New Grad & No one will hire me

U.S.A. New Jersey

Published

I have never applied to so many jobs and not receive a response. Follow up letters and phone calls have been made. references used. what else can I do? I need to start working. Any advice?

I am truly beginning to believe, I just wasted away 30000 dollars and 5 yrs of school for nothing. I was so excited to become a nurse, something I have always wanted and finally had a chance at it. I thought nursing was different than your average positions. nurses are suppose to help each other, teach each other, and grow together, what happened?

NJ nursing shortage? hospitals advertise they will take new nurses on their career sites, but they lie. All they want are experienced nurses. well guess what, when you fall short of staff in the few years the industry is predicting, all their will be are NEW NURSES! TRAIN THE NEW GRADS NOW AND START PREPARING FOR THE RETIREMENT LOSS NOW! I don't understand.

Thanks for letting me vent. :)

do your research on the facility. Find out what the turn over is for nurses, see if they have any strikes against them. What is the patient ratio per nurse, ask lots of questions before you decide.

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Specializes in Cardiac, Maternal-child, LDRP, NICU.

prettynurse25 no the HR don't consider SNF OR rehab as your acute experience at all I have been an RN over a year with hospital LPN background for 7 years an excellent nurse GPA of 4.0 in RN school yet can't find a job in hospital setting. I have applied to nearly 10 hospitals i live in southern/jersey, i have covered most hospitals in ocean,monmouth and atlantic county with no results. I have even applied to med-surg positions my last choice with no luck i am just working with a home care company and i do some agency work for nursing homes and rehabs center until one of the hospitals calls me for an interview. It really is bad right now hope it gets better soon!!!!!!!!

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i love this idea of how you went about applying for jobs. im going to try it. thanks for sharing your experience.:yeah:

today was the very first day of my official job hunting... i started my day at 8:30 am, i had a list of facilities (of which all were ltcs/snfs) to go to so... i asked for an application for each one and filled it out right on the spot and then turned it in right away...for my very first one, i was lucky 'cuz the don was there and she interviewed me...so the interview ended and i was told that she will just call me by this week and let me know...so i went on to the next one on the list...i went to total of 5 facilities... i finished at about 1 pm (some of the applications were really long...my hand kind of hurts from writing...)anyway, a couple of hours after i got home, i got a call...it was from the first snf i went to...they want me to come in for an orientation already! wow! (*i was thinking, they could've just hired me right on the spot...hehe!) well, i'm kind of excited about this job...this is something new for me...i worked in an assisted living but i never worked in a snf/rehab before... so... yeah ...but on the other hand...i would really really want to work in a hospital setting!...but like what i said before...a hospital job is very hard to get if you're a new grad... :cry:well, that is based on my personal experience, it may be different from others... so...now am thinking if i want to work in a hospital later on...would they count snf/ltc/rehab as rn experience? :confused: i know some hospitals want acute care experience and then again how can we new grads get acute care experience if they don't hire us?!? :banghead:urghh!!! so should i take this job?? thank you all for your time :heartbeat
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I just stumbled across oodle.com, which aggregates job listings and other types of classifieds from a whole bunch of other websites. It might be worth checking out their healthcare jobs:

http://philly.oodle.com/job/

The job categories are on the left-hand side.

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Specializes in Internal Medicine.
I love this idea of how you went about applying for jobs. Im going to try it. Thanks for sharing your experience.:yeah:

you're very welcome. :wink2:

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Hi everyone...sorry to hear it is so difficult for you....I work at Bayshore Hospital in Holmdel...got hired last year right out of school, as did a lot of my friends.

I work in Med/Surg...am transferring to another floor, so I KNOW there is at least ONE position available at Bayshore; actually, there are several...the only advice I can give is to apply for any shift you can get, don't be fussy...if you want to try Bayshore, go and apply online...that's what I did...good luck...here's the link:

www.bchs.com

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Feeling horrible.

Been job hunting 2 months. I've only had 2 interviews. One I didn't get the job, and the second interview I thought for sure would work out... I was promised "I would definitely get a call back" and told I was a strong candidate. I was promised a call the next day or after. I never got a call. I've tried contacting the head nurse recruiter by phone many times. She is never at her desk and I've left 2 messages.

I'm hoping that they've just been really swamped and will eventually call me, but I"m starting to doubt it.

Has anyone received a call back from Clara Maass Medical Center yet?

I feel like everything I know is seeping out of my brain. It is really tough to get a job as a new grad in New Jersey.

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There was a problem with the link I left before, for Bayshore Hospital in Holmdel....try this:

http://www.bchs.com

There are openings there...if you are really interested, pm me....

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Feeling horrible.

Been job hunting 2 months. I've only had 2 interviews. One I didn't get the job, and the second interview I thought for sure would work out... I was promised "I would definitely get a call back" and told I was a strong candidate. I was promised a call the next day or after. I never got a call. I've tried contacting the head nurse recruiter by phone many times. She is never at her desk and I've left 2 messages.

I'm hoping that they've just been really swamped and will eventually call me, but I"m starting to doubt it.

Has anyone received a call back from Clara Maass Medical Center yet?

I feel like everything I know is seeping out of my brain. It is really tough to get a job as a new grad in New Jersey.

What area of NJ are you looking in?

Here are a couple of SJ hospital websites:

http://www.umhospital.org/careers/nursing.html

http://www.lourdesnet.org/careers/

https://kennedyhealth.igreentree.com/CSS_External/CSSPage_SearchAndBrowseJobs.ASP?T=20080905062444&

I took a quickie look at the sites. I did see *some* jobs at Lourdes that said 0-1 years experience. Underwood doesn't list their jobs, but gives a phone number instead.

Stay positive! Sooner or later you'll find something. Best of luck!

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I remember that story last year.

Well, Nursing homes will hire! Harborside in Bridgewater NJ

Also St. Barnabas Hospitals Hire New Grads.

Some agencies will hire new grads.

Go to job fairs, there is one coming up in Atlantic City in a few weeks sponsored by Advance. And Corrections hire new grads.

Not sure exactly where your located, but you gotta keep looking.

www.craigslist.com

I actually got my first job through craigslist.

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AtomicWoman: I live in northern nj, but thank you for the links... those hospitals are a bit of a commute (and if I were commuting that much I would first go to new york where the pay would be 50% more!)

puddingpie: Oh believe me, I practically use the SB healthcare system's webpage as my online homepage! I've applied to all of the hospitals in their system. SB isn't hiring right now for any medical/surgical or tele floors (just OR and ER I think and I would rather die than do ER, trust me). Newark beth just layed off a ton of nurses, my mother's friend is a nurse on the peds unit there and she tried to get me job but they have no positions. Clara Maass, when I checked a few days ago, was hiring lots of nurses... and this was the hospital where I went to the open house interview session (they need to fill a lot of tele positions, and I was hoping to snag one). I was interviewed and told I was a great candidate, and he told me how normally hospitals would snag someone like me but it's difficult for a new grad in new jersey right now. Clara Maass is one of the few hospitals that needs a lot of new nurses still. He made it sound like my chances were really good for getting one of the positions. I never got a callback, even though I was promised one, and I've called back so many times. I don't know what's going on with this hospital, all the jobs are still listed on the career website... I am *hoping* that there is some internal stuff that needs to be sorted out and I'll get called eventually.

Thanks for the suggestion to use craigslist. It depresses the crap out of me thinking that I went to nursing school to work in a drs office or a nursing home, but at this point, I can't be picky I guess.

I should have just went to the community hospital. Sigh.

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I should have just went to the community hospital. Sigh.

For school or for a job? I just wasn't sure what you were referring to. :)

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