The Nurse Connection Staffing expands into Syracuse market

SYRACUSE — The Nurse Connection Staffing, Inc., an Albany–based provider of nursing staff for long-term care facilities, nursing homes, assisted-living facilities, and school districts, is expanding into the Syracuse market.

Dan Moran, the firm’s managing director, says it “is technically referred to as a staff-augmentation company.” 

Moran spoke with the Business Journal News Network in a phone interview on Nov. 24. 

When an organization calls and says it needs a nurse or a certified nursing assistant (CNA), Nurse Connection Staffing has people it can deploy to fill that shift. 

“It’s not permanent placement, it’s not temporary placement,” says Moran, who launched his firm 28 years ago. 

With an aging population, the work at long-term care and assisted-living facilities is ongoing, and “that’s not going to change.”

“Their challenge is finding people,” says Moran.

Moran is searching for office space that would give the firm its “foothold” in the market. He and market manager Charles Harkola were searching in Fayetteville and in downtown Syracuse, he says. 

Moran is seeking space that’ll accommodate a few offices and conference space.

“We’re not going to lock into a three-year lease now. It wouldn’t make any sense for us,” says Moran. 

The firm has been recruiting in Central New York for a few weeks. It also held a hiring event on Nov. 25 at the local office of the New York State Department of Labor at 450 S. Salina St. 

As Moran sought options for expansion, he examined the number of annual contracted hours in a given region. 

Contracted hours are the number of hours an organization might need from a staffing firm. 

In the eight-county Albany region, organizations have about 1 million contracted hours available. When he started examining the number of contracted hours in markets statewide, he says the data indicated Syracuse was “one of the top markets in New York” with more than 2.4 million contracted hours per year. 

“So, there’s a significant potential … for our business model,” Moran contends.

Through their marketing and recruiting, Moran and Harkola are finding a “fair amount” of people who enjoy this type of work; it provides “flexibility,” especially to some of the company’s CNAs, who tend to be younger and have children. 

The Nurse Connection Staffing employs 11 in Albany, including Moran; 11 in Syracuse, including Harkola; and about 200 field staff members (those who fill the positions), according to Moran. 

It hired about 10 people at the Nov. 25 event at the local office of the state Labor Department. The firm has hired a total of 25 nurses in the Central New York region as of Dec. 2, a figure it expects to rise to near 50 by the end of the year, according to Harkola.

Employees are bonded, insured, and Nurse Connection Staffing carries their liability, he adds. 

The firm looks for candidates with six months to one year’s worth of experience. “When they go into a facility, they have to walk in and they have to know what to do … because there’s no training time,” says Moran. 

The Nurse Connection Staffing handles background checks, criminal-record checks, and credential verification through New York state, says Moran. 

“We do all that and we don’t charge for that,” he adds.

When asked how the company is making itself known to organizations in Central New York, Moran replied with a laugh, “It’s called marketing, calling; marketing, calling.”

Harkola has been alerting local organizations about what the company is and does, says Moran. 

“In our market research, there’s about 120 facilities in the Central New York area, not including Binghamton,” he says. 

Some use staffing agencies and some do not, he notes.

On its website, Nurse Connection Staffing boasts that it currently serves 120 clients in the Capital region and upstate New York area.        

Contact Reinhardt at ereinhardt@cnybj.com