Bridging the Mental Health Talent Gap: How New Oakland Family Centers Revolutionized Recruitment Across Michigan

Introduction: The High Stakes of Nonprofit Healthcare Recruitment

In the landscape of modern healthcare, few challenges match the complexity of recruiting specialized clinical talent for community mental health organizations. For New Oakland Family Centers—a prominent Michigan-based nonprofit mental health provider operating 16 locations and supporting 319 employees—talent acquisition is not merely an administrative function; it is a vital community lifeline.

Since 1991, New Oakland has delivered a continuum of care ranging from routine outpatient therapy to intensive crisis intervention programs for highly acute clients. Delivering this care requires a diverse, highly specialized workforce. The organization relies on an intricate ecosystem of talent, including licensed therapists, registered nurses, nurse practitioners, psychiatrists, behavioral health technicians, call center operators, and drivers.

However, filling these roles has historically tested the limits of traditional human resources infrastructure. Operating within a specialized healthcare sector characterized by severe statewide talent shortages, the organization faced a daunting bottleneck: how to attract, vet, and retain qualified professionals across multiple geographic locations without overwhelming a lean HR team.

This is the story of how New Oakland Family Centers transformed its talent acquisition framework from a fragmented, manual operation into a streamlined, tech-enabled engine. By implementing Workable’s Applicant Tracking System (ATS), the nonprofit standardized its pipelines, widened its candidate reach, and successfully reversed turnover trends during its first full year of deployment in 2024 and 2025.

Chronology of an HR Transformation: From Spreadsheets to Modern Automation

To understand the magnitude of New Oakland Family Centers’ recent operational success, one must examine the evolutionary path of its recruitment strategies. The organization’s talent acquisition journey reflects the broader struggles faced by mid-sized healthcare nonprofits attempting to scale without enterprise-level resources.

Phase 1: The Manual Era and Fragmented Beginnings

In its earlier years, New Oakland’s HR department managed recruitment through a patchwork of low-tech tools. The operation relied heavily on spreadsheets to track applicants, individual job postings manually pushed to platforms like Indeed, and time-consuming cold outreach to prospective candidates. As the organization expanded its footprint across Michigan, this decentralized approach quickly proved unsustainable. It created blind spots, made candidate tracking difficult, and left applicants vulnerable to falling through the cracks.

Phase 2: The False Starts of Early ATS Adoption

Recognizing the need for automation, New Oakland transitioned to an ATS add-on provided by its existing Human Resources Information System (HRIS) vendor. Unfortunately, the software was still in its developmental infancy. It introduced technical barriers, rigid workflows, and operational friction that ultimately frustrated both HR personnel and hiring managers.

Seeking a more reliable solution, the organization migrated to a second standalone platform. While this system remained functional for a year or two, persistent operational issues, limited candidate visibility, and poor integration capabilities signaled that the organization had outgrown the software. The HR team required a robust, scalable system capable of unifying its multi-site recruitment efforts.

Phase 3: The Implementation of Workable

In mid-2024, New Oakland Family Centers officially partnered with Workable. Driven by the need for broader multi-board job distribution, seamless calendar integrations, and advanced candidate relationship management features, the transition marked a fundamental shift in how the nonprofit approached its talent acquisition infrastructure.

According to Kathleen Kubiak, HR Coordinator and the sole manager of talent acquisition for the organization, the platform represented a massive upgrade across every operational dimension. By shifting away from administrative dependency—where HR acted as the sole bottleneck for every hiring action—Workable empowered department leaders, clinical supervisors, and hiring managers to engage directly with the recruitment pipeline.

Supporting Data and Quantitative Impact

The operational pivot to Workable yielded immediate, measurable results across multiple performance metrics. New Oakland Family Centers documented dramatic improvements in hiring reach, time-to-fill intervals, and internal communication loops.

Summary of Key Performance Metrics

Official Responses and Perspectives

Transitioning a healthcare organization to a new digital ecosystem requires careful change management, cultural adjustment, and strong leadership buy-in. Kathleen Kubiak, who spearheads all talent acquisition efforts for New Oakland’s 319 employees, offers a firsthand perspective on the transformation.

Navigating the Clinical Talent Shortage

In the mental health sector, the candidate pool is notoriously narrow. Clinical roles demand advanced credentials, including master’s degrees and active state licenses. In regions of Michigan where staffing shortages are particularly pronounced, competition for qualified clinicians is fierce.

Kubiak emphasizes that Workable’s multi-board distribution capability has been instrumental in overcoming geographic and demographic limitations.

"The amount of people who are getting to see our ads has definitely been impactful for us, especially in a field where there are not as many candidates," Kubiak explains. "We want as many people getting eyes on our ads. Even if one job board hasn’t resulted in a mass amount of hires, we’re still getting our name out there."

Streamlining the Administrative Workflow

Prior to implementing Workable, executing routine administrative tasks—such as requesting background checks, drafting employment offers, and issuing contractual agreements to independent staff—required navigating a labyrinth of disconnected tools, emails, and manual follow-ups.

Kubiak highlights how centralizing these workflows changed daily operations for the HR team:

"It’s kind of like a one-stop area, which is nice to have it all saved in there," notes Kubiak. "The email templates, having those all saved, it’s definitely helpful to be able to just click and send and not have to spend time drafting an email."

Furthermore, Kubiak points to the profound cultural shift regarding candidate communication. In previous years, high application volumes meant that many applicants received no acknowledgment of receipt, and rejected candidates were rarely notified. Today, automated acknowledgement systems and status triggers ensure absolute transparency.

"Closing that loop is something we haven’t been able to do before, which has been really great," she says.

Deep Dive: How Workable Transformed Operations at New Oakland

The integration of Workable directly influenced six core pillars of New Oakland Family Centers’ recruitment and human resources strategy:

1. Exponential Expansion of Hiring Reach

Because mental health professionals are scarce, New Oakland cannot rely on passive recruitment strategies. Through Workable’s multi-board distribution engine, a single job posting is simultaneously pushed across numerous prominent employment boards. This automated syndication has visibly amplified application metrics, particularly in competitive urban markets like Metro Detroit, ensuring the nonprofit’s brand remains visible to active and passive job seekers alike.

2. Integration of On-Site Visits into the Interview Workflow

The nature of acute mental health care requires a rigorous mutual assessment before an employment relationship begins. New Oakland maintains a strict policy: no formal offer is extended without an in-person site visit, allowing prospective employees to evaluate the high-acuity environment firsthand.

Workable’s native integration with Microsoft Outlook transformed this requirement. The HR team can now coordinate and schedule on-site visits directly within the platform. This eliminates the sluggish manual coordination that previously took place between the initial phone screening and the in-person interview stage, significantly accelerating the pipeline.

3. Centralized Document and Compliance Management

Compliance is paramount in healthcare organizations operating under state and federal regulatory frameworks. The transition to Workable consolidated several disparate processes into a single repository. Background check requests, full-time employee offer letters, and specialized contract agreements for temporary or auxiliary staff are now managed using standardized templates. Administrators can execute complex documentation workflows in a single action, minimizing human error and ensuring strict regulatory adherence.

4. Customizable Pipelines for Diverse Roles

Hiring a licensed clinical therapist requires an entirely different evaluative process than recruiting a registered nurse, a behavioral health technician, or an administrative call center representative. Workable’s customizable pipeline architecture allows New Oakland to configure distinct interview stages and workflows tailored specifically to each department. When a new office opens or an existing department expands, the pre-defined workflows apply immediately, allowing relevant clinical directors and supervisors to evaluate candidates without unnecessary administrative interference from HR.

5. AI-Powered Matching and Automated Disqualification

To manage high application volumes efficiently, hiring managers leverage Workable’s AI candidate match score. This feature provides an immediate indicator of a candidate’s alignment with job descriptions before decision-makers dive into full resume reviews. Additionally, automated killer questions (pre-screening queries) instantly filter out applicants who fail to meet basic licensing or credentialing requirements. This automation protects clinical managers from spending time on unqualified leads.

6. Closing the Communication Loop

Perhaps the most notable qualitative improvement is the restoration of candidate dignity and engagement. Under legacy systems, communication breakdowns were common due to manual tracking limitations. Today, every applicant receives an immediate automated acknowledgment—routed through a dedicated administrative no-reply address to keep HR inboxes manageable. Furthermore, when candidates are disqualified, automated notifications are triggered. This complete transparency ensures that no applicant is left wondering about the status of their submission.

Broader Implications and Future Outlook

The success of New Oakland Family Centers offers a compelling blueprint for other community-based healthcare providers grappling with administrative bloat and talent shortages. By modernizing its recruitment infrastructure, the organization achieved several strategic milestones with its existing headcount:

• Downward Trend in Staff Turnover: Following the mid-2024 implementation of Workable, the organization recorded declining turnover rates throughout its first full operational year in 2025. This stabilization points to better candidate-role alignment driven by structured interviewing and clear expectations.
• Empowered Leadership: By encouraging hiring managers to leave comments, review applicant profiles, and participate directly in hiring decisions, New Oakland decentralized talent acquisition. Recruitment is no longer viewed solely as an "HR problem," but as an organization-wide priority.
• Enhanced Employee Referral Networks: The integration of an internal referrals portal successfully engaged existing staff in the sourcing process, tapping into professional networks that traditional cold outreach could never reach.

Conclusion

New Oakland Family Centers has demonstrated that even non-profit healthcare providers facing intense systemic talent shortages can overcome operational paralysis through strategic technology adoption. By replacing spreadsheets and fragmented add-ons with a unified, intelligent recruitment platform, the organization has safeguarded its ability to deliver uninterrupted, high-quality mental health care to communities across Michigan. As the healthcare sector continues to navigate workforce volatility, New Oakland’s journey stands as a testament to the power of structured workflows, transparent communication, and modern HR automation.