Travel Nursing Checklist Part 3

Travel Nursing Checklist Item #14: Travel Nursing Resumes

At this point in the travel nursing process you will be asked to submit a travel nursing resume. Some travel nursing companies will write your resume for you; either based on the information you supply on a resume you have already written or you list on your application. A good resume is very important for a travel nurse. The competition for travel nursing jobs can be intense for the really good locations and hospitals so you want to make sure you stand out. The style is important (and may even be changed to match the company’s look anyway), but nowhere near as much as the information on it and making sure it is presented in a clear and easy to follow format. Some of the key information every good travel nursing resume should have includes:

• All certifications
• All licensures
• Locations of previous work history
• Complete start and stop dates 
• Job type (travel assignment, perm, PRN, contract)
• Any degrees you may hold
• Locations of any school/college you attended
• Dates you attended those schools

Your travel nursing company should have a lot of experience and knowledge about what hospital hiring managers want to see on a travelers resume so check with them and make sure you are providing all the information they need to build a competitive resume for you. But some other things you may want to add are a summary of qualifications and any volunteer work or non-profit organizations you belong to.

Also don’t worry about going too far back in your work history. It may be one of the older positions that is the selling point on your nursing skills. Also the travel nursing company you are working with may have a preset policy about how far back they go in your nursing job history.

Overall the biggest ingredient to a good resume is attention to detail and thoroughness. If you have those two aspects handled you will have a winning resume.

Travel Nursing Checklist Item #15: Being Submitted as a Travel NurseEvery travel nursing company’s process is a little different, but for the most part the next step in the Ultimate Travel Nursing Checklist is being submitted by your recruiter. There is not a lot of for you as a travel nurse to do at this point. By this stage if you followed all of the guidelines laid out in the first 14 steps of the Ultimate Travel Nursing Checklist you should have already explained where you want you to go, any travel nurse housing, pay, unit and assignment requirements and preferences you have and your travel nursing recruiter should have a good sense of what you need next in your travel nursing career and a good understanding of your nursing skills. It is this part of the process that is out of your hands that makes the prep work so important.

Now, travel nursing companies may differ here in how this process works. Some recruiters may also be contacting the hospital on your behalf while other companies may have these roles split out between two different departments. There are advantages to both systems, which I will be writing about in a later post, but basically one set up will be able to make the claim that the person selling you to the hospital will know you better, while the other will be able to promise that they will know the hospital better and their needs better and thus give you and the hospital a perfect fit. So if this difference is going to be important to you then you will want to find out how the travel nursing agency you choose to travel handles this.

Some companies are going to be very selective in where they submit you, while others may be more scatter-shot in where your profile is submitted. Good travel nurse companies will be the selective ones, I have heard of unhappy traveling nurses who have been called by hospitals they didn’t even know they were being submitted to in locations or hospital environments that they are not particularly interested in working in. Find out up front how the travel nursing company you are looking at handles this process, so you don’t have any surprises.

What you really need to do at this point in the travel nursing process is really just to prepare for the next step, the travel nursing interview.

Travel Nursing Checklist Item #16: The travel nursing interviewThe next step in the Ultimate Travel Nursing Checklist that you will be aware of is the travel nurse interview. Between being submitted and interviewed may be a bit of waiting for you. But at the hospital and the travel nursing company a bit more is going on. The hospital staff responsible for making the hiring decision will be evaluating your resume, references, skills checklist and profile along with all the other candidates competing for the job, which is why you want to have a standout profile.

Your travel nursing agency will be contacting the hospital on your behalf trying to convince them that you are the best candidate to meet their needs. And sometimes this is not just based on years of experience alone. So don’t get too worried. Travel nursing is such a unique job and good travel nurse candidates have a few different characteristics than just what makes a good nurse. For instance a nurse with 5 years travel experience out of 8 years of nursing experience may have the edge over a first time travel nurse with 20 years nursing experience, or a nurse who has already worked in a particular part of the country may have an edge over a nurse who didn’t. It all just depends on the hospital’s needs.

Depending on how the hospital is set up and how many travel nursing companies they work with, two basic processes will be going on while you are waiting to hear from the hospital.  Either a staffing or HR manager will look over your profile, one among anywhere from 10 to 40 other candidates (less companies means less competition for you) and decide which ones meet the needs that the nurse unit manager has told her she has for the position. She will usually narrow this down to the top three or so and and them to the nursing manager to evaluate and/or interview. If the hospital is smaller the nurse unit manager is more likely to be in direct contact with the travel nursing agency eliminating the go between, but leaving her with more profiles to evaluate. Either of these situations means you will have to sit and wait a little until you get your travel nursing interview, but don’t take it as a time to veg, instead use it to prepare so that you can blow the hiring nurse manager away during your interview.

One of the first and obvious differences of a travel nursing interview versus a traditional interview is that it will be done over the phone. For some nurses that is a cause to breathe easy, for others it is a cause to panic.  If you are the latter don’t worry we have done several posts here at TravelNursingBlogs.com full of great travel nursing interview tips, so rather than rehash them all here are the links:

Travel Nursing Job Interview Tips
All the ingredients to a great interview
Are you ready for the five types of nursing interviews?

Overall when it comes to interviewing for a travel nursing job the key is to be confident of your skills and not to get nervous. Taking the time to prepare will help you a ton in this regard.

Keep an eye out for the next step in the Ultimate Travel Nursing Checklist installment; accepting the travel nursing job.