Nurse recruiters are an integral part of the nursing process. Without nurse recruiters, hospitals and clinics would be hard pressed to find nursing staff. It’s just the predicament that medical facilities are in nowadays.
There are many reasons why nurse recruiters are needed, but suffice to say it’s a fact and it’s here to stay.
With so many nurses being hired in recent years, there are also quite a few nurse recruiters being hired. And since nurses work weekends, sometimes as a per diem side hustle, sometimes as their scheduled shift, it becomes necessary to discuss the work schedule of nurse recruiters.
This question and the following brief article is designed for all current nurse recruiters who are curious about what their schedule should be. And it’s also designed for potential nurse recruiters who have yet to start the job. These future nurse recruiters might be curious as to how much work they will be expected to do.
So, with those questions understood, let’s set about answering them.
What Do Nurse Recruiters Really Do?
Nurse recruiters are responsible for finding nurses for organizations that need nurses. It’s a very hard task to accomplish. Most hospitals and clinics are not equipped to hire and train the nursing staff that they need. So, what they do instead is outside nursing agencies to handle the recruitment, scheduling, training, and payment.
A nurse recruiter therefore is many things. The nurse recruiter needs to source and find nurses for the hospitals. The nurse recruiter also needs to often handle the credentialing aspect of the process, as well as manage the nurses expectations as it comes to salary and other issues.
While this might seem easy enough from the outside, the reality is that working as a nurse recruiter is extremely difficult and can, for most people, be a very time consuming process.
Some of the challenging tasks involved in recruiting a nurse include:
- Making Initial Contact with a Nurse Who Has the Required Skill Set
- Discussing The Job and Nursing Contract Details
- Negotiating a Pay Rate and Establishing A Contract
- Handling The Interview Process
- Obtaining All Nursing Credentials Necessary
- On-Boarding The Nurse
These are all very time consuming activities. There is a reason why hospitals and doctors who run their own clinics don’t just hire their own nurses. The reason is that dealing with nurses takes a lot of time. The majority of nurses are often engaged in multiple jobs, some working side hustles some working full time jobs and looking for per diem pickup shifts. Remember, even if a nurse doesn't mention that they are working a side hustle during their interview, odds are they have something per diem or on call--nurses are always in demand.
There is also a culture in nursing where the nursing agency and the nursing recruiter is expected to handle all of the paperwork for the nurse. This extends to every single interaction with the nurse. So, for instance, when a nurse is supposed to have their diploma, many simply tell the recruiter to call the school and get copies.
Now, most experienced nurse recruiters know that you should avoid dealing with nurses who cannot supply their own credentials, but the fact remains that the industry standard is for nurses to expect other people to handle their paperwork.
There are even entire departments in hospitals and nurse staffing agencies that process and obtain these paperwork’s: credentialing departments. The credentialing department is responsible
What Kind of Nurse Recruiting Roles Require Weekend Work?
There is no special kind of nurse recruiter that would require weekend work. All nurse recruiters have the option of working on the weekend. There is not specific reason why weekend work is required.
It’s not the same sort of work as a nurse scheduler. Nurse schedulers are often set on weekend shifts. This is because nurses have to work on weekends as a matter of course. It’s important to remember that nurses only work 3 days a week. Some of those nurses might work on weekends.
A nurse scheduler is going to have to be on call at the hospital so that they can schedule the nurses who are supposed to work that particular weekend. Nurse schedulers only deal with nurses that have already been hired and placed on the particular shift. They do not recruit.
Nurse recruiters, on the other hand, quite often will have to handle nurse issues over the weekend. A particular nurse who is scheduled to start working might disappear on vacation and want to start work a month later. Or else the hospital is requesting an updated physical and drug test. It might be any number of things which require immediate action.
Unlike regular staffing concerns, hospitals and clinics will require that a nurse who starts working have all paperwork filed before that nurse steps on the floor to work. Why? Because hospitals are overseen by government programs (JACHO, for instance) and are reimbursed by insurance companies and government funded programs such as Medicaid.
Because hospitals are audited by agencies, it’s important that the nurses on staff have all of the legal required documents: drug tests, criminal checks, and up to date medical records. There are too many instances of nurses operating with suspended licenses, criminal records that hospital staff did not check, and even no medical records. In order to avoid these issues, hospitals require staffing agencies to collect all of the paperwork from nurses before they start working.
The reason that the recruiters have to work on the weekend is that collecting documents from nurses is extremely time sensitive. Oftentimes the nurse that the recruiter is working with will only respond when they are not working their per diem or side hustle, which might happen to be on a weekend.
It's important to remember how nurse recrutiers make money...they are compensated by the hospital and agency when the nurse works. If the nurse forgets about the job or ends up working somewhere else then they won't make any money.
Nurse recruiters are not nurses, though they can be former nurses. Recruiters work in the professional space and are in charge of organizing and finding nurses and putting them to work. This is a full time job which even sometimes takes over the weekend.
Changes To Schedules In 2025- Do Nurse Recruiters Now Work Weekends?
One of the new changes to healthcare is the involvement of Private Equity firms. During the pandemic, private equity firms took notice of the huge demand for services, and the billions of dollars that went into the healthcare field--from government money as well as insurance practices.
There have been many instances of the news reporting on P.E's involvement in the hospital system--much of it critical.
This article out of Iowa, for example, discusses the issue of a Private Equity firm buying up nursing homes, and the negative effect.
Many nurses have come out and protested the staffing issues in nursing homes-- sometimes 40 to 1 Patient to Nurse ratios.
Because of the new structure that most Private Equity firms have, nurses are not paid as much unless they are willing to handle increased work loads and have good attendance. Nurse unions are fighting back, trying to insure that nurses maintain 100k starting salaries, pensions, job protection, and guaranteed raises.
As a result, nurse recruiters are having to work weekends to fill hard to place spots. Travel assignments are always lucrative, as nurses can make 5k a week on a travel gig. However, local spots and overnight spots are more problematic. So, in 2025, if a nurse recruiter is working agency, they can expect to work weekends.
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