The Next Chair

Would your best finalist from your last search have cleared your first screening filter?

This month, we look at how hiring technology shapes who gets seen, and at the latest numbers on nursing and physician assistant faculty, program leadership, and workforce pipelines.

Welcome back. Each month, we share what we're seeing in academic healthcare leadership searches, plus practical advice for candidates and hiring institutions.

Is Your Hiring Process Finding the Best Talent—or Just the Easiest Résumés to Read?

ATS, AI, and the human side of hiring

Technology can help hiring teams manage volume, but speed is not the same as quality. This month's read explains how applicant tracking, automated screening, and AI-assisted recruiting differ, and how qualified candidates can be overlooked before they reach a hiring decision-maker.

Sharing Is Caring: The Power of Showing Up for Your Professional Community

Small actions. Meaningful connections.

Your professional network works best when people show up for it, and the smallest actions often count the most. This article looks at LinkedIn as a community, not just a job board, and at how everyday support strengthens the people around you.

From My Desk

Two patterns I keep seeing in my searches. First, many job seekers are searching somewhat casually, often looking for remote or regional online roles. Second, candidates' compensation expectations do not always line up with the ranges advertised for open positions.

My hypothesis is that current economic constraints play a part. But it may also reflect how accreditation and compliance standards demand more than some institutions are prepared to offer the qualified candidates those standards call for. If that is right, closing the gap starts with an honest look at what a role truly requires and what it should pay.

National Market Snapshot

Academic healthcare leadership remains a candidate-driven market. Three things stand out:

• Vacancies are easing slightly, but they persist. AACN's 2025 survey counted 1,588 full-time nursing faculty vacancies, a 7.2% vacancy rate, down from 7.9% in 2024. Among schools reporting vacancies, the rate was 9.6%.
• The faculty pipeline is aging and narrowing. AACN reports average ages of 60.2 for doctorally prepared professors, 55.0 for associate professors, and 48.9 for assistant professors (2025-26 salary report). PhD nursing enrollment declined for an eleventh consecutive year, by 0.5% from 2023 to 2024.
• Policy is adding uncertainty. AACN has warned that new federal limits on graduate student loans could affect the faculty pipeline. In its 2025 survey of deans (469 respondents), 77% indicated the limits would negatively affect nursing faculty.

Regional Spotlight: California and Texas

Nurse faculty recruitment remains an important concern beyond the Southeast, although recent state reports show some improvement.

The longer-term outlook adds urgency in California: HRSA projects the largest RN workforce shortfall of any state there by 2038, as charted in Hiring Trends below. These projections describe future supply-and-demand gaps, not current openings.

Steadford is currently recruiting for opportunities in both states. If you are considering a move to California or Texas, or hiring there, start a confidential conversation with us.

Data note: California, Texas, and AACN report on different nursing education populations and use different vacancy measures. Their figures illustrate local recruitment conditions but should not be used as a direct ranking of state performance.

Physician Assistant Programs and Faculty

PA education is growing fast, and it faces the same leadership and faculty pressures as nursing. We could not find a current national count of PA faculty vacancies, so the figures below describe the size and makeup of the field, not open positions.

• Programs keep multiplying. ARC-PA lists more than 320 accredited entry-level PA programs in 2026, up from 243 in 2019, roughly 4% to 5% growth a year. Its count of potential accredited programs by 2031 is 363.
• Leaders and faculty are increasingly doctorally prepared. In the Physician Assistant Education Association's (PAEA) 2022 survey, 57.8% of program directors and 32.1% of faculty held a doctoral degree, up from 45.5% and 23.5% in 2019.
• Faculty often keep a clinical practice. 58.5% of PA faculty still practiced clinically, averaging 11.3 hours a week.
• Compensation: For the 2021-22 academic year, PAEA reported a mean salary of $105,353 for faculty and $141,964 for program directors. That data is now several years old. In our recent searches, we are seeing that to be competitive, PA program director roles that involve establishing an accredited program are demanding $200,000 per year.

Data note: Most PA faculty data comes from PAEA's 2022 Faculty & Directors Survey, published in December 2024, and is older than the nursing figures above.

Southeastern U.S. Snapshot

The Southeast remains capacity-constrained. Population growth, an aging population, and rural workforce gaps are pushing colleges and health systems to expand training, all competing for the same limited pool of clinicians, faculty, and academic leaders.

• The South runs above the national vacancy rate. In AACN's 2024 data, the South's nursing faculty vacancy rate was 8.6%, above the national rate that year.
• Several Southeastern states face large projected RN shortfalls. North Carolina, Georgia, South Carolina, and Virginia are among the ten states with the largest projected RN shortfalls in 2038, as charted in Hiring Trends below. These are projections of future supply and demand, not current openings.
• Rural markets feel it most. HRSA projects an 11% RN shortage in nonmetropolitan areas by 2038, compared with 2% in metropolitan areas. That matters for the many Southeastern programs and health systems that serve rural communities.
• The hardest roles to fill are nursing and specialty allied health faculty, program directors, clinical education leaders, and deans or associate deans who can manage accreditation, enrollment, faculty, and clinical placements.

Hiring Trends

When the talent pool is this thin, a screening process that filters out qualified people early is expensive. That is the question behind this month's read.

• The pipeline is thin. HRSA's nurse workforce projections show state-by-state RN shortfalls (charted below) and a licensed practical nurse (LPN) supply that falls about 30% short of demand by 2038 (roughly 245,950 full-time equivalents, or FTEs).
• Leadership searches reward demonstrated outcomes. Accreditation results, clinical partnerships, and enrollment growth tell a hiring committee more than a title alone, but only if the screening process lets those results surface.
• PA education is expanding, and so is the need for leaders. The American Academy of Physician Associates (AAPA) reported more than 40 developing PA programs in the pipeline for accreditation as of November 2025. Each new program needs a program director and faculty, including the founding PA program director search we are recruiting for in Tampa.
• Posting preferences can run ahead of the pool. A review of PA faculty job ads from 2014 to 2020 found 38.9% required or preferred a doctorate, well above the share of PA faculty who held one in PAEA's 2014 to 2019 data. Because many PA faculty also keep a clinical practice, a screen built around academic credentials alone can miss experienced clinician-educators.

• Some employers are rethinking requirements. In July 2026, Mission Health in western North Carolina announced it was dropping the bachelor of science in nursing (BSN) requirement for newly hired registered nurses to widen its applicant pool and fill open positions.
• Applicant volume is a hurdle for experienced roles. The North Carolina Department of Commerce's 2024 Employer Needs Survey found healthcare employers citing a low number of applicants as the primary difficulty when recruiting for more experienced roles, so every qualified candidate who is screened out early is a real cost to the institution.

One Practical Tip

What is one thing you wish you had known sooner, or wish job candidates knew or did sooner, to improve their chances of landing a role?

Share your answer in the comments on LinkedIn. I would like to hear from candidates and hiring leaders alike.

Positions We Are Recruiting For

Let's Talk

Hiring a program director, associate dean, or dean? Considering your next leadership move? Send us a message or comment below to start a confidential conversation.

Our subscriber list has grown to 145, up 145 since our inaugural issue last month. Thank you for being here. If this issue was useful, forward it to a colleague or invite them to subscribe.

Sources: AACN (Survey on Vacant Faculty Positions 2025-26 and Faculty Vacancy Report 2025, October 2025; 2025 Survey of Deans, December 2025; 2025-26 Salaries of Instructional and Administrative Nursing Faculty, reported May 2026; Nursing Faculty Shortage fact sheet, 2026), BLS (May 2025), HRSA (Nurse Workforce Projections, 2023-2038, December 2025), PAEA (Faculty & Directors Report 5, December 2024), ARC-PA (accredited program data, 2026), AAPA (November 2025), BMC Medical Education (Kayingo et al., April 2022; PA academic leadership study, 2022), WLOS (July 2026), North Carolina Department of Commerce (March 2025), California Board of Registered Nursing (2024-2025 Annual School Report, data as of October 15, 2025), Texas Board of Nursing and Texas Center for Nursing Workforce Studies (2025 Nursing Education Program Information Survey). Figures are presented as reported by the sources listed. Some reflect earlier survey years, and projections are estimates of future supply and demand, not current openings.