational demands on QualDerm’s recruiting team are immense. Roles frequently emerge in clusters, driven by facility expansions or staff turnover, necessitating a system that can absorb this volume without introducing chaos or compromising efficiency. Workable’s requisition management and hiring plan functionalities provided the necessary structure, allowing the team to systematically stack and prioritize openings. This ensured that high-urgency roles received immediate attention while maintaining a well-organized and visible broader candidate pipeline. The platform’s multi-location visibility was particularly transformative, offering recruiters a comprehensive overview across all 17 states from a single interface – a capability previously unattainable.
Furthermore, Workable’s integrated AI screening tools have become indispensable in managing the high volume of inbound applications. Instead of manually sifting through countless resumes across dozens of open roles, recruiters can now rapidly identify and prioritize the most qualified candidates. This automation maintains candidate quality while significantly accelerating the initial screening process, allowing recruiters to focus their valuable time on engagement and assessment rather than administrative tasks. This blend of structured management and intelligent automation was critical for a team operating under such high-pressure conditions.
Quantifying Success: The Metrics That Redefined Performance
One of the most profound impacts of Workable’s implementation at QualDerm Partners has been the establishment of robust, reliable metrics, particularly for "Time to Fill." Before Workable, the organization lacked any consistent or accurate method to measure this crucial KPI—a significant deficiency in a healthcare environment where provider availability directly underpins revenue generation. The inability to quantify this metric meant that the true financial impact of recruitment delays remained largely opaque.
Today, QualDerm’s talent acquisition team consistently tracks an average time to fill of 32 days. This newly established baseline is not merely a number; it serves as a critical anchor for their cost-per-vacancy analysis, providing leadership with a data-driven lens through which to evaluate and optimize recruiting performance. As Iesha Vann articulated, "We couldn’t track time to fill in Paylocity. Now we have a yearly average of 32 days, and that number is important because we use it to keep cost per vacancy as low as possible." This statement underscores the strategic shift from reactive hiring to proactive, cost-conscious talent acquisition.
The newfound ability to track granular data—from candidate sourcing channels and pipeline movement to ultimate hiring outcomes—has fundamentally elevated the talent acquisition function within QualDerm. It has transitioned from a purely operational role, often perceived as a cost center, to a strategic partner that can provide actionable insights directly impacting the organization’s financial health and growth objectives. This data transparency has also fostered a new level of engagement from senior leadership, who now interact directly with hiring data rather than relying on secondhand summaries. This direct access enhances confidence in recruitment decisions and facilitates more informed strategic planning across the organization. The availability of this data allows for continuous improvement, enabling the team to identify bottlenecks, refine strategies, and demonstrate tangible value, thereby solidifying TA’s position as a vital contributor to QualDerm’s overall success.
Efficiency Unleashed: Video Interviews and Automated Savings
The immediate and quantifiable efficiency gains derived from Workable’s features were particularly evident through the adoption of its video interview capabilities. This feature proved invaluable during a period when QualDerm faced significant recruitment challenges for its call center, one of the organization’s highest-turnover positions. At one point, the team contended with more than 10 simultaneous openings for this critical role. Under traditional screening methods, such a volume would have consumed an inordinate amount of recruiter time, bogging down an already time-sensitive process with scheduling complexities and repetitive initial interviews.
By activating Workable’s video interview feature, QualDerm was able to screen candidates asynchronously and at scale. Recruiters could send out video screening requests, allowing candidates to record and submit their responses at their convenience. Crucially, hiring managers could then review these recordings without the logistical burden of coordinating schedules, which is often a major bottleneck in high-volume recruitment. The impact was immediate and substantial: within a single 30-day period, the talent acquisition team reported saving an estimated 20 to 30 hours of recruiter time. This freed up valuable resources, allowing the team to focus on more strategic aspects of candidate engagement and assessment, rather than the initial, often repetitive, screening stages.
The success of the video interview feature quickly led to its expansion beyond the call center. Senior leadership, including those who previously had limited visibility into early-stage candidates, now actively participate in reviewing video screens. This broader adoption signifies not only the feature’s efficacy but also its ability to democratize access to candidate information across the organization. As Iesha Vann noted, "Anyone can watch them now, including leaders. It opened up the process." This shift enhances collaboration, ensures greater alignment on candidate fit from the outset, and further embeds Workable as an integral tool for QualDerm’s broader talent strategy. The team is actively identifying additional roles and workflows where video interviewing can be strategically applied throughout the year, promising continued efficiency gains and a more integrated hiring experience.
Elevating the Candidate Journey: Engagement and Accessibility
In the highly competitive market for clinical and administrative talent, candidate responsiveness and a superior experience are not merely niceties but crucial competitive advantages. QualDerm Partners has leveraged Workable’s communication features to enhance the candidate journey significantly, ensuring sustained engagement from initial outreach through to pre-start communications.
The use of Workable’s texting feature throughout the entire hiring process has proven particularly effective. The immediacy and ubiquity of text-based communication have drastically reduced candidate drop-off rates, keeping applicants engaged and informed at every stage. This direct line of communication is vital in a fast-paced environment where delays can lead to losing top talent to competitors. Candidates appreciate the quick updates and responsiveness, which reflects positively on QualDerm as an employer.
Similarly, Workable’s self-scheduling functionality has alleviated a considerable administrative burden from the recruiting team. Instead of manually coordinating interview calendars across over 60 facilities, candidates can now directly book into available interview slots. This eliminates tedious back-and-forth communication, significantly accelerates the time to interview, and empowers candidates with greater control over their application process. The efficiency gained allows recruiters to dedicate more time to meaningful candidate interactions and strategic sourcing.
Beyond direct communication, QualDerm has also made a meaningful investment in optimizing the front-end candidate experience. They have meticulously built out their careers page within Workable, creating a polished, branded, and intuitive entry point for candidates. This consistent brand experience, regardless of which job board an applicant originated from, reinforces QualDerm’s professional image and helps attract high-quality talent. By prioritizing a seamless and engaging candidate journey, QualDerm is better positioned to secure top talent in a demanding market.
Compliance and Documentation: Integrating Critical Healthcare Requirements
Healthcare hiring is inherently complex, laden with specific compliance requirements that often challenge general-purpose ATS platforms. Workable has proven instrumental in allowing QualDerm Partners to seamlessly integrate critical documentation directly into their hiring workflows, ensuring regulatory adherence and maintaining comprehensive, auditable records.
A key example is the incorporation of job description acknowledgement forms directly into the standard hiring process. These forms, which fulfill regulatory requirements, are now completed and stored within Workable alongside all other candidate records. This ensures that every hire has a complete, centralized, and easily accessible file, significantly simplifying audit processes and bolstering the organization’s compliance posture. This capability minimizes manual paperwork, reduces the risk of human error, and provides a clear chain of custody for all necessary documentation.
Furthermore, the entire offer letter workflow is now fully managed within the Workable platform. This end-to-end digital process has streamlined what can often be a complex and multi-signature stage of hiring. The ease of use and efficiency of this feature is highlighted by its adoption by senior leadership, including the Chief Operating Officer (COO), who has found the integrated workflow straightforward and effective. This executive-level engagement with the compliance-critical aspects of the platform underscores Workable’s robust capabilities in handling the nuanced demands of healthcare recruitment, ensuring both efficiency and legal soundness.
Executive Endorsement: A Powerful Signal of Success
Perhaps the most compelling indicator of Workable’s deep and successful integration within QualDerm Partners is the unprecedented level of engagement from the organization’s executive leadership. The CEO, CHRO (Chief Human Resources Officer), and COO all actively utilize the platform, not as passive recipients of reports, but as direct participants in hiring workflows. This direct executive adoption reflects a profound confidence in both the usability of the Workable platform and the accuracy and strategic value of the hiring data it provides.
For the talent acquisition team, this executive involvement is transformative. It means that the crucial data they generate and analyze resides within a shared environment where leadership can engage with it firsthand. This direct access significantly reduces the friction typically associated with traditional reporting cycles, where data might be filtered or summarized, potentially losing nuance. Instead, leadership gains real-time, unmediated insight into recruitment performance, pipeline health, and strategic hiring decisions. This increased transparency and direct engagement foster greater alignment across the organization, enhancing confidence in overall hiring decisions at every level. The fact that the most senior leaders are directly interacting with the ATS underscores its strategic importance and its role in shaping QualDerm’s future workforce and operational capabilities. This level of executive endorsement is a powerful testament to Workable’s efficacy and its ability to deliver tangible, measurable business impact.
Broader Implications and a Future-Ready Talent Strategy
QualDerm Partners’ journey with Workable exemplifies a modern approach to talent acquisition, demonstrating how strategic technology adoption can revolutionize recruitment in complex, high-growth environments. The transformation from a system lacking fundamental metrics to one providing rich, actionable data has not only optimized operational efficiency but has fundamentally repositioned talent acquisition as a strategic imperative. The ability of a six-person team to manage 787 annual hires and up to 150 open requisitions simultaneously, across 17 states and over 60 facilities, is a remarkable achievement. This efficiency is directly attributable to the robust infrastructure provided by Workable, enabling structured requisition management, AI-powered screening, and streamlined communication.
The implications extend beyond mere numbers. By establishing a clear baseline for Time to Fill, QualDerm can now precisely calculate and manage the cost per vacancy, directly linking recruitment performance to financial outcomes. The substantial time savings generated by features like video interviews allow recruiters to engage more deeply with candidates and strategic sourcing, rather than being bogged down by administrative tasks. Furthermore, the enhanced candidate experience, driven by texting and self-scheduling, provides QualDerm with a crucial competitive advantage in attracting and retaining top talent in a highly competitive healthcare market.
Looking ahead, QualDerm Partners is poised for continuous optimization. The successful integration of Workable’s evolving features, coupled with strong executive buy-in, suggests a future where talent acquisition remains agile, data-driven, and aligned with the organization’s growth objectives. The experience of QualDerm Partners offers a compelling case study for other healthcare organizations grappling with similar challenges: that with the right technological infrastructure, speed, visibility, compliance support, and an exceptional candidate experience are not just aspirations but achievable realities. Without reservation, QualDerm Partners stands as a testament to Workable’s capability in delivering what the demanding field of healthcare talent acquisition truly requires.
