Five things that decide how your first assignment goes, and that rarely come up on a first call with a recruiter. Published September 2026.
A recruiter's job on the first call is to find out whether you are placeable and to keep you talking. That is not a criticism — it is the job. But it means the first conversation is organised around what they need to know, and several things that will matter a great deal to you in month one do not naturally come up. Here are the five that change the most.
Most facilities ask for at least a year of experience. Some accept less. Both halves of that sentence are true and you will usually only be told the first one.
What that means in practice: the requirement belongs to the facility, not the agency. A recruiter cannot waive it, and an agency that promises they can is telling you something they do not control. What an agency can do is know which of its client facilities have accepted newer clinicians before, and put you in front of those.
So the question to ask is not “do you take new grads?” — you will get a yes. It is: “which of your current openings have taken someone with under a year, and when?” A recruiter who can name one is worth more than a recruiter who says they take new grads and then sends you nothing for six weeks.
The gate also varies by setting far more than by discipline. Skilled nursing is the most open to newer clinicians, and it is where most first contracts happen. Acute care is the tightest. That ordering is not about prestige; it is about how much independent judgement the role expects on day one and how thin the supervision is. Our settings guide for new grads ranks them.
If you are a new PTA or COTA the gate behaves slightly differently, and in your favour on one axis. Assistant roles sit overwhelmingly in skilled nursing — the setting most open to newer clinicians — so the setting where you are most likely to be accepted is also the setting where most of the work is. The trade is that the better-paying settings for assistants are genuinely thin, so the first-contract question and the pay question pull in opposite directions in your first year in a way they do not for therapists. Take the placement, and treat setting as the thing you move in year two rather than year one.
Interstate licensure compacts — the PT Compact and the compacts covering occupational and speech-language therapy — let you work in a member state without going through that state's full licence-by-endorsement process. Every guide tells new grads to use them. Almost none mention the ordering problem.
A compact privilege is not a licence. It is issued on top of an active home-state licence. As a new graduate, you do not have one yet. So the sequence is fixed and cannot be compressed:
You cannot start step three early, and a recruiter quoting you a two-week compact turnaround is quoting the last step of three. The realistic question is not “how fast is the compact” but “how fast is my home state.” That is the number that sets your start date, and it is the one our licensure timeline is built around.
Two more things worth knowing before you plan around a compact. Membership is a moving list, and there is a real gap between a state passing the legislation and actually issuing privileges — so check the current status for your specific state rather than a list in an article. And a privilege rides on the home licence: if that lapses, everything built on it lapses with it. The licensure guide tracks where each state currently stands.
You will hear “therapist-owned” used as a badge. It is worth understanding what it does and does not mean, because the honest version is narrower and more useful than the marketing version.
What it changes is who is on the other end of a clinical question. When a new grad calls about a caseload that does not match what was described, or a supervision arrangement that is not what was promised, the difference between an owner who has worked a skilled-nursing caseload and one who has not is the difference between being understood and being managed. That is a real difference and it shows up in month one, not at signing.
What it does not change is the bill rate. A facility pays what the vacancy costs it regardless of who owns the agency, and any agency claiming ownership structure alone moves your package is describing something else. Compare packages line by line either way — the pay guide covers how the pieces fit together.
Most first-contract advice presents housing as a choice between agency-placed housing and taking the stipend and finding your own. That is the choice, but it is presented as though you make it after you sign. You do not: the offer is built differently depending on which you take, so you are choosing while you are still comparing offers.
The mechanics matter more than the preference. A travel package is taxable hourly wages plus reimbursements for housing and meals that can be paid without tax withheld if you qualify. Two published sources govern that half:
For a new grad the tax-home question is the one that catches people, because it turns on where you actually maintain a residence and duplicate expenses — and a recent graduate who has just left student housing may not have the arrangement they assume they have. That is a question for your own tax preparer before you sign, not after. Nothing here is tax advice, and this page quotes no pay figures at all — for those, and for how the two halves of a package fit together, use the pay guide.
The practical read: if you are unsure whether you qualify, agency-placed housing removes the question at the cost of flexibility, and taking the stipend is worth more only if you can actually take it untaxed. Work that out first. The housing guide covers the comparison.
New grads routinely assume a first offer is take-it-or-leave-it. Most of it is not. What is genuinely fixed is the bill rate the facility pays; what sits inside it is more flexible than it looks. Guaranteed hours, the cancellation terms, the start date, travel reimbursement and whether orientation is paid are all ordinary things to ask about, and asking does not mark you as difficult.
The one thing that is not negotiable is whether you are licensed and credentialed on the start date. Everything else can be moved; that cannot, and it is the most common reason a first contract slips.
Tests the experience gate against reality rather than against a slogan. A name and a date is a real answer; “we work with new grads” is not.
A weekly figure that assumes 40 hours is a different offer if the guarantee is 32, and first-contract cancellations are most common in exactly the setting most first contracts are in. Ask for the guarantee and the cancellation terms in writing.
The single best predictor of how a first assignment goes. A building where the supervising therapist is also a traveler, or is a rotating contractor, is a building where your support can change mid-contract. This is a fair question and a revealing one.
The experience gate belongs to the facility, not the agency, so ask which facilities have actually said yes. The compact cannot start until your home-state licence exists, so plan around your home state. Therapist-owned changes who answers a clinical question, not what you are paid. The housing decision is made while you are comparing offers, and it turns on a tax-home question worth answering before you sign. And most of a first offer is negotiable except the one part everyone assumes is — being credentialed on time.
If you are still mapping the sequence, the month-by-month timeline lays out the whole path from graduation to start date, and the common mistakes page covers what goes wrong after you have signed.
Connect with professionals who specialize in placing new grad travelers.