Looking back at where she started, Cristina Castaneda—Wingspan founder and visionary—reflects on how she thrived in the cutthroat international healthcare recruitment industry.
I stumbled onto the healthcare recruitment business by accident two decades ago. Coming from a different industry, I was brought in to manage a firm that recruited medical professionals for the UK’s National Health Service.
I had zero knowledge in recruitment or even the healthcare industry, and perhaps that was an advantage: I brought in fresh perspective and came in armed with knowledge and discipline from years of quality assurance and process improvement work. So coming from that background and experience with international companies, I was in for a big shock when I realized what I had gotten myself into—an underdeveloped, multilayered, and traditional network that didn’t have a process in place and where bribery and corruption were accepted practices.
There were so many lines to untangle, so many procedures to sort out, and a deeply rooted culture that would take years to turn around, but the biggest realization of all was this: You cannot change a company that is not yours. So I knew I had to choose my own battles and build own team, finding people who knew the industry like the back of their hand, but shared the same mindset with me. Later knowing that there is strength in number, I partnered with other industry players who, like me, wanted to see change happen.
Choosing my battles
I’ve seen so many improvements with the industry since then. Requirements for processing, registration, and professional qualification of nurses are in place now, and policies are clearer. The Philippine curriculum has changed massively to align with globally acceptable standards particularly on theoretical learning and internship hours. With collective efforts of all the stakeholders in the industry, we set up an “adaptation program” to strengthen the competencies required of nurses being deployed to the UK, to ensure that they provide care meeting UK standards. I hardly recognize the industry I’m in now, compared with where it was before—and I am glad I stayed.
Lessons learned
I could write a book from all the lessons culled from the two decades of working in the international healthcare recruitment industry, but I wanted to keep this blog post short and simple. Whatever industry you’re in, these three lessons will definitely apply:
Bend like the bamboo. Change is part of doing business, and in the arena of international recruitment—especially in the healthcare sector—policies and requirements can change at a fast pace so you need to be adaptable and move quickly to comply. The pandemic taught us that what we know in the past is no longer relevant, so a complacent person has no place in this industry. You need to keep learning, move fast, and know when to shift gears.
Know your purpose. It is easy for this industry to eat you up alive when you forget why you are in it in the first place. But then I am reminded of how our nurse applicants have sold a family-owned plot of land, or pawned off a family heirloom just to process their papers for a nursing job in the UK. So many lives have improved because of this industry. I remind myself of this bigger purpose every time I encounter a roadblock when working with government and other agencies.
Empathy is what ties everything together. It’s easy to listen and sympathize when a problem comes up, but to go the extra mile to want to change something in the industry, knowing you have the solution, knowing that so many people and players will benefit from it—that takes empathy. Many players are content with simply going with the flow, but being able to say, “This needs to change,” takes empathy. To be able to influence people around you to be better, to do better, and to act better than the norms—that can only be achieved by a leader who practices empathy.
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