Mental health providers are facing a staffing crisis. Tarrant’s response? Same-day job offers

In September, Tarrant County’s agency for people with mental illness and disabilities was facing a staffing crisis: Almost one of every three full-time positions was empty.

My Health My Resources of Tarrant County, better known as MHMR, is a component of county government that serves people with the mental illness, intellectual and developmental disabilities, and substance use disorders. It is one of 37 similar agencies throughout the state that make up the backbone of Texas’ public mental health system. MHMR serves some of the highest need children and adults in the county and its longtime staffing challenges reached a crisis point in 2021 and 2022, as it became harder and harder to recruit and retain qualified staffers.

With 820 open positions in September, leaders at MHMR decided to try something different. Hiring managers had found that when they offered candidates positions, the candidate had already accepted another offer.

“By the time HR called them, they would decline it,” said Bill Hill, senior director of behavioral health business operations at MHMR. “The would say, ‘I have another job, you guys didn’t get to me in time.’

“So we had this crazy idea. Is it possible to bring everybody in and hire them on the same day?”

Hill and his colleagues redesigned the agency’s recruiting and hiring protocol, focusing on getting job candidates with the necessary qualifications to a job fair, where they could learn about open positions, talk with hiring managers, sit down for an interview and get a job offer and a tentative start date all in the same day.

By February, MHMR had cut its open positions almost in half, down to 449 openings last month at the beginning of last month.

Before the job fairs, the staffing crisis was self-sustaining: Hiring managers were trying to cover the work of their missing staffers, leaving them without enough time to review and hire new applicants.

“Hiring managers didn’t have time to screen the applicants and make those phone calls to coordinate their interview,” said Michelle McCall, part of MHMR’s human resources team. “And they were inundated with day-to-day operational stuff while trying to serve their populations.”

The job fairs brought everyone into one place: Job candidates, the HR team, and MHMR staff who could explain exactly what the jobs entailed. The fairs, Hill said, are allowing candidates to learn exactly what some of MHMR’s more taxing jobs entail, so that only candidates who actually want the position are applying, helping retention.

“We’re putting the right people in the right seat now,” he said.

MHMR’s success and the unusual speed with which a government entity has hired essential workers could provide a lesson for direct care providers throughout the state who are facing a staffing crisis. There are thousands of empty positions in roles like day care workers, direct service providers and nursing assistants, and other demanding and typically underpaid roles that fill essential roles within society. In Texas, the median hourly wage for a direct care worker was $10.38 in 2019, according to research from PHI, a nonprofit working for better care for people with disabilities. Direct care workers help people with disabilities with a range of day-to-day tasks, anything from eating and taking medication to getting bathed and dressed.

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