Locum directory: how workplaces find you

The locum directory is a public search page where an Australian workplace looking for cover can find you directly, without going through an agency. A practice manager in Parramatta or a DON at a regional hospital types in a postcode and a specialty, and the locums who match come back as a list of profile cards.

Each card shows your name, your primary specialty, any additional specialties, a short biography excerpt, and the general area where you work. From there a workplace can open your full public profile or send you a booking request. The directory is built for cross-source discovery: it surfaces you to every workplace, not just the ones already on an agency panel.

The most common way a workplace searches is by postcode and radius. They enter a postcode (for example 2000 for the Sydney CBD, 3000 for Melbourne, or 4870 for Cairns), pick a search radius, and Sessional returns the locums whose recorded location falls inside that radius. Results are ordered closest first, so a locum a short drive away outranks one on the other side of the state.

Your position on the map comes from the location on your profile. Only your general area is shown on the card: your exact street address or full postcode is never revealed unless you choose to display it in your visibility settings. If you have not set a location, you will not appear in distance-based searches at all, so it is worth adding one even if you travel widely.

Workplaces can narrow the directory in two more ways, and the three filters combine:

• Specialty filter: a dropdown built from the specialties that listed locums actually carry, so a clinic can filter to, say, women’s health, skin cancer medicine, or aged care. List every specialty you genuinely cover on your profile and you will appear in more of these filtered searches.
• Text search: a free-text box that matches your name, your specialties, and keywords from your biography. Typing “rural GP” or “conscious sedation” will surface locums whose biography mentions it, even without using the dropdown.

Because these run together, a hospital can search “within 25 of 3000, specialty emergency” and get a tightly scoped shortlist. The more accurately your profile reflects your work, the more of those shortlists you land on.

The sort order depends on whether a postcode is in play:

• With a postcode: results are sorted by distance, nearest locum first.
• Without a postcode: results are sorted by most recently updated profile first.

That second rule is the lever you control directly. Keeping your profile fresh (updating your biography, specialties, or availability) lifts you toward the top of non-location searches. Results are paginated at 24 profiles per page, with the total match count shown above the list.

Directory searches are recorded anonymously in an internal audit log so the team can understand demand patterns across the country, what specialties workplaces look for, which regions are underserved. This is operational analytics only. No other user ever sees who searched, and your personal data is never exposed to other users through it. Field-level visibility (for example whether your AHPRA registration number shows on your card) is governed by your own profile settings, not by the search.