No one has relationships with all the hospitals and healthcare facilities in the country, so travel nurses expanding their net to find the best travel nursing contracts is a smart move! Of course, travel nursing agencies and recruiters will tell you not to work with other agencies, but doing so isn’t necessarily bad.
While there are plenty of benefits to contacting various agencies, there are some things to note. Here are a few pros and cons for travel nurses working with multiple recruiters.
Pros of Multiple Travel Nurse Recruiters
The perks and benefits of every agency differ, making working with two travel nurse agencies or more than one recruiter a sensible decision. Although it might feel like “cheating” on your recruiter or being disloyal, it’s for your benefit so you can better understand what each agency can offer. The pros are:
Enhanced Negotiation Power
Travel nurses should always be negotiating their travel nurse contracts. Working with multiple agencies gives you more room to find the best assignment for you—the more options you have, the more power you have.
Working with multiple travel nurse recruiters also creates a competitive market for your services. Telling recruiters you’re working with different agencies may result in them bidding against one another to bring you the best pay package. However, always be cautious when discussing competing offers, as one recruiter could rescind theirs (it’s rare, but it happens).
More Available Travel Nurse Assignments
Travel nursing agencies partner with only certain hospitals, so working with multiple recruiters will ensure that you have access to more hospitals in the area you want.
With more job options, there’s a higher chance of finding travel nurse assignments that meet more of your criteria. For example, if you want a specific location for your next contract, working with several travel nursing agencies will help you maximize the number of positions available to you.
Personal Protection
After you sign a travel nursing contract, you never know what could happen next. The facility could cancel the contract, misunderstandings could arise and alter the conditions of your assignment, or a family emergency could force you to cancel the contract yourself—no one can ever be sure!
While no one ever wants these scenarios to happen, we can’t predict the future. The best way to protect yourself professionally and financially is by staying in touch with other travel nursing agencies and having an alternative assignment in your back pocket. This way, if things fall through and your agency cannot connect you with a suitable new opportunity to replace it, you have a head start on finding a similar opportunity nearby.
Cons of Multiple Travel Nurse Recruiters
Sometimes the grass isn’t greener on the other side, and you don’t need to mess with a good thing! While there are many benefits, there are also cons to working with numerous travel nurse recruiters, like:
Requiring More Time and Energy
Many travel nurses stick with one recruiter because it can be time-consuming to manage and maintain profiles with multiple agencies–it can feel like double charting, and that’s a no-no. Balancing multiple travel nurse recruiters means extra reference checks, skills assessments, onboarding, paperwork, and more. The process may be more effort you simply don’t need or want to spend.
Doubling the Damage Control
When submitting travel nursing applications, time is of the essence. If you wait too long, you may be out of the running entirely. This means that recruiters will submit your application to new openings without speaking to you first if they know what you’re looking for. This can be troublesome working with multiple agencies, as they could submit your application twice or thrice for the same position.
However, most medical facilities that rely on travel nurses have become so accustomed to duplicate submissions from different agencies that they now have methods to determine which application they’ll consider if they choose you. Don’t be surprised if you have to clarify the agency that you’d like to work with moving forward.
If a duplicate application does derail your plans, remember there are plenty of other travel nursing opportunities out there. Don’t be discouraged!
Not Discussing the Specifics
Just like dating, you wouldn’t want to share the details of the last person you went out with, right? The same idea can be applied when discussing other travel nursing agencies.
As much as you would like to share the details about how things are going with one travel nurse recruiter to improve your experience with others, it’s best to stick to giving a general sense that you’re currently working with multiple agencies. This way, you can avoid a recruiter submitting you for a position without your permission or doing a lackluster job just because they heard that another recruiter is doing so.
Working with multiple travel nurse recruiters ensures you are transparent and professional. Recruiters spend many hours finding and connecting nurses with facility needs, so open communication is key. Ultimately, as long as every one of your recruiters has your best interests at heart, you’ll find the perfect travel nurse assignment every time.
