At this year’s Health & Wellbeing at Work Show, we had a straight-talking conversation with the Head of Recruitment at one of the UK’s largest OH providers.

On paper, they’ve got it sorted. A full in-house team. Hundreds of roles are filled every year. A strong grip on their own hiring.

But under the surface, the cracks are starting to show. And if you’re leading recruitment internally right now, some of this might sound familiar.

What’s Working Well

• Clear ownership of process
  
• Consistent employer messaging
  
• Tight cost control
  
• High-volume fulfilment (in some cases, 500+ roles a year)
  

These teams are built for speed and scale. They know their business, and they know how to move quickly when vacancies come in.

But Here’s What’s Holding Them Back

• Reputation issues that turn good candidates away
  
• Unrealistic workload expectations that lead to attrition
  
• A growing reliance on newly qualified staff from outside OH
  
• No breathing room to work on the difficult hires
  

Internal recruitment teams are brilliant at delivering volume. But they’re often spread thin. That leaves little time for the parts of recruitment that take more than a job ad — headhunting, market mapping, candidate engagement and real-world insight.

This Is Where a Specialist Partner Makes a Difference

Not to take over. Not to replace the in-house team. But to step in where capacity is stretched and complexity is high.

We support where it matters:

• Quiet, confidential searches for roles that can’t go to market
  
• Honest feedback on how your brand is being received
  
• Access to passive talent that doesn’t respond to job ads
  
• Strategic insight, not just candidate admin
  

If you’re hitting your fill targets but still struggling with the roles that drag, that’s not failure. That’s capacity. And that’s where we come in.

Need expert recruitment support in Occupational Health or Corporate Healthcare?

At Recruiting Heads, we don’t do generic. We work with healthcare leaders who need roles filled quickly, properly and without the usual noise. Whether it’s a senior clinical post or a critical leadership role, we’ve spent over 25 years finding and placing hard-to-reach talent.

Ready to talk? No waffle. No juniors. Just two seasoned recruiters who know this market inside out.