Do You Have to be a Nurse to be a Nurse Recruiter?

One of the most common types of recruiting is nurse recruiting. There are entire agencies setup up and designed to handle only nurses.

I know that it seems odd to anyone who doesn’t work in the nursing field, or who is not involved in medical staffing, but it’s the truth. I’ll discuss in brief why nurses need recruiters a bit later on, and there are lots of articles here that talk about the demand for nurses as well as the challenges involved in recruiting them.

But, let’s get back to the main question for this article: do you need to be a nurse or have been a nurse to be a nurse recruiter? No.

Of course not. Most recruiters are not nurses. And most nurses would never go into recruiting. The work is so different, the skill set so separate, that a nurse would rarely make a good recruiters. And recruiters can’t work as nurses due to legal restrictions, so obviously it’s not a two way street.

Some nurses end up working as recruiters, but this oftentimes has to do with their ability to land contracts with their former hospitals. We’ll talk about that as well.

What Do You Need to be a Nursing Recruiter?

The skill set for being a nurse recruiter is not that much different than being any other type of recruiter. You need to be a fast worker, self-motivated, have excellent communication skills and great follow up.

The particular challenges when dealing with nurses is that it’s much different than when working with corporate roles and people who have a sophisticated skill set.

Recruiters who work in PR or Finance or administrative role are working with people who have gone to colleges, and have a professional understanding of business relationships. It’s much different with nursing.

Nurses are not professionals, they work a skilled position in a hospital. Many have not gone to college but rather nursing school. The challenges you will deal with as a nurses recruiter include handling communication with someone who is not used to professional email exchanges.

Also, nurses require extensive credentialing, which include paperwork proving that they are not criminals (though many hospitals and jurisdictions will hire and work with criminals including felons).

The additional burden that comes from recruiting nurses is that you must secure proof that they are in fact nurses and have not lost their license. Also, drug work to prove that they are not abusing recreational drugs, and that they have their vaccinations up to date and are physically fit to work.

Many places will also require insurance and references that will show that the nurses are not in bad standing with former employers.

You as a recruiter must also have a knowledge of nursing. Imagine the annoyance that a ICU nurse would feel if some green recruiter cold called them and asked if they wanted to work as a floor nurse in a rehab facility, or work as a school nurse? The experience and pay differs dramatically for nurses and their skill set is also very different.

A good nurse recruiter will be able to differentiate between a Psych NP and a Med-Surg first year. However, it does take time to learn the difference, and most recruiter roles do not provide training or guidance.

This is a reason why there is such high turnover in recruiting.

Finally, being a nurse recruiter requires a patience. Nurses are notorious for being difficult to contact. It requires constant calls and follow up to get even the most basic paperwork, which often is the job of a credentialer. Though as a nurse recruiter you must always seek to be a participant in the credentialing and paperwork.

You don’t need to be a nurse to be a nurse recruiter, but you do need to know the difference between different types of nursing roles.
If you can’t tell the difference between a NICU nurse and a PACU nurse, then you’re going to have a hard time filling roles.

Are Nurses Good Recruiters?

No, as a rule, and having consulted for several large medical staffing firms and having hired multiple directors of staffing, my opinion is that nurses are not good recruiters.

They can be, but as a rule I would not say that it’s a good fit. Here’s why.

Recruiting requires a great deal of effort, much of it self directed. Nurses come from a field where they are involved in specific tasks, often the same repetitive work over and over. The patients they are working with come to them, nurses don’t have to go out and find patients or find work.

Also, nurses are used to having people come to them, not having to chase after people. It’s simply not in a nurses nature to follow up with someone.

Recruiting, on the other hand, requires a great deal of speculative work.

Not only that, but it’s not what nurses were trained for. Nurses are trained to care for patients, not network online and interview people and determine peoples ability to perform a variety of jobs.

With that said, some nurses make excellent recruiters. Especially those nurses who went to a real college before turning to nursing.  A well rounded education, and experience with professionals is the ideal background.

Finally, the main reason that the recruiting world isn’t a good fit for nurses is that nurses are used to extremely high pay. That pay is not dependent upon their work performance. It’s not a merit based job. A good nurse is paid the same for a lazy nurse (much to good nurses chagrin).

They simply refuse to work for a business that is structured to reward based on merit and performance and not simply on time on the floor.

Why Do Nurses Need Recruiters?

Why do nurses need recruiters? Can’t a nurse find a job without a recruiter?

Well, a nurse right out of school can sometimes find a job directly with a hospital, but it’s not likely. And even then, the nurse will be dealing with the hospitals nurse recruitment staff.

And rehab places, schools, and many other facilities are always advertising for jobs on places like Indeed, Craigslist, Monster, ZipRecruiter, not to mention government websites, and other locations like Facebook.

The reason that nurses need to work with recruiters is that the places that hire nurses don’t use regular human resources. Nurses are very difficult to hire and onboard when compared to corporate workers.

They are in high demand due to hospitals being required to staff a minimum number of nurses and schools and non-profits also working with government funding to secure nursing staff.

Because of this, nurses are constantly being tempted away by employers and they switch jobs frequently.

The typical hiring manager at a company would not be equipped to work with nurses as it’s simply too difficult.

The paperwork involved, the credentialing involved, and often the time spent chasing the nurse before anything is submitted and filed into the company system requires a professional nurse recruiter who focuses solely on managing the hiring process for skilled nurses

What’s it Like to Be a Nurse Recruiter?

That depends on who you ask. If you ask someone who works for a hospital, they will tell you it’s pretty stressful, but not all around bad.

If you’re asking someone who works for a nursing recruiting agency then you’ll hear something else. An agency that places nurses at hospitals, clinics, and on travel contracts in various locals is going to be an environment with a ton more pressure.

The skill set required to be a nurse recruiter at a nursing agency is much more intense and involved than a recruiter who works for the hospital.  Why? Well, let’s look at this.

Hospital staff who are in charge of hiring nurses work hand in hand with nurse agency recruiters. They do this because they are unable to fill roles themselves. In essence, they have the agency do their job.

Many hospital staff are union employee who work on salary. They are not motivated by commission, or merit based performance. Agency recruiters, on the other hand, live and die based on performance.

The more nurses they place in a role, the more money they make. That’s totally different than a hospital nurse recruiter. These individuals are more akin to human resource workers who are a step in the process.

The stress for the hospital nurse recruiter is way less. They have a guaranteed salary that is not dependent on hiring a certain number of nurses. They don’t make more if they place 5 ICU nurses vs 2 ICU nurse for a season.

The other big benefit for hospital nurse recruiters is that they get benefits, sick time, time off, and for those that are union, they get pensions. This is one reason why people are always looking to get a full time job at a hospital.

Agency recruiters get none of this. It’s virtually impossible for an agency recruiter to get benefits such as a 401k. And no agency in the country provides pensions. That’s something that only still exists for union workers (of which hospital workers are one lucky group).

Also, recruiting directly for a hospital is much easier than recruiting through an agency. Hospital nurses are being recruited for the choice roles. The easy shifts, and the positions that can become permanent with full benefits.

Agency nurses are all being recruited for travel contracts and short term assignments, for the most part. These roles do not provide benefits. Therefore, the roles are less attractive than the ones the hospital offers. Travel contrasts do pay much better, which causes many nurses to leave their union roles to take travel contracts, however.

This was seen with the recent Covid crisis when nurses in many cities simply walked away from jobs to fly to California, Arizona, New York and other hot spots to make $150 and up an hour (raking in half a million for a contract in some locations, much of it tax free due to generous legal loopholes nurses are smart to take advantage of).

Part of the challenge with role is that it’s lucrative, but tough, to make money as a nurse recrutiter.