A computer, and somebody who knows how

Nurses who are qualified, licensed and experienced, and who have no computer. The forms are hers to fill in, and a great many would rather pay somebody to do it for them. If you run a computer centre, that somebody is you — she signs in as herself on your machine and authorizes you to do the work, she pays your counter rates for it, and we pay you a share of the placement fee out of our margin if she is hired.

Two things to know before you read the rest. Charge her your posted rates for the typing, scanning and printing — never a fee for the placement itself, and never an enrolment fee, a success fee or a cut of her future pay. And nothing pays before a hospital has signed a contract with her, which for a United States post is usually more than a year away.

What an enrolment agent is

A computer centre, a cyber café, a business with machines and staff who know how to use them. A nurse is supposed to fill in her own forms and upload her own documents, and plenty of them would far rather pay somebody to do it: they have the qualification, the licence and the experience, and no computer, no scanner, no spare evening after a double shift, and no appetite for a long form on a website in a second language. That is a secretarial job, and it is the job you already do all day. She pays you for it at your counter like any other customer.

She signs in as herself, and she authorizes you

The account is hers from the first screen. She sits at your machine, signs in in her own name, sets her own password — you never ask for it, never write it down, never use it. Then, if she wants your help on the file itself, she authorizes you: we send a six-digit code to her own phone and email with the undertakings she is agreeing to, she reads them, and she gives you the code. Until she does, you can see how far she has got and what is outstanding, and nothing else.

What you may then do, and what stays hers

With her authorization you fill in her profile, upload and replace her documents, and send her file in for verification. Three things stay hers whatever she agreed: her identity document and the face match against it — she must do those signed in as herself, and you may not hold her ID; the four digits of a social security number and the consent that goes with them; and her password. She sees a list of everything done in her name, with who did it and when, and she can withdraw the authorization in one click without giving a reason.

Charge her for the work. Never for the placement

Your ordinary posted rates for typing, scanning, printing and computer time — the rates on your wall, the same ones you charge anybody who walks in — are hers to pay on the day, because that work is what she came in for. Those rates are shown to every nurse who chooses you, which is why we will not open an account until they are on file. What you may never charge her for is the placement itself or getting to African Wood: no enrolment or registration fee, no success fee, no percentage of what she is paid later, no fee for acting as her agent. A worker pays no recruitment fee — that is the ILO fair-recruitment line, and a "processing fee" that is really a recruitment fee is exactly what a published price list exposes. It is also the promise that lets us tell a nurse it is safe to walk into a computer centre she has never been to, and an agent that breaks it loses the account.

And we pay you for something she is not paying for

When a hospital hires a nurse you brought through, you share in the placement fee — reckoned after the portfolio fees the facility has already paid for her, and paid out of African Wood's own share rather than added to anybody's bill. That share is not for the typing; she already paid you for the typing. It is for keeping her enrolment moving to completion — the chasing and following-up she is supposed to do herself and has no time for. It never comes out of her pocket, and she is never charged a recruitment fee by anybody at any stage.

Be clear about the wait

Nothing is owed to anybody until a hospital has signed a contract with her, and a United States immigration case usually takes more than a year after that. The share is then released across five deployment milestones — contract signed, visa issued, arrival, day 90, day 180 — rather than in one payment on signature. So the honest answer to "when does the share arrive" is: not this quarter, and not at all for a nurse who is never hired. The money that arrives this week is the money that already does — your counter rates, paid by the nurse on the day you do her typing. Treat the share as what it is: something real when it comes, on top of work that already pays.

One helper, not two

A nurse has a training college or an enrolment agent, never both — they occupy the same place on her file. She can also leave you at any time, and that takes effect immediately without anybody's agreement, including ours.

Shared machines, and what that means

Your computers are used by the next person in the queue. So: delete every scan, photograph and download as soon as it has been uploaded, empty the Downloads folder and the recycle bin before the next person sits down, and sign her out when she finishes — her own screen carries a standing reminder to do exactly that, with the button beside it.

How a share is reckoned on the net placement fee, and how the five milestones divide it, are on the pricing page. Yours is whatever was agreed with your business.

Become an enrolment agent

Register the business first. The form asks for your registered name, your business registration or permit number and when it was registered, your town and your posted rates — somebody here checks them before the account is opened. Nothing there needs looking up.

Become an enrolment agent

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