- How do I know what jobs are available for traveling PTs?
- Where do the jobs come from?
Where do the jobs come from?
When a facility has a job posting, they can reach out to a recruiting company directly to ask for candidates, or they can post it to a VMS (a Vendor Management System), if they are a member. A VMS is an intermediary company that manages all the job postings and screening for candidates for a facility. This way, the facility only communicates with the one VMS instead of 50 different recruiting companies. A VMS may collect a fee of 3-5%.
So, recruiting companies can be members of multiple VMSs in addition to have jobs that are direct to the company (non-VMS). The amount of VMS jobs compared to
private jobs differ based on recruiting company. Generally, I’ve seen about 50/50 split between VMS postings and direct jobs specific to the company.
Some facilities will only work with specific recruiting agencies, either because they already have a past relationship, they are contracted with a non- compete (can only
work with that agency), or maybe they are required to work only with a JCAHO- accredited agencies. But this is rare.
Some recruiters will tell new therapists that their jobs are “exclusive to their company” or that their company has more jobs than others and that is why people should go with them. It is really not the case the whole “exclusive” thing is very rare. Yes, there are a lot of jobs that are not on vendor management systems, but typically, those places are open to most travel companies and basically whoever can get them their traveler at the price they want.
