Transforming Mental Health Recruitment: How New Oakland Family Centers Overcame the Talent Shortage with Workable

Main Facts

In the high-stakes world of behavioral healthcare, talent acquisition is rarely just a matter of filling open seats—it is a critical operational bottleneck that directly impacts patient care. For New Oakland Family Centers, a prominent Michigan-based nonprofit mental health organization, the recruitment landscape has long been defined by fierce competition for scarce clinical professionals.

Operating 16 offices across the state and supporting a workforce of 319 employees, New Oakland provides a continuum of critical care services, ranging from routine outpatient therapy to intensive crisis intervention programs for highly acute clients. To maintain these services, the organization relies on a diverse ecosystem of professionals, including licensed therapists, nurses, nurse practitioners, psychiatrists, behavioral health technicians, call center operators, and drivers.

However, scaling and sustaining this workforce presented a persistent hurdle. Clinical roles require advanced credentials—specifically a master’s degree coupled with a state-issued clinical license—making the talent pool exceptionally thin, particularly in underserved or rural regions of Michigan.

The turning point for the organization’s human resources infrastructure came with the mid-2024 implementation of Workable, a comprehensive applicant tracking system (ATS) and talent acquisition platform. By transitioning away from fragmented, legacy hiring methods toward a centralized, automated platform, New Oakland Family Centers achieved a dramatic transformation in its recruitment metrics.

Key outcomes include:

• Expanded candidate visibility: Multi-board job distribution simultaneously projects openings across numerous platforms for all 16 locations.
• Streamlined workflows: Department-specific pipelines successfully segment therapists, nurses, and administrative staff into tailored interview stages.
• Unified document management: Full-time employee offer letters, contractor agreements, and background check documentation are seamlessly integrated into a single hub.
• Improved time-to-hire: Standardized templates and structured HR milestones accelerate the journey from initial application to onboarding.
• Closed communication loops: Automated applicant acknowledgments and disqualification notices rectified a historically neglected candidate experience.
• Enhanced retention: Employee turnover trended downward throughout the first full year of implementation, supported by an active internal staff referrals portal.

Chronology: The Evolution of New Oakland’s Hiring Operations

To understand the magnitude of New Oakland Family Centers’ recent operational success, one must examine the iterative, often frustrating evolution of its HR infrastructure.

Phase 1: The Manual and Fragmented Era

In its early stages of regional scaling, New Oakland’s recruitment strategy relied heavily on manual intervention. The HR team managed open positions using basic spreadsheets, posted individual listings manually to job aggregators like Indeed, and conducted labor-intensive cold outreach to prospective candidates. As the organization grew to encompass multiple locations, this decentralized approach quickly proved unsustainable. The sheer volume of incoming resumes overwhelmed administrative staff, leading to missed follow-ups and uncoordinated communication with applicants.

Phase 2: Early ATS Experiments

Seeking to automate and centralize the process, New Oakland first adopted the early-stage applicant tracking system (ATS) add-on provided by its Human Resources Information System (HRIS) vendor. Because the software was still in its infancy, it lacked robust functionality, presenting administrative roadblocks and rigid workflows that frustrated both HR coordinators and hiring managers.

Recognizing its limitations, the organization transitioned to a dedicated third-party ATS platform. While this secondary solution offered temporary relief, it ultimately failed to meet operational demands over a one-to-two-year period. Persistent software glitches, clunky user interfaces, and poor integrations made it clear that New Oakland required an enterprise-grade solution built for scalability and ease of use.

Phase 3: The Workable Implementation (Mid-2024)

In mid-2024, New Oakland officially migrated its entire talent acquisition apparatus to Workable. The transition required an intentional onboarding and adjustment period, particularly as the HR team worked to decentralize hiring responsibilities. Rather than acting as gatekeepers for every administrative task, HR empowered local hiring managers to directly engage with candidates, leave notes, evaluate profiles, and participate in interview decisions within a shared digital workspace.

Phase 4: Maturation and Measurable Impact (2025–Present)

By 2025—the first full calendar year operating under the Workable ecosystem—New Oakland’s recruitment framework reached operational maturity. The organization successfully unified its handling of both permanent employees and independent contractors, drastically reduced its time-to-hire metrics, closed communication gaps with applicants, and observed a noticeable downward trend in organizational turnover.

Supporting Data & Operational Metrics

The operational transformation at New Oakland Family Centers can be mapped through concrete structural changes and performance metrics across several key categories:

Official Perspectives and Insights

At the heart of New Oakland’s recruitment strategy is Kathleen Kubiak, HR Coordinator, who manages talent acquisition across all 16 facilities. Kubiak has been central to evaluating the organization’s historical hiring pain points and championing the adoption of Workable.

Reflecting on the stark realities of recruiting in the mental health sector, Kubiak notes the unique challenge of sourcing specialized clinical talent:

"Clinical roles are the hardest to fill. They require a master’s degree and a clinical license, and the candidate pool in mental health is notably thin, particularly in regions of Michigan where staff shortages are most pronounced."

Despite these regional labor constraints, Workable’s multi-board distribution feature has dramatically improved the organization’s regional brand visibility. Kubiak highlights this as one of the platform’s most valuable assets:

"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. 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."

For New Oakland, extending a job offer is never done sight-unseen. Because clinicians and support staff routinely interact with vulnerable individuals experiencing acute behavioral health crises, candidates must complete an on-site visit to evaluate the work environment before accepting a position. By integrating Workable directly with Microsoft Outlook, the HR team streamlined this critical step, eliminating manual email chains.

Furthermore, administrative bottlenecks surrounding background checks and offer letters have been virtually eliminated. Kubiak emphasizes the efficiency gained through centralized templates:

"It’s kind of like a one-stop area, which is nice to have it all saved in there. 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."

Perhaps most importantly, Kubiak points to the psychological and reputational value of closing the loop with applicants:

"Closing that loop [with rejected candidates] is something we haven’t been able to do before, which has been really great." Previously, applicants often fell into a communication black hole; today, automated updates ensure that every individual who applies receives timely correspondence.

Broader Implications for Healthcare and Nonprofit HR

The successful modernization of New Oakland Family Centers offers valuable strategic lessons for healthcare providers, nonprofits, and organizations operating in talent-scarce industries.

1. Overcoming Niche Labor Shortages Through Wide Distribution

In industries facing severe talent deficits—such as behavioral health, nursing, and specialized social services—passive recruiting strategies are no longer viable. Organizations must leverage programmatic, multi-board distribution tools to cast as wide a net as possible. As demonstrated by New Oakland, even if a secondary job board does not yield a high volume of direct hires, broad visibility builds vital brand awareness within regional labor markets.

2. Decentralizing Hiring Ownership

A common pitfall in HR management is the over-centralization of administrative tasks, which forces HR personnel to act as constant intermediaries between applicants and department heads. By equipping hiring managers with intuitive digital tools to review profiles, leave evaluation notes, and participate in real-time decision-making, New Oakland successfully distributed the hiring burden. This cultural shift not only accelerates decision-making but also fosters greater accountability among departmental leaders regarding team composition.

3. Elevating the Candidate Experience as a Retention Strategy

The candidate journey does not begin on day one of employment; it begins the moment an individual submits an application. Organizations that fail to acknowledge applicants or provide transparent closure risk damaging their public reputation and alienating potential future applicants. By automating basic communications and establishing structured touchpoints, New Oakland transformed its candidate experience from a liability into an asset.

4. Maximizing Efficiency Without Expanding Headcount

Perhaps the most compelling implication for nonprofit organizations is the realization of enterprise-level operational efficiency without proportional increases in administrative overhead. By replacing spreadsheets and disjointed legacy software with an integrated recruitment ecosystem, New Oakland Family Centers successfully scaled its multi-location operations, improved retention, and accelerated time-to-hire—all while maintaining its existing HR headcount.

As New Oakland continues to serve communities across Michigan, its transition from manual friction to streamlined, technology-driven recruitment serves as a powerful case study in modernizing healthcare human resources.