I recently co-hosted a booth for my employer at a large nursing and healthcare worker job fair. I wanted to share some observations:
Many of the attendees did not have a resume with them.
Many of the attendees were not dressed in proper business attire.
Many of the attendees did not know how to approach prospective employers in a professional manner.
There are too many unemployed nurses, social workers, therapist etc in the NYC area. The unemployed are not just new grads but those with experience and credentials. To see so many people representing so many disciplines makes me wonder what is really going on? Are we producing too many health care workers or are the facilities downsizing/eliminating jobs too rapidly?
While I enjoyed hosting a booth and spoke with many interesting people, I have to comment about the lack of professional decorum among some attendees. I am old school so hear me out. If you are going to a job fair shouldn't you be dressed in your "Sunday finest" and have numerous copies of your resume to hand out to the representatives and HR recruiters? First impressions do count.
What saddened me about the day was to see so many unemployed nurses. NYC is very tight now. I was asked what advice I could offer and I really could not say anything new expect to volunteer, keep applying and continue to seek out opportunities. The job market for experienced nurses is tight so the new grads really have a hard road ahead of them.
I have been in nursing a long time and I have seen the highs and lows but the lack of opportunity out there for the new grads is something to worry about. A nurse out of school for more than two or three years who has not worked is in a very difficult place. With so many new grads, employers will take the latest grads from from school and clinical training if jobs should open up. I do wonder what will happen when it gets out that nursing is over subscribed especially in NYC.
To those who are looking for work, good luck. You are in my prayers.
A lot of it depends on where you live. Where I live, the local Chamber of Commerce, and also the businesses themselves together, helps advertise job fairs, and ads are run in the paper, on TV, Internet, and billboards. Billboard advertising is big where I live and I see job fairs advertised that way a lot. It depends on what sort of C of C and business community you have in your area and how organized and active they are.
Schools BTW are notorious for not keeping up with this stuff. I've even attended a state university in the early and mid 00's where instructors came right out and said "It's not our job to point you toward jobs - that's your problem"
I'm currently working on my 3rd degree (BSN), and I've never had a single school help me search for a job. My nursing advisor wouldn't give me any information on how to challenge my state's CNA exam; I finally found out on my own 2 weeks before graduation. Career services was worse than useless; I ended up telling them about job fairs. In 2 years, we had 1 job fair that was mostly RN-BSN programs.
I wish I'd seen this post before I went to a job fair last May. I feel like a lot of people just don't know what to expect at job fairs. The truth of the matter, for me, was that I'd been to several nursing job interviews before the job fair and at every one of them, the person interviewing me had printed out my resume and was asking me questions about it. Not a resume I brought in - the resume I posted with my job application. After every interview having been the same (the interviewer already having my resume), I didn't bring mine to the job fair. I attached my resume to my application for the job fair, right?
I didn't realize it was going to be different from every other job interview I had, which is why I didn't have an extra copy of my resume. I think it was a blessing in disguise, though - the only person I got to talk to with the crazy amount of applicants present was the manager of a unit I would have hated to have to work on. Thanks for putting the information out there - maybe it will help someone else like me. :)
Not_A_Hat_Person, RN
2,900 Posts
I'm currently working on my 3rd degree (BSN), and I've never had a single school help me search for a job. My nursing advisor wouldn't give me any information on how to challenge my state's CNA exam; I finally found out on my own 2 weeks before graduation. Career services was worse than useless; I ended up telling them about job fairs. In 2 years, we had 1 job fair that was mostly RN-BSN programs.