5 Better Questions to Ask Travel Nursing Companies
It’s crucial for travel nurses to know what questions to ask when they are evaluating a new travel nursing recruiter or company. Asking the wrong questions can lead to ambiguous answers and confusion. In this article, we’ll take a look at some of the most common questions travel nursing recruiters receive. Then, we’ll provide some alternative questions designed to illicit explicit, clear-cut responses.
Don’t ask this:
“What travel nursing assignments/jobs do you have available?”
Of course, this is one of the most common questions that travel nurses ask recruiters. It’s a great question IF you have already completed the travel nursing company’s required documents. These documents include a job application and skills checklist among others. Collectively, travel nursing companies call these documents the “submission profile”. So, if you have your submission profile ready to go, then this is a good question.
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However, you don’t have your submission profile ready, then this isn’t the most productive question you can ask. The reason is that travel nursing jobs are often filled too quickly for the answer to matter. Most travel nursing jobs will close before the travel nurse and recruiter are able to get the submission profile ready to submit.
The facility will almost certainly have all the submission profiles it needs within 2-3 days. Sometimes, hospitals fill their travel nursing jobs within an hour! Therefore, the jobs the company has open at the time you ask this question will most certainly change by the time your profile is complete and ready for submission.
Moreover, the recruiter could simply tell you anything you want to hear. While this rare, recruiters sometimes do this just to get candidates to complete an application and skills checklist, only to later tell the candidate the job is no longer available. Then, the recruiter tries to sell the candidate on the jobs that are available. Again, this is very rare, but it does happen.
Ask This Instead:
“What cities/states do you typically have the most jobs in?”
“What hospitals do you work with in city/state?”
“Do you get a lot of jobs in city/state?”
Therefore, if your submission profile isn’t ready to go, then it’s better for you to determine where the agency in question has the biggest presence. These questions are designed to get you the information you need to determine whether or not you’ll want to work with this particular company. If they work with facilities in locations of interest to you, then you may want to take the time necessary to get your submission profile ready with them. This way, when the right job pops up, you’re ready to go.
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Additionally, by determining which particular facilities agencies work with, you’ll ensure that you aren’t working with multiple companies that staff the same facilities. The goal is to get maximum exposure to your desired job market. For example, in a market like San Diego, CA, you may need to work with 3-4 companies to have access to all of the facilities in the area. No one company has contracts to work with them all.
When asking this question, avoid getting into discussions about where you want to travel before the recruiter tells you where they have jobs. Again, your goal is to find out where the agency staffs its most travelers, or where it has a strong presence. Almost every agency has a stronger presence in certain geographical areas over others. At the same time, many agencies can make the claim that they truly staff nationwide.
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So, if you let the recruiter know where you want to travel before they tell you where they staff, then they can probably tell you they staff there. And they won’t be lying. However, they also may not have a very strong presence there.
Don’t Ask This:
“What’s the rate?”
This is a bad question to ask when it comes to pay because it’s ambiguous, and ambiguous questions result in ambiguous answers. Travel nursing pay and compensation packages involve many variables. Company provided housing vs. housing stipend, meals and incidental expenditure (M&IE) reimbursement vs. no M&IE, medical benefits vs. no medical benefits, travel expenses, hourly rate, overtime rate, extra hours rate, etc., are all potential parts of a pay package.
The question, “What’s the rate?” can be answered many different ways, and is highly vulnerable to slick salesman talk. I personally believe that this question is wholly responsible for the horror stories I heard from travelers who worked for another company, and told me that the compensation they actually received was starkly different from the compensation they thought they were going to receive when they accepted the job.
Ask This Instead:
“If I take company provided housing, and no medical benefits, what will my weekly gross pay be for working 36 hours? And what amount is provided for travel expenses separate of the pay figures?”
Detailed questions like this are far better at obtaining the information you’re really after. You don’t have to ask this exact question, but your question should be specific, and it should capture the compensation variables you desire. You should get into the habit of asking the same question of all companies so you can better compare pay offers.
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Also, if you’re taking a benefit in lieu of money, you’ll want to know all the details. For example, if you’re taking the company’s housing in lieu of a lodging stipend, then you need to know the details of the housing being offered so you can compare it to other offers. A one bedroom, fully furnished apartment is usually much more expensive than an Extended Stay. Such cost differences may affect the compensation you receive. Ultimately, you’ll want to select the option that best meets your overall needs.
Don’t Ask This:
“Do you provide free (insert anything here)?”
I hate to break it to you, but nothing is free. Everything costs money. The only source of revenue that a company has is the rate they’re able to bill the facility for the nurse’s time. EVERYTHING comes out of the rate. Some agencies say they offer free things, but ultimately it all comes out of the bill rate.
Again, you should focus on comparing the overall value of travel nursing pay packages offered by competing companies. For example, one company may say that they offer free medical benefits, but they may still have lower total compensation than another agency who charges for the benefits, even after the cost of benefits has been calculated.
Ask This Instead:
“Do you provide (insert anything here)?”
You certainly need to know if agencies provide the types of services you’re looking for. Some agencies can provide rental cars and some won’t. Some provide fully furnished apartments and some will only provide Extended Stay type hotels.
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Again, all of these items should be viewed as services that agencies provide for a price. Your goal is to find out if they offer the services you’re looking for.
Don’t Ask This:
“Do you provide medical benefits?”
If medical benefits are important to you, then you certainly need to find out if the agency you’re speaking with offers them. However, asking a vague question will result in a vague answer. And when it comes to medical benefits, you need to know specifics.
Some agencies offer very low-level coverage. It may not cover some of the services or medications you need. Or it may have very high deductibles.
Ask This Instead:
Can you email me a Schedule of Benefits for your health insurance plan?
Again, if medical benefits are important to you, then you probably want to know what the coverage is like. The “Schedule of Benefits” lists the main benefits. It will give you a very good idea of what the insurance offers. It may also include links to websites where you can find out if the specific medications you take are covered as well as other specific information.
Your recruiter may not know what you’re talking about when you ask for a Schedule of Benefits. However, they should be able to easily find out and send you what you need.
Don’t Ask This:
“What’s the Overtime Rate?”
Technically, “Overtime” is the time that the state you’re working in mandates the employer to pay you 1.5 times your taxable base rate. In states like California, employers are required to pay overtime after the employee works 8 hours in a day. Therefore, you will have overtime hours as part of your contracted 12-hour shifts.
In other states, overtime doesn’t kick in until you’ve worked 40 hours in a week. Therefore, if you’re working 12-hour shifts, then overtime doesn’t kick-in until after you work the fourth hour of your fourth shift. Therefore, if you ask what the overtime rate is, then you may not find out how the company will pay for those four hours.
Ask This Instead:
“How do you pay for extra-hours?”
What you really want to know is how the company will pay for any additional hours that you work above your contracted hours. The industry commonly refers to these hours as “extra hours”. You can learn much more about extra-hours pay rates for travel nurses by following this link.
The important thing to know about extra-hours is that the travel nursing company is able to bill the facility the same rate or more for your time. Therefore, they could potentially pay you the same amount or more for extra-hours as they do for regular hours. That would include the value of your lodging and meals stipends as well.
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That said, some companies will continue to pay you based on the taxable hourly rate alone. For example, if your taxable hourly rate is $20 per hour, then they’ll pay you $20 per hour for any extra regular hours and $30 per hour for any extra overtime hours. Other companies will pay you a rate a much higher rate for your extra-hours.
It’s important to note that companies that pay extra-hours based only on the taxable base rate are not necessarily ripping you off. There are some very real concerns about wage-recharacterization and other tax related issues. Basically, there is some debate in the industry as to whether or not the adjusted extra-hours rates runs afoul of various tax rules. The important thing for you as a travel nurse is to make sure you know how the company pays for extra-hours before you actually work the extra-hours.
Travel nursing can be made much easier and much more fruitful for travel nurses when they’re armed with the right questions. Please let us know if you have any helpful questions so we can improve this article!
