How Much Do Nurse Recruiters Make?

This topic comes up again and again. There are lots of threads about it on Reddit and other job forums.

It seems that everyone is curious about how much nurse recruiters make. People interviewing for nurse recruiter roles want to know the potential salary. And nurses always wonder how much their recruiter makes.

It makes sense because of how in demand nurse roles are. Hospitals have enormous budgets and nurses positions are notoriously difficult to fill yet vital for the safe operation of the hospital.

While everyone who reads the newspapers knows how lucrative it is to be a nurse (starting salaries average 100k in most cities for a 3 day work week) the amount of money a nurse recruiter makes is less well known —and also less in dollar amount.

But what is the actual amount that a nurse recruiter will make? It’s not an easy answer since it depends on a lot of variables—size of agency, number of nurses, compensation structure. We’ll get into the details later on in the article, but since everyone wants to know right away here’s a fast response. This will help you decide if you’re even interested in interviewing for a nurse recruiter role.

Typical Salary: 20hr. That’s the max rate that most nurse recruiters make. If they are on salary, that yearly number might be 39-44k.

Commission Structure: Max commission would be 7% with 2-5% being the norm. However, many of the large nurse recruiting agencies actually only pay a flat salary—either commission goals are never “hit” or they are simply not offered.

As you can see, nurse recruiters make way, way less than nurses. A typical nurse will make 100k. A travel nurse might clear 250k if they are working heavy overtime on extended crisis contracts around the country.

Do Nurse Recruiters Get Paid Base or Commission or Both?

It depends on the agency. Some large healthcare staffing agencies only pay recruiters a flat fee. They pay them a flat rate of 20hr in many cases the recruiter won’t make more than an average office job. These large healthcare companies have constant turn over, you wouldn’t be surprised. Once a recruiter realizes how much they could make if they were paid fairly, they tend to seek out a more reputable organization.

It’s a somewhat complicated topic, so much so that I have an entire other article describing how nurse recrutiers get paid.

Large healthcare staffing agencies can get away with either paying no commission or little commission because they have all of the best nursing contracts, and there is very little effort in recruiting. The large nurse recruiting agencies have nurses coming to them. This is important as nurses are known to be extremely difficult to recruiter and deal with. They are even known to be mean to other nurses.

So, the large agency that has credentialing departments, connections with national healthcare staffing executives for lucrative no-bid contracts, and every other perk –these agencies can hire recruiters and pay them very little.

Smaller nurse recruiting agencies have to entire recruiters with a better commission structure. These agencies don’t have the same large networks as giant healthcare companies. The C.E.O’s of national hospital networks are all connected (through lucrative private business associations and cronyism) with national staffing agencies.

Some temporary staffing agencies are very predatory and will offer only commission or—in a more common tactic—only offer commission once “goals” are hit. These goals are obviously created and changed at the discretion of the agency owners.

Nurse staffing isn’t luxurious, the companies that operate in this space are either large national players or smaller shops that need to be vetted extremely well.

Avoid staffing agencies that offer “non-traditional” or “creative” commission structures. The large recruiting agencies might not offer a lot of money, or little to no commission, but they are not often found to slow pay or no pay on commissions.

When interviewing for a nurse recruiter role at a smaller agency, always vet the ownership. If the principals are involved in multiple, unrelated businesses or have questionable online reputations then avoid.

Yelp, Glassdoor, and other online reviews including Redditt can be questionable and are not always trustworthy. There are companies located overseas who will populate fake positive reviews.

While we’re on the topic of overseas, it’s becoming more and more common for nurse recruiting agencies to outsource their recruitment overseas. Most credentialing is already outsourced—employment verification and reference checks have been handled by Indian and East Asian firms for years.

The advantage to the staffing agency is that they are paying outsourced recruiters a wage (often 2 or 3 dollars an hour) that would not be legal in the United States.

The typical structure for a nurse recruiter would be: a base salary of 20 an hour. At some nurse recruiting agencies it might be a salaried position of anywhere from 35-50k (depending on location).

The Market Matters: Big City Hospitals vs Rural Hospitals

One of the determining factors in how much a nurse recruiter makes is the nurses they work with.

If you are a nurse recruiter and all you are staffing for are nursing home nurses, or home agency nurses, then you will be limited in salary. While nursing home nurses are the lowest paid nurses, home agency nurses can make over 100hr—but the recruiting is not lucrative.

The most money is in hospital recruiting. Nurse recruiters who handle travel nursing have the highest potential for salary and commission.

Simply put, the more money the nurse makes, the more money the recruiter makes.

Travel nurses who work in hospitals can command enormous hourly pay rates. It’s not uncommon for a travel nurse to make $150+ per hour.

If you want to learn exactly how nurse recruiters make money, then you can read this article.

Basically, it all comes down to the spread. The profit an agency makes. For instance, when a nurse is working and being paid $150 an hour, the agency might bill the hospital at $190. That is a $40 dollar spread. The recruiter either makes nothing (when they work as an hourly worker) and the agency makes all of the profit, or else the recruiter makes a percentage of the spread (anywhere from 1-6 percent).

So, in this case a nurse recruiter might make $3 an hour when a nurse is working and making $150 an hour.

As you can see, even with the highest paying nurse roles, the nurse recruiter isn’t making a lot of money.

Travel’s Where It’s At

The most lucrative nurse recruiting jobs are those involving travel nurse recruiting. This is because travel nurses are the highest paid nurses in the country.

The nurses that are hired to work travel assignments are paid often twice what a staff nurse will make. For instance, during nurse shortages in large cities, it’s not uncommon for a travel nurse to be hired on and paid 15k a week.

These trave nurse jobs are incredibly lucrative and many nurses leave their regular jobs to take on a travel assignment. In addition to the very high pay, travel nurses are given tax free stipends and free housing and airfare.

The recruiters who work on travel assignments have the highest earning potential. This is as long as the agency they work for allows them to have commission. Some large healthcare travel agencies do not allow recruiters anything beyond a hourly rate (even if more is promised during the interview—make sure you read the contracts you sign!)

Taking Risks: Dealing With Problem Nurses and Contract Penalties

One of the things that is important to recognize before you get into nurse recruiting is the risk involved.

There are many reasons that nurse recruiting is a job with such high turnover, and also why it can be lucrative: the difficulty in recruiting nurses.

In the world of recruiting, nurses are known to be very hard to recruit.

One of the risks then, is finding yourself dealing with problem nurses. This can be one of any number things including:

• -Nurses who quit contracts in the middle of their assignment
• -Nurses who fail drug tests
• -Nurses who get in trouble for braking HIPA with TikTok vids.
• -Nurses who have behavioral issues on site
• -Nurses who no-show to work
• -Nurses who agree to work then back out after all credentialing is complete
• -Nurses who fabricate work experience or credentials
• Nurses who are working too many side hustles

These are not rare issues, they are events that happen with some frequency within the world of travel nursing. And because of this, the cost to work with and recruit nurses is so high. It’s one of the reasons why many staffing agencies prefer not to pay high commissions to their recruiters. It’s also one of the reasons why the cost of staffing nurses is so high—hospitals want to off load all of the cost and financial burden onto staffing agencies.

The Agency Cut: Where The Big Money’s At With Nurse Recruiting

Individual recruiters do take home the majority of the revenue from nurse staffing. The majority of the revenue made from nurse recruiting is made by the agency.

The owners and partners in staffing firms pull in 90-95% of the profit on each nurse staffed.

So, to give a clear cut example that will spell it out in plan numbers:

1 Travel Nurse on a Contract in NYC or LA might make: 16k a week

The nurse recruiter will profit around $140

The agency will profit around: $3,000

As you can see, the nurses make the most. Then the agency, then far behind the individual nurse recruiter.

If the nurse staffing agency happens to use outsourced recruiters such as those from India or the Philippines, then they will only pay the recruiters an hourly rate (around $3 per hour).