New grad status info for international students

[sallyp911]

I am currently helping a few of my overseas friend's friend with trying to get their ATT and all that stuff. I'm not sure if many of here understand what it means to be a "new grad" in the States.

We all know that a "new grad" means that the new nurse has from zero to maybe less than a year of true RN experience. Most of us may have worked as a live-in or in some sort of caretaker capacity, but nothing that qualifies one to be a practicing nurse. Most of us and you just graduated from a nursing school or college.

With that in mind, upon graduating, you are a new grad and probably with no to very little nursing exposure. New grad programs in the States are geared to give those with zero to less than one year of RN experience a chance to get into the very highly competitve new grad programs so that you can gain the needed experience to move on to other positions or get another job outside of the current place of employment.

This came about after hearing from her friends and herself that obtaining your RN license here in the States makes you a "new grad". It does, BUT in order to get your application for a new grad job opening, one of the strictest qualification is that you must have graduated within ONE year of your graduation date, NOT the month and year of passing the NCLEX. They were under the impression that getting your RN license starts their time clock to apply for new grad jobs, but it's not.

I have found that the ones I'm helping out have graduated from 2008-2010, meaning even if they passed the NCLEX for whatever state they get into, the hiring people will see that they graduated "too long ago" and will get their applications declined.

The same thing holds true for any US educated grads, they must apply and apply anywhere and everywhere before their one year of graduation expires in order to get into the highly desired new grad program.

So what happens to those grads that don't find a job after their one year expires and now must compete with those other nurses without any experience and many hospitals wants 1-2 years minimum of experience? They can still try, but I know of nurses still 2-3 years without a single nursing job, you can also read of other nurses here having the same problem. So in order to pay the bills and groceries, they go back to their previous non-nursing jobs from being a waitress, working at a coffee shop, bookstore, retail sales, etc.

Yes, some of the expired graduates are now working in other places like SNF (skilled nursing facility) or LTC (long term care) or nursing homes and the likes, it's still not the hospital job of their desire. Some have gotten "pigeon-holed" after working at these places, thinking at least it's RN experience, but it's not really, especially if they wished to work in Peds, NICU, OR, other nursing jobs that are of other specialties, so that RN job of theirs only puts them more behind, yes, there are almost the exceptions, but rare. They find themselves unable to move on or harder to get accepted, since there are more qualified nurses given the same spot. Pigeon-holed, fyi, means you know how homing pigeons can fly right into the same nesting hole when they coming back home from another location.

Most of us new grad nurses prefers to work in a medium to larger hospitals, as they also offer better benefits (after the qualification period) such as: paid vacation time, paid sick days or leave, usually better pay, good retirement plans, etc, such as those of a UCLA hospital system or the Kaiser's, etc.

I just wanted to let everyone know what the real world is like out here. Go to the CA nursing forum here and you can see how competitive it is. Other states are also having the same problems with not enough new grad jobs.

[Nurse428]

thank you for the info :)

[dayandnight]

F1 students new grad nurses don't stand a chance right now in the US with the economy and the competition.

I have many US citizen nursing new grads who can't find work. My university hospital already said they will not hire US EDUCATED F1 students because they just cannot support H1B visas nor do they have the patience to wait 6-8 yrs for you to get your green card.

Even if you don't like working in LTC, remember that there's all sorts of facilities out there: home health, hospice, community health, rehab, Nursing Homes, SNF's, Assisted Living facilities etc. These days it's even a luxury to have preferences regarding where you want to work in. It's all about getting the spot you can get. That often means starting out in lower places than many other nurses your age

[sallyp911]

@Nurse428, yo're welcome!

@companisbiki, yes, you re right, it is very tough right now for any US grads, in CA alone, according to the most recent survey and studies done by the CA BON, 50% of the CA new grads will NOT find their first nursing jobs within the first year of their graduation date. Most will have to go out of state and even that's no guarantee of job security. Like most new grads, we also have loans to repay back and usually we must start paying back after the 6th month of our graduation date.

However, if you can show that you're not employed before the 6th month arrives, they will let us extend the first repayment amount another 6 months to a year, depending on the lender.

[sallyp911]

Oh, there's also one big misconception of the overseas students, based on my current dealings with the ones that I'm trying to help out. They all see the websites of hospitals all over this country and so many job openings for nurses!

But there are a couple of glaring issues: (that they are overlooking, but clearly stated in the job description)

The hospitals are looking for:

(a). EXPERIENCE, in most cases 1-2 years minimum and some other specialities 3-5 years of RN experience.

(b). Must be a resident of the US or be able to work in the US.

Many are under the assumption that they can find some kind of sponsorship (??), I'm not real clear on that myself, being a US citizen. They said they look for hospitals that will be able to assist them with that. But they also said many hospitals now state they are not looking for a sponsored visa, something that was very heavily promoted by the US hospitals years ago. But they have so many family members and friends telling them to try anyways or that's it's not really true.

[steppybay]

Geezz....even if some of PH new grads (2011-2012) ever got thru the CA BON issues or even with the other 49 states with the English proficiency testings and the course evaluation delays and by the time, we're granted to take the NCLEX AND then having to make sure we pass the first time only, our new grad status to apply for any new grad job opening will either be available to us for only a month or two or the time period will have EXPIRED and we are no longer considered a new grad!

Thanks for the explanation! Here I am thinking like many of my friends that we're still a "new grad" no matter how many years have passed since we graduated with NO nursing experience.

Another double or triple or maybe quadruple whammy, if it's not one thing it's another....oh well....working at Starbucks is lookng better and better. Not knocking down the fine coffee places, I love Buks!

[steppybay]

Oh, there's also one big misconception of the overseas students, based on my current dealings with the ones that I'm trying to help out. They all see the websites of hospitals all over this country and so many job openings for nurses!

But there are a couple of glaring issues: (that they are overlooking, but clearly stated in the job description)

The hospitals are looking for:

(a). EXPERIENCE, in most cases 1-2 years minimum and some other specialities 3-5 years of RN experience.

(b). Must be a resident of the US or be able to work in the US.

Many are under the assumption that they can find some kind of sponsorship (??), I'm not real clear on that myself, being a US citizen. They said they look for hospitals that will be able to assist them with that. But they also said many hospitals now state they are not looking for a sponsored visa, something that was very heavily promoted by the US hospitals years ago. But they have so many family members and friends telling them to try anyways or that's it's not really true.

This is so true! Even those that are foreign students with a foreign degree but are US citizens or have legal residency, what's lacking for so many of us international students is that our "cover letter" usually doesn't come near many of those that studied in the States.

Many US grad nurses have a lot more to offer in terms of their volunteer work, their outside activites, some related to nursing, some not related to nursing (but shows the humanity in them: worked at a homeless shelter, rescued animals, etc), have great letters of recommedations and or high references.

I think that's one reason many international students are passed over in the job application process, we don't have much to put down on paper for any hiring person to review, when compared to the very tough competition.