QualDerm Partners, a prominent dermatology organization operating across 17 states with over 60 facilities, has fundamentally transformed its talent acquisition strategy through the comprehensive implementation of Workable, an advanced applicant tracking system (ATS). Facing the formidable challenge of high-volume, geographically dispersed hiring for a diverse range of roles, the organization has achieved remarkable efficiencies, establishing critical performance baselines and significantly enhancing strategic oversight within its recruitment operations. This strategic shift has enabled QualDerm to complete 787 hires in a single year with a lean team of six, drastically reduce time-to-fill, and integrate executive leadership directly into the hiring workflow, marking a significant departure from previous operational limitations.
The Landscape of QualDerm Partners: A Growing Healthcare Powerhouse
QualDerm Partners stands as a significant entity within the specialized healthcare sector of dermatology. With a workforce exceeding 2,000 employees and a footprint spanning 17 states and over 60 distinct facilities, the organization’s operational scale presents unique challenges in talent acquisition. The roles requiring recruitment are exceptionally varied, encompassing highly specialized medical professionals such as surgeons and physician assistants, alongside critical support staff like medical assistants, front office personnel, and call center teams. This broad spectrum of positions demands a recruitment strategy that is both agile and robust, capable of sourcing, screening, and onboarding candidates with diverse skill sets and professional backgrounds across a wide geographical expanse.
Leading the charge for non-provider recruitment is Iesha Vann, the Manager of Talent Acquisition. Her dedicated team of six is responsible for managing the entirety of the hiring workflow for all non-clinical roles across the organization. This responsibility often translates into handling as many as 150 open requisitions concurrently. For a team of this size supporting an organization of QualDerm’s magnitude, the underlying technology infrastructure for recruitment is not merely a tool but a critical determinant of success, directly impacting efficiency, cost-effectiveness, and ultimately, patient care delivery.
Pre-Workable Era: Navigating Growth with Obsolete Systems
Prior to its partnership with Workable, QualDerm Partners found itself grappling with the limitations of an inadequate applicant tracking system, Paylocity, particularly following a period of substantial organizational growth driven by a strategic merger. This merger, while expanding QualDerm’s reach and operational capacity, simultaneously exposed the glaring deficiencies of their existing recruitment technology.
The primary challenges posed by Paylocity were multifaceted. Firstly, its data and analytics capabilities were severely limited. In an era where data-driven decision-making is paramount, QualDerm’s talent acquisition team lacked access to essential metrics that are vital for optimizing high-volume healthcare recruiting. Key performance indicators such as time-to-fill, time-to-hire, and the overall health of the candidate pipeline were either entirely unavailable or impossible to track with any degree of reliability. This absence of verifiable data meant that the recruitment team operated largely in the dark, unable to quantify the true cost of open positions or identify strategic areas for investment to improve hiring efficiency.
Secondly, the user experience of the previous platform was notably difficult and counter-intuitive. A clunky interface and an outdated design hindered recruiter productivity, turning routine tasks into cumbersome processes. This friction directly impacted the team’s ability to efficiently manage a high volume of requisitions and provide a seamless experience for both candidates and hiring managers. Furthermore, the platform felt static and unresponsive in a rapidly evolving talent market, failing to keep pace with modern recruitment practices and technological advancements.
The operational consequences of these limitations were significant and tangible. In the specialized field of dermatology, an open provider chair represents more than just an unfilled position; it directly translates into lost revenue and potentially delayed patient care. Without robust data to quantify the cost-per-vacancy, QualDerm’s leadership lacked the insights needed to make informed decisions about resource allocation and strategic investments in talent acquisition. The team had prior experience with Workable before the merger, and this previous positive engagement underscored the stark contrast with their current system, making the decision to transition a clear and straightforward one when the opportunity arose.
The Strategic Imperative for Change: Why Workable?
The decision to return to Workable was not merely a matter of familiarity but a strategic validation rooted in the immediate and profound contrast it offered. Where the previous system was characterized by its limitations, inflexibility, and outdated design, Workable presented a dynamic platform that was demonstrably evolving, genuinely user-friendly, and specifically engineered to support the complex demands of high-volume, multi-location hiring that is inherent to QualDerm’s operational model.
The core drivers behind Workable’s selection were its capacity to provide granular data insights, streamline complex workflows, and enhance the overall candidate and recruiter experience. QualDerm recognized that to thrive in a competitive healthcare talent market, it needed an ATS that was not just a repository of applications but a strategic engine capable of driving efficiency, compliance, and superior talent outcomes.
Transforming Scale: Managing 150 Requisitions Simultaneously
The operational demands on QualDerm’s recruiting team are immense, routinely managing up to 150 active open requisitions at any given time. This volume is often compounded by roles opening in clusters due to facility expansions or staff turnover, necessitating a system capable of absorbing significant hiring pressure without succumbing to disorganization. Workable’s robust requisition management and integrated hiring plan functionality have proven instrumental in navigating this complexity.
The platform allows Iesha Vann’s team to systematically stack and prioritize openings, ensuring that high-urgency roles, such as those impacting direct patient care or revenue generation, receive immediate and focused attention. Simultaneously, the broader candidate pipeline remains meticulously organized and visible. A critical enhancement has been the multi-location visibility Workable provides, enabling a recruiter to gain a comprehensive overview of all active requisitions across QualDerm’s 17 states from a single, unified dashboard. This centralized perspective was previously unattainable and represents a significant leap forward in operational control and strategic planning.
Furthermore, Workable’s AI screening tools have become an indispensable component of the team’s strategy for handling inbound application volume. Instead of the laborious and time-consuming manual sifting through hundreds of applications across dozens of diverse roles, recruiters can now leverage AI to rapidly identify and prioritize the most qualified candidates. This automation maintains the quality of the candidate pool while dramatically increasing the speed of the initial screening process, allowing recruiters to focus their valuable time on engagement and relationship building rather than administrative overhead.
The Power of Data: Establishing Critical Baselines and Driving Strategy
One of the most profound impacts of Workable’s implementation at QualDerm Partners has been the ability to establish reliable metrics, particularly for time-to-fill. Prior to Workable, this crucial metric was untrackable, representing a significant blind spot in an industry where provider availability directly correlates with revenue and patient access. Today, QualDerm proudly tracks an average time-to-fill of 32 days. This figure is not merely a statistic; it serves as a foundational baseline that now anchors the organization’s cost-per-vacancy analysis.
The establishment of this metric has provided leadership with a clear, data-driven lens through which to evaluate recruiting performance and understand the financial implications of every day a position remains unfilled. As Iesha Vann emphasized, "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 direct insight into operational costs empowers QualDerm to make more informed decisions about where to allocate resources to optimize recruitment processes, minimize revenue leakage, and enhance overall organizational efficiency.
Beyond time-to-fill, Workable provides granular data on candidate sourcing channels, pipeline movement, and overall hiring outcomes. This comprehensive data visibility has elevated the talent acquisition function from a purely operational role to a strategic one. Leadership, including the CEO, CHRO, and COO, now actively engages with hiring data directly within the platform, rather than relying on secondhand summaries. This direct access fosters greater confidence in hiring decisions and allows for a more proactive approach to workforce planning and talent strategy.
Efficiency Unleashed: Video Interviews and Significant Time Savings
Workable’s efficiency impact at QualDerm is perhaps most vividly illustrated by the success of its video interview feature. The call center, an area characterized by higher turnover rates within the organization, frequently presents scenarios of multiple simultaneous openings. At one point, the team faced over 10 concurrent openings for call center roles. Under traditional screening methods, this volume would have consumed an inordinate amount of recruiter time, significantly slowing down an already time-sensitive process.
By activating Workable’s video interview feature, QualDerm was able to pivot to an asynchronous screening model. Recruiters could send video screening requests, allowing candidates to record their responses at their convenience. Hiring managers could then review these recordings without the logistical complexities of scheduling live interviews, eliminating time-consuming coordination efforts. The result was a staggering saving of 20 to 30 hours of recruiter time within a single 30-day period for this specific role. This efficiency gain allowed the recruitment team to reallocate their efforts towards more strategic tasks, such as candidate engagement and building talent pipelines for other critical positions.
The success of video interviews in the call center has spurred its expansion across the organization. Leadership, including senior executives who previously had limited visibility into early-stage candidates, now actively participates in reviewing video screens. This broad adoption underscores the feature’s value in streamlining initial candidate assessment and bringing a wider range of perspectives into the early hiring stages. The QualDerm team is proactively identifying additional roles and workflows where video interviewing can be strategically applied throughout the year, maximizing its impact on efficiency and candidate quality. As a team member noted, "Anyone can watch them now, including leaders. It opened up the process." This statement encapsulates the enhanced transparency and collaboration fostered by the feature.
Elevating the Candidate Journey: Texting, Self-Scheduling, and Branded Experience
In today’s highly competitive market for clinical and administrative talent, candidate responsiveness is a critical differentiator. QualDerm Partners leverages Workable’s integrated texting feature throughout the entire hiring process, from initial outreach to interview scheduling and pre-start communications. The immediacy and convenience of text-based communication have proven invaluable in reducing candidate drop-off rates and maintaining high levels of engagement at every stage of the recruitment funnel. This direct line of communication helps QualDerm stand out in a crowded market where candidates often juggle multiple opportunities.
Similarly, the implementation of self-scheduling functionality has significantly alleviated the coordination burden on the recruiting team. Instead of manually managing complex interview calendars across QualDerm’s 60-plus facilities, candidates can now directly book into available interview slots. This eliminates tedious back-and-forth communication, accelerates the time-to-interview, and provides candidates with a more empowering and convenient experience.
The candidate experience on the front end has also received considerable attention. QualDerm made a meaningful investment in developing a polished, branded careers page within Workable. This dedicated portal serves as a professional and consistent entry point for candidates, regardless of the job board through which they initially discovered the opportunity. A strong employer brand and a streamlined application process are vital for attracting top talent, and Workable has enabled QualDerm to present itself as a modern, candidate-centric employer.
Ensuring Compliance and Streamlining Documentation
Healthcare hiring is inherently complex, burdened by stringent compliance requirements that many general-purpose ATS platforms struggle to accommodate. QualDerm Partners has proactively addressed this by embedding critical documentation directly into its Workable workflows. This includes, for instance, job description acknowledgment forms that fulfill regulatory mandates as a standard part of the hiring process. These essential documents are meticulously stored within Workable alongside all other candidate records, ensuring a complete, centralized, and auditable hiring file for every single hire. This seamless integration of compliance measures into the daily workflow mitigates risk and ensures regulatory adherence without adding administrative burden.
Furthermore, the entire offer letter workflow is now fully managed within the Workable platform. This end-to-end management, from generation to electronic signature, streamlines a historically manual and error-prone process. The ease of use and reliability of this feature have led to widespread adoption, even among senior leadership. The COO, for example, is among the key executives who have recently embraced the platform for offer letter approvals, attesting to its straightforward functionality and efficiency. This executive adoption signifies a high level of confidence in the platform’s ability to handle critical, sensitive processes.
Executive Engagement: A Hallmark of Success
Perhaps the most compelling indicator of Workable’s deep and successful integration within QualDerm Partners is the unprecedented level of engagement from its executive leadership. The CEO, CHRO, and COO are not merely passive observers of hiring reports; they are active participants, directly utilizing the platform for various hiring workflows. This direct executive-level adoption is a powerful testament to both the inherent usability and intuitive design of the Workable platform, as well as the elevated priority that hiring visibility and data-driven talent acquisition have assumed within QualDerm’s strategic objectives.
For the talent acquisition team, this executive involvement translates into significant benefits. The data and insights they generate now reside in a shared, transparent environment where leadership can directly engage with them. This direct access substantially reduces the friction typically associated with traditional reporting cycles, fostering a culture of trust and shared understanding. Ultimately, this executive-level confidence in the hiring data and streamlined workflows empowers more agile and informed hiring decisions across every echelon of the organization, solidifying the strategic importance of talent acquisition.
Broader Implications for Healthcare Recruitment
QualDerm Partners’ journey with Workable offers valuable lessons for the broader healthcare industry, which faces persistent challenges in talent acquisition. The demand for skilled healthcare professionals continues to outpace supply, exacerbated by demographic shifts, evolving patient needs, and the competitive landscape. QualDerm’s success demonstrates that investing in modern, specialized ATS technology can yield significant returns, not only in operational efficiency but also in strategic advantage.
The ability to accurately track time-to-fill, manage high requisition volumes with a lean team, and leverage automation for initial screening addresses some of the most pressing pain points in healthcare recruiting. Moreover, prioritizing the candidate experience through features like texting and self-scheduling is crucial in attracting and retaining talent in a candidate-driven market. The emphasis on compliance documentation within the workflow also highlights a critical need for healthcare organizations to adopt systems that can seamlessly integrate regulatory requirements, mitigating legal and operational risks.
The executive adoption observed at QualDerm also signals a growing recognition among top leadership that talent acquisition is not merely an HR function but a core business driver. When CEOs and COOs are directly engaged with hiring data, it elevates the entire function, ensuring that talent strategies are aligned with broader business objectives and directly contribute to organizational growth and sustainability.
QualDerm’s Resounding Recommendation
Without reservation, QualDerm Partners wholeheartedly recommends Workable. For healthcare organizations navigating the complex and competitive terrain of high-volume, multi-location recruiting, Workable delivers a comprehensive suite of solutions tailored to industry demands: speed, unparalleled visibility, robust compliance support, and a superior candidate experience that reflects the professionalism and forward-thinking nature of the organization.
The QualDerm team of six, armed with the right technological infrastructure, efficiently manages an impressive 787 annual hires and expertly handles up to 150 open requisitions concurrently. This remarkable output is achieved with the unwavering confidence that stems from having a powerful, intuitive, and strategically aligned recruitment platform supporting their every effort. QualDerm’s experience serves as a compelling case study for how modern ATS technology can transform talent acquisition into a strategic advantage, ensuring that healthcare organizations can consistently attract, hire, and retain the talent critical for delivering exceptional patient care and achieving sustainable growth.
