How to Compare Travel Therapy Companies Without a Spreadsheet

The usual advice is to build a comparison spreadsheet. Most people build one, fill in two rows, and abandon it — not from laziness, but because the columns that are easy to fill in are the ones that matter least, and the ones that matter are hard to put in a cell.

Here is the version that works without the spreadsheet: six criteria, in the order that actually decides it. Each is a question you can answer from one conversation, and the first three eliminate most of the field.

No company is named on this page and nothing is ranked. That is deliberate — a ranking goes stale, and the criteria do not.

1. Can they tell you the setting and the guarantee, immediately?

Ask what setting a quoted rate is for and what the guaranteed hours are. Not how good their contracts are — everyone says the same thing to that.

An agency that can answer both in the first conversation is one that has the information to hand and is used to being asked. An agency that has to come back to you is telling you how the next three months of communication will go.

2. Will they break the package into line items?

A weekly figure alone is not comparable across agencies, because the split between taxable wages and non-taxable reimbursement differs and the split changes what the offer is. Ask for hourly, housing and meals separately.

This is the fastest single filter in the list. It costs one question, it is entirely reasonable, and the answer sorts the field quickly. How the halves fit together is covered in the pay guide.

3. Do they publish anything you can check?

Not testimonials — those are selected by definition. Something checkable: computed pay data with a date on it, a methodology, a stated minimum sample below which they will not publish a figure.

An agency that publishes a number with an as-of date and a sample size is making a claim you could falsify. Most do not, and that is informative rather than damning — but where one does, it is worth more than any amount of description.

4. What happens when your recruiter is unavailable?

Your recruiter takes holidays, changes jobs, and occasionally hands your file to someone who has never spoken to you. Ask what the arrangement is.

The question also reveals size, indirectly and more honestly than asking about size directly. A small agency will tell you exactly who the other person is. A large one will describe a team. Both are legitimate answers; they suit different people, and the difference is worth knowing before you need it rather than during.

5. Who owns it, and what does that change?

Worth asking, worth being precise about.

A therapist-owned agency means the person on the other end of a clinical question has worked a caseload. That is a real difference and it shows up in month one, when the caseload is not what was described and you need to be understood rather than managed.

What ownership does not change is the bill rate. A facility pays what the vacancy costs it regardless of who owns the agency. Treat any suggestion that ownership structure alone moves your package as a claim about something else.

6. What are the benefits, specifically — and what is not included?

“Full benefits” is not a list. Ask for the list, and ask the second half of the question explicitly, because the gap is where the surprises live.

Health insurance in particular varies enormously between agencies, including whether it is offered at all, when it starts, and what happens to it between contracts. Ask directly, get the answer in writing, and if the answer is that you should arrange your own, that is a legitimate model — it just needs to be priced into your decision rather than discovered in week two.

Running it in one week

The criteria are only useful if you actually get through them, and the way to do that is to compress it rather than spread it out. A comparison that runs for a month is a comparison whose early answers have gone stale.

1. Days one and two: three calls, criteria one to three only. Setting and guarantee, package line items, anything published you can check. Twenty minutes each. Take notes in whatever you already use.
2. Day three: drop to two. If one agency could not answer criterion one without going away, that is your answer to criterion four as well, and you have saved yourself two conversations.
3. Days four and five: criteria four to six with the survivors, in writing. Cover arrangements, ownership, and the specific benefits list including what is not on it.
4. Then compare the written answers side by side, not your memory of the conversations. Two recruiters describing the same contract will describe it differently, and only the written versions can be held up next to each other.

That is four or five short conversations, not a matrix. The reason it works is that the first three criteria are genuinely fast to ask and genuinely discriminating — most of the sorting happens in the first two days.

The order matters more than the list

Criteria one to three are answerable in a single call and eliminate most of the field. Four to six are worth asking only of the agencies that survive.

That ordering is the whole reason this does not need a spreadsheet: you are not scoring six columns across eight agencies, you are running three quick filters and then having a proper conversation with the two or three that are left.

Where the six criteria disagree

They will disagree, and knowing in advance which one wins saves an evening of going back and forth.

The common case is an agency that is excellent on criteria one to three — specific, transparent, everything in writing — and thin on four and five. One recruiter, no obvious cover, ownership you cannot establish. That is usually a small agency, and a small agency being small is not a defect. Take it, and ask for a second name and a direct line before you sign.

The reverse case is the one to be careful with: strong on cover and structure, vague on the setting and the split. A large operation with a proper desk behind it can still leave you comparing two weekly numbers that are not comparable, and no amount of organisational depth fixes an offer you cannot evaluate. Criteria one to three are the ones about this contract; four to six are about the year around it. When they conflict, the contract in front of you wins, because it is the one you are signing.

What deliberately is not on the list

Size. It is a proxy for things you can ask about directly — contract volume, cover when your recruiter is away, how quickly credentialing moves. Ask about those instead.

Anyone's ranking, including one on a page like this. A ranking is a snapshot of someone else's criteria applied to a market that has moved since. The criteria travel; the ordering does not.

Reviews in bulk. Useful for spotting a pattern, useless for comparing two agencies that both have some good and some bad. Read them for recurring specifics, not for a score.

For the questions in the form you would actually ask them, see the recruiter guide; for what other travelers report, the reviews site.