Healthcare facilities are under constant pressure to keep units staffed while controlling costs, maintaining compliance, and protecting patient care. For many organizations, nurse recruitment agencies have long been the default solution. But as staffing shortages persist and agency costs continue to rise, more health systems are evaluating a different model: the talent marketplace.
If you’re deciding between a traditional nurse recruitment agency and a contingent talent marketplace, understanding how these models differ and where each one fits is critical.
The Traditional Nurse Recruitment Agency Model
Nurse recruitment agencies are designed to fill immediate staffing gaps. They manage sourcing, screening, and placement, often through vendor-controlled models or MSP/VMS programs.
Where Agencies Can Help
Agencies can be useful for short-term coverage needs, especially when internal resources are stretched. They offer speed during urgent situations and manage much of the administrative workload.
Where Agencies Create Long-Term Challenges
Over time, many healthcare leaders encounter limitations with agency-driven staffing models:
- Extended time-to-fill, often averaging 11+ weeks under vendor-controlled programs
- Inflated bill rates with limited visibility into markups
- High dependency on agencies during census spikes and seasonal surges
- No ownership of talent pipelines or candidate data
While agencies solve immediate problems, they rarely help facilities build a sustainable workforce strategy.
What Is a Talent Marketplace Model?
A contingent talent marketplace shifts staffing from vendor ownership to facility ownership.
With SkillGigs’ Contingent Talent Marketplace (CTM), healthcare organizations operate a branded marketplace they control, while SkillGigs supports the technology, compliance, and Employer of Record (EOR) services behind the scenes.
This model combines the efficiency of outsourcing with the transparency, speed, and ownership that traditional agency models lack.
Key Differences: Agency vs. Talent Marketplace
1. Ownership and Control
Agency model:
The agency owns the talent relationship, candidate data, and pricing structure.
Talent marketplace model:
Your facility owns the marketplace, the data, and the clinician pipeline — with full visibility into bids, rates, and performance.
2. Speed to Fill Roles
Agency model:
Vendor-driven workflows often result in average fill times of 11+ weeks.
Talent marketplace model:
Facilities using CTM typically reduce time-to-fill to approximately 5–6 weeks by activating existing pipelines and redeploying proven clinicians.
3. Cost Transparency
Agency model:
Rates are often bundled with opaque markups, making true labor costs difficult to assess.
Talent marketplace model:
Direct bids and clear rates provide CFO-ready reporting and measurable cost control, with organizations seeing 20–30% spend reduction and significantly less agency reliance.
4. Workforce Stability
Agency model:
Each placement is transactional, often resulting in repeated sourcing for the same roles.
Talent marketplace model:
Clinicians remain inside your marketplace, allowing for redeployment, priority recall, and long-term pipeline growth.
How SkillGigs CTM Supports the Talent Marketplace Model
SkillGigs CTM is designed specifically for healthcare and supports all clinician categories:
- Nurses
- Allied Health Professionals
- Locum Tenens
The platform enables facilities to:
- Stock the marketplace using ATS applicants, alumni, referrals, and the SkillGigs network
- Drive demand through always-on clinician engagement
- Match and redeploy clinicians through transparent bidding
- Hire with confidence while SkillGigs manages onboarding, credentialing, payroll, and compliance as EOR
- This structure eliminates co-employment risk while keeping ownership firmly with the healthcare organization.
Which Model Is Right for Your Facility?
If your organization needs short-term, transactional staffing, a nurse recruitment agency may meet immediate needs.
But if your goals include:
- Faster fills without vendor lock-in
- Lower long-term staffing costs
- Ownership of clinician pipelines
- Reduced agency dependency
- Compliance without co-employment risk
- A talent marketplace model offers a more sustainable path forward.
Moving From Staffing Dependency to Workforce Control
Healthcare staffing challenges aren’t going away. The question is whether your facility continues to rent access to talent or builds a marketplace it owns.
SkillGigs CTM enables healthcare organizations to transition from agency reliance to marketplace ownership, delivering faster fills, lower spend, and real workforce stability.
Take back control of your contingent nursing workforce.
Explore how SkillGigs CTM helps healthcare facilities hire smarter, faster, and with confidence.
