Please recommend agencies

Specialties Travel

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I am not very happy with my agency. I have to call them every week about being short on my pay, they dont update their "active" assignment list online, and here I am on week 7 of my assignnent, I told them that I would like to extend if I am needed, but agency told me that they wont know until week 10 or 11. I am definetely going to get the ball going with other agencies. I have a couple in mind, but would love to hear about why u love your agency.

Yes, I always negotiate overtime separately. The math is simple, but no one ever seems to do it. If you use PanTravelers calculator, you will find that total compensation on most travel assignments is between $40 and $50 an hour (very similar in fact to many staff jobs when you add in the benefits). Thus fair OT would be between say $50 and $75 an hour right? (just like staff) That means if your base salary is $20 an hour (because of all those tax-free benefits you are getting) and they want to pay you $30 an hour overtime, you have actually taken a pay cut over regular hours where you were getting paid $40 to $50 an hour!

Pretty darned sad, and a shift bonus of $100 doesn't really compensate if you do the math. The fact more and more agencies are starting to pay these shift bonuses is a sign that something is wrong. But it takes more like $200 or $250 shift bonus to bring OT into a good range. While agencies are profiting mightily from overtime, they are doing themselves a disservice. If they provided a proper incentive for working overtime, travelers would soak it up, making the agency a fair profit, and making both the travelers and the facilities happier. But trying to explain the math to your typical recruiter (or traveler for that matter) is rather frustrating.

Let me try an example from the agency perspective. Let's say the agency is receiving a bill rate of $60 an hour for your work (pretty middle of the road). They pay you in total compensation $40 an hour for your hourly of say $20, housing, per diem, travel pay, and health insurance. All those extra costs other than your hourly are paid for in full after 36 or 40 hours of work. Now for overtime, they are getting $90 an hour, and paying you $30 an hour overtime. This give them a pure profit of $60 an hour while you have received a pay cut from $40 to $30!

Pretty incredible! While overtime bill rates do vary (time and a half is traditional, but more and more hospitals are realizing how much profit is being made by agencies), you can see that agencies can still profit even if the bill rate stays at a flat rate for overtime (happens but is very rare indeed) and a fair overtime rate is paid. Remember, all agency expenses were paid for the first 36/40 hours of work, and a fair profit made. That is all they were expecting, so any overtime is an unexpected bonus for them, and pure profit from our work.

My recommendation is to fight for a fair overtime rate if you want to work overtime, and the hospital said overtime is available in the interview. But if you don't want to work overtime, or there is no overtime available, forget about it and save your negotiation bullets for something else. But if you have a chance to make big bucks working your butt off, you need to make an equitable arrangement with an agency so you both profit.

As far as recommended agencies, none that I or anyone else suggests will increase your odds. The most important factor for successful is your ability to communicate with your recruiter. If you don't have good communication, obviously you will have no ability to negotiate. Study after study shows that both parties will be happier if there is some give and take, not just take it or leave it. But the ability to negotiate is just one benefit to good communication. I cannot possibly predict how well you will do with a recruiter (nor can any matchmaker). The only way to find out is to call lots of agencies, talk to lots of recruiters, and pick the best, say, five to work further with that you connect with. Along the way, if you have any hot buttons like overtime, housing, or locations for example, you can further triage agencies and recruiters to come up with the best fit for you.

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Ned, I did mean that the shift bonus is in addition to overtime rates. The points are also separate from your contract, because you may choose to hold on to them until you have more in your bank. I still communicate with other agencies, and I'm not considering TNAA my only agency. I've just really enjoyed working with them, since I just recently switched. They are up front about everything, which is not something I had with my last agency.

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Ned, I did mean that the shift bonus is in addition to overtime rates.

Of course! Yet in your particular case, perhaps you have a base rate of $20 and OT rate of $30. That $100 shift bonus brings the OT rate to $38 an hour, still a drop from your regular hours.

I'm not trying to run down TNAA, a popular agency who gets more positive reports than negative reports. It is industry practices I'm running down. I don't want a shift bonus that brings my extra hard work up to par with my regular hours, I want an honest to goodness straight forward overtime rate for every overtime hour worked of at least $60 a hour. The agency will still make a more than fair profit from that rate.

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Hi There,

I am reading avidly on this and other sites as I am interested in traveling in about a year. All this tax talk is very confusing and frankly scarey!! Is there a site I can go to that thoroughly explains all this jargon in lay terms? Thanks so much!!

greta

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Taxes take a while to wrap your brain around for sure. And traveler taxes have some concepts that are extra confusing. You have timed your learning curve very well, a year for learning and planning is great. You want to consider the tax home (an IRS term) very carefully before traveling, keeping up a residence after you start traveling is worth $10,000 a year in the bank for most travelers! But it does depend on how you arrange your affairs and specifically how much it costs you to keep a tax home.

Both PanTravelers and TravelTax discuss tax homes and related topics in depth and in plain words (or at least defines necessary jargon). But it will still take several reads to really get it for most people. I think I grasp these things better than most, but it still took quite a few readings of a number IRS publications before I really got it (this was in the dark ages before we had these great online resources). In addition to a dozen or so focused tax articles (you are in for a lot of reading), PanTravelers also has a wide range of articles covering all of travel nursing.

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