Rockstar Recruiter Round Table
Nurse Kelley, Chief Nurse Advocate – Wanderly: Hey Everyone! My name is Nurse Kelley and I’m the Chief Nurse Advocate for Wanderly. We have an incredibly special treat for all of you guys today. We have our very first Rockstar Recruiting Round Table and what that means is we have incredible recruiters on with us that are the most googled and sought-after recruiters in the country. So, we are very, very excited about this round table and I will let each of them introduce themselves! They come from all over but we are so excited to have each one of you so thank you for joining us and Jan, we’ll start with you!
Jan Steele, Recruiter – The Right Solutions (TRS): Hi! I’m Jan Steele and I work at TRS Healthcare. I’ve been here about 13 years as a travel nurse recruiter. I was a nurse for 25 years in ER and Trauma and later got into management and healthcare administration before coming here. I am dedicated to the nursing profession. Obviously, I chose a company that’s RN owned and operated so those are some of my favorite things, some of the most important things to me when dealing with travelers. I’m really glad to be here and thank you for inviting me.
Shari, CEO – Moxie Mentoring: This is Shari from Moxie Mentoring, I’m the owner and CEO of Moxie. Prior to Moxie I was a recruiter in the industry for about 15 years. We started Moxie and here we do training for recruiters in the healthcare staffing industry. We’re always out there looking for ways to help them get better and help make our industry better for the nurses and for the hospitals. So, I’m excited to be here and excited to ask some great questions.
Krystle Johnston, Recruiter – Advanced Travel Nursing: Hi my name is Krystle Johnston, I work with Advanced Travel Nursing. I’m out in Denver, Colorado. Actually, I was born Canada, oddly enough. I’ve been in recruiting for about 6 years, nurse recruiting for the last 2. My favorite thing is, honestly, just the friendships that we build. Kind of the way that I describe what I do on a daily basis is that I get to make friends, chat to nurses all day and just find them great travel contracts whether it’s to be close to family, make money or to see different places. That’s what makes my job fun.
Sean Davis, Recruiter – United Staffing Solutions Inc (USSI): My name is Sean. I’m from Philadelphia, and out here in California. I work for United Staffing Solutions, USSI. I have about 3 years of recruitment experience. Definitely, piggybacking off what Krystle said, I think the relationship aspect to me is probably one of the most joyful things to go through with your nurses. You know, getting to know them on a personal level too. You build really good relationships that way you can get them what they want hopefully.
It’s a grind and I love doing it because I like to set up my nurses in destinations where they’d like to go. And if you can’t get them in some of those, then you figure something else out. The relationship aspect to me is probably one of the most joyful things about the recruiting aspect of it.
Nurse Kelley – Wanderly: Well thank you four so much again for joining us. I’m super excited about this. Let’s start this discussion off with Shari. Shari, you being the CEO of Moxie, can you tell us what makes Moxie Mentoring unique?
Shari Dalton – Moxie Mentoring: We are one of the only companies in the nation right now that does training for our industry and specifically for the travel healthcare staffing industry. We are the only ones at this time that was, and still is, provided by trainers who have former experience in our industry. Both myself, and my partner Adam, are former recruiters in the industry. We worked as recruiters for about 15 years each. So, we’ve got a ton of background and history in healthcare staffing which helps us help the recruiters that we’re out there teaching every day.
Nurse Kelley – Wanderly: Awesome! I think that’s fantastic. Krystle will you tell us a little bit about why your style has become one of the most googled in the country?
Krytle Johnston – Advanced: You know it’s kind of funny because I remember when I first started my manager told me “just go out there and make a friend.” And of course, it takes quite a few phone calls to get to someone and make a friend. But I think it’s in terms of just listening. It’s really about figuring out what’s the most important part to the nurse and what they need.
It’s just understanding that, for example, I see a lot of times other recruiters pitching this job and it’s completely out of what this nurse wants. And a lot of times it’s just pitching a lot of money, and just throwing money at nurses but in reality, they want to be down in Dallas, Texas to be near their mom. And you’re pitching these jobs that are elsewhere that are paying so much more. It’s good to get them that information, but I really think it’s about focusing on what they want and I’ll do whatever I can to get them exactly what they want. Of course, if the jobs not there we look outside that, but really focusing on what they need.
Nurse Kelley – Wanderly: I love that! A lot of individualization it sounds like which is perfect and I think that shows a caring side of what you do which makes total sense! I’d want to google you as well! So thank you for sharing that!
Sean can you talk a little bit about your favorite part about recruiting?
Sean Davis – USSI: My favorite part? I like the hunt, like finding them is pretty fun. The first bit of recruiting was all phone calls you know we didn’t know much about the Facebook and social media aspect of recruiting. And you know everybody looked at is as you could share your night out about the previous night, so after recruiting for a year and getting nurses on by phone call is exhausting so when I learned about the social media aspect of it and then finding them that way it’s cool because you have a face and name to speak to.
You know rather than going through 100 phone calls and calling people and getting to know who they are. It’s cool to see on social media that this person likes to go hiking! I have an L&D nurse for example who has literally one of the coolest Instagram pages ever because she travels all the time and she literally posts like screensaver quality shots of the places she’s at. That’s how awesome it is. So, you know, it’s cool. I like the hunt of finding the nurses on social media or other platforms like Wanderly as well. Finding them, building that relationship and getting them the job. It’s the circle of life, you do your job to its full extent by getting that, a job, and then at the end of that you’ve got to extend them.
Nurse Kelley – Wanderly: Yes definitely! I think that’s super fun and I think that’s really great. And yeah, the social media aspect for sure has kind of changed every single company, but definitely the travel industry. Jan, can you give us one piece of advice that you’d give a brand new recruiter?
Jan Steele – TRS: Every recruiter, I just want to encourage them to be an advocate for the nurse and the nursing profession. That works out very well and that nurse needs to hear that. But also, not only to focus on want, but need. Because the trick in travel is to help them come to the point of at least getting what they need. And I would stay focused on that before what they want.
Nurse Kelley – Wanderly: Great! That’s perfect! So, I think we want to open up the discussion now for anyone. Does anyone have any questions for any of your fellow recruiters and CEO of Moxie, Shari? Does anyone have any questions for each other?
Jan Steele – TRS: I would love to ask the question in general, over the past 16-18 months when we’ve had a little bit of a slag in nursing, what has been the outcome for you as recruiters? What are you seeing?
Sean Davis – USSI: Um, one thing I’ve noticed since I got back into the nurse recruiting game is the nurses’ expectations. I try to mainly focus on L&D nurses, that’s my thing. You know expectations vs the reality is the most important thing. One time a nurse gets x amount of money and they expect to see that every time, and that’s not the case. Educating the nurses and letting them know so they can understand the market I think is the most important thing. Where you tell them, “Hey I know what you want, but let me tell you what the market is doing.” It’s our job to educate them about what the market is actually doing vs what their expectations are.
When they come to that realization where it’s like okay but since that’s what the other person is saying too it seems like that is the general idea of what the market is paying right now for my specialty. So letting them know that I think it’s really important vs them linking up with another recruiter telling them “this job is getting paid x amount of money,” and it’s the nurses job to tell the other recruiters where they’re being submitted and what they’re being offered. I’m here to build a relationship with you. You juggle a lot of things to get them what they want, but they have to understand it’s the expectations vs the reality.
Jan Steele – TRS: I think that’s very important. One thing I really like to focus on is teaching, you mentioned education. One thing I believe is teaching that traveler the right questions to ask, both with me and the facility so that they can have a good fit. It’s all about fit. The right nurse in the right place to be fully successful for everyone to experience success and that’s important to me and goes along with what you were saying.
Krystle Johnston – Advanced: Yeah, I definitely 100% agree on letting our nurses know exactly what the market is doing for sure. A couple of things I’ve done to try and look and find any way because I know we have less jobs then what we might have seen a year ago even. I think it’s kind of looking outside the box.
I think we all know it can always still be, who you know and so I call it grassroots. I know it’s silly but when a nurse is trying to go to a facility I’m like “do you know anyone that’s worked there,” or I’ll try and look in our system. Have we had anyone that worked there? Just any kind of in, especially in such a competitive market I think it really, really does make difference when you can look outside the box and look at opportunities you might not have seen too.
Shari Dalton- Moxie: That’s really, really smart Krystle! You really have to take advantage of any opportunity you can to get your nurse at a facility whether it’s somebody you knew before, or a relationship with a hospital, a direct contract you have at a hospital. Anything like that that you have that can give your candidate a leg up on the position. That’s really smart.
I have a question for you guys, you guys have varying degrees of experience and various strengths, but how much of a role does social media play in your growth as a recruiter?
Jan Steele – TRS: as far as myself and my company, in the past 5 years we’ve had a marketing director change and he was very instrumental in making sure that we have a presence on social media. I’d say around half of the people inquiring to our company and to me as a recruiter come from social media.
Shari – Moxie: Do you in particular spend time on social media or is it more the company’s marketing or content marketing on there?
Jan Steele – TRS: I don’t ever sell on social media. I don’t like to sell period. I like to give information and so I spend a lot of time on LinkedIn, I’ve done some articles there. I do a lot of different blogs that I’ve learned to pitch in and speak if I can add something. I spend a lot of time on that because I think if we sit back and wait for the right time when we really have something to say it can make a difference.
Krystle Johnston – Advanced: I’ll be honest. I don’t use social media as much as I should. I’m 32, so I definitely know the impact and I have a Facebook account. The part I spend the most on is the housing side. I do believe in getting referrals done on your individual pages. I’m sure that helps in terms of some google searches. I like having nurses have their own words about me because it does explain a lot, especially when you have maybe a new prospect you’re talking to so they have something to look at as well.
I do feel like the social media part is pretty huge and it’s something I need to hone in more. My nurses are friends with me on Facebook and that’s where I use it the most. It’s just I feel a lot of the comments on the sites are just so negative and it’s so hard to keep focus and be around that much negativity that we hear on those sites so I probably steer away more than I should. But I don’t like the negativity.
Sean Davis – USSI: I would agree with Krystle it’s one of those things where when I started this new opportunity at USSI, previously I was just making phone calls. So at USSI I started off making it work with Facebook. At first, I wasn’t able to post because they thought my new account was spamming. I wanted to make it more personal so I used my real Facebook account to market, which is Sean Michael Davis, and I have a great picture of Jeff Goldblum!
I think what I like about social media, I mean the haters on there, nobody cares for that, but it’s one of those mediums that pits the expectation vs the reality. You post a job and what they pay and somebody is like well “I’m not accepting that! That’s too low for the area!”
And I’m like “well that may be too low for you, but there may be another nurse out there that that could be a great fit for.”
Overall, I like social media because it’s such a great place to advertise and when you attach the Wanderly link, it speeds up the process. As all of you know in this travel nursing game we do, timing is everything. So I like to post the jobs to let people know that “hey this area has this job for this price, if you’re interested, click that Wanderly link to apply to the job right away because once I get your information I can send you over right away.”
Things I don’t care about social media is when people are like “Oh well I’m interested in the job” and then you never hear from them. They don’t exchange their information with you just yet because they’re still starting that relationship with you. But it’s one of those where if you like to quick recruit, and I’m a fan of it, social media is great for that.
With LinkedIn it can be a little more strategic with Boolean Searches and how you’re going to find your specific nurses in certain areas. With Facebook it’s more about posting in the groups based off the specialty for that location. With LinkedIn it gives you their resume and their breakdown. On LinkedIn you can see where they’ve worked and the patient ratios and all of that. So, there’s pros and cons to both but I’m a fan of it because doing cold calls for 8 hours a day making 100 phone calls and not hearing from 1 person, it hurts. It hurts a little bit.
Nurse Kelley – Wanderly: Thank you Sean. Thank you guys so much! For this first round table we only have a couple minutes left but this has been incredible content and I can’t wait for the next one. I just want to give you all the opportunity quickly to say goodbye and to say anything else that you’d like to add and we’ll start with Shari.
Shari Dalton – Moxie: Check us out at moxiementoring.me or on our Facebook page: Moxie Mentoring.
Nurse Kelley – Wanderly: Thank you Shari, and Krystle?
Krystle Johnston – Advanced: Thank you for the opportunity to let us kind of pick each other’s brains and just grow as recruiters so that we can help our nurses even more
Nurse Kelley – Wanderly: You’re welcome and thank you for jumping on! Sean?
Sean Davis – USSI: You can find me on social media, Sean Michael Davis, I have a great picture with Jeff Goldblum like I said earlier. My email is sean.davis@ussinurses.com hit me up and I’ll find your dream job.
Nurse Kelley – Wanderly: Awesome and I love your energy! Jan?
Jan Steele – TRS: You can find me on Facebook Jan Steele TRS. You can find me on LinkedIn under the same name. We’re an RN owned and operated company and I cannot stress that enough. We’re nurse first and nurse focused and I’m proud of that. You can also reach me by calling 1-479-303-4240 and that is my desk phone as well as my fax.
Nurse Kelley – Wanderly: Awesome Jan! Thank you all so much again I cannot thank you enough. I’m your host Nurse Kelley, I’m the Chief Nurse Advocate for Wanderly and this has been the Rockstar Recruiting Round Table and we can’t wait to bring you another one. Thank you all so much and we can’t wait to bring you all another one!