How to become a nurse practitioner

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Hi, I know how to become a nurse practitioner but my question is what steps do I need to do to get hired as one. I see there aren't very many jobs and only been a nurse for two years. I would like to set myself up for the future. Do you just ask work to hire you as one? And what areas of nursing are you most likely to get a job? Thanks

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Specializes in Assistant Professor, Nephrology, Internal Medicine.

Depends greatly where you live and what setting you want to work in. Where I live, chicago, the market is saturated with NPs but there are still jobs. One rotation I was in was in the south portion of IL which the market is not saturated. I was fortunate enough to land a job (and several other offers) with physicians I had worked with.

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There are still many openings in rural locations. Some of these positions go months and months without being filled.

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Specializes in Nephrology, Cardiology, ER, ICU.

Yeah - where I live (central IL) there are oodles of jobs - most prefer experience but if you are an awesome new grad with solid RN experience, sometimes you can be considered too.

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Specializes in Internal Medicine.

I'll echo what other's have said. Location is huge. Where I live in west Texas there's hundreds of openings and I'm propositioned all the time by local physician's and recruiters. Even travel companies that I worked for as an RN call me once a week to see if I want to travel as an NP. If you're working in a major metro with several schools pumping out new grads 2-3 times a year, plus all the people in your area going to online for profits, it's going to be competitive.

I will say the biggest advantage of having experience as an RN before you become an NP is the connections. I worked for several years in critical care and built relationships with physicians across numerous specialties as a competent nurse. When it came time to graduate I got to pick between 3 different offers. I'll also add that once you have experience, you can pretty much work anywhere in the country since lots of practices want someone they can bring in and hit the ground running.

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