New grad RN in Denver - no job after 3 months of looking

[westfall520]

Just wondering if any of you experienced RNs have job hunting advice for landing your first RN job. I feel like I am sending applications into a black hole since I never hear back about most of them. The responses I do get all say the same, "we don't hire RNs without a year of experience". I am getting so sad/frustrated...how exactly am I ever to get experience if no one will hire me? Any advice would be much appreciated.

[shereencat]

Cmh918,

I too had so much difficulty as a new grad in may 2014 moving from North Dakota where I'd accepted an ICU position then could find nothing here. I had to take a job in home health doing pediatric cases. Now that I have a small amount of experience under my belt I've begun applying again, to a much similar response. I decided to be brave and just call one of the nurse manager's on the floor I was applying to. Although she needed someone with more experience she actually emailed me back right away and expressed that she was glad I called. I think this is going to be the only way I can find a hospital job at this point. I will be walking my resumes in and calling from now on. Thank you scared silly as well for the advice.

[scaredsilly, BSN, RN]

Cmh918,

I too had so much difficulty as a new grad in may 2014 moving from North Dakota where I'd accepted an ICU position then could find nothing here. I had to take a job in home health doing pediatric cases. Now that I have a small amount of experience under my belt I've begun applying again, to a much similar response. I decided to be brave and just call one of the nurse manager's on the floor I was applying to. Although she needed someone with more experience she actually emailed me back right away and expressed that she was glad I called. I think this is going to be the only way I can find a hospital job at this point. I will be walking my resumes in and calling from now on. Thank you scared silly as well for the advice.

stunnedto find

I hope it works out for you! I think you are going to find that the NMs are very surprised when they find out that HR is tossing out applications without them ever getting to see them!

[HarryTheCat, MSN, RN]

Many employers, including hospitals, use software packages that do the initial screening of resumes. Far too often, resumes that don't make it past the software are never seen by human eyes. Sometimes there is also a "quiz" as part of the application process where you have to answer several true/false or multiple choice questions correctly to avoid getting the automatic "ding notice". You may see one that asks "Do you have at least three years of experience in _____?" If you have two years and nine months, and answer truthfully, you get dinged by the software, but the NM may be perfectly willing to hire a bright, enthusiastic, competent nurse who has slightly less than the stated minimum requirement. Some NMs just don't want to be bothered by candidates taking the direct approach, while others (especially those who have not been getting good candidates from HR to fill their openings) may be happy to meet you. All you need is one of the latter who will give you a chance.

A very wise person once told me, "Human Resources is a hollow tube through which everything must pass, that adds no value to the hiring process". That may not be completely true, but it often is a bottleneck.

[SuprMomBSN, ADN, BSN]

I just moved to Denver and have applied to a couple new graduate residency programs. I have interviews this week. Check out new graduate residency programs at both Healthone and Children's hospital Denver. Health one has 6 hospitals with open graduate positions all over Denver/Aurora. They also have new graduate cohorts for different units starting each month beginning in august to October.