Travel Nursing in NC

emb92250 · Jul 30, 2014

I have been trying to get travel positions in that area for some time now (the past 6 months). I'm an ICU nurse and have put my resume in for Duke University in Durham (rejected because I don't have level 1 trauma experience) and at Cape Fear in Fayetteville (rejected because I don't have 5 years of experience).

I had a total of 20 months of experience before I started traveling, and I am currently on my second assignment. The lack of experience, I feel, limits me sometimes. Nurse managers are more likely to hire a traveler with more experience. Med/Surg may be different.

I just did a search for RN jobs for the two companies I'm signed up for, Medical Staffing Network and Cross Country Trav Corps. These two companies will soon merge though. Both are good, large companies (larger the company, more contracts to choose from).The only difference was MSN paid weekly (awesome!) but my paychecks were more likely to be wrong. Also, MSN has local offices that try to get you per diem work, which I thought was cool until they kept calling me for my availability. That gets annoying fast. I really like CC, which is my current company. But soon they will be the same anyway.

Incidently, both MSN and CC have Med/Surg positions available in the Durham/Raleigh/Fayettville areas. Most travel contracts are last minute, so the sooner you are available, the more likely a hospital will hire you. I have a little more than 4 weeks left on my contract and I have not heard back yet from any applications yet because my start date (Sept 1) is too far out yet.

In summary, I don't think you will have any problem finding a travel position, but the exact location may not be what you want, especially for your first position (Hospitals want travelers with travel experience. And most want you to know how to chart in Epic).

NedRN · Jul 30, 2014

Cape Fear requires 5 years of experience? Something wrong there, I suspect someone selected the wrong lie to tell you.

I would recommend signing up with several more agencies. More than half of all assignments these days are through vendor managers, and midsized and even small agencies will usually have the same access to them. But the real reason is it gives you a better picture of what is really going on. You will get different stories from each recruiter about a particular assignment (like Cape Fear) and can piece together a decent reality.

It is true that most assignments have shorter start dates currently, but certainly not all. Again, having several agencies to talk to will give you a better picture. For example, Epic conversions can be booked several months out. So can seasonal assignments or vacation coverage.

In addition, having several agencies is the only way you will learn which agencies really pay better. There is a vast range of agency profit margins off of your work, and MSN and CC are on the high end (well over 30% target) and neither is famous for high pay for nurses (I've worked with both)! Smaller agencies have lower overheads and can work at profit margins as low as 20% of the bill rate (24% is the current overall industry average gross profit margin). That difference represents a huge difference to your take home pay. Mind you, there are other reasons to select agencies than just pay, for example service, or relationship, or performance when something bad happens.

Since agencies quote very differently, using a tool like the PanTravelers calculator can put offers on a level playing field so you can compare actual compensation fairly.