How to Hire International Nurses

Aug 20, 2021

How to Hire International Nurses

Recruiting international nurses lets UK-based healthcare organisations cast their nets across the ocean and tap into a wider talent pool. And given the current staffing shortages, why wouldn’t you increase your chances of reeling in a top candidate?

If you hire nurses from overseas, you can also build professional and cultural exchanges that benefit your organisation as a whole. But if you haven’t worked in this space before, it can be daunting. The paperwork can be pretty exhaustive with all the professional registrations and sponsorship applications to consider – and that’s all on top of the usual hiring process!

The good news is that you don’t have to go it alone. Below, we’ll help you get your head around the key steps so you can sail through the process and welcome your new hire in no time.

Apply for a Certificate of Sponsorship

The first thing you need to do in order to hire a nurse from overseas is apply for a sponsorship licence. You must assign a Certificate of Sponsorship to each foreign worker you employ, and your organisation needs to hold a valid sponsor licence in order to allocate this certificate.

You can apply for the sponsorship licence online, but we recommend using a third-party company to make the process easier. The good news is that the government is actively encouraging applications right now, and we can also help you recruit in order to build a stronger case for your application, making it more likely that your licence will be granted.

Put Together Your Relocation Package

It is standard across the UK, both in private and NHS care facilities, that you provide a relocation package for international nurses. This varies from employer to employer, but a standard package might cover the costs of:

  • Visa
  • Flight
  • COS
  • Accommodation (for the first several weeks)
  • NMC final payment

But if you’re feeling particularly generous you might also want to include the cost of IELTS/OET exams or the OSCE.

Advertise Your Role

You will not have a shortage of applicants if you advertise a role overseas. The issue will be ensuring they have the right qualifications, experience and level of English. This is the time-consuming part.

If you don’t have the resources internally to carry out this process efficiently the idea of hiring from overseas is quickly going to feel like a bad one when you’re inundated with excited candidates looking for a role.

At WESolutions, we only run targeted job ads to qualified nurses so our applicants are already highly likely to be good candidates. We then have a large resourcing team who will vet each candidate before we put them forward to you, so you know every nurse you speak to will be ready to come to the UK and have all the paperwork in place to make the move.

Work with a Specialist Nursing Recruitment Agency

If you’ve not hired nurses from overseas before it can definitely feel a little overwhelming. As a specialist nursing agency with 15 years of experience bringing nurses from all over the world into UK healthcare organisations, we understand the process like the back of our hands.

We know how useful hiring international nurses can be for your team and will be here to guide you through every bit of bureaucracy, making it as easy and stress free for you as possible. We even offer a free half-day session to help explain the process to employers wanting to know more about how to hire international nurses.

So what are you waiting for? Get in touch to learn more about hiring nurses from overseas and sign up for one of our information sessions today!