Using a Travel Nurse Job Board to Hire: Pros and Cons
A travel nurse is a registered nurse (RN) or licensed practical nurse (LPN) who takes a short-term assignment at healthcare facilities in different locations. A travel nurse contract typically ranges from 4-13 weeks, depending on the facility’s needs. It allows facilities to quickly hire experienced, competent nurses to care for patients during a staffing shortage or high patient census.
If your facility needs temporary nursing staff, you may be wondering where to post open positions. In this article, we review the pros and cons of using a travel nurse job board and provide tips to help you attract quality candidates to your job postings.
What Is a Travel Nurse Job Board?
A travel nursing job board is a website where healthcare employers can advertise traveler positions. Travel nurses commonly visit these sites to find needs in their specialty and desired location. Postings typically include information such as location, facility type, shift, contract duration, and pay.
Job boards are often hosted within a travel nurse platform or agency website. This allows nurses to visit a central place where they can find and apply for opportunities of interest. The recruitment process for travel nurses moves quickly as nurses are prepared to accept offers and begin covering shifts in a short timeframe. For this reason, it’s important to have an efficient travel nurse hiring process that includes strategic job advertisements.
What Are the Advantages and Disadvantages of Using Travel Nursing Job Boards?
A recruitment strategy for staff nurses typically involves posting open positions on a healthcare organization’s website. The hiring process for travel nurses is often handled differently due to the nuances of temporary staffing.
Companies that utilize travel nurse job boards are able to post opportunities and receive applications quickly. However, employers give up some control when posting to another platform and may struggle to connect with interested candidates. To help administrators understand how a travel nursing job board can impact their facility, we’ve listed some of the advantages and disadvantages of using these recruiting sites below.
Advantages | Disadvantages |
---|---|
Cost-effectiveness: Posting on job boards can be more cost-effective than other strategies for marketing to nurses.
Faster hiring: By posting positions on a job board, recruiters can receive applications and begin the onboarding process quickly. Bigger reach: When you post travel positions to an established nursing job board, you benefit from a high volume of online traffic from searchers around the world. Increased visibility: Online job postings are visible 24/7, allowing you to reach job seekers at any time, including the curious night shifter browsing jobs during downtime. |
Bigger pool of candidates: Having a broad reach may increase the amount of applicants recruiters have to review, which can be frustrating and time-consuming.
Difficult to stand out: On a job board, your job posting may appear side-by-side with other competitive healthcare organizations. Narrow job market: Posting to a travel nurse specific job board as opposed to a general nursing job board could limit the number of interested candidates who interact with postings. Impersonal process: The application process on job boards is less personal than working directly with a recruiter, which can turn away those who seek personal interaction with HR representatives. |
Tips for Using a Job Board for Travel Nursing Jobs
Travel nurses can bring value to your facility due to their wide range of professional and clinical expertise. Finding fitting candidates for travel positions requires an effective recruiting strategy, and often involves taking a long-game approach.
A job board can help your company boost brand awareness by placing your healthcare organization’s name and logo in front of a large pool of nurses. Even if a nurse doesn’t take a position at your facility right away, this exposure makes them more likely to remember your name and consider your organization for future work. Reviewing these five tips can help you match with industry-leading professionals.
1. Attract Candidates With a Compelling Job Title
There are hundreds — sometimes thousands — of postings on a single job board. You’ll need to make a concerted effort to help your position stand apart from the rest. Include keywords that a nurse may use to find the posting, like your position’s specialty, location, or level of experience.
2. Develop a Unique Job Description for Each Position
When posting jobs to a travel nurse job board, it’s important to create a job description that showcases why your facility is the best place to work. This will be a prospective applicant’s first interaction with your organization, so make sure you highlight the unique duties, benefits, and scheduling options your position offers.
3. Showcase Any Opportunities for Financial Incentives
Pay transparency is an important feature of job postings, as it ensures a company’s salary offerings match candidate expectations prior to applying and interviewing for a job. It can be helpful to share opportunities for overtime, shift differential, or sign-on bonuses in your job posting to entice those who are on the fence to apply.
4. Highlight Career Development Opportunities
Studies show that employees often look for a new job because they feel a lack of professional development opportunities at their current company. Highlighting any growth opportunities your organization offers is a great way to attract candidates to your position.
5. Keep Your Company Branding Consistent
When you post a new position to a travel nurse job board, use the same colors, fonts, and language across all of your social media platforms. Brand consistency can keep your organization at the forefront of nurses’ minds when it comes time for them to start applying for jobs.
Connect With Qualified Travel Nurses Today
Posting your vacancies to a travel nurse job board can help your facility attract the talent you’re seeking. If you’re not sure where to begin, IntelyCare can help. Learn how posting your positions to our healthcare hiring board can help you match with qualified healthcare professionals across the nation.