What do you look for in an employee?

Daytonite, BSN, RN · Jun 4, 2005

Sometimes I am just flabbergasted on why management picks certain nurses to hire and lets other, more experienced nurses, slip through their hands? What do most managers look for in a new employee? Why is experience such a burden? Does every nurse have to be young, blonde, pretty, and slim? I am serious and would appreciate an honest answer to this question.

I can agree with everything that has been posted already on this thread. The fact is that you can never know for sure when you hire somebody that they are going to work out. There are just too many variables that you have no way to measure. It seems like a lot of time it boils down to the job seekers attitude and the gut feeling of the person hiring. We had certain guidelines that the DON expected us to follow. She wanted BSN hired over AA degreed nurses. She would always want us to take on a nurse with more years of hospital experience. We did, however, have a terrific new grad orientation program too. I hired a good many nurses who were older and middle aged and plump as well as those who looked like Barbies. I was interested in their overall nursing experiences. If the potential employee was someone wanting to transfer within the hospital I had the good fortune to be able to take a look at their personnel file, check up on them with their current manager, and talk to their shift supervisors. You don't have that advantage with a new hire coming into the facility from outside.

llg, PhD, RN · Jun 4, 2005

Is it possible that your friends said that they wanted to work part time in their new jobs? Switching to a new specialty often requires a full time committment.

I believe that inappropriate age discrimination ocassionally happens -- but to have it happen multiple times to the same group of people is a little hard to believe. I still think there is information you don't have that would help explain their job-hunting difficulties. Something in the way they are selling themselves is turning propective employers off. You could help them best by helping them learn how to sell themselves better. Perhaps it is simply a matter of learning to interview better.

For example ... I work in a children's hospital. What we look for in an employee is someone who understands the toughness that the job requires. The pace, the technology, the seriousness of the illenesses and sometimes horrible injuries that the children experience, the messy/sometimes abusive family situations, etc. -- often shock people who expect a pediatric environment to be all "sweatness and light." If you friend is selling herself as this cuddly grandma person, she may be inadvertantly sending signals that suggest she has unrealistic expectations of pediatric nursing and is therefore a "high risk" person to hire. Such comments may also suggest that she thinks peds will be less stressful and/or difficult that working adult med/surg. A lot of people have that mistaken idea.

When a candidate says she wants to "cuddle the babies" or "nteract with the kids" etc. -- that's a danger/warning sign in an interview. Those types of comments are often the first clue you get that you are dealing with a job applicant who has unrealistic expectations and who is "running away from" adult med/surg to a peds unit thinking it will be easier and less stressful. Making the transition from adults to peds is exceptionally difficult and many med/surg nurses do not successfully make that transition. Your friend may be giving out signals that suggest she would be one of those people who would not successfully make that transition. Not being peds nurses, you (and she) would not be aware that she is sending out those signals.

Again, I suggest that your friends work with someone who has the objectivity and the experience necessary to do some serious career counseling -- assessing their strengths and weaknesses as a job candidate switching specialties (NOT as senior med/surg nurses) and giving them some high-quality, objective feedback. As a caring friend with no experience hiring people in other specialties (and that's a wonderful thing to be), you are not in a position to do that. But you could help them by helping them find someone who could give them that objective feedback.

I wish your friends the best of luck,

llg

barefootlady, ADN, RN · Jun 9, 2005

Thanks for the input, I can't say I agree with some of the advice posted here, I do know these people were more than qualified for the jobs they wanted and did not get. Each of these nurses took the steps to get what they wanted, it took some big changes for one, but she is happy and so are the others. Teaches me that we just have to be sure we want something and go for it! Have a great day.