Finding a Travel Nursing Company – Beware The Broadcast Service!
With literally hundreds if not thousands of travel nursing companies in business, determining which companies you’re going to work with as a travel nurse or travel healthcare professional of any kind can be daunting. In addition, there are so many different ways to find them. In this post we’re going to discuss one of those ways which I like to call the “Broadcast Service.”
What is a travel nursing broadcast services
The “Broadcast Service” is one that offers to broadcast your interest in travel nursing to travel nursing companies. These web sites all have the same basic pitch, “Provide us with your contact information and some basic details about what you’re looking for, and we’ll send your information to the top 20 agencies in the industry!” Or, “Make agencies compete for you, provide your information and we’ll have the top agencies contact you!” Or, “Complete one application for multiple agencies!” Like all sales pitches, these sound amazing! The reality is a bit different.
“Shell” travel nursing broadcast services
Broadcast Services come in two distinct forms. The first is essentially a shell company. This is very simple. Essentially, a large company that has multiple subsidiary companies puts up a web site that makes this great claim, “Fill out one application for the top companies in the business.” It provides a list of those companies, maybe 5 to 10 companies in total.
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What you don’t know is that they’re all part of the same company. For example, American Mobile and Cross Country both have sites that do this. American Mobile’s is called travelnursing.com and Cross Country’s is called rntravelspace.com. You will indeed fill out one profile at each of these sites, which will be transmitted to only the respective company and its subsidiaries.
“Lead generator” travel nursing broadcast services
The second type of Broadcast Service is essentially an information broker. Examples include companies like travelnursesource.com and rnvip.com. These services collect your information and sell it.
They tell you they are sending it to “the top agencies.” However, they’re sending it to essentially any company, or anyone claiming to be involved with employment, who will pay for it. If you don’t believe me, closely read their terms of use. They reserve the right to sell your information, and your information is valuable! They obviously don’t use the term “sell” when describing their practices. They prefer terms like “release” and “transfer”.
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One of the claims that they often make is that they’ll send your information to the top 15 or 20 agencies. This capped number exists because it makes your information more valuable. Agencies are willing to pay a higher price for the information if they are assured to be 1 of 20 companies receiving the information as opposed to 1 of 100 companies receiving the information. The agency has a better shot at landing your business if there is less competition.
The typical guarantee that the agency receives for being one of “the top companies”, is that your information will be released to only “the top companies” for a period of 1 month. So the agency receives hot leads and is assured to be one of a certain number of companies receiving the information. After the 1 month period is up, the Broadcast Service is free to sell your contact information to anyone who will pay for it. Companies who are not currently part of “the top” group can then purchase the leads.
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The insinuation of their claim to “send your information to the top companies” is that they have somehow determined which companies are “the top.” They don’t come right out and say this, but it is certainly insinuated by their claims. Again, the truth is that they’ll sell your information to anyone who will pay for it. These companies may dispute this claim and point out that there are some companies that they will never sell your information to. For example, they may not sell your information American Mobile, or any of the other very large companies in the industry. However, this is again due to the fact that excluding the largest of companies makes the leads more valuable to everyone else. This is due to the fact that mid and small-sized companies do not like competing with the largest companies. So one of the first questions that companies might ask a Broadcast Service is, “Do you sell your leads to American Mobile?” Excluding the large companies ensures the Broadcast Service a larger pool of potential clients.
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Now I’ve gone and made these Broadcast Services sound evil. But they’re not all that bad. I just want you to know what you’re in for. These services do indeed deliver on their claim. If you provide them with your information, you will get calls and emails from many different companies interested in your business. You won’t have to do any digging around to find companies to call. However, you can’t be assured that the companies that call are great and wonderful companies to work with. But this is also ok. You can simply do some internet research on any company that contacts you and determine if you’d like to move forward with them.
The one negative that you can’t avoid with the Broadcast Service is the spam and onslaught of calls you will most certainly receive. If you meet the minimum criteria for a travel nurse or travel healthcare professional in a sought after area of expertise, you’ll receive more calls and emails than you could possibly handle alone. You may end up changing your telephone number and getting a new email address just to get out of the loop.
