post written by Dan Kashulines

Deciding to become a travel nurse can be an exciting endeavor. Let’s be honest, who doesn’t like the sound of working the career you love while being paid to travel the country? This was the way I saw it anyways when I first decided to do travel nursing. I soon found out just how difficult it can be to break into and navigate this field. Today, I just want to look at choosing a travel nursing agency. There are hundreds of different companies to choose from, so how you figure out which one is right for you? 

Do your research

For starters, DO YOUR RESEARCH. With so many different companies you could be hired through, you have to start by narrowing it down. My recommendation for this is to utilize those who have already done the research and shared it. Obviously you should fact check and cross reference, but this can be a helpful way to get started. There are many different sites where you can find rankings of the best travel nursing agencies. A few notable mentions I consider are The Gypsy Nurse, Very Well Health, and Better Nurse. These are fantastic resources, utilize them! Perhaps after reviewing these, you’re satisfied with choosing a particular agency. Or, if you’re like me, you want to do a little more digging. 

After narrowing down the list of agencies, now you need to compare them to each other. A very simple and easy way to do this is by visiting their websites. First of all, how does the website interface look? Does it look up to date? Is it easy to navigate? Is information on the company easy to find? These are just basic things, but I like to think of it this way: If they don’t have the budget to keep their site looking fresh, do I trust they will make it a priority to find the job that best suits me? If it seems they are hiding information about their own agency, do I trust them to be the ones shelling out my pay week by week? If they don’t make it a priority to keep their site up to date, will it be difficult for me to navigate their system month by month once I sign on? These aren’t be all end all suggestions, but in general you can gather some information on the quality of a company from the quality of their website. 

Navigating the phone calls

You’ve probably already received emails or phone calls from recruiters advertising an agency, but how do you know if they’re legitimate? Every company likes to promise decent pay and recruiters can be great at smooth-talking nurses into applying for a position. If you’re thoughtful, this time can be utilized to gain further information about the company and how they may or may not suit your needs. 

Are they too pushy? 

Recruiters and agents are trained to be enthusiastic about getting you the job, and that’s for good reason. It is their job to sell you the “product” in a sense; they want you to believe you would be best suited at their agency. However, once you are hired this person is likely to be your point person for every issue and question you have. So, you want to be sure they would advocate for you and are prompt and reliable. If they seem too focused on rushing you to make a decision rather than making sure they understand what you want and why, this may be a warning sign. 

Do they tell you that you’re too picky? 

Don’t get me wrong, some nurses are genuinely too picky when they try to enter the field. If you don’t have much experience, you will probably need to concede in other areas (like pay and/or working nights) if you want a position in a timely manner. That being said, some recruiters are a little too focused on rushing you into a job and are more interested in making their job easier rather than getting you the job you want. Be clear about what you want, and if the recruiter thinks you’re too picky, you can always bring up the same preferences with another agency and see how they react. 

It is entirely possible to change travel nursing agencies at any point, but you should be aware that there is a rigorous onboarding process for each agency. It’s not fast, simple, or easy to start off with a travel nursing agency because they frontload (almost) everything so that they can quickly apply you to different positions once you are fully onboarded. For the most part, the only things they don’t frontload are things like drug tests, fit tests for masks, blood tests, etc. because those are all time sensitive for when you sign on with a hospital. I don’t say this to scare you into staying with a bad agency, but instead to impress on you the importance of doing your due diligence before committing to an agency in the first place. It’s totally up to you if you want to try out a bunch of agencies to see what you like best – that’s entirely valid – but just know that there’s a lot of added work involved in that.

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These are just a couple things to keep in mind while trying to decide which agency to work with. In my opinion, aim for the agency with the best ratings and then go with your gut when it comes time to actually picking a recruiter. If something isn’t sitting right, then it may not be. You can always ask for a different recruiter from an agency if you aren’t meshing well with the one who originally reached out to you. Even if you had a specific agency in mind and it doesn’t work out, don’t be discouraged! I personally found it difficult to break into the travel nursing field, and the agency I started working with wasn’t my top choice. But here we are, still doing travel nursing and loving it!

if you’re travel nursing, what agency do you work with?