Tri-State Nursing began in 1993 as a staffing agency that connected nurses and healthcare facilities across the midwest tri-state area in Iowa, South Dakota, and Nebraska. Since then, Tri-State Nursing has expanded throughout the country from Alaska to Texas to become a leader in medical staffing. Originally focused on home health care, the company has grown to place RNs, LPNs, and CNAs for both short and long term contracts in hospitals, nursing homes, medical clinics, and in-home care positions. Tri-State Nursing is dedicated to their community and provides services like flu clinics, safety inspections, and even a Mommy & Me program from their Sioux City headquarters.

Stephen Liebetrau, MS, RRT, began his career as a respiratory therapist, learning the ins and outs of quality healthcare service. Eventually, he found himself on the other side of the role, working as a physician recruiter for a private medical practice, a non-profit hospital, and now, Tri-State Nursing. “I joined Tri-State at the end of January because they needed a recruiter. When I came on board, we were in Iowa, Nebraska, and South Dakota,” Steve shared. His role is multifaceted: he splits his time between recruiting nursing candidates and marketing to healthcare facilities to help place nurses for them.

Steve is currently the only recruiter at Tri-State Nursing, so when he started in January, he hit the ground running. Initially, he focused on more traditional recruitment methods like networking at career fairs. He shared that January was the perfect time to recruit at career fairs: “It was a good time to do it because most of the fairs were in February, March, and April. I contacted all Iowa, South Dakota, and Nebraska colleges and universities. I scheduled as many as I could. I think I ended up going to about 30.” The fairs were a success for Tri-State Nursing and helped them build a presence in areas they previously hadn’t, like Western Nebraska.

As college recruitment season wound down, Steve needed a new source for nurses. He considered LinkedIn and other platforms when he began looking for a recruiting tool. That’s when a sales rep from GoToro contacted him. After considering the cost, full scope of services provided, and the results from a trial, Tri-State Nursing chose GoToro.

“As a physician recruiter, I’d worked with other companies and did not have the results we’re having with GoToro.” Once Steve started working with GoToro, his day-to-day completely changed. Instead of traveling across the country for career fairs, he logs in daily to his inbox to see a list of new applicants. “Every morning when I come in, I look at what comes in through GoToro.”

Tri-State Nursing has seen a massive increase in applications since working with GoToro: “This has been extremely successful to date. We’ve had about 917 names that have been presented to us from GoToro, and I would say 25% have applied with us to work.” In other words, of the over 900 applicants, about 25% have moved forward in the recruitment process to complete a long-form application, a conversion rate well above the industry average.

Steve isn’t the only one on his team that is pleased with the results. Tri-State Nursing’s President and CEO, Bridget Hoefling, has also enjoyed working with the company: “Bridget has been very happy with the number of candidates we’ve received with GoToro.” Therefore, when Tri-State was looking to expand nationally, Steve shared that Bridget was totally on board to grow their GoToro account.

Once Steve brought GoToro on board, he was able to lead Tri-State’s goals for expansion. “Bridget’s goal is to be able to place nurses in every state.” Since working with GoToro, Tri-State Nursing has expanded their staffing efforts to new states like North Dakota, Missouri, and Texas. They’re also spreading their efforts to states like Nevada, Alaska, Illinois, Kansas, and Indiana, where they’re not actively recruiting yet.

“It’s exciting. Every day is different. You try to hit all the areas in one day, but it never happens.” Amidst their national growth, one thing has remained certain: GoToro is Tri-State Nursing’s largest source of candidates: “There are times where I get 15-20 applicants in a two-day period, and I expect more as we’re expanding.” Steve couldn’t picture it any other way.