Do Nurses Make Good Recruiters?

Nursing and recruiting go hand in hand in many large cities. It’s no secret that hospitals, clinics, mental health facilities, homeless shelters, and schools need nurses to be on staff. It’s also no secrete within the recruiting world that nurses are in such high demand that recruiters are needed to find and hire them.

It’s not uncommon for a company to have multiple nurse recruiters working to find a single nurse. The reason nurses are in such high demand and why they are so difficult to find is the topic for another time, but suffice to say the field is growing and recruiters are necessary for finding and bringing nurses into work.

Does that mean that nurses make good recruiters? Is there something special about nurses and how they work that would make them good recruiter? Well, it depends. It’s not that common for nurses to work as recruiters, but what about those that do? Do they have a special insight that makes them really good at their job?

You’d think so. So, let’s see if that’s accurate.

Why Would a Nurse Switch Careers ?

The first question to ask yourself why a nurse would want to work as a recruiter. It’s a career switch, and nurses tend not to switch careers.

The reason nurses do not often switch careers is because they are very unlikely to make as much money in any other sort of profession.

Nurses cannot pivot into a professional setting unless it is directly related to nursing. A firm will never hire a nurse to work as a PR executive, or a Project Manager. These are positions that are only filled by people who went to colleges and studied traditional subjects such as Communications, Psychology, Finance, or Marketing. A nurse who graduated from a nursing school would simply be ill-equipped to work in those roles.

However, nurses can pivot into a career that is related to nursing.

But why? Why would a nurse quit a lucrative job to work as a recruiter and make less money?

Well, many nurses grow tired of their jobs. Nursing can be a very difficult profession. Nurses have to clean bodily fluid from people such as feces, urine, and vomit. Another thing that nurses have to do is deal with violent people such as the mentally ill people who are brought into hospitals, and also the aggressive patients that sometimes are in the E.R. such as criminals and victims brought in by police.

Most nurses go into nursing because the schedule is great. A nurse might only have to work two or three days a week. Some nurses who are only working part time for extra income might only work a few days per month!

Also, the pay is exceptional. In the private sector, which is a completely different working environment than nursing, to make the salary of an average nurse it would require years of experience and working 50 or 60 hours a week at a minimum.

While nurses need a degree, they do not have the educational background that prepeares people for professional enviroments.

But some nurses still want to leave the profession because it’s too unpleasant. Nursing might get into nursing because it can be easy to get into a bottom tier nursing school and get an associates degree and launch right into a three day a week shift that pays 70k a year. The nurses who go to the best nursing schools have an easier time getting right into a job that pays a starting salary of 100k.

If a nurse decides that they just really hate working as a nurse and don’t want to work in a nursing role anymore, not even in case management or remote nursing where they have no interaction with patients, then they might look into a nurse recruiting role.

Would a Nurse Make More Money as a Recruiter?

There are very few scenarios where a nurse recruiter would make more money than a nurse, unless that nurse only worked very few hours a month.

Nurses are paid a very high hourly rate. Nurse recruiters make money by successfully making placements. The work is hard, and the hours are long with many nurse recruiters having to work on weekends.

It might help to review a typical nurse schedule vs a nurse recruiter schedule.

A nurse who works in a hospital on the floor is paid a per hour rate. In NYC, for instance, an ICU RN is paid between 70 and 100 dollars an hour.

Some states pay less, but that’s a standard rate in cities like NYC, Chicago, and LA.

A nurse recruiter might be paid a yearly salary of 40-50k in a large city, or an hourly salary of slightly above minimum wage if they are working for a large nurse staffing company.

Their salary is supplemented by the commission they make when they place a nurse to work. This is in and of itself a bit of a tricky situation because nurses tend to leave jobs with some frequency and it’s not uncommon for a nurse to abandon their shift simply because they find a better job. The idea of a two week notice is not standard in the nursing world.

Experience Matters: Nurses Have the Inside Scoop

One of the reasons a nurse might be a good nurse recruiter is that they know the nursing lifestyle. They know that it can be hard to reach a nurse because they are sleeping during the day if they work at night, or that they are on vacation for a few weeks because they just finished a contract assignment.

Many people who have no detailed history with nurses might not understand the very hectic lifestyle that nurses have. Because of these very hectic lifestyles, nurses are hard to reach and get on the phone.

It can takes dozens of calls to get a nurse to respond to a recruiter. This sort of situation makes most people throw up their hands in disbelief. However, former nurses know that it’s just the lifestyle that nurses are in and are not flustered.

Also, former nurses have inside scoop on hospitals and clinics and other hiring problems.

Not to mention that nurses are often members of private nursing Facebook groups. These groups are a lucrative source of recruiting options.

Nurses do not use LinkedIn. They use Facebook. LinkedIn is a professional network meant to be used by people in corporate roles. Nurses work in a different atmosphere and as such are very unlikely to use LinkedIn.

However, they do use nursing Facebook groups which can mean lots of potential nursing applications.

The typical nurse uses their Facebook during work, and at home. They are constantly posting updates to Facebook. This is common. There are even nurses who run TikTok and Instagram accounts showcasing their daily nursing routines.

These nurses are more likely to trust other nurses than professionals who are trying to recruit them into a hospital job.

Trust Between Nurses and Recruiters

One of the reasons that nurses do make good recruiters is that they have immediate trust.

Most nurses do not have a lot of trust for people who work in administrivia settings or other professional roles. Nurses tend to only trust other medical personnel, such other nurses. If someone is not in the trades, then nurses tend to view them with suspicion.

There is a consensus amongst nurses that anyone who works at a desk or went to college (instead of nursing school) is not to be trusted.

The executives at hospitals who make millions of dollars are surely not to be trusted. And recruiters who get nurses work are always under suspicion.

Part of this is because nurses do not understand how the recruitment process works. They are not aware of the costs associated with hiring a nurse. There are multiple reasons why hiring a nurse is expensive (costs of insurance, credentialing process, search results, and taxes associated with employment).

Sometimes nurses assume that recruiters want to pay them as low as possible, which is not the case. In reality recruiters are motivated not to low ball a nurses pay, but instead they are incentivized to pay them a high salary.

Recruiters want to get the nurses to work, because unless the nurses go to work then the recruiters won’t make any money.

Nurses who transition and become recruiters are at an advantage because they have the background to convince other nurses that there is nothing strange going on.