Travel Physical Therapy Career Guide: Step 6 – Finding Your Travel Therapy Recruiter.

One of the most important things you are going to do during your travel therapy career is build a relationship with a recruiter. A good recruiter is going to be your guide through this process and someone you can rely on to help you through any rough patches you may go through during your travel therapy job. They should:

• feel like your friend
• be knowledgeable resource about the industry 
• be easily accessible, especially if you are new to your travel therapy career

But if you are a more experienced travel therapist you may feel that you have enough experience dealing with the ins and outs of the travel therapy process, like state certifications or setting up housing, and not need to rely on your recruiter as much.

No matter which relationship level you prefer it helps to know ahead of time when you are talking to different travel therapy companies how they are structured so you will  know what kind of relationship is possible. Some travel therapy agencies are built location first while others are built relationship first.

What does that mean? If the company is built location first then the recruiters will be internally structured to assigned states, which means that depending on what you state you want in a travel therapy job who your recruiter is may change based on that. This set up usually means that your recruiter will also be the one contacting the hospitals, skilled nursing facilities or home health companies on your behalf. Which can have some advantages, but also means they will have less time to devote to you.

However, if  the company is built relationship first you will be assigned a recruiter who will be with you through your entire time with them. This structure means that the company is probably split in some form between recruiters and a client manager who deals with the healthcarefacilities, homehelath providers, hospitals and skilled nursing facilities. This lets the recruiters focus on you and not have to do two different jobs.

This is definitely an area to look into when you choose your travel therapy company and recruiter.