As a travel nurse, your portfolio or profile can be the first impression with a recruiter. That means that all the information, background, work history, and skills listed in your portfolio could make or break you receiving a placement for a new assignment.
Recruiters go through dozens and dozens of profiles every day, so having a polished and well-established portfolio can help put your name on the top of that paper stack.
Keep reading to find out key things recruiters actually pay attention to, and use that information to improve your chances of landing an assignment.
What Is A Recruiter?
To understand how to stand out to a travel nurse recruiter, you first have to understand what a travel nurse recruiter is and how they fit into the big picture. These recruiters provide expertise and serve as advocates for nurses during their assignments. They can also help nurses avoid unfavorable job situations.
Recruiters are tasked with hiring and filling healthcare positions with staff or employees who appear to be responsible and have preferences that match job descriptions. They are a major point of contact in healthcare careers, as they help fill staffing needs and seek new job opportunities.
In simple terms, these recruiters are the middle-man point of contact between you as a travel nurse and your hospital assignment location. Their biggest and most important role is filling empty jobs with the best qualified candidates.
Recruiter Role
Recruiters have various duties in their departments. Recruiters can assist with onboarding and credentialing paperwork, license verification and background checks, and even help arrange housing and travel plans for nurses.
Travel nurse recruiters often work under tight deadlines and track demand in different regions for nursing assignments. These recruiters must have good communication and multitasking skills as they are communicating with multiple agencies and nurses all at once.
Along with this, a travel nurse recruiter and their agency’s main role is to help connect open hospital jobs with a travel RN, LPN, or CNA. Searching for jobs can become easier with recruiters, as they are already looking to match you with jobs they have open or on hand.
How Does It Work?
Recruiters can pull your profile from a job board, such as TravelNurseSource, and match you with a hospital in the health system. The recruiters and their teams work to explain the travel contracts, base salary, and level of compliance that would be expected for those specific matches found.
These recruiters can be a very helpful resource to a travel nurse searching for a new job. Securing a recruiter to invest in your profile could open up opportunities. A recruiter may have a better, privately listed job for you if you have a specific, well-rounded profile.
Why Your Profile Matters To A Recruiter
Now that we understand what a recruiter does and how they are a valuable asset to finding your next assignment, you need to understand why your profile really matters.
Your profile is more than just a simple resume with work history; it is a professional snapshot of all your achievements, qualifications, and specialty skills. Travel nurse recruiters can use your profile to quickly determine if you’re a good fit for the open positions that come across their desk.
There isn’t just one thing recruiters look for; it’s an overall combination of several things that can make your profile stand out more than others.
Below is a list of several items to include when creating your resume and portfolio to make sure you catch the eye of a recruiter.
Up-to-Date Resume
Having a complete and up-to-date resume can lead to faster job placements, matches, and overall better opportunities. Making sure to list current jobs and recent assignments, your employment dates, any specialty experience, and your clinical accomplishments are very important pieces of information.
A few tips to keep your resume up to date and easily manageable are to update it after every assignment and include measurable accomplishments when applicable.
For example, maybe you reduced your chart time by 20% over a 13-week assignment!
Relevant Clinical Experience
Adding experience from different facilities, whether they be long-term or short-term assignments, helps you add more details to your resume. The more details you have on your clinical experiences, the easier it will be to match you with the most appropriate employer within the industry.
Examples of experiences recruiters may want to know could be your specialty (ICU, Med-Surg, etc.), years of experience, types of facility, or even trauma level experience.
The more information the recruiter has, the more likely you’ll be matched with an assignment that fits your qualifications and preferences.
Licenses and Certifications
A key piece of information you never want to miss including on your resume is the type of license you obtain.
Listing licenses such as an RN, compact, state, BLS, ACLS, or even focused specialty licenses (etc.) provides credentials which are essential for recruiting success.
Skills and Comfortability
Depending on your level of comfort with exploring new skills within the healthcare system, you may be more eligible for one job over another. The more skills you acquire over your assignments, the more marketable you are as a travel nurse.
It is important to include skills such as the equipment you are comfortable using, procedures you may have performed, and even charting systems you are comfortable with.
Being honest about your experience helps align you with jobs better suited for you.
Professional References
Because travel nurses are constantly moving to new locations, this can provide a great opportunity to build up a network of skilled companies and businesses along with access to professional contacts.
Those professional contacts you meet throughout your travels on the road can serve as a strong referral or point of contact that could help secure you a new assignment. When providing a reference to a recruiter, always make sure the reference knows they may be contacted.
Contract History And Reliability
Not only does a recruiter want to view your previous work experiences, but they want to see if you are consistent with your assignments. Meaning, you tend to complete the contracts you have in place.
This can show a recruiter that you are a reliable employee who values good attendance and professionalism.
Flexibility
When it comes to travel nursing, the more flexible you are, the more favorable you may look to a recruiter. Having a sense of flexibility stands out to recruiters because it shows that you can cover a wide range of assignments.
Flexibility can open up a wide range of opportunities, especially if you have a wide range of skills in areas such as dental or patient care. Having flexibility in other areas such as licenses in multiple states, varied shift times, weekends, hospital sizing, and even willingness to travel can open up many more opportunities with a recruiter.
Health and Immunizations
A very important quality that recruiters look for is that you are up to date with the health and immunization standards for the industry. This would include up-to-date physicals, vaccination records, TB testing, drug screenings, and a variety of other health records.
Recruiters value up-to-date health information because it alleviates a step in the placement process. If you are up to date with all of your own medical and health records, a recruiter will favor placing you in an assignment over someone who does not have this information.
Career Goals
There is a lot of information in here about what you should be including in your portfolio for a recruiter. There is one piece of information to remember throughout your whole recruitment process. Recruiters aren’t just filling jobs; they’re finding the right fit based on YOUR experience and preferences.
There’s no doubt that the recruitment process is a journey and adventure in itself, but sharing your career goals and preferences with a recruiter can only help strengthen your chances of getting a desired assignment.
Putting It All Together
Overall, these recruiters look for more than just experience. They are looking for the reliability, readiness, and qualifications you may have. Your portfolio is your professional snapshot that an employer gets to see firsthand; it is your first impression with them.
Hopefully this information helps you feel confident and prepared when building your portfolio. Remember, your portfolio is a place for you to stand out, so do just that!
