What are the qualities of a good Travel Healthcare Recruiter? - Pt 3 of 3 - Atlas All Access 99

Rich Smith: Part three of traits of a good recruiter. On this episode Mr. Braden Boex will round out the last five for us as we discuss what it takes to be a great recruiter. Only according to me, this is only according to me. We'll see how Braden reacts. Atlas All Access starts now.

Rich Smith: Braden, I'd say welcome back, but you're here every day. So I welcome today.

Braden Boex: And I think I'm the only one that actually enjoys me being here every day-

Rich Smith: You volunteer-

Braden Boex: ... in this room.

Rich Smith: You do volunteer for everything and I appreciate that a lot. I really, really do. So I think you'd just like to see yourself on camera.

Braden Boex: I don't hate it.

Rich Smith: Okay, there we go. All right, so number 11. We're going to go 11 through 15.

Braden Boex: Okay.

Rich Smith: The last three traits of a great recruiter.

Braden Boex: Easily the best numbers in the top 15 list.

Rich Smith: I guess. I don't know how, but all right. Maybe because they're yours, right?

Braden Boex: No, just scientifically proven. 11 through 15 is a stronger number because they're bigger.

Rich Smith: That doesn't make any sense. Okay. Number 11.

Braden Boex: Okay.

Rich Smith: Be independent.

Braden Boex: Okay.

Rich Smith: So give me kind of... what does that mean to you as you kind of go through your day as a recruiter or your career so far as a recruiter. Be independent.

Braden Boex: As a recruiter, actually I think Atlas does a really good job of allowing their recruiters to be independent and I think that's what allows our recruiters to do what they do. We're given a ton of free reign to interact with our nurses in the way that they need to. We don't have set call volume that we have to put out. I don't have to text 50 people a day or make three phone calls or anything like that. Those numbers are so low.

Rich Smith: Those are low. I hope you do more, but right. But you're right, we don't track that at all.

Braden Boex: Right we don't track that sort of information. We can go and we can meet our nurses and we can meet our travelers where they are. So if I need to leave early because I'm going to have a phone call with a nurse, a first time traveler at seven at night, that's not something that's watched.

Rich Smith: Sure.

Braden Boex: We can meet our travelers where they are. And so I think that that's really important. It allows us to stand out as recruiters and it allows a recruiter to stand out amongst other recruiters for being able to adjust and just kind of make their own decisions to be the best advocate for the nurses that they work with.

Rich Smith: Right.

Braden Boex: I'm sorry, the travelers that they work with.

Rich Smith: There we go.

Braden Boex: Yeah.

Rich Smith: And early on we decided, and this is no secret, we've talked about this a lot. Early on we decided that, who are we to say, we as in management at Atlas, whatever you want to call it, right? If your child has a dentist appointment at three o'clock in the afternoon and that's the best you can possibly get, right? Because it's hard to get into the dentist, doctor's appointment, immunizations, whatever the case may be.

Braden Boex: Right.

Rich Smith: Who are we to say no, because I know 10 o'clock at night you're talking to a traveler and that might be through texts, it might be on the phone, it might... whatever it is, you're putting profiles together. 1:30 in the morning, this just happened not too long ago, over this past weekend, this past, past weekend, Mike Spies, client manager got a submittal at 1:30 in the morning.

Rich Smith: Nurse happened to be up working on profile, whatever. She was a night nurse, but she wasn't working, but she was still up. Recruiter happened to be up too because she stays up late or whatever. Sent the submittal through [inaudible 00:03:51]. So now is there somebody at a hospital at 1:30 in the morning that's going to look at that profile? No. But Spies gets here early. He gets here at 6:30. So that profile was in that manager's inbox when she walked in the door that morning.

Braden Boex: Right.

Rich Smith: So.

Braden Boex: I mean with the systems that we work with too, they get sent to managers in the order that they're submitted.

Rich Smith: Right.

Braden Boex: So there could be five other recruiters that talk to other nurses at 1:30 in the morning. But if the client manager is not submitting that over at 1:30 in the morning, they're doing it at eight when they get in and get their cup of coffee. We're going to be first.

Rich Smith: There's no more eight to five. Let's be honest. I mean, the eight to five work day, Monday through Friday thing is... that only existed for farmers and I mean that was... and factory workers and that type of thing. It's silly to think that that structure still exists.

Braden Boex: Right.

Rich Smith: Or that structure still works. And then at five o'clock you walk out the door and you turn it off and you come back at tomorrow at eight and you turn it back on.

Braden Boex: Right.

Rich Smith: It doesn't work like that anymore.

Braden Boex: Well, especially with the gig economy and people having multiple gigs that they work. I mean, yeah. Yeah. That's gone.

Rich Smith: That's gone. Okay. So then number 12 kind of plays into that. Manage your time.

Braden Boex: Okay.

Rich Smith: And I think if I know one thing about you besides you that you like to be on camera and you like your face on stickers, you do a very good job managing your time. How? No, you do. And I think maybe it's one of those traits that it isn't one that you may see every day.

Braden Boex: Sure.

Rich Smith: But I think when it comes to, and if I asked you travelers, right? If I asked Michelle or Corey or whoever, they would tell me, yes Braden does a good job managing his time. I get the feeling that you don't think so.

Braden Boex: I've never had anybody tell me that I manage my time well.

Rich Smith: But talk through how maybe you structure your day, how you manage your time.

Braden Boex: Everything that I do personally to manage my time or run around chaotically as I feel like I do, I have always kind of worked on one, my overall logic behind how I organize my time is based on one thing. React to what's the most important thing right now. So if I'm putting together profiles, that's important. But if there are profiles for a late January or late February right now, but one of my active travelers that is on the floor is having a problem and they text me, "Hey, I need to talk about something." That's my priority. So the way that I structure my time is I think somewhat non-traditional in terms of structuring your time. It is a constantly evolving schedule reacting to the things that are most important and then re-establishing how my time or how my day is built, based on just things as they come in.

Rich Smith: Gotcha.

Braden Boex: So it's just constant re-prioritization.

Rich Smith: Well I think just as a good recruiter, you have to have that. You have to have that re-prioritization skill. And whether or not that's planned, that's how you prioritize. That's what makes you good at what you do.

Rich Smith: Oh, these next three are the reason why I said yes when you volunteered for part three here. Okay.

Braden Boex: Oh boy.

Rich Smith: These encompass everything that Braden is as a recruiter.

Braden Boex: We're going to talk about tacos.

Rich Smith: No, we're not.

Braden Boex: Dang it.

Rich Smith: Okay. Number 13 over achieve.

Braden Boex: Okay.

Rich Smith: Over achieve. And here's my... this is what I wrote down. So I've got little notes that I've talked about along the way. Overachieve to me means going above and beyond, pushing to be great. You go above and beyond. Why? What made you... when you got here, what made you think I'm going to put my face on a sticker? That's going above and beyond.

Braden Boex: I love what I do. I love working with people all over the place. It was one of the things I loved about being in sales before I came to Atlas, except I hated retail sales hours-

Rich Smith: Sure.

Braden Boex: ... but I loved the people. I go above and beyond because in this industry I think that we are constantly asking travelers to go above and beyond in facilities where they may not know people, where they don't know the area. To me it's not fair for me to ask other people to go above and beyond and to constantly be doing what they do and me to just nine to five it, phone it in.

Braden Boex: So, I just think it's matching what I expect from the people that I work with and what I know that they're already doing. In terms of the stickers and the coasters and the... those are all just byproducts of my personality. I'm wildly competitive and I just love... we have a industry with what, several hundred different agencies. There's thousands of recruiters. There's thousands of travelers. You can't just put out pay packages. You can't just talk to nurses about jobs and expect to make the sort of connection that I want to make with my travelers.

Rich Smith: Sure.

Braden Boex: I have to go above and beyond because there's a lot of people out there. I just want to be different. So I don't know. I never think of it as going above and beyond. I just think of it as I just want to be different. I just want to match what I know our travelers are doing out there.

Rich Smith: Makes a lot of sense. Makes a lot of sense. Okay. Number 14 then, be a good person.

Braden Boex: Okay.

Rich Smith: What happens when no one's looking right? What do you do when nobody is watching?

Braden Boex: I wish I could say terribly dance, but I do that with people who are watching too.

Rich Smith: Yes you do.

Braden Boex: Again, I think that a lot of this same trait falls back on the overachieving thing. There's a lot of recruiters out there and I think that there's... I worry about this and I think that this is just because I spend so much time online, but I think that there is a little bit of an opinion of some recruiters are shady and some travelers are difficult to work with. I think that these stereotypes are just kind of developing, just based on the volume of people. But to me, doing the right thing will always carry me through.

Braden Boex: I'm never going to get in trouble for what I do. I'm never going to have somebody say, "Hey, this guy is just not a good fit," because I did the right thing. It's one of the things that I love about working with Atlas too is I know that if I were to walk to you at the desk or walk up to Steve Ryan and say, "Hey, I have this difficult situation, it may not work out well for Atlas. It may not work out well for whatever reasons. I don't know what to do." I know the first thing that both of you or anybody else I asked who is going to say is going to be, "Just do the right thing." And everything else is just details.

Rich Smith: Right.

Braden Boex: So it's easy. I work in a culture where doing the right thing is not just expected, it's just easy. It's easy to do.

Rich Smith: And that's kind of just... that's run through who we are in general as the company has grown and it's been very easy to kind of fall back. It is very easy to fall back on that now. And you understand, and I think everybody here understands, is doing the right thing means sometimes not making any money, right? But in the end it's always the right thing to do.

Braden Boex: Right.

Rich Smith: Always.

Braden Boex: Sometimes doing the right thing is saying, "Hey, you should work with a different agency."

Rich Smith: Absolutely.

Braden Boex: And then I'll just... we'll just say together and we'll meet back on the next one.

Rich Smith: Yup.

Braden Boex: This is the right move for you.

Rich Smith: And understand that's hard in a... as much as we don't track calls and checks and whatever, and I don't care what time you get here, what time you leave or whatever, your job is still based on volume. Right? I mean, I still expect you to have a certain number of travelers working for you per month.

Braden Boex: Right.

Rich Smith: That's just the... it's just the nature of the company, right? I mean it's just the nature of how things go. So being able to say, "It's okay, you can go work for that other company. I know I'll get you on the next one." That's tough.

Braden Boex: It is.

Rich Smith: That's not an easy thing to do. But being able to reconcile it in your head because it is the right thing to do, makes it a whole lot easier.

Braden Boex: Absolutely.

Rich Smith: Okay. Number 15, have fun.

Braden Boex: I don't know why you thought of me for this one.

Rich Smith: I don't know why either.

Braden Boex: I've never had it. This is suit and tie. Yeah, I just can't wait to get out of here. God, all these do tie together. So-

Rich Smith: Yeah.

Braden Boex: Time management, just always working. And again I think this applies to many of the recruiters that I work with, but we're all here 40 hours a week on just a standard nine to five type work week. All of us are working together more than that. We're spending a majority of our time basically split at home taking care of our families at work and sleeping. I'm not going to not have fun for a third of my day because I'm not really having that much fun sleeping. So-

Rich Smith: I like to sleep still, but that's what happens when you get old.

Braden Boex: I do too. But it's not active fun. It's-

Rich Smith: Okay. Okay.

Braden Boex: ... just being your best self. That's what sleeping is.

Rich Smith: Understood.

Braden Boex: But I mean, I don't see why anybody wouldn't want to have fun with what they do. And I think that I know you and I have talked about things like this before with all the content that we put out and us reaching out to our travelers and engaging with everybody. Having fun is so important because if you're miserable, then why are we doing it?

Rich Smith: Right. Well, and it goes back to what our travelers do too. I mean, if you're not having fun-

Braden Boex: Right.

Rich Smith: ... out on the road doing what you're doing, then you should probably just find a perm job.

Braden Boex: Right.

Rich Smith: Or maybe this isn't the career for you. That's okay too.

Braden Boex: Right.

Rich Smith: If you aren't excited to get up and go to work every day.

Braden Boex: Right. And the other thing that has always kind of impacted me is I have conversations. Sometimes we have tough conversations.

Rich Smith: Sure.

Braden Boex: Sometimes they're tough, not because we have to participate, but because we have to listen. I've had nurses younger than me tell me, "Hey, I had to talk to a 90 year old woman because she asked me what death is like today." It's hard. A lot of the nurses that I work with are in the ICU. A lot of them are in the NICU. There's nothing super fun about those units. Not at their core.

Rich Smith: Well, yeah.

Braden Boex: Anything that I can do to make someone smile and make somebody's day just a little bit better. I don't care if I've got to make a jackass of myself to do it. If I can make somebody's day better, I'm going to do it. Having fun is just so important to me and it's... I think that of all the things we just talked about, having fun I think is at the core of how I operate as a recruiter.

Rich Smith: Again, that's why as I was going through this list, that it made absolute perfect sense for you to be in on part three. Right? I mean, I think if anybody embraces the have fun mentality here at Atlas, like a lot of us do, most all of us do anyway.

Braden Boex: Yeah.

Rich Smith: You live it every day and I know your travelers would say the same thing. They have said the same thing to me. So it's living vicariously through them doing what you have to do, doing what's right. All of those things play into that and into what makes you a great recruiter. So, all right. There are the 15 traits of being a great recruiter. Like I said, it's just my list. I don't know. I came up with it. It was snowy that day and I couldn't go outside. And so, I used a bunch of different sources for this.

Rich Smith: Do you have to be all these things? No. Probably not. But you got to be a majority of them and you have to at least understand what the rest of them are in order to really excel as a recruiter because it's not an easy job-

Braden Boex: No.

Rich Smith: ... at all. I understand being a traveler isn't an easy job. Being a nurse, a therapist, a tech, you have struggles completely different than we do. Right? But on this side it isn't easy either. And these guys do what they do every single day and love what they're doing. And I can't be more thankful for that. So especially going into the first year into 2020. There's a lot of good stuff happening at Atlas and it's all because we've got great recruiters here. So that's... don't ruin this moment.

Braden Boex: I was just going to ask, so I don't know what any of the other ones are. So of your 15-

Rich Smith: Yeah.

Braden Boex: ... don't tell me what it is-

Rich Smith: Okay.

Braden Boex: ... but what number do you think is overall most important?

Rich Smith: I think-

Braden Boex: And I realize that that's a terrible question to ask you.

Rich Smith: No. I think have fun is the most. I think it really is. I mean I think if... and there's a lot of other ones too. Number two was be respectful. Number seven is be positive. I mean, we've gone through all these... number 11 was be independent. I think you need to have all of these traits, but if you don't love what you do-

Braden Boex: Yeah.

Rich Smith: ... and you don't have fun, why are you doing it?

Braden Boex: Yeah.

Rich Smith: What are we doing here? And so, like you said, I was in retail before, just like you were. I loved the people. I loved the product. I did. I worked for Toys R Us years ago. I managed boys' toys. This shouldn't surprise anyone.

Braden Boex: I'm not surprised.

Rich Smith: The hours killed me. Right?

Braden Boex: Yeah.

Rich Smith: And I was about your age and my youngest, Rylee, was Gaby's age when I left retail because of just the hours were horrendous.

Braden Boex: Yeah.

Rich Smith: But I loved the people I worked with. I loved the product. I loved Toys R Us back then. Completely different than what they became, sadly. That's a whole different topic though, for another day maybe.

Braden Boex: The funny thing is I think I work more now as a recruiter than I did when I was working retail hours.

Rich Smith: Oh, I think so too.

Braden Boex: But I can be home with my man.

Rich Smith: But you have the ability to make it what you want.

Braden Boex: Yeah.

Rich Smith: Whereas before, I mean, big box retail meant more than just... it was just a big store.

Braden Boex: Right.

Rich Smith: Right. I mean there was so much more to that than that. So anyway.

Braden Boex: All right, well now you have to have a second followup, super emotional comment because I ruined our cut there so.

Rich Smith: Well, it's fairly typical. I'm kidding. Braden, thank you so much. I really appreciate.

Braden Boex: Yeah.

Rich Smith: I really appreciate you being here.

Braden Boex: Anytime. Literally, anytime. Tomorrow you need something else?

Rich Smith: We'll see you next week.