Help picking that first nursing job! Very confused...

[girlynurse]

Hey to all. I am a student graduating next month. I am having a huge dilemma in picking for my first job. I accepted a position at a huge hospital in my area and the ratio for nurses in med-surg is 5-6:1 depending on acuity and staffing, and I have three twelve hour shifts for scheduling. The pay is 27 dollars an hour and it seemed like an okay place. The drawbacks are that they do not have loan forgiveness and they only pay for the graduate school that they want you to attend. No choice to pick from. Now the university I go to has their own hospital and health system. I interviewed with them yesterday but I have not gotten a job offer from them. They have excellent (I mean, excellent) benefit, good pay, and they are a union. I also have done my clinicals there. I see how the nurses are there. They can be catty sometimes. The ratio is 6 to 1 nurse usually. I am there right now for my mentorship and it is fine with me. The orientation there is for six weeks as opposed to twelve for med-surg. Also they pay for graduate studies at the school I am at now. The only draw back is that they are only offering two twelve and two eight hour shifts due to the new contract for new nurses. The problem is that I have not gotten a job offer yet from them.

The dilemma comes in when I called the hr manager at the first hospital where I got the offer from. Since I had accepted the offer a month ago, I just had some questions (like if I had a contract with them). She got really defensive and told me I had until monday to tell her for sure if I did want to stay with them. She told me that she did not want me to say yes now and then call back a month from now and say no. She said I would be burning bridges with them. I don't want that to happen but I also don't want to be with out a job. I really want the position at the second place since I know it well and they have the great benefits. Can you guys give me advice????

[llg, PhD, RN]

Ouch! You made a political mistake with your boss and it is "biting you back." I can see how that is upsetting and puts you in a bad position.

By mistake, I mean that you put questions in her mind about whether or not you were going to actually take the job you had accepted before you knew whether or not you had another option. She now suspects that you mislead her when you accepted the position. She is probably turning away other good candidates for the job and doesn't want to left with a last-minute "bail out" from you after all the best applicants have already found jobs elsewhere. You can't really blame her for that.

The lesson to be learned for next time ... is not to raise that question until you have the 2nd job offer in hand. Had you waited to receive the 2nd job offer, you could have talked with the 1st place and without having to worry about them finding out you were considering another offer. Also (and perhaps most important), you should have known whether or not you were signing a binding contract or not when you accepted the original offer. If all you did was verbally say, "I accept," then you are free to "resign" later -- even though they might not like it. They can't come after you legally for money or anything unless you signed a document and received something from them in exchange for your committment. You should have known your status when them without having to call your boss.

However ... it's too late to change that now. All you can do is decide whether which gamble you would like to take. I see 3 choices:

A. Do you want to now decline the 1st job offer and gamble on getting the 2nd?

B. Do you want to accept the 1st offer again and decline the 2nd offer if it comes?

C. Do you want to accept the 1st offer again, but decline that 1st offer if the 2nd offer comes?

Only choose Option A if you are pretty certain of getting offer #2 and pretty sure that you would prefer job#2. You would have to assess your chances carefully. You might be able to talk with the hiring manager in the morning, tell her that you are being pressured to give a final committment from another hospital, and hope she will give you a clue. Tell her that hers (#2) is the job you really want, but that you are afraid of being jobless if you decline #1. Be polite: see what she says. If you can e-mail her and tell her that you would like to speak with her on Monday if at all possible. Let her know your problem, and if she really wants you, she might help you out.

Choose Option B if you decide that job #1 is the job you would actually prefer -- or if you consider the jobs equal and think you might want to work there someday in the next couple of years and don't want to get a bad reputation there. Consider your most recent interview a flirtation that didn't work out this time, but might work out at some point in your future. Keep a good relationship with them in case you decide that the 1st hospital is not where you want to be. From your original post, I take it that is not the way you feel about the job you already accepted.

Choose Option C only if you are fairly confident that the 2nd job offer will come and if that is the job you really want ... and you are not affraid of burning your bridges with employer #1. Burning your bridges doesn't mean you will never be able to work there ... but it does mean you might not be able to work for that particular manager for a while. You might also have to do a lot of groveling to be given a second chance with them ... or you might have to wait a couple of years to be considered.

There is another possibility that I am sure you have considered. You may re-accept job #1 on Monday only to learn later that you are not going to be offered a job at hospital #2. That makes it the safer choice to go ahead and recommit to the 1st job on Monday. But safe isn't always the best choice. How much of a gambler are you? How comfortable are you with risk?

There is no way to gurantee a positive outcome here. It's all a matter of which risks you are most comfortable with -- and with your assessment of your chances with job #2 -- and with whether or not you see an acceptable 3rd or 4th job possibility that you would be willing to settle for if you decline offer #1 and offer #2 does not materialize.

[girlynurse]

Yeah, I see what you mean! I should have asked more questions before accepting but this is the first real job I got accepted for (what I mean is not a McDonald's job) and I was excited about it and accepted the job without thinking. Now it is biting me back. I just think that maybe I will decline the position because the manager of the 2nd job talked to me today and gave me a good indication that I would be hired there. It is a huge risk that I am taking but hopefully it will work out for me.