TTATN 006 :Tips for Finding and Evaluating Travel Nursing Companies

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In this episode, we’re going to discuss how to find and evaluate travel nursing agencies. New travelers are typically daunted by the number of options and experienced travelers are often overwhelmed by the marketing campaigns…getting calls, emails, and blasted on social media. Our goal in this episode is to help you find the best agencies for your unique circumstances and to do it like an expert with minimum effort that will achieve maximum results. So we’re going to discuss two main themes:

We’re going to take a look at some of the services available to help you find agencies. We’ll discuss the advantages and disadvantages of each so you know what to expect.
Then, we’re going to discuss how to approach agencies to ensure the best paossible results. This involves defining your circumstances so that you know what to look for which will help you easily and efficiently find the right agencies.

Travel Nursing Blogs, Ratings, Social Media Groups and Lead Generators

Like most things, rather than become an expert, we rely on heuristics. We rely on the opinions of others to make an educated decision without spending the time to become an expert.

There are 4 main types of services: Blogs, Ratings, Social Media Groups and Message Boards and Lead Generators. As you’ll see, you have to understand that sometimes these things are ways for you to find companies and other times they’re a way for companies to find you.

Blogs:

They can be a good source of information. But it’s important to watch out for who owns the blog. Many of the most popular blogs are owned by travel nursing companies.
Even when they’re owned by a third party, there can be bias involved.

Rating Services:

All the rating services have some problems in common. They have small sample sizes. It’s difficult to control who the rating is coming from. It’s also impossible to know that the rating is based on fact. There are times that travelers misunderstand or harbor unjustified grievances. None of them can address all of your unique circumstances.

Highway Hypodermics: provides ratings and benefits. For ratings, 20 point scale based on 20 questions that are answered yes or no, if you submit bad, you must submit good. For benefits, she does her best to check and make sure the benefits are indeed offered.
Travel Nursing Blogs: They have a star rating and thumbs up-thumbs down. Star rating allows written review.
Travel Nursing Central: They have a 20 question survey that lets you rank them 1 through 5. You can read the written reviews
Other rating services are not industry specific.

Social Media and Message Boards

Facebook Groups, Delphi Travel Nursing Forum, AllNurses.com

Some people ask questions like what are your thoughts on Atlas MedStaff?
This isn’t really a great way to use these services. You’re most likely not going to get a good response
Instead, use the search feature

Lead Generators:

Broadcast Services: travelnursing.org, travelnursesource, rnvip
Job Boards: Sell your contact information. They are good to see if an agency works in a particular location. Always check the agency’s job board to make sure.
On a side note, watch out for other career related sites like RN.com and others that are owned and operated by staffing companies. They have lead generation built into them.

Develop a Plan for Evaluating Travel Nursing Agencies

You will get overwhelmed if you don’t have a plan. It will be very time consuming and you will run the risk of getting frustrated and making a bad decision.

Destinations: Where do you want to travel? It doesn’t matter how amazing an agency is, if they don’t have contracts where you want to go, then they may as well be the worst company out there.
Length of contracts: This shouldn’t be a concern, but for some it is. If you want shorter contracts, then you need to make sure the agencies focus on them.
The services you require: This is really the “Everything Else” Category. Pay, Medical Benefits, 401K, Do you have pets? Need a rental car? Want tax free money? Maybe you don’t want tax free money? The best thing to do is to make a list of the things that you must have, the things that you’d like but aren’t necessary, and the things you don’t need at all.
Now when you talk to agencies, you can guide the discussion with your checklist. If you want to go to Michigan and they don’t have jobs there, then you can quickly pass.

With all of this in mind, you can now approach these services with confidence. Run a cross check on all platforms and to get an idea of what the agency is all about. Then, quickly and confidently make your decision.

Links:

Highway Hypodermics

Travel Nursing Central

Travel Nursing Blogs (Medical Solutions)

BluePipes Best Travel Nursing Agency Comparison

BluePipes Travel Nursing Survey

Checklist for Travel Nursing Benefits