Travel Nursing Insider, Episode #3

Pursuing a Travel Nursing Job

Welcome to our third episode of Travel Nursing Insider. We’re back in Wilton, Connecticut with Deb Shea, Vice President of Travel Nursing at Onward Healthcare and Sera Cullen, the Director of Travel Nursing. In the first two episodes of travel nursing insider, we discussed what is travel nursing and what does a travel nurse need to do to get started in a travel nursing career. Today, we are going to focus on the hiring processes.
…. (download mp3)

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

SHOW TRANSCRIPT

Travel Nursing Insider: Episode #3

Welcome to Travel Nursing Insider, the podcast that brings you the latest insight and advice from experts within the travel nursing industry. Travel Nursing Insider is brought to you by Onward Healthcare, a leading nationwide provider of travel nursing jobs with offices across the country. If you’re looking to get started in a travel nursing assignment, you should apply online at onwardhealthcare.com or call 1-800-278-0332 and talk with an experienced Onward Healthcare recruiter today.

Welcome to our third episode of Travel Nursing Insider. We’re back in Wilton, Connecticut with Deb Shea, Vice President of Travel Nursing at Onward Healthcare and Sera Cullen, the Director of Travel Nursing.

In the first two episodes of travel nursing insider, we discussed what is travel nursing and what does a travel nurse need to do to get started in a travel nursing career. Today, we are going to focus on the hiring processes.

Deb, let’s say I’ve decided I really want to pursue this idea of doing a travel nursing assignment. I’ve gone online, filled in my application, I’ve sent it in, what happens next?

Deb: The next step is within the same day, a nurse recruiter from Onward Healthcare will give you a jingle. Basically if you have about half an hour to spend with us because it’s a time for us to kind of bond, get to know one another, find out the type of nurse that you are, the type of facilities that you like to work at, really get to know you and perhaps your family and pets if you’re traveling with pets, and at that point, you talk about when you’re available to start to travel, and then we start talking about potential opportunities.

Peter: And Sera, how do you decide which recruiter calls me up?

Sera: Actually you are assigned to a recruiter and that recruiter’s responsibility is to, as Deb said, call you right away and build a relationship with you. They really want to get to know you, what motivates you, and why you’re interested in travel. So they’re going to ask you some personal questions about your work history, but also what you’re looking for out of this travel experience.

Peter: So, I do about a half an hour interview with my recruiter and then my recruiter goes away and then…

Sarah: Okay I’m going to jump in here. Basically, what happens is when you have that recruiter on the phone, and you and the nurse are talking, you guys are going to go through everything all at once. This is a really smooth process where you’re not going back and forth with 10 phone calls trying to connect; this is something that we can do in one swift motion. Basically, you’re going to talk about what you’re looking for, your recruiter is then going to guide you because really they are expert, and they want to help you get what you’re looking for. So, they’re going to talk to you about what positions are available for you, how that’s going to fit in with what you’re looking for, with your start date. They know the licenses, like how long it takes to go to a particular location. So, if you had someone that wanted to go to Florida, that recruiter would be able to guide that nurse and say Florida actually takes six to eight weeks to get a license, but you’re looking to start next week, why don’t we look at one of these other states that is a walkthrough state that you actually could.

So, in that conversation, not only are they going to be able to guide you on where you want to head, but they’re also going to be the expert to help you get there.

Peter: And Deb, I’m assuming that during this conversation, that recruiter pulls up your database and is able to do a scan of the kinds of the assignments that are available in the locations that that individual may be interested in, in pursuing an assignment.

Deb: Absolutely. We have an extraordinary database both on the nursing side, but also on the client side, so as soon as we find out what specialty you are, what we would do is we pull up all our open positions and then the expert recruiter would match you to those open positions. One thing that’s nice about our database is we have anywhere from 2000 to 3000 open positions and it’s changing in real time. Minute to minute the system is getting updated so your recruiter can see the hot jobs and really help you get the job you want, that’s correct.

Peter: So this is sort of like the Twitter of nursing jobs?

Sera: Absolutely, and then what happens is when you and the nurse are talking about jobs, anything that you’re interested in, the recruiter will actually be able to send your profile or your application straight over to the hospital. The recruiter represents the nurse and then on the flipside, there are account managers that represent the hospital. So the recruiter has your best interest in mind, and you can apply to multiple positions at once. You don’t want to put all your eggs in one basket; you want to apply to four or five different locations and you’re going to interview with all of those to see which one is the best fit for you.

Peter: What’s the next process? Let’s say, in this initial phone call that you have submitted my CV to what, 10 different positions and 10 different locations, how long does it take then to get back in touch with me with some times and scheduling of those interviews?

Deb: Great question. We actually probably don’t recommend that you send your file out to more than about five locations. We do have awesome relationships with our facilities and sometimes if it’s more than five, it gets confusing. We’d recommend at the most, you send to five, and then what would happen is we would go ahead and set up in person a telephone interview information with each nurse manager. So you’d actually be able to talk to the nurse manager, find out a lot about the floor, the nurse/patient ratio, the type of equipments used on the floor, the charting system that’s used, a lot of charting nowadays, as we all know, is through the computer, to make sure you’re comfortable with that, and really get a chance to find out if your style of nursing and your background is going to be a good fit for the hospital. Of those five positions that we send you to, because you know we’re pretty good at what we do and we’re great recruiters, you’re probably going to say yeah, I feel good about four, but one just isn’t a right fit, it just isn’t a right fit, and we really want you to spend the time in the interview, and listen to your heart to make sure that you go to the right assignment because at the end of the day, nurses and our best interest is always to give the best patient care, and if you’re happy at your unit and comfortable, that’s when you’re going to be able to perform the best patient care.

Peter: Speaking about background Sera, what happens when I… let’s back up just a little bit, I’ve submitted my application what do you do on your end to check my references to go through and make sure I have the certifications and the licenses that I put in, in my resume?

Sera: Well, I don’t expect that you’re lying to me so I’ll take you at your word for 99% of the stuff you give me. We do check references before we send your file over. We do background checks and then all your certifications are kind of like credit card-type certifications that you would fax in to me but a lot of times I don’t need information pre sending you out to get you out for a position.

My motivation is again to work with you and be your representative and get you out to these hospitals. I take your application and again, I don’t use a resume because hospitals like it in a particular format; that’s why I encourage everyone listening to get online and fill out an application because that’s how the hospitals like to receive it.

Once I send it over to the hospital, the hospital reviews it, the nurse manager reviews it, and then I as a recruiter get an email or call from the hospital saying, “Yes we are interested in Nancy nurse, please have her call in to this number.” And I receive the information directly from the hospital. As recruiter, I then call the nurse and let the nurse know that this was the information I was given, and I will give her tips on how to interview and how to interview successfully.

With this process, I can get interview information in a little as an hour or it may take a day or two. It really depends on the hospital’s process and how quickly that nurse manager is reviewing files and reading through the ones that she likes and the ones that she doesn’t like.

Deb: One part of our online application is actually what we call the skills checklist. So, if you’re an ER nurse, we have a specific ER skills checklist. So if you’re an ICU nurse, we have a specific ICU checklist. So that checklist really is a way for the unit manager to see your level of proficiency. Checking #1 means you cannot do the duty and checking #5 means you can teach and supervise. That really is a guidepost for the hospitals to see if you’re a good fit. Checklists take about four minutes to fill out, they’re really easy to do.

Peter: And Deb, once I’ve gone through this process, let’s say that there is a position that the hiring hospital really wants me for, but I’m really not that cool about it, do I have to take that position?

Deb: Absolutely not. You know, the ball is always in the nurse’s court. We would definitely never make you take a job that you didn’t feel comfortable with. As a matter of fact, we don’t encourage it because, again, our job here Onward Healthcare is to get you a great job and provide excellent patient care, and if you’re not feeling great about the job, it’s probably not something you should do.

Peter: Well, Sera, let’s say I am feeling great about the job and I really, really want this job, what happens next?

Sera: Well, I go Woo Hoo! on the phone to you, and the next step is we start talking about numbers, making sure we get you the right contract, we confirm everything with the hospital to make sure that it’s a good one on their end is well. The great thing about the over-the-phone interview is a nurse manager isn’t going to corner you on the interview and say, “Do you want this position?” They’re basically going to get off the phone with you, say “Thank you very much for the interview.” As a nurse, if I love this position, and I think it’s a good fit for me, I’m going to drop a couple of hints, like “When are you going to make a decision?” And, “I’m really interested in this” or if they are not sure if it’s a good fit, they are just going to say, “Thank you very much” and then the good thing about it is the nurse manager will contact the client service manager and tell them what she thought, and then the nurse will actually contact the recruiter and say, “Sera, I just interviewed. It sounds fantastic. I want this position. You know, go get it for me” or “Sera, I interviewed and eh, you know, just not sure, don’t like paper-charting” or – nurses have been nurses long enough that they know what they like and they know what they don’t like. So, even within a five-minute interview with the nurse manager, they can already tell whether it’s going to be a fit for them.

Peter: What’s different between this kind of an interview process and a process where you would be interviewing for a full-time job?

Deb: I’d say it’s not much different except it’s a lot more streamlined. Hospitals tend to move through the hiring process for a traveler a heck of a lot quicker than they would a permanent position. You talk to a recruiter on a Monday, on a Monday afternoon you’re going to get interview information. Hopefully, Monday night or Tuesday morning, you’re going to interview, and then the offer will come that next day. So it moves through really quickly, which is actually great because the nurses want to know what position they’re going to be at next. So, it moves really quickly, so I’d say similar but faster.

Peter: And it seems like that with these interviews, you’re really talking to either the supervisor or someone who is a decision-maker; you’re not going through like an RPO (recruitment process outsourcer), or going through a whole series of interviews before you get to that hiring manager, is that correct, Sera?

Sarah: You are talking directly with the nurse manager that is working on the floor, which is why the interviews are so great, because they are able to give you real life examples of what they’re seeing on a day-to-day basis. You’re not interviewing with someone who is sitting in HR, who isn’t on the floor, and can’t give you accurate information.

Peter: What have we missed here in this segment about the whole initial interview process, Deb anything?

Deb: I think the one thing that I’d like to add is once you’ve been offered the position and you want to accept it, it’s really important at that point that you work with your recruiter on the best package for you. You know, nurses are obviously money-motivated but there are benefits that we offer like we talked about in our last sequence. There’s insurance, there is travel, there is Onward Healthcare housing, 401K. So if you want those benefits, that’s great and we will be more than happy to provide them for you, but if not, we will give you more in the base salary. So, a big part of this is working with us to make sure you get a package that fits your needs.

Peter: Sera, is there anything that you would like to add to this?

Sera: The last thing I do want to add is we have talked about applying to five positions or more, and I want to tell everyone that just because you have applied to all five positions doesn’t mean you need to interview at all of them. If you interview at the first location and love it, you can say I love this one; I got this offer, and we can politely decline the other opportunities, and give them to other nurses.

I want them to know that just because you’ve applied to five, doesn’t mean you need to interview at all five and as soon as you find the one that you love, go for it.

Peter: Well, thanks again for taking time to speak with us today on Travel Nursing Insider and be sure to tune in to our next episode, because we’re going to be talking about acing the interviews, and these two ladies are going to give us some real insider tips on the kinds of things that you need to do to prepare for an interview.

Thank you for tuning in to Travel Nursing Insider. For more information on the exciting world of travel nursing, you should visit Onward Healthcare on the web at onwardhealthcare.com or call 1-800-278-0332 to speak to a travel nursing recruiter.

You should also follow Onward Healthcare on Twitter at Twitter.com/onwardhealth, fan them on Facebook at facebook.com/travelnursing, and subscribe to our podcast on iTunes. Just do a keyword search for Travel Nursing Insider.

Travel Nursing Insider, Episode #2

Returning to our second Travel Nursing Insider are Deb Shea, VP of Travel Nursing, and Sera Cullin, Director of Travel Nursing at Onward Healthcare. Deb gives a point-by-point description of benefits OH offers to their travel nurses, including insurance, housing, relocation and license applications. Sera describes, step-by-step, the process for becoming a “traveler,” creating a relationship with a recruiter, selecting opportunities, the interview and contract process. Deb closes the show with some cool assignments in need of immediate qualified candidates. (download mp3)

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

SHOW TRANSCRIPT

Welcome to our second Travel Nursing Insider show. We’re back in Wilton, Connecticut with Deb Shea who is the Vice President of Travel Nursing for Onward Healthcare and Sera Cullen, Director of Travel Nursing at Onward Healthcare.

Deb, in our first segment, we talked a lot about what travel nursing is all about and several reasons why someone would want to get in to the travel nursing profession, and I’d like to follow up on that with you and have you talk about what some of the benefits of being a travel nurse, particularly with Onward Healthcare.

Deb: Great, my pleasure. Basically, our benefits are similar to a menu. We have about seven benefits that we offer the nurses. A nurse may choose to accept all seven (and I’ll explain that in a minute). If she chooses to accept all seven, that’s great. We love to offer them all to her or him. If a nurse, for instance, decides to decline a benefit, what we would do is we take that resource or those allocated funds and increase their base salary. So once again, we like to treat each nurse like they’re our only nurse and give them the package that works for them, and our goal always is to give a nurse the highest weekly pay that we can give them. So, keep that in mind, I’ll kind of review the benefits and maybe you can ask some questions about that after.

Again, the seven benefits that we offer are highly competitive pay rates and we pay the nurses weekly.
We offer them health insurance benefits, so they get our health insurance.

We offer them obviously like we talked about in the first segment, free housing, or if a nurse is a local nurse, we give them a subsidy in lieu of the housing so it’s a dollar amount that we actually pay to the nurse weekly.

We offer them travel reimbursement to and from the assignment.

We offer them license reimbursement to help them pay for the licensure in the state.
We offer 401K plan and we do reimburse for CEUs for nurses to take classes, etc.

That’s pretty much what our basic benefits are.

Peter: Do you find that your nurses oftentimes are able to get overtime?

Deb: Absolutely. The hospitals are bringing in travelers and it’s actually causing them more to hire travelers than it is their permanent staff, which is great for the travelers because they make more money and on most assignment, there is an availability of overtime, either in the same unit that they work in or perhaps a unit that might be a sister unit that they feel comfortable working in their area of expertise.

Peter: Is it possible to bring a friend, including a dog or a cat along with me?

Deb: Our nurses come with husbands, children, pets, sometimes two pets, sometimes three pets. We do our best to accommodate the nurses and make sure that they’re comfortable in the assignment because if they’re comfortable in their home life, then they’re, again, going to provide good patient care to the patients in the hospital and that’s really what the goal of Onward Healthcare is.

Peter: Sera, let’s talk about how you can get started becoming a travel nurse. I mean, we did touch on in the first episode a little bit about what travel nursing is all about, but if I am a registered nurse and I really find this an attractive alternative, what are some of the steps that I need to take to get started doing this?

Sera: Okay, so the first thing you’re going to want to do is fill out an application. Applications are online and you’re going to fill it out and as soon as you do that, you’re going to be contacted by a recruiter and she’s then going to be able to work with you to get the ball rolling.
Peter: If I start working with Onward Healthcare, will I keep the same recruiter or do I, how does this whole thing with your recruiters because you have offices all over the country.

Sera: You’re going to keep the same recruiter. Basically, when you are a traveler, you want to make sure you make a connection with your recruiter because that is the person that is going to be there with you through thick and thin. So, they are going to go through the application process with you, they’re going to work with you on possible jobs, they are going to prepare you for your interview, they are going to be there for you through housing, through payroll, they’re going through compliance, they’re going to walk you through all the steps so you have to have a great trust level with your recruiter and in fact, that’s how a lot nurses decide on which company to go with is the recruiter that they connect with the most because that is going to be your counselor, your guide, your social director while you’re on assignment; they’re going to tell you the amazing things you can do in the different locations, so that connection is very critical to deciding which company you’re going with.

Peter: Do I have to fill out an application or can I just send you my CV or resume?

Sera: You want to fill out an application with us just because that application was designed in a way that the hospitals appreciate and receive better. So, always fill out that application; it’s going to make the process easier for you.

Peter: Once I filled out an application, how long can I expect to wait before I’m able to take in an assignment or hear from one of your recruiters?

Sera: A recruiter will get a hold of you in less than 24 hours and they will call you, they will email you, they will do everything they can to make sure that you guys connect because they are anxious to help you and get you started.

Peter: As we mentioned in the first episode that we did, these assignments usually go for around 13 weeks. Is my recruiter working on finding me the next assignment while I’m in an assignment?

Sera: Yes, absolutely. The recruiter’s job is to be there with you every step of the way. They’re going to know everything about you, what time you need off, what locations you want to go to, how you want to get there, all of the details about your life the recruiter is going to know. So, halfway through your first assignment, they’re already working on your second assignment. That recruiter is going to make sure that if you want to work assignments back to back, that they help you line all of those up or if you need a couple of weeks off in between to go home to visit family, anything like that, they’re going to arrange that for you and they can still line that assignment up months before the end date of your current assignment. It’s completely up to the nurse of how she wants everything to transpire.

Peter: What happens, Sera, if I take in an assignment and I get to this facility and, for me, it turns out to be The Shining and I’ve got to get out of there?

Sera: A great recruiter and a great company will support you no matter what and that’s what we do here at Onward; we back our nurses up 110%. We work with the nurses. We have people on-call 24 hours a day, so even though that nurse may be on the floor alone in the middle of the night, she is never alone. Onward is always supporting her and so if you get to an assignment and it turns out to be the worst…

Peter: Jack Nicholson.
Sera: Yes, thank you very much okay so…

Deb: Round peg, square hole.

Sera: Yes. If it is not a good fit at all, your recruiter is going to first of all, be the mediator between you and the facility because we want to make sure our nurses feel comfortable. So we don’t want you to be in an awkward position so the recruiter will take up and run with it, work with the hospital, find out what’s going on and if there’s anything that can be done to resolve the situation, maybe there was just a personality conflict, there could have been some miscommunication. If it is something that cannot be mended then we will get you out of that assignment and get you on to something else that appeals to you. So, there is always a way out and your recruiter, and a great recruiter will always back the nurse up to help them out.

Peter: And I’m assuming this does not happen very often but you are taking these assignments sight unseen, correct? So, I think having that leverage where if for some reason you get there and you find that it’s just not the place for you that you’re not stuck there for the next 13 weeks.

Sera: We back our nurses up 110%.

Deb: The one thing that’s great and like I said in the first segment is we have a lot of industry experience in our management team, so the reason that we don’t have it happen a lot is because we do prep the candidate, the nurse, and prep the hospital for the interview process so when the nurse interviews, you know we encourage the hospital to be very transparent as what the environment is going to be and so we can avoid situations like. Again, like Sera said, if it happens we work through it but fortunately, you know we have a system and our interview process really helps us get that perfect match.

Peter: Now, does that interview process include a one-to-one with the candidate and the hospital or someone within the hospital?

Deb: Great question. What plan A would be is that the nurse would actually interview with the nurse manager that he or she would directly be reporting with. So, you’re able to talk to the nurse manager, find out exactly the type of equipment they’re using on the floor, you know what sort of documentation system that they have and kind of ask questions about the personality of the unit. Every unit has a personality.
Am I forgetting anything Sera?

Sera: The best thing is the fact that nurses have been nurses long enough that they know what they like and they know what they don’t like. So, when they are interviewing, even though you may be a New York and you’re interviewing for something in California, the nurse manager can, within like three minutes, give the nurse a description of the unit and nurse will know whether she’s going to be a fit or not.

The great thing about the interview is it is one on one. They do go through everything that’s going on in the unit, the ratios, the equipment, and everything else but also the nurse manager isn’t going to put the nurse on the spot and say do you want this position? They both get off the phone after they interview and the nurse will call you up and say, “Hey, Sera I just interviewed, it sounds fantastic, I love it. Go get me the offer.” Or they may call me up and say, “Sera, uck, they still do paper charting. I can’t do that; let’s look for something else.”

So even though we are working through all this step, just because the nurse interviewed doesn’t mean that she is stuck to take that position.

One of the things that a great recruiter will do is that she will have them out to multiple positions. We’re not putting all of our eggs in one basket. We are trying for multiple jobs at the same time so we can find the best fit so the nurse has the best experience.

Peter: What if there is a facility that I have always wanted to work in? Is it possible for me to come to you as a recruiter and say you know, I have always wanted to work at XYZ hospital. Is there an opportunity for possibly placing me within facility that I’ve always wanted to be associated with?

Sera: When I talk with a nurse, I’m going through all the different states and all the different hospitals that have openings and as Deb mentioned earlier, 87% of hospitals in the US use travel nurses. So, getting you to a specific location and a specific hospital is completely an option.

Peter: Do you work outside of hospitals or any kind of facilities you work in other than hospitals?

Deb: Most of our assignments are in acute care facilities, but we do have some long-term care facilities but again, most of them are acute care facilities. We find that the nurses are happiest in acute care facilities.

Peter: And I would imagine those are the kinds of facilities that they’re used to working in.

Deb: That’s correct.

Peter: We are at the segment of the show now where we’re talking about what some of the hot jobs and hot geographies are currently in the travel nursing industry. So, Deb can you give us some insider tips on where some really hot opportunities are today.

Deb: We have a lot of travelers that like to ski and like to be out in the hiking and kind of some rugged weather. Not everybody likes to be in 80- and 90-degree weather, so we have tons of assignment right now in Colorado, up in ski country, in Maine, in Vermont, in Nevada and Reno has some great ski slopes. So if you guys like to ski, give us a call. We can definitely help you out. A lot of great assignments are coming in.

Peter: That’s great. That will end this segment of Travel Nursing Insider. I’d like to thank both Deb and Sera for joining us today and be sure to tune in for the next Travel Nursing Insider.

Thank you for tuning in to Travel Nursing Insider. For more information on the exciting world of travel nursing, you should visit Onward Healthcare on the web at onwardhealthcare.com or call 1-800-278-0332 to speak to a travel nursing recruiter.

You should also follow Onward Healthcare on Twitter at Twitter.com/onwardhealth, fan them on Facebook at facebook.com/travelnursing, and subscribe to our podcast on iTunes. Just do a keyword search for Travel Nursing Insider.