The Recommended Recruiter List
As a Canadian nurse, a lot of recruiters will reach out to you...
...or maybe you will reach out to an agency and be assigned a recruiter at random.
Looking to Permanently relocate to the U.S.A.?
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This is a recipe for disaster...
It is important to have a recruiter in your corner who is an expert with Canadian nurses.
It means getting a recruiter who knows which facilities will accept Canadian nurses who do not have an American Social Security Number (SSN) yet. In some states (e.g. Texas and New York), something like 90% of facilities want a SSN just to get an interview with the facility.
It means they know what should be in the letter you must present to the border to get your TN visa and what is required to cross the border with minimal issues.
It means they can advise you along the way while keeping in mind you are from Canada and have very unique immigration, taxation, work-lifestyle, geographical, and cultural differences.
And so much more!
So, what are the benefits of using a recruiter from this list?
A recruiter in your corner who actively has Canadian nurses on assignments & is an absolute expert.
A portion of the referral bonus depending on the recruiter you choose! This can help pay for some of the costs that might otherwise be out-of-pocket for you in order to start travel nursing.
It helps keep the community going! Because we manage the community and are constantly adding resources for free to hopeful travel nurses, the only real source of revenue to cover the costs involved is referral bonuses. There have been a few close calls in the past, but it is very important to admin that everything remain free for nurses. So, by utilizing the referral bonuses and sharing a portion with the nurses using 'Kat Ann' as the referral source, it's a win-win-win for everyone! The agency gets a nurse, the nurse gets some extra money from the referral bonus and all the resources from this community, and the community is able to keep going!
Connect to the community!
So, what do you think? are you ready for a recruiter that knows how to work with Canadian nurses?
Here are our recruiters
favourite
Nick Garcia
TNAA
Alison Kon
Host Healthcare
*New* recruiter
and agency
coming soon!
nurse bonus
$700*
$500*
nurse bonus
* TNAA nurse bonus $500 USD (approx. $700 CAD) (taxable)
* Host Healthcare Nurse Bonus $500 CAD (taxable)
Other recruiters & their Agencies
A Note of warning...
There are several agencies I would warn against including the following:
AYA
Aya has the absolute worst reputation of any agency. I would give them an F rating.
Now, some would say they are the biggest, but even the second biggest (Medical Solutions) has a far superior reputation. Let's get into the rationale why...
1. The Class Actions
Aya had a class action for bait n' switch practices. This means they got nurses on assignments for high pay that didn’t really exist in the first place. Once the nurse got to their assignment, the recruiter would call and say something happened and the pay was lowered by several hundred. The money never changed, they lied in the first place about the pay to get the nurse there. It is believed the class action was dropped due to technicalities in the nurses' contracts.
2. Criminal Activity
Aya has been committing identity theft with Canadian nurses either with them knowing or not knowing.
I was just talking to Nick with TNAA and tNAA is partners with AYA and get all the same contracts as Aya without the horrible reputation.
He said he had a nurse who wanted a job with a hospital, and that hospital won’t take a nurse without an SSN. The nurse contacted him a few days later saying she got that hospital with Aya. He knows there is zero way to get the hospital without lying about the SSN or filling it in with a false one.
What they do at Aya is enter a random number or ask the nurse for their Canadian SIN to put in the submission. The issue is that the same sequence of numbers in our SINs do not belong to us in the United States... That same sequence of numbers probably belongs to some lovely lady named Betsy Sue in Tennessee and Aya/the nurse is using her number.
It is identity theft and is a felony in the U.S.
If Aya is caught, and they have been. That is how a recruiter was recently let go, he was reported to the IRS. Aya can face fines, etc. and they’re so big, they can afford to pay them, no problem. But a Canadian nurse committing, even if unknowingly, identity theft in the U.S… well, you might have to say goodbye to your dreams of travel nursing there if the IRS suspects you knew what the recruiter was doing.
3. Personal Experience
personally, they wouldn’t give me a recruiter or let me talk to a real person when I called the main line until I had my ViSascreen and state license.
Next, they told me my Massachusetts license was not able to be used. I panicked thinking I got a license I couldn’t use. Well, no. Aya just doesn’t put first time Canadians in MA. Another agency had me there about 3 weeks later making over 4k USD/week.
4. Majority of Nurses' Experience & Reviews are SCATHING
There are way too many things wrong with them to list but I have tried here.
I also suggest heading to the Gypsy Travel Nurse Facebook group, joining, and typing in ‘Aya’ in the search function. It is basically just negative review one after another...
I really strongly caution any Canadian nurses to AVOID Aya. Even if you find a good recruiter, it is a systemic problem with the organization and how they operate.
Since TNAA is partners with Aya and has access to Aya’s contracts without the horrible reputation, it reallllly isn’t worth it to work with Aya.
I’d just go straight to Nick Garcia with TNAA if I wanted to get a Aya contract tomorrow.
Triage
Unbelievable spammers. Contacted me about 2 dozen times by a dozen different recruiters in one month.
I don't even know how they got my phone number...
They contacted me an obscene amount. I would never give them a call or your contact information. You’ve been warned!
Nomad/Trusted
These agencies are 'recruiterless' and ill-advised for first-time Canadian travel nurses.
Even as an experienced travel nurse, I would never attempt to use them... even with my knowledgebase being what it is - and I like to think it's quite a bit!
AMN
I can’t say I have used them personally. But I would just advise a lot of caution. They have probably the second worst reputation (second to Aya).
Relocation Agenices
- Elite Intellicare A.K.A. Westaway Staffing
Per nurses emailing admin, we have issued a caution against this agency. There is one particular recruiter who spams a lot in Canadian travel nurses and the complaint from nurses is that he is giving bad information. Apparently he has told one nurse they could 'bypass the english proficiency test' by 'endorsing' her nursing license from Quebec to another 'state' like Ontario. This is entirely false. There have been multiple other complaints suggesting it is possible to bypass the NCLEX, etc.
- Greenstaff
Per nurses, I don't have much info off the top of my head, but complaints just including lack of knowledge of how to go about the process, things like getting a TN visa, etc.
- IMCS
Spoke with admin from the company and they clearly had no idea how a TN Visa worked. They mistakenly said they could get LPNs a TN visa, when LPNs do not qualify under the NAFTA shortage occupation list for the TN visa. This could lead to LPNs spending a lot of money and then being turned away at the border. Would certainly avoid!
- Nursematch
Per nurses from the group. I actually used to recommend them (despite complaints of low pay) until nurses began to DM me that the location were aweful (e.g. CAlifornia, sure, but in the desert... Florida, sure, but on the underbelly... etc.). They complained pay was low and after signing the contract the agency going dark and zero help when or if clinical issues or bullying on assignment occurred.
back when I was recommending them, I did reach out to them to see if they wanted to connect. They offered a referral bonus of $200 (the lowest I have ever seen) and complained they would not be able to 'handle the volume' of nurses from our community, whatever that means. No issue with them personally, just found that response incredibly odd considering how much marketing they do and all the events they Put on. I'd suggest to them to reduce the money spent on marketing and events and channel that money into increasing their referral bonus as that would make more sense.
- Salud & McCare Global
Ghosting, no response to multiple inquiries from nurses.
- Travel Care Hawaii
It was nurses again who brought this up frequently in the Hawaii chat in the facebook group, many were prepared to go and then switched to LTC regardless of their specialty, others were bait n'switched, others were led through the process and it fell through because the agency/recruiters had no idea what they were doing with Canadians (e.g. TCH told LPNs they qualified for the TN and they bought the VS for $760 USD only to find out LPNs don't qualify for the TN), etc.