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Tips on landing a job you love

Stressed Out Nurses Weekly, June 11, 2007

It's no secret. All the studying, all the long nights, all the money, and all that tireless effort goes toward one goal: a job you love. Whether you are looking for a short commute, lots of money, a new group of friends, or just somewhere to make a difference, your first nursing gig is an important one. While you may not have it forever, you'll always remember it. One new graduate nurse working in Boston was kind enough to share her experience and some advice about the job hunt:

As we prepared to graduate with BSNs from a reputable nursing program in Boston last year, the majority of my classmates and I weren't getting any responses to our resumes, let alone getting job offers! This seemed odd because searches for RN job postings in the Boston area showed plenty of open positions. So why was the job search so difficult?

After a lot of thinking and speaking with some experienced nurses, I concluded that despite the newly-acquired credentials following my name, I was not as highly demanded as I expected in the face of a nursing shortage. As a new graduate without experience, it would require a potential employer to invest a lot of time and resources to ensure that I was safe, not only for my patients, but also to protect myself and my new license.

As it turns out, I ended up with a job, as did all of my classmates. Some of us found jobs quickly, whereas others had to search for a few long, frustrating months. Regardless, we all realized that finding a job was not as easy as we had anticipated. Many of us found jobs because we knew people, because we were persistent, or because we made good impressions during our clinical experiences. I will add that I was lucky and ended up with a job that I really enjoy, on a wonderful cardiac floor in a large teaching hospital, which is exactly what I wanted. However, many of my friends had to accept jobs that did not meet their ideal expectations of the type of unit-or even the type of hospital-in which they had hoped to work upon graduation.

For more of this story (plus a whole lot more!), please click here.

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