12hr shifts/alternating weekends?

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Hi all, I'm a pre nursing student with no clinical experience aside from the training to get my CNA license(which didn't involve 12 hour shifts), and I have 2 follow up interviews for CNA jobs next week! I decided if I'm gonna work my bum off while in school it makes more sense to do it in healthcare than to keep waitressing.

Now having no experience whatsoever with 12 hour shifts, I want to make sure I understand what they're talking about with the scheduling, and I'm really nervous and don't want to ask my interviewers a dumb question and blow it. =[

Both jobs I'm up for are full time, "3 12 hour shifts a week and alternating weekends."

To me this means 3 nights one week, weekend off, 5 nights the next week and 2 of them are saturday and sunday. Then 3 nights the next week, weekend guaranteed off, 5 the next guaranteed saturday and sunday. Is that how it works?

On the alternating weekends week it might be 5 shifts in a row if thats what they need?

If the 3 12 hour shifts every week put me at 36hrs, are the weekends basically guaranteed overtime? Do these positions have overtime like food service jobs do?(time and a half once you pass 40 hours?)

Sorry if these are silly questions, at the first interviews they said the scheduling stuff so matter of factly like I should understand what it meant I just wanted to check

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No, this just means that on the alternating weekend that you do work you will work one day during the week. You will end up with 36 hours every week.

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Twelve hour shifts are great for those that like several days off a week, me personally, my job is so exhausting from running those halls for 12 hours that my next day off is spent recovering by just lying around resting for my next shift lol.

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Specializes in mental health / psychiatic nursing.

No, you will work 3/12s every week. One week those 3 days will fall during the week, the next week those shifts will fall on the weekend.

E.g. you might work W/Th/Fr one week and the next week work Fr/St/Sn then rotate.

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