The pandemic has completely changed the healthcare staffing industry. In some ways, for the better, and in other ways, for the teachable moments. We have heard our clinicians voice their concerns on issues that are occurring across every sector of healthcare staffing. At Wanderly we are on a mission to solve the core inefficiencies in the healthcare staffing. We have heard the complaints, the criticism, and the challenges of clinicians for years. We want to write this piece to give you more insight into the behind-the-scenes issues in the healthcare staffing industry and how Wanderly is innovating to solve them for our users. Wanderly is committed to our travelers, our clinicians, and our users. We were founded in the spirit of honesty, complete transparent communication, and the relentless pursuit of the future of healthcare staffing. Here are 5 issues that you have likely experienced, why they happen, and what Wanderly is doing about them:
- Jobs open and close rapidly—sometimes, before they are removed
You have probably applied for jobs only to hear that the job is no longer available. We have seen jobs open and close within minutes, and while most systems update their job profiles as quickly as possible, there is no way to update them instantaneously which leaves closed jobs marked as open for short periods of time. Wanderly updates assignments on our platform within every single hour, as we are committed to coming as close to real time open and close as technologically possible in this current travel healthcare climate.
- Pay is higher than ever before
The competition is tough for desirable positions right now as the pay for travel nurses keeps getting higher—we expect some decrease in rates for the remainder of 2021, but demand for contingent clinicians is still high across the US. More travelers are participating in travel healthcare and with pay rates reaching upwards of $6,000 a week, the positions are filling rapidly—faster than many people can even view the jobs.
Wanderly allows you to quickly search for jobs by pay rate and compares the rates at one agency with others to make sure you get the best rate! When you sign-up for Wanderly you get weekly emails to notify you of the highest paying jobs based on your profile. We want to give you a competitive edge when it comes to snagging a high-paying assignment.
- Recruiter Response Times and Ghosting
The healthcare staffing industry is largely operated by recruiters who are essential to the happiness and success of clinicians. A recruiter’s commitment to responding rapidly, working hours outside of their business day, and having up-to-date information is absolutely vital to the success of a traveling clinician landing a job. You can imagine that recruiters are inundated with a great deal of requests for their hottest jobs, so it is common for clinicians to fall through the cracks.
Wanderly works extensively with our recruiters to ensure they have the tools and understanding of how to combat these concerns, but at the end of the day their commitment to placing a traveler is essential for the success and communication. Quality interactions and comfort within your traveler-recruiter relationship should always be top of mind and accountable. Wanderly research and development efforts in recent months has been focused on building new recruiter tools to allow them to manage more clinicians, more effectively. We are hoping to improve response rates and reduce ghosting episodes. Because at the end of the day, you deserve and answer after you spend your valuable time filling out an application.
- Wanderly is a true marketplace—our users are in control
Wanderly is not a job board, we do not sell leads, none of our jobs are fake, nor do we share our clinicians’ information with anyone outside of whom they have given us permission to share. We work to only supply our users with relevant information. We strive to keep the unnecessary “noise” to a minimum. Our commitments to transparency and keeping our platform honest takes time, manpower, and constant innovation. We work each day here at Wanderly to execute on this goal to ensure our users are supported.
- New job listings that have never been in travel healthcare before
It is important to note that there is an adjustment period for the entire healthcare staffing industry when it comes to the creation of job listings that have never existed before. There were not vaccinator positions, testing site positions, or Covid-specific assignments before last year. Navigating and organizing the facilities, assignments, recruiters, and job posting themselves for positions that never existed before takes a lot of organization, conversations, input, and feedback to perfect as we move forward in the pandemic. Wanderly is proud to be unquestionably spearheading this movement as a company for our clinicians to continue to have the best experience.