Can't get a job in the hospital, even with experience

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I am just about to finish my first semester in nursing school and I've been a CNA and a long-term care facility for almost a year. I really want to get a job in the hospital and just finished my first clinical rotation. I've been applying to nurse tech positions but I am constantly getting rejection letters. I don't understand because I have all the qualifications and I even have the year of experience. What more are these places looking for? It is very discouraging.

I also don't know what to do because I have been getting contacted for a central service technician position. However that is not really a nurse tech and I'm not sure that I'm all that interested. They also want two managerial references which I don't have..... Our head nurse quit a while back and our DON just got fired last week. I do not have any supervisors or managers that can give me references, period. I am not sure if I should continue to pursue this if my heart is not exactly in this position or if I should just hold out for a nurse tech position. What do you think? I have a feeling I would have to do the references anyway so it's going to be a problem down the line.

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Take whatever you can get and then transfer later. I worked at an LTC for 2 years and hated the place due to the way it was ran. I tried and tried to get a hospital job at our local hospital. Applied for probably 100 tech/cna jobs , interviewed 6 times, and still nothing. One day I said screw it applied to every possible job and ended up working in dietary of all places. I transferred after 6 months and now work on a med surg floor. I don't regret my decision. I took a step back to move two steps forward. I have a friend who will not settle for a "low" job like dietary or housekeeping. Well 2 years later she is still working in LTC and applying for the same hospital job I am now doing.

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Haha good point! I am going to try my best. I was able to contact a manager I had many years ago in a non health field. And I am going to ask my clinical instructor tomorrow when I go to clinicals. Hopefully that it sufficient.

I feel the same way about my LTC.... Obviously things aren't going well if corporate came in and fired the DON. :no: I want to get out of there....

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Over all unless you know someone in the hospital that you are appling for that can put in a good word for you it can be very difficult to come off the street and get those CNA/Tech jobs at hospitals. They are very coveted, and they get many apps for just one opening, and many of them are CNAs that are in nursing school hoping to get a nursing job by being a CNA at the hospital. I like vc01ca's suggestion of looking beyond cna jobs and maybe seeing if another department might be better at getting your foot in the door of the hospital.

With the other job opertunity could you somehow get a hold of your old DON and see if she can give you a referance? Or even maybe your current DON can give you some sort of referance because I am sure she can say what she sees so far from your work as well as see your current employee record.

Good Luck

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Specializes in Forensic Psych.

Keep applying! It's a numbers game, unfortunately. DONs can't look at every resume that comes in, so it's just a matter of floating to the top of the stack. Luck and lots of buzzwords. :)

As far as references go, I was a stay at home mom for 9 years before I started NS, meaning I had ZERO professional references for jobs. So I used my clinical instructor and two of my fellow students from clinical and everything went fine.

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I am in the same boat. I have been applying for positions at hospitals and I never even get a phone interview. Automatic email rejections. It seems like lately it is who you know that will get you a job. Nursing shortage my ass! Maybe we will see one by 2020, but as of now, it is very competitive.

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It took me three months to get a PCT job at a Hospital after getting PCT certificate. All applications were basically ignored until I read somewhere to use key words in your résumé because most searches for a qualified candidate are found by a computerized search for key word matches. As a former CNA in Homecare and as an Ophthalmology Tech I had used some key words but not enough so I decided to redo resume to get a lot of key words recognized. Example , skin observation, I&O, transfers, hoyer lift, bed baths, charting, feeding, bedmaking etc, I know those are words we normally would put on resume, what I did was just redo my resume to include more key wording as I prepared it. I also included my CNA clinical location, and duties. I got more calls after I remade my resume, so take a look at yours, see if their is something you could improve to make it recognizable by a medical computerized system. I read online somewhere that It would take forever for a hospital to go thru resumes to find a match if done by staff, so when I read applications are pulled for further review by computerized keywords recognized I changed my format. Still not sure if a lot of hospitals use this method but I tried it by changing resume, got calls, interviews, then a job. Good Luck.

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Good advice! I also just recently remade my resume and have more keywords like that. I bet I could put even more because I didn't include I & O or hoyer lift.

Well I got all my references in so now I am just waiting to hear about the central service tech position. Ended up using my clinical instructor :) I'll go ahead and add those words to my resume and keep applying. Thanks for the encouragement everyone,

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Does the hospital have volunteer positions? If you can squeeze in a little time volunteering, it can get your foot in the door. We have a hospice house in our hospital and I know of a few people that started there, just playing cards with residents, etc. Then they were able to use the manager there as a reference.

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