Anyone experienced this before?

Effectively, the first agency that submits your profile to a hospital "owns" you. Sometimes this leads recruiters to submit you just for this reason, but normally they submit you because they know you are more likely to take it if you interview. That is human nature, and to some extent, good business practice.

From a traveler perspective though, at least one who is involved in the process and uses multiple agencies, being submitted without permission gives up valuable control. Almost invariably, the first agency to submit you is not the one you would prefer to use. Ideally, you get a good idea about pay and preferred agency prior to submission so you can select what agency submits you.

You also lose considerable negotiating power when submission happens without your permission. It is just like shopping for a car, if you find the same one at two dealers, you can take competing offers and get better prices. If one agency "owns" you, what incentive do they have to maximize your pay? Zero.

It is not uncommon for travelers to be submitted to an assignment by more than one agency. You have expressed interest in one small city and there are only so many assignments in your specialty available, thus it is normal to focus on those assignments by all of your agencies. Sometimes double submissions can cause you to lose the assignment completely. The hospital doesn't want to get involved in an agency fight over a commodity traveler and refuses to consider your profile at all. Sometimes you will end up interviewing, stating strong interest, and then having to back out when you see that agency's really bad contract or lies about compensation. The agency will spin this to the hospital as your fault, and the hospital will blacklist you from working there in the future. If that hospital was on your bucket list, so sad, too bad, you have lost it forever.

Bottom line is that you have to control your agencies and insist that they run every hospital by you before they submit you. Especially if you haven't previously worked with them before. When you have developed a long term relationship with an agency and recruiter, and trust them to pay and treat you well, this trust can play well in letting your recruiter have a long leash, and submitting you to assignments she knows you want. Some assignments are literally gone within a hours, and if you are sleeping... But you have to have trust and mutual understanding first.

If you are a traveler who doesn't particularly care what agency you work for, then being submitted without permission won't bother you.

Ned you are a font of information! I am grateful for your posts. One thing I found out about Parallon is they are the premier nursing contract holder for all (ALL) HCA hospitals. This means that any HCA hospital must use Parallon as the primary contractor and then Parallon subcontracts to the other companies. If Parallon submitted you to the same HCA hospital or if the company you are working for comes into conflict with Parallon on another hospital submission, your company will most likely dump you rather than risk not being able to subcontract with Parallon in the future.

Ned gives great advice. Control your company. My first contract I was inadvertently submitted by two different companies and the other company complained that they had submitted me first. Fortunately, I corresponded through email and had the exact message from the complaining recruiter that said she submitted me (after the other company had already) without my consent. That changed her tune real fast. For once I was organized!

Parallon is not just the prime vendor, they are fully owned by HCA. Not that most agencies are better buffers if you need some conflict resolution with the hospital, Parallon effectively is the hospital. So almost zero possibility of being an advocate for the traveler.

Your comment about agencies not standing up is well taken, and not restricted in any way to a vendor manager such as Parallon. In fact in most cases where a traveler gets termed for low census (not allowed in any contract), no agency will try to enforce the contract and get paid for the balance of contract term. To some extent, and this is difficult, travelers need to do some due diligence not only on the agency, but on finding out if the hospital is a good actor or not.

For vendor managers that also run their own agency like Parallon or American Mobile or MSN, there are several advantages to working for subcontracting agencies. For starters and rather paradoxically, the pay is often better downstream. For another, if you work directly for Parallon, you may not be able to ever again take an assignment at an HCA hospital for another agency (a legal blacklist since Parallon is owned by HCA). If you start off with another agency, you can freely change agencies. Working for a subcontracting agency at least gives some possibility of an advocate on your side. The only good reason to work directly for a prime vendor is assignment priority. It costs HCA much less to have in-house travelers, and of course they will utilize them first.

I recently signed up with my first agency. I only have a license for the state where I live. I told my recruiter that I'm working on getting other licenses but to go ahead and look around and try to find me something in my home state. I guess she took this as a green light to submit me for any job she could find because she submitted me to the hospital where I currently work. I found out when my manager came to me and asked if I was leaving.

I swear this is a true story. It's also really turned me off of traveling.

Pretty funny! But don't give up on traveling because of this, take control of your career! It is a learning curve, but learn from your mistakes, don't give up (you may have other reasons of course). Personally, unless you live in a diverse interesting state, staying in the same state is not travel, it is local contracts! Not the full experience.