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The U.S. locum tenens staffing market is projected to grow from $9.77 billion in 2026 to $16.30 billion by 2033.
But this revenue growth lands as more work for your staffing team. Your locum recruiters must manage more open requisitions, source more providers, chase credentialing documents, coordinate schedules, and track license renewals.
By the time these tasks are done, there may be little room left for the conversation that actually brings a placement. While trying to fit in all the extra work into the same team can cause burnout.
So, before you ask recruiters to take on more, look at what you can take off their plates.
This guide breaks down how you can decide what to automate, outsource, and keep with your internal recruitment team to meet the growing locums demand.
Why locum recruiters need a workload-allocation model
38.8% of recruitment teams are smaller than last year, while only 35.3% report lower hiring volume. This means the same team is now handling more requisitions and absorbing increased admin work pressure.
A workload allocation model lets you review this work pressure task by task. You decide where AI recruiting can handle a repeatable step, where an external team can provide support, and which tasks need your recruiters’ attention.
For example, you can automate interview reminders, outsource credentialing, and candidate sourcing, while keeping provider conversations and assignment negotiations with your recruiters.
This way, your recruiters can gain back 3-4 hours a day, so they can focus on what they do best.
5 questions to decide what needs recruitment automation or not
Before you decide who handles the work, use these 5 questions to identify which tasks you can automate and which still need a human judgment.
Question 1: How repetitive is the task?
Start by checking if the hiring task involves doing the same thing repeatedly or follows a specific pattern. For example, does your team manually send a reminder to every provider on the interview day?
You can easily automate the reminder email with the interview date as the trigger that tells the AI recruiting tool when to send it. Your team only needs to step in if the provider has a concern or wants to reschedule.
Question 2: Is it high-volume or transactional?
Now, check how often your team handles a particular recruitment task and whether it simply confirms or updates information.
For example, does your team manually acknowledge every document a provider uploads? Do they update the ATS each time a provider completes an onboarding form? Or send assignment details to every provider who confirms their availability?
You can automate these steps, so your team doesn’t have to send each message or enter each update manually. You still need a locum recruiter to verify the details or when the provider needs clarification.
Question 3: What is the compliance or data risk involved?
Since locums staffing involves sensitive data, it’s important to check what information the AI recruiting tool needs and what happens if it makes a mistake.
Will it access provider records, credentialing documents, or confidential client information? If so, will the AI store data or route it externally to train its model? Will it suggest matches for your team to review, or automatically screen out providers and move them through the process?
Now, compare the answers to your firm’s policies and client agreements before deciding what tasks to automate. However, always keep authorized staff to verify credentials, review exceptions, and take the final call.
Question 4: How much contextual judgment does it require?
When you’re considering automation, ask if a hiring task only needs information from your records or requires understanding of the specific situation.
For example, a locums provider’s availability may match an assignment’s dates, but that doesn’t tell you whether they want the role. They may prefer outpatient work, expect a higher pay rate, or need to stay close to home.
AI can compare dates and qualifications using the information in your records. But if these records don’t explain the provider’s preferences, your recruiter needs to ask before deciding whether the assignment fits.
Question 5: How directly does it affect the candidate relationship?
Finally, look at how the provider experiences the hiring task on their end.
Is the step you’re going to automate involve just background logistic, or is it a moment that can shape how locum providers see your firm?
For example, you can automate a shift confirmation or a routine follow-up after first outreach. But if a message can change whether a provider works with you again, a recruiter must own it.
This is especially important as more than half of physicians learn about locum tenens through word-of-mouth. So, one provider’s experience with your agency can shape whether they recommend other colleagues to work with you.
The five-factor decision framework for choosing AI recruiting or human recruiting
Once you’ve answered all the above 5 questions, score each task using the table below to see where recruitment automation makes sense and what must be human led.
| Factor | Favors AI or automation | Favors human recruiter |
|---|---|---|
| Repetition | Repetitive tasks with a set pattern | Infrequent tasks or varies case to case |
| Volume of work | High-volume standardized or transactional tasks | Low volume or highly strategic tasks |
| Compliance or data risk | No sensitive data involved or low-risk tasks that follows clear rules | Audit-sensitive tasks, high-risk decisions, or exceptions |
| Context or judgment requirement | Minimal | SOP-guided or strategic judgment |
| Candidate experience impact | Minimal impact. Internal, transactional, or routine tasks. | Tasks that build trust and involve persuasion, negotiation, resolution, or support retention. |
In case a task fits both columns, split it into steps. Then, automate the routine parts and assign a person to overlook the process or handle exceptions.
When to choose recruitment automation vs. recruitment outsourcing services
The above scorecard tells you what you can automate. However, you may want to consider outsourcing parts of your recruitment work to an external human team instead of an AI recruiting tool.
Here’s a comparison table to help you decide when to outsource your recruitment tasks to an AI vs external team.
| Considerations | Recruitment automation | Recruitment outsourcing |
|---|---|---|
| Who does the work | Software, AI tools, or automated workflows | An external trained team (onshore or offshore) working under your SOPs |
| How it handles work | Uses configured rules or trained on your recruitment data | Follows your procedures but brings in human expertise where required |
| Best for | Repetitive, high-volume tasks | Providing human support to your team without adding permanent overheads |
| What you pay for | Licenses, setup, integrations, maintenance, and usage | Partner fees as per the work you need |
| Exception handling | May or may not flag inconsistencies or biases | Resolves issues within its scope and escalates others to your team |
| Your internal effort | Configure workflows, train teams, control access, review output, and correct errors | Set expectations, audit quality, and review reports |
| Risks involved | AI hiring biases, hidden errors, data leak, and compliance risks | Work inconsistencies or inappropriate data use if not outsourced correctly |
| Locums example | Create job descriptions and screen provider profiles lacking certain mandatory skills | Contact providers, confirm availability, and update their profiles if required |
However, it’s not an “either…or” situation. You can always use both within the same process.
Here’s how it may look for your locums staffing process:
- AI creates your job description and runs the initial screening against mandatory skill criteria.
- An offshore recruitment team reviews the AI output, contacts new providers and takes care of credentialing.
- The same offshore team provides out-of-hours coverage for faster sourcing and refreshes your existing candidate database, so you can re-engage with them.
What needs recruitment outsourcing solutions vs. in-house hiring
Now that you know where AI in recruitment works best, review the remaining work that needs an actual locum recruiter.
Start by asking yourself:
- What tasks can an external team manage to free your internal capacity?
- What do you want to own internally?
To help you decide when to outsource locums recruitment tasks, here are 7 signals to consider.
Market demand is rising or fluctuating
Compare your weekly requisition volume with the work your team can handle. If locums staffing demand spikes leave you short of capacity, it may be time to consider external staffing support.
New requisitions are creating sourcing backlogs
Check how long new requests wait before your team starts sourcing. If your recruiters spend the day managing active assignments, you can outsource candidate sourcing and screening tasks to build pipelines faster.
Your profit margin is shrinking
Review what you spend on fixed costs, including salaries, tools, infrastructure, and management time. Then compare what you’ll need to pay if you add permanent headcount vs to outsource the work.
You can consider offshore teams to improve recruiter capacity with greater cost-savings and out-of-hours coverage. This is especially helpful when you’re looking to scale flexibly without paying for idle overheads.
You need greater role coverage
If your recruiters prioritize urgent requests while other roles sit untouched, it may be time to outsource some requisitions to an external team or offshore for out-of-hours role coverage.
You lack internal expertise for a specific role
If your firm takes on a completely new or niche specialty, you can consider partnering with a team that has experience in that specialty.
At IMS People Possible, you can interview and choose your own recruiter for the role(s) you want to cover. All of them have expertise in the USA market and in specific domains.
Once assigned, they work as a natural extension of your team within your defined workflows. This way, you keep complete control of the hiring process while rebuilding your capacity with additional support.
Your team is showing burnout symptoms
Speak with your recruiters about workload, overtime, and tasks they struggle to finish. It’s also important to notice the work they regularly carry out after work hours or during weekends.
Then, use that feedback to decide what you can redistribute or outsource to free their capacity.
Your recruiters spend a lot of time in admin work
Locums recruitment has a lot of credentialing and compliance tasks along with regular documentation. This can leave your recruiters with increased admin work pressure.
The best way to resolve it is to automate the suitable tasks and outsource the remaining coordination work to a team of experts.
Task-by-task allocation for locum recruitment
Once you’ve assessed which tasks to automate, outsource, or keep internally, use the table below to apply those decisions to your workflow.
| Recruitment Activity | Recruitment Automation | Recruitment Outsourcing | In-house Recruiter |
|---|---|---|---|
| Candidate sourcing | Draft job descriptions, run search queries, and suggest profile matches | Map specialty talent pool, build provider pipelines, refresh candidate database for re-engagement | Review job descriptions, define target profile, prioritize requisitions |
| Database management | Flag duplicate records, apply approved tags, and send reminder alerts | Clean records, confirm details, and update availability | Set data standards and contact preferences |
| Candidate screening | Resume matching for initial screening | Talk to candidates, verify information, and shortlist talent | Review the shortlisted candidates, check the overall data to see rejection trends and flag any error |
| Credentialing | Track expiry date and flag missing documents | Collect documents, verify all credentials, and follow-up on any gaps | Assign roles that need credentialing and get client approval |
| Compliance | Maintain checklists and log activity | Gather required data, maintain reports, and flag inconsistencies | Interpret requirements and oversee compliance decisions |
| Interview scheduling | Set schedules and send reminders | Coordinate with the candidate and handle routine communication | Resolve any conflicts and communicate with the client |
| Interview assessment | Prepare approved questions or take agentic interviews | Record and assess responses against requirements | Collect feedback and send forward to clients |
| Onboarding support | Send any outstanding reminders or confirmation emails | Help providers complete paperwork and coordinate onboarding documents | Explain assignment expectations, address concerns, and resolve start-date issues |
| Candidate re-engagement | Send re-engagement campaigns based on set rules | Contact database segments, update data, and confirm interest to shortlist candidates | Discuss suitable assignments with shortlisted candidates |
| Assignment negotiation | Prepare rate comparisons and record responses | Gather information and coordinate discussions | Negotiate rates and final terms with client and providers |
| Ongoing account management | Track deadlines and prepare reports | Initiate routine updates with providers, log any issues, and create reports | Own client communications, commercial discussions, and any escalations |
To make sure you benefit from the above implementation, start with one hiring task. For example, if screening consumes most of your team’s time, automate the repetitive steps or outsource a part of it. Then, compare the turnaround time, accuracy, and see if it’s helping your recruiters gain productivity.
Once the pilot workflow meets your expected standards, expand the same workload allocation model to other tasks.
Also read: 8 Recruitment Metrics that Reveal Capacity Issues
How to measure workload reduction and capacity gained
Here are 7 metrics to understand if the “automate-outsource-inhouse” workload allocation is working for your team.
- Recruiter hours saved: Compare the time your recruiters spent on a task before and after the change. Subtract the hours they now spend reviewing output, supervising the work, and correcting errors to see how much time they actually gain. For example, if they previously spent 5 hours screening and now spend 1 hour reviewing the results, they’ve saved 4 hours.
- Time to fill: Track the time from receiving a complete requisition to confirming a provider for the assignment. Then compare it with your historical time-to-fill metrics to confirm any productivity gain. It’s a good idea to compare similar specialties and clients, so the baseline remains consistent.
- Submission quality: Look at the percentage of submitted providers who progress to interviews. If you submit more profiles, but the submission-to-interview ratio falls, review your sourcing or screening process for any bottlenecks.
- Credentialing accuracy: Sample a few files each month and track how many passes the review, how the credentialing accuracy is, and the average time to solve any inconsistencies. Faster turnaround times without much rework show that your support team is reducing your administrative workload.
- Requisition backlog: Compare the number and age of open requests awaiting sourcing or a qualified shortlist. If your backlog is shrinking, it’s a good sign that the new support layer (e.g., automation, outsourcing, or offshoring) is working as intended.
- Provider experience: Send a short survey after onboarding and track their feedback. It’s also important to check the repeat-assignment rate and re-engagement response rate to understand their previous experience with your team. If the quality slips after you automate or outsource a task, you can pull it back to your internal team.
- Profit margins: As a locums staffing firm, you must see whether the productivity gains result in margin growth. Are you generating more placement revenue after accounting for software, outsourcing, and internal oversight costs? Comparing the profit you retain before and after the change helps you decide whether to continue with the current approach or switch to some other strategy.
To audit your current locums workflow and optimize it for rebuilding capacity, download our Locums Staffing Intelligence Checklist.
Wrapping Up
81% of healthcare facilities relied on locum tenens to meet patient demands last year.
This number is only set to grow as the U.S. population aged 65+ is set to grow 34.1% in the coming few years.
To effectively meet the growing locums staffing demand, you must have a solid workforce strategy in place. If you follow the above steps in the guide, we hope you feel well-equipped to rebuild your internal capacity.
And if you’ve any more questions or want offshore support for your locums recruitment, reach out to us today.
Locum Tenens Recruitment FAQs
How does a hybrid recruitment model work for staffing firms?
In a hybrid model, you divide your locums staffing workflow between AI, outsourced teams, and your internal team. Recruitment automation handles routine tasks while the external team provides additional human support within your agreed SOPs.
Your internal recruiters gain back more hours which they can spend on provider relationships, strategy, and client communication.
What’s the difference between onshore and offshore recruitment process outsourcing?
For U.S. locum staffing firms, onshore outsourcing means you work with a recruitment team within USA. Offshoring your recruitment process involves working with a team located in a different country like India or Philippines for improving profit margins and extend role coverage.
While both have their own advantages, the choice comes down to the support you need, your budget, and the partner’s capabilities.
When is the 30% rule for AI in recruiting?
The “30% rule for AI” is often used to describe how much work AI should handle. This means using AI to automate 30% of hiring tasks while still keeping 70% of recruitment human led. While there’s no fixed approach to using AI in recruiting, it’s always a good idea to combine both AI and human to scale your staffing processes.
Why won’t AI fix your recruiter burnout if you don’t fix your workflow?
If your workflow includes broken steps like duplicate data entry, unclear handoffs, or unnecessary approvals, adding AI will only increase admin load. Your recruiters may still spend time checking output, correcting errors, and managing more tools.
So, before you introduce automation, identify the bottlenecks and then use AI for suitable recruiting tasks. Track the recruitment capacity metrics weekly and have 1-1 conversations. If the productivity numbers don’t rise, the burnout driver may be still in place.
How offshore recruitment teams can help scale your locum staffing?
An offshore staffing team adds capacity to your team without adding permanent overhead costs or infrastructure burden. The team works within your agreed SOPs as a natural extension but can still function beyond your local hours. Your recruiters can verify and overlook the entire process while gaining back 3-4 hours per day. You can also save 50-70% of your operational costs and scale flexibly as market demand shifts.
