Buying Leads

By Rich Smith, 01-10-2018

I posted a question a few weeks back. Does anyone still go out to sites like RNVIP, Travel Nurse Source or HCEN and blindly enter their information in the hopes that a recruiter from a random company will call them? Couple those with sites that are owned by companies and masquerade as a "resource" for nurses but ultimately exist just to gather information to feed their database. The answers I received to my question didn't surprise me. In fact, they just goes to show how much our industry had changed.

15 years ago, sites like this were the norm. Facebook didn't exist yet. We had this weird message board called Delphi, but it really wasn't much of a resource (it was mostly just infighting and name calling). Not surprisingly, the overwhelming response to my question stated most nurses start their job search on Facebook first, then they would ask the other travelers at their facility for referrals, then finally company specific job boards. The number of nurses that had no idea about these old sites was astounding.

Full disclosure. Atlas has bought leads from sites like this. They cost as much as $15 per lead. I'm not proud of this, but early on it's how we built our business. Every other company out there that is older than Atlas did the exact same thing. It's how things used to be done. However, we can see the path of the market and realize these sites are going the way of the dinosaur. Same with the sites owned by companies, which have become VERY easy to identify. Now Facebook groups for travel nurses are trying to monetize their user base. How they do it is slightly different though, a member of the group has to inquire about an open job that is posted on their site. Then their information is sold to the company posting the job. Another one is charging agency recruiters a subscription fee in order to post jobs. These are all an evolution, and only time will tell if they will be successful.

So where does this leave us in 2018? My guess is all of this will evolve even further. Facebook isn't the final answer to this question. It's just the current, most popular answer. One thing is for sure though, nothing ever stays the same.