As a recent graduate, I've noticed that many hospitals- especially the large academic systems that everyone wants to work for- hire few new graduates while continuing to post umpteen positions for experienced nurses. One hospital I looked at was even offering several thousand dollars in hiring bonuses to nurses who had >2 years of experience. Hence, if hospitals still have a need for nurses, then why have many of them developed a moderate allergy to new graduates? I know new graduates are initially a liability to health care organizations and are expensive to train. That's probably one of the reasons why, in this economy, hospitals have restricted how many graduates they hire per year. I still don't understand, however, why many hospitals continue to want to hire experienced nurses while basically closing their doors to the majority of new graduates? If they claim that they don't have the money to hire graduate staff, then where does the money to hire experienced staff come from? I think that the aforementioned hiring practice is quite myopic, because: 1)there are only so many experienced nurses to go around and I'm sure many of them aren't moving; and 2)when the economy gets better, nurses who came out of retirement will retire, nurses who work FT will go back to per-diem status, and the baby boomers will begin to retire in droves. Hence, I dare say that nursing executives who engage in this hiring practice will be in a hiring conundrum in a few years. So instead of severely restricting the number of new graduates hired, why don't nursing executives make a more concerted effort to recruit and retain the current graduates of today? Why don't hospitals turn more of current nursing vacancies into new graduate positions? That way, those new graduates would not only be able to fill needs for experienced nurses (within at least 1 year), but would also be able to act as preceptors for other recent graduates down the line. I'm sure there is a lot of information regarding this issue that I don't know, so any information you may have from a management perspective would be appreciated. I wrote this posting to seek out information, not to be one of many of whine about the lack of jobs available to people like me.