Hiring guideRead at source, 29 September 2026

How to Hire Travel Nurses: Recruiting Travelers for an Agency or an Internal Travel Program

To hire travel nurses, recruit experienced specialty RNs with a license that covers the assignment state (a multistate compact license or that state's license), and show the full weekly pay package, contract length, shift and start date in the ad. Find them among current travelers nearing contract end, staff nurses in the specialty, per diem nurses and referrals. Screen for license, specialty experience and required life support cards, then call within minutes, because travelers talk to several recruiters at once.

Who you are actually hiring

A travel nurse is a registered nurse on a fixed-length assignment away from home. BLS does not count travel nurses separately; they are included in registered nurses (SOC 29-1141), and every federal figure here describes all RNs. BLS Employment Projections 2025-35 count 3,465,400 registered nurses in 2025, projected to reach 3,660,100 by 2035 (5.6 percent growth), with about 180,800 openings a year. The median annual wage was $97,550 (BLS, May 2025 median annual wage). The BLS handbook notes only that "some nurses travel frequently in the United States and throughout the world to help care for patients in places where there are not enough healthcare workers."

Two kinds of employer hire travelers, and this guide covers both: staffing agencies filling hospital contracts, and health systems running an internal travel or resource pool that rotates their own nurses between sites. The recruiting mechanics are the same. The difference is who signs the contract and who the nurse reports to.

License rules that decide who you can place

• State license. BLS: "Registered nurses must have a nursing license issued by the state in which they work. To become licensed, nurses must graduate from an approved nursing program and pass a qualifying exam."
• Compact license. The Nurse Licensure Compact "allows for nurses to have one multistate license with the ability to practice in all compact states," and 43 jurisdictions participate. Implementation status varies, so check the NCSBN map for the assignment state. Our compact nursing states guide covers what this means for hiring.
• Non-compact states. The nurse needs that state's license before starting, so build the board's processing time into the start date.
• The hospital still verifies. Under 42 CFR 482.23(b)(2), a hospital's nursing service "must have a procedure to ensure that hospital nursing personnel for whom licensure is required have valid and current licensure," and under 482.23(b)(6) the director of nursing service must provide for the supervision and evaluation of the clinical activities of all nursing personnel "regardless of the mechanism through which those personnel are providing services (that is, hospital employee, contract, lease, other agreement, or volunteer)." Expect the facility to check your travelers, not just take your word for it.

How to recruit travel nurses

Travel nurses shop assignments the way buyers shop quotes: side by side, on a phone, often with more than one recruiter working for them. That changes what wins. The recruiter who shows the full package first, answers the license question clearly and calls back fastest gets the submission. Recruiting travel nurses is therefore less about a clever headline and more about completeness and speed.

Three things decide whether a traveler engages with you:

• The whole weekly package, broken out. Hourly rate, stipends and overtime rate listed separately, so the nurse can compare like with like.
• The terms that cost them money. Guaranteed hours, the cancellation policy, and what happens if the facility cancels shifts. Experienced travelers ask about these before anything else.
• A clear answer on license. Whether their license covers the state, and if not, whether you help with a license by endorsement and who pays.

Where to find travel nurses

• Travelers nearing the end of a contract. The most ready candidates you will ever talk to. Keep in touch with every traveler you have placed and every one who applied but was not placed; ask when their current contract ends.
• Staff nurses with recent specialty experience. Many nurses consider travel after a few years on a unit. They need a first assignment and someone to explain how travel works.
• Per diem and local contract nurses. Nurses who want contract pay without moving far. Local contracts and internal float programs suit them.
• Referrals from current travelers. Travelers know other travelers from every assignment. A referral bonus paid after the referred nurse completes an assignment rewards the referrals that work.
• Social ads in the markets where nurses live. Target the regions that produce experienced specialty nurses, not only the assignment city. Meta employment ads run in the Employment special ad category, so targeting is by location (at least a 15-mile radius), never by age, gender or ZIP code.
• Nursing job boards. Where active travelers search. Worth posting, but expect active travelers to be applying through several agencies at once.

What your travel nurse ad must say

• Specialty and unit (ICU, ED, labor and delivery, med-surg, OR, telemetry) and the facility type and city.
• Contract length, shift, start date and whether extension is possible.
• The weekly package, with taxable rate and stipends shown separately.
• Guaranteed hours and cancellation terms.
• The license line: an active RN license in the assignment state, or a multistate compact license where the state participates.
• Required years of recent specialty experience and required life support cards.

The travel nurse job description has a full template with duties, requirements and the pay package fields.

Screening questions for a mobile application

Screen for what makes a placement possible, and nothing else on the first step:

• "Do you hold an active RN license that covers this state (a license issued by this state or a multistate compact license)?"
• "How many years of recent experience do you have in this specialty?" Make this a knockout only if the facility sets a hard minimum.
• "Do you hold the life support cards this unit requires (for example ACLS, PALS or NRP)?"

Add the date they can start and the best time to call. Collect the resume, skills checklists and compliance documents after the first conversation, not before it. A nurse finishing a shift will not upload a resume from a phone for an assignment they have not discussed yet.

Speed and follow-up

A traveler who applies is usually talking to other recruiters the same evening. Text within minutes with the recruiter's name and a direct question ("When does your current contract end?"), then call. Submit qualified nurses to the facility quickly and tell them when you did. Nurses who hear nothing for two days assume the assignment went to someone else, and they are usually right.

What a travel nurse applicant costs on social

The Registered nurse family in Boostpoint's 2026 Social Job Advertising Benchmark had a median of $19.08 per applicant, a middle 50% of $12.76 to $34.84, a blended cost of $20.00 and an 11% apply rate. The family covers registered nurse campaigns generally, not travel assignments specifically. Across the benchmark, the apply experience explained 70% of the variation in cost between campaigns, so a short application with a license question matters more than the ad auction. Costs are what advertisers paid; cost per applicant is not cost per hire. For what agencies charge facilities, see nurse staffing agency costs.

Agencies with many open assignments

An agency with dozens of open contracts cannot write an ad for each by hand. Boostpoint Programmatic 2.0 takes your XML job feed and runs one Meta ad per assignment, with a quick-apply application and screening questions on Facebook and Instagram. It builds a resume-formatted candidate summary from the answers and sends contact details, answers and summary to that job in your ATS. Ads start and stop with the feed, so filled assignments stop spending.

Extensions and the second contract

The cheapest traveler is the one who extends or takes a second contract with you. Call every nurse before the midpoint of an assignment to ask how it is going, fix problems with the facility early, and offer the next assignment before the current one ends. For permanent RN hiring, see the healthcare recruiting hub.

Frequently asked questions

Sources: BLS Occupational Outlook Handbook, Registered Nurses; BLS Employment Projections 2025-35 and BLS, May 2025 median annual wage (SOC 29-1141); Nurse Licensure Compact (NCSBN); 42 CFR 482.23; Boostpoint 2026 Social Job Advertising Benchmark. General information, not legal advice. Read at source 29 September 2026.