Evaluating Staffing Firms

[nursesearch]

I am a Partner in a boutique recruitment firm that primarily recruits technical, sales, and marketing talent for technology companies in CA and NYC. We were recently approached by an established health care staffing firm to assist their company in filling traveling nursing positions for health care providers throughout CA.

We are currently in the final stages of negotiating our agreement to fulfill several hundred open nursing positions. We understand that our success will be fully dependent upon our ethics, accuracy, and timeliness. Our goal is to ensure candidates who go through our nurse recruitment campaign receive the same world class experience that we offer to our technical candidates.

Before we get started on the project we would like to gather feedback from nursing professionals who have worked as a traveling nurse. Please feel free to answer any/all of the following questions:

- What professional attributes do you look for in a health care recruiter?

- What factors are most important in determining whether or not you will pursue an assignment?(e.g. location, shift, cash compensation, benefits, per diem, etc…)

- What criteria do you use to determine if the workplace will be a good match for you as a traveling nurse?

- Do you prefer to work for a large HMO, a University Research Facility, a Medical Center, etc?

- In your decision making process, how much emphasis do you place upon the number of beds/patients you will be required to support and the nurse/patient ratio?

- What criteria do you use to evaluate a staffing agency?

- After completing a traveling assignment, are there specific issues that will prevent you from working on another engagement through the same staffing firm?

- What is your preferred method of communication: email, telephone or a blended approach?

-What other factors should we consider when setting up our recruitment process?

Thank you very much for taking the time to review our posting! We will summarize the responses that we receive and provide the information in a checklist format to everyone who posts a response. (Perhaps this summary may be of use when you speak with recruiting firms for your next assignment.)