Phone Interviews

Due to the nature of being a traveling professional, you will most likely always have phone interviews instead of in-person interviews.
Sometimes these interviews can be formal, but usually they are more of a two-way interview making sure that you would be a good fit for the temporary role they are looking to fill.
Questions to Ask During Phone Interview:
- How large is your business/clinic? Is it a private or non-profit organization?
- Will there be other PTs in the clinic or are you going to be the only one?
- How many PTAs? Interaction with PTAs?
- What hours/days of the week will you be working? Is there any flexibility?
- What is their documentation system?
- How many patients will you being seeing in a day and how many of those will be evaluations on average? How much time is allotted to each patient? Are overlapping sessions/double bookings expected?
- When are they looking for an applicant to start working?
- What is the primary patient population?
- What kind of equipment does the facility have?
- Is there a guaranteed 40-hour work week?
- Is overtime an option or requirement?
- What is the productivity expectation? When is full productivity expected?
- Have they had other travelers?
- Is there an orientation period? (We have had anything from 1-2 weeks’ time frame to ramp up our schedules, to five minutes at the site and off you go!)
- If it’s a for sure thing, ask about housing options in the area.
With all those questions asked, the interviewer still may fib a little bit. After all, they are reaching out for travelers, so they need your services quickly. You may find that the setting is not quite what you had in mind, so be prepared to be flexible.
If you do want to sign a contract somewhere, this is now the point to go back to your recruiter and check on some important aspects you want put into the contract:
- Precise start and end dates.
- Exact days that you need/want off.
- Even think about the holidays, where you would normally have a day or two off. For example- Do not just assume they will give you the Friday after Thanksgiving off. You must ask for it.
- Make sure your contract says 40 hours/week guaranteed, so that they can’t start dropping your hours and paying you less.
- Make sure you have your exact weekly schedule in the contract.
- You may want to also put no weekends into the contract so that you have some time to relax and explore the area around you.
The standard for a PT traveling contract is 13 weeks, but some companies like for travelers to sign on for longer than that. Usually these are the clinics that are willing to take on new graduates. For some clinics, they want a more specific candidate, such as someone with two years’ experience or a specialization. Just remember, for a longer contract, you should be compensated at a higher rate.