How To Find Travel Nursing Agencies that Work in Your Desired Destinations

If you’ve read our articles about “Finding Travel Nursing Companies,” you’ll probably agree that the question becomes, “Are you finding the agency, or is the agency finding you?” If you stop to think about this, you’ll discover that your approach to finding travel nursing agencies may actually expose you to sneaky ways for agencies to find you. This isn’t necessarily bad. However, it behooves you to actually find agencies that can meet your needs as opposed to fielding random inquiries from random agencies.

Why you should focus on destination to find travel nursing companies

In a previous article, we recommended that you create a checklist of everything you want out of travel nursing. This list will include compensation requirements, benefits, housing, and anything else that might be important to you.

While you must create this list to effectively evaluate companies, it will take you too much time to randomly call agencies and inquire if they provide everything you’re seeking. Therefore, you need an additional criterion to focus your search.

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This is why we recommend you use your desired destinations to help you whittle down the list. We have several reasons for recommending that you use this variable to focus your search.

Destination as a deal breaker

First, destination is often a deal breaker for travel nurses. A very high percentage of travel nurses cite destination as among the top three most important factors when they’re evaluating job opportunities.

Even if destination is not all that important to you, it may still play a large role in your decision-making process. This is because it may prove to be very difficult to land jobs in states you are not licensed in.

Agency access to destinations matters

Second, while most travel nursing agencies claim that they staff “nationwide.”, the simple fact is that different agencies have a better foothold in certain geographic locations than others. This is especially true for small to mid-sized agencies. This is also true to a certain degree for the largest of agencies.

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Therefore, when you focus on finding companies that are experts in your desired destinations, you’re not only finding companies that meet a key need, you’re also improving your chances of landing the jobs you want.

Destination is easier to research

Finally, you’ll have an easier time using destination as the focus of your agency search. This is because there are several excellent methods for doing so. Lat’s take a look at each of them.

Should I use agency job boards to find the right travel nursing companies?

If you’ve read our blog posts on travel nursing job boards and job postings, then you know there are several problems with relying on agency job boards to land jobs. However, job boards and job postings can be effective at helping you determine which agencies have jobs in your desired locations.

For starters, many agencies maintain their own job boards on their websites. While these job boards may not be 100% up to date, they nonetheless display jobs that an agency tends to have available.

First, look for the locations where an agency has the most jobs posted. For example, if you see one job posted for Texas and 50 jobs posted for Florida, then it’s safe to assume that the agency has a bigger footprint in Florida.

The main point here is that you are often able to view an agency’s jobs in aggregate when you visit the agency’s job board. Again, the jobs may not be up to date, but they provide a snapshot of all the agency’s offerings.

Of course, the problem with this approach is that you may find yourself perusing hundreds of agency websites which could be too time-consuming.  If you don’t feel like doing that, then you can also try utilizing 3rd party job boards.

Using third-party job boards to find the right travel nursing companies

Many travel nurses wonder if third-party job boards are worth using. The answer is, “Emphatically yes!” However, not all job boards are created equal. Therefore, you have to know the ins and outs to achieve success.

Remember, this article deals specifically with finding travel nursing companies that have strong footholds in your desired destinations. Therefore, we won’t cover everything you need to know about third party job boards here, but just the concepts that are pertinent to the topic.

General Legacy Job Boards

General legacy job boards like Indeed, ZipRecruiter, Monster and CareerBuilder are household names. Therefore, many people begin their job search with them. Unfortunately, these job boards are not very good for travel nurses.

Due to the pricing plans of these legacy job boards, the vast majority of travel nursing companies do not partner with these services. Those that do, rarely publish all their jobs to these platforms. As a result, you typically aren’t able to see all the jobs that a company has access to if you’re looking on one of these legacy job boards.

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That said, if an agency does post jobs on a legacy job board, then this might be a good indication that the agency has a strong presence in the locations of the jobs. That’s because the agency is more likely to pay for job postings in the locations that the agency has the best chances of making a placement.

Niche Travel Nursing Job Boards

Niche travel nursing job boards are better able to accommodate the needs of travel nursing companies. As a result, agencies are typically able to post all of their open jobs on niche job boards like BluePipes.

These job boards typically have pricing that is designed specifically for healthcare staffing agencies. They also have software that automatically imports an agency’s jobs to the job board and automatically keeps the jobs updated and fresh. As a result, these job boards typically have 30 or more agencies posting 100% of their open jobs.

For these reasons, niche job boards like BluePipes are excellent for helping you determine what locations particular agencies have large presences in. For example, you can filter by agency to see all the jobs a particular agency has open. You can then refine your search by location. Most importantly, you can do this for each agency all in one place.

What you need to know about searching for destinations on job boards

There are several things you should know about using third party job boards to help you find agencies that have strong presences in your desired destinations. First, you might come across closed jobs. This happens less often on niche sites with automated job importing. Either way, you don’t really need to worry about this. That’s because you’re simply trying to find companies that have a strong presence in your desired destination.

Similarly, you don’t need to be too concerned about finding jobs for your particular specialty at this point; you’re only interested in finding advertisements for your license. For example, if you’re an Operating Room Registered Nurse, and you see a job advertisement for Labor and Delivery Registered Nurses in your desired location, that’s ok. You’re not looking for exact jobs at this point; you’re looking for agencies that provide service in your preferred areas.

Next, there are tons of 3rd party job boards. Therefore, you may end up scouring through just as many websites as you would have if you just went directly to agency websites. It’s best to confine your search to a few niche job boards and one or two of the largest job boards.

Finally, job postings on 3rd party job boards tend to be dominated by the largest agencies in the business. And many travelers don’t like working with the largest agencies who tend to get really low ratings for the service they provide.

What about using social media and message boards?

Next, there are several social media groups and message boards dedicated to travel nursing that can be valuable tools to help you find agencies working in your desired locations. You’ll find these groups on Facebook, LinkedIn, and Reddit among other services.

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Some of these forums allow recruiters to post job openings. For example, the Travel Nursing Jobs Facebook Group has over 40,000 members and gets hundreds of new job postings every day.

The good thing about these job postings is that they’re bound to be fresh and active when posted. However, a single job posting does not necessarily indicate that an agency has a good foothold in a given location.

You can also use these forums to inquire about agencies that staff in particular locations. Post a message asking if anyone knows which agencies staff in the area you’re looking for. Again, the responses you receive don’t necessarily indicate that an agency has a good foothold in a given location.

At any rate, you can use the information you receive in these forums as a jumping-off point. Whether you receive a response from a recruiter or travel nurses, you can visit the agencies’ websites to look at their job boards. From there, you should be able to discern how much business the agency does in the location.