Older workers that are new grad nurses, please explain.

[wish_me_luck]

Hi,

I am not going to be popular with this thread, but here goes...I have seen quite a few posts about the older workers that are new grads thinking they deserve a job more because they had a previous career. Many times, these former careers are NOT healthcare related, so it does not help with their nursing career at all. My question to the older workers who are new grads is why do you feel like you deserve jobs over the younger new grads?

I feel like if anything, the older workers seem more entitled than younger workers. When you get a second career, you are starting at ground zero. So, let the opinions fly.

[ixchel]

you quoted me and said that shouldn't be brought up in an interview anyway.

That, too, was not about your life choices. Whether you want to have children or not has nothing to do with me and I have absolutely no opinion on that whatsoever. I do know, based on all of that experience you seem to begrudge older new grads for relying on, that that is simply not a topic for an interview. I had a roommate who didn't want to have kids, and I heard all the time about the judgment thrown his way. I bet it is even worse being a young woman who does not want kids. People thought he was somehow damaged emotionally, or that he was either lying or would eventually change his mind.

Bringing this up on your own in an interview is opening you up to the judgment you feel you are receiving from us here and that you may be receiving when you discuss this in your face to face life. Only, the person judging you is the one who could hire you. If the interviewer asks about your future plans to start a family, then the interviewer is being inappropriate. As much as an interviewer would love to know your future plans, it is simply not a topic for the interview.

In this sense, yes, your youth and gender will be held against you. On the other side of that coin, I will be judged for having children who will need me to take time off on occasion. Yes, there are assumptions made by age. They can be to your benefit, they can be to your detriment.

In this response, yes, I am responding to you personally in regards to your life choices, and with that, I am offering advice to avoid the topic altogether during the interview because saying you don't want children CAN actually be a mark against you in the interviewer's mind. Is it that you don't want to be tied down? Is it that you are somehow emotionally damaged? Is it that you fear the commitment? Is it that you're lying and you are pregnant right now? Will you abort? (I, myself, am pro-choice, but there are plenty of fantastic people out there who are employers who do not believe in abortion, and will judge another person for having one.) These questions, and more, are not the questions that a person who just met you 5 minutes ago needs to be asking.

Now, back to the topic of youth vs. age-given experience, the thing is, the more I read your posts, the more I feel your frustration with your circumstances. You are fighting an uphill battle. I'm guessing you made some poor choices that led to your employment restrictions, which has limited your options and tarnished you before even walking in the door. You volunteer, which hopefully helps to make up for that.

You have no nursing experience yet, but you see the relevance of your volunteer experience to nursing, and have articulated some excellent points here to back that up. Many of us older new grads and soon to be new grads have articulated our relevant experiences to nursing, which you have dismissed. Meanwhile you feel frustrated that some don't feel your volunteer experience is relevant. Do you see the irony in that? It's been pointed out here more than once.

The vibe of your posts, which admittedly may be misinterpreted due to this being a message board, is that you can't find your dream job, and you feel frustrated that those of us with life experience feel we have a shot at ours. We are all fighting for the same jobs, and you are not going to make any of us feel bad for using our age and experience as an advantage. You just wont. We are fighting against your youth, energy, flexibility, lack of health issues, and potential lack of major commitments in your life. We are going to take our experience, and we are going to sell the crap out of it, because we need strong selling points, too. And we will make no apologies for that, because what we bring to the table, we have EARNED, through years of hard work, stress, commitment, and sacrifice. We will NOT wipe that slate clean just to make the younger new grads feel the playing field is tipped in their favor. I'm sorry if you don't like that attitude or if you feel it is entitled. I have never in my life felt entitled to one single thing, but I will not for a second let go of something I have EARNED.

Me? I have to convince an employer to hire me as a new grad with a broken spine that got diagnosed while I was at the end of my first semester in the program. I have to fight against all of the applicants who are NOT chronic pain patients with a potential for serious, surgery-required (with a 12-week recovery period) injury if they forget proper mechanics. Do I feel a bit of resentment for that? Heck, yeah, I do. But is that the fault of anyone I compete against for a job? Of course not. And by standards of health alone, they might very well be the better candidate and be better qualified for the job. It just suck. It's a dog eat dog world, and you are just getting started in it. Just wait until you do have a mortgage to pay, and elderly parents to care for, and a car payment, and all of the joys you get to age into.

BTW, some differences between a lease and a mortgage:

A lease: you walk away from any time you want with maybe a couple of thousand dollar penalty that a reasonable landlord will work with you on on a payment plan. You don't pay to repair anything that is part of your home because the landlord is responsible for it. You get renter's insurance, which will cover your stuff in the event of a fire or something, and you just move to a new place and you buy new stuff.

A mortgage: You're stuck with it for decades. You want to move? You have to wait until someone wants your place. You have to pray someone actually wants your house at a price that doesn't LOSE you money. You could potentially move out of that house, sell it, and still have the mortgage to pay off because you lost that much. Your house gets destroyed, you are the one on the line dealing with all of the clean up, insurance crap, and cost that isn't covered. And you still have that mortgage looming over your head if your insurance doesn't pay out enough. Or, you could have a ton of fun with an insurance company who decides you somehow screwed up and they wont pay a penny for your losses. What then? That is on YOU. And every appliance that dies, every time the septic overflows, every time a fuse blows, every crack in the plumbing, that is on YOU. All of it. And if you want to move, you can stop having equity and go back to renting, making some other person money off their own investment. Or you can wait until you've once again saved up the $20-50k it takes to make a reasonable down payment on a reasonable house in a reasonable neighborhood. But be careful with that. If you can't sell your second house, you'll be stuck straddling two mortgages.

And with that little novel, I think I've made all the points I want to make.

[HM-8404, BSN, RN]

There seems to be a question of what an older new grad brings to the table. Someone with many years at the same company shows stability. A stable work history is quite important. What does that show an employer? It shows you are probably a responsible person, have to ability to be at work when you are supposed to be there. You can work with others. You understand you may not be able to take off work because your BFF wants to have a girls night out on a Tues. Most likely you will not be taking off for maternity leave, maybe 6 months after hired.

What percentage of new grads are still in the same job 2-5 years later? Most employers are not looking to train nurses for other hospitals.

[Amnesty]

So, what skills do people in non healthcare fields bring to the table? I mean, what is transferable?

How does having a former career bring maturity??

I'm 24. Nursing will be my second career of sorts. I've already got a BBA in Accounting, which I used for only about a year and a half, and then hopped into retail because I was unhappy, and am now working as a nurse aide in a hospital and doing nursing school.

I can absolutely assure you that having work experience in an unrelated field helped me get hired as an aide. I'm not a CNA because I don't have a license for that. I had never had any patient contact. I haven't even been successfully accepted into a nursing program (1 month off from that!). Why on earth would a hospital hire me to be an aide when there are candidates who do have those qualifications?

Because I showed up and showed them my skills. I gave strong answers to every interview question. I showed them with previous job experience what a hard worker I am, and how dedicated I am to furthering myself. My prior jobs had included self-employment, fast food, retail, waitressing, babysitting, accounting offices, tax firms, and general business offices. I used my work history to demonstrate that if a company treated me right, I always stayed. I used prior examples to show how I'd gained maturity through my interactions with difficult people in prior jobs. Like one poster said, you have to first learn how to have a job, and then you can learn how to do your job.

All of that interaction with other people can be quite instrumental in teaching the kinds of people skills you aren't going to get anywhere else other than hopping in and getting dirty. Now, at my new job, I've already encountered one girl who just gets on my nerves. She isn't nurse licensed because she failed her NCLEX, but she is nurse trained, so she thinks she's better than the aides and sits behind the desk playing secretary (even though we already have one) and calling the aides to give them orders on what each room needs. Nobody likes her because she's uppity. When I first started working, that really would've stressed me out. Now that I've been working for a while, I let it roll right off my back like it's nothing.

Another example: I'm a real go-getter when I am working. I'll always be the first in line to volunteer if someone needs help and I can help them. After just one day of working with the resident weekend aides, they pulled me aside at shift-end and said, "You've had other jobs before, haven't you?" They could tell because of my maturity and my ability to adjust to both difficult people and difficult situations.

Point blank, life experience counts for a lot. You can be the best person in the world at doing the physical actions of the job but if you don't have the people skills to navigate the workplace, both coworkers and patients, you will be a jagged edge in the otherwise smooth workflow of your floor. Nobody likes dealing with an immature and difficult person. No, not all people are like that without work experience, but most are, and why on earth is an employer going to give you a chance when you don't have anything to back up your story that you're not like that?

So, given two new grads, one in her 30's with a good employment history and one in her 20's who'd never held a job before or had limited history with it, all other things equal, I'd pick the 30's chick any day.

[Cobweb]

I think, in addition to other points made here, a lot of HRs don't hire staff for longevity that much any more. They want somebody to fill their quota today, and they don't care if you plan to leave next year or forty years from now. They will hire somebody with a proven work record over someone with no record if all other things are equal, because they want to keep that staffing quota filled, and a person with a 10-year good work history is more apt to show up. I can't count the number of new young nurses that have been scheduled and don't call, and don't show up. It makes job-hunting really hard for those young people who actually want a job.

[Marshall1]

Based on your Jill vs. Sue..then if the roles were reversed with the older nurse have the CNA experience and the younger nurse not having any health care experience..based on what you wrote you would hire the older nurse over the younger one because of healthcare experience of some sort - right?

Entitlement - or the attitude of entitlement - can be possessed by anyone - male/female, young/older/old - and doesn't apply just to job hunting.

You said you knew you would rock the boat here..ok...objectively reading your posts it sounds like no matter what you would lean toward the younger applicant. You said you are still unemployed because you only apply for jobs you are really interested in - something along those lines - well, maybe the older applicants apply for any job because they realize that in this economy with the market saturated with applicants and jobs scare that any job is better than none so in reality maybe the older applicants are being selected more often because they are being so selective. Either way OP, the nursing world is saturated with new grads of all ages and genders and young/old/experienced/not experienced - it's basically a computerized crap shoot most of the time to get an interview..to land the "dream job" - is an exception rather than the rule..it will change - nursing/the shortage/no shortage - goes through cycles and will again regardless of those who lean toward youth or maturity.

[csmcj, BSN, RN]

So, what skills do people in non healthcare fields bring to the table? I mean, what is transferable?

I'm an older student, hopefully soon to be an older nurse, and my previous work experience (non-healthcare) has a lot of transferable skills. For one, you made a dig earlier about the physical fitness of older nurses, but my job involves regularly lifting, carrying, and turning anywhere from 50-200 lbs. I began my job working in an area that was primarily Hispanic, with primarily Hispanic coworkers, which allowed me to build on the little bit of Spanish I learned in high school and college to the point where I'm now essentially bilingual, also a transferable skill. I was responsible for training new hires (I even developed some of the company's training materials), as well as putting on classes for the public, which translates to patient education (and later down the road once I've gained experience as a nurse, the ability to precept students). Being in charge of shipping and receiving, as well as ordering and budgeting gives me an eye for detail and organization that multiple instructors and nurse managers in my clinicals have complemented. I have strong customer service skills from almost two decades of working with the public that once more translate to being able to effectively handle patients and their families in difficult situations. Being often put in high pressure, high intensity situations has given me a fortitude to remain calm and logical under pressure, able to think critically and do what needs to be done without panicking. Being in supervisory roles has taught me more than just a little about prioritization and delegation. Being with the same company for almost 10 years shows stability and competence, and working multiple locations in that time (at the company's request) shows that I'm willing and able to be flexible when the greater good demands it.

Do you really think these skills I've learned in a non-healthcare setting don't translate?

[RNsRWe, ASN, RN]

dotoriffic, I appreciate your response. I hope there will be some stories of how someone used skills in a former non healthcare career and didn't have to start from ground zero. I have not seen many yet at all.

I wouldn't say that there are those new grads who DON'T "start from ground zero" (to use the popular phrase of this thread). Everyone who is a brand new nurse starts out employed in the same brand new nurse manner.

The REAL question you are asking is why do those who have non-healthcare-related employment experience warrant (or feel they warrant) a shorter or easier Job Search. Not the same thing as "who doesn't start out at ground zero", really.

By now, you must have an understanding of why this is, why someone with a longer resume is more likely to be hired before the one with a one-paragraph all-inclusive resume of experience. It has been explained a multitude of times, with (in my opinion) great clarity by many. Therefore, I won't address that aspect. I will, however, offer you this:

I came into nursing as a new grad, exactly the same as every other new grad. My resume was different than most of the new grads, however, in that I came from a background of significant management (business) experience. I need to be vague here to protect my identity (after all, nothing is more identifiable than rattling off my resume!). I CAN tell you that the businesses for which I was employed and enjoyed administrative roles were varied yet one thread was consistent: ability to manage teams of employees, handle licensing/accreditations, negotiate contracts, contribute to increased profits, and on and on.

What did all of that mean when it came time for my "new grad" interviews? It meant that I was a more desirable applicant than many others, although I had not spent ONE SINGLE DAY in a healthcare-related job prior to completing nursing school. The training I'd receive on New Grad Orientation would be the same that anyone else would get, BUT the hospitals interviewing me knew that they were not getting a "from scratch" employee. New nurse, yes, but one with a proven track record of higher-level employment and responsibilities. NO ONE with whom I interviewed expected me to stay "at ground zero" for very long....and I didn't. Will skip the steps I made in between, but I'm currently the manager of a busy and profitable surgical center and got here NOT because I'm the best nurse on the planet (pretty sure I'm not, anyway!) but because of what else I "brought to the table".

My previous non-healthcare-related work experience made me the candidate of choice over anyone with lesser experience (paid or volunteer).

THAT's the answer to your query, as well as I can manage.

[MathHatingNurse]

I want to say that you can be young and have a career. I have one and I am just 29 and have been going strong for nearly eight years. I am a journalist and web developer. It is my business that I created around the time the economy started to turn. I also hold two Bachelor's degrees (my nursing degree will be my third degree). I don't have a mortgage because I paid it off and own my home. However, a mortgage and rent is like apples and oranges. A mortgage is 10 times the responsibility because you just do not pay a mortgage. I have rented too, so I can compare the two. With a mortgage, everything is on you and you are not getting out of a mortgage for a fee like you can get out of a renter's agreement. Your mortgage is your mortgage unless you can sell and pay it off with the housing sale price. And, in today's economy, good luck with finding a buyer in a timely manner. I also pay cash and have zero student loans.

As for what I bring to nursing, I bring work ethic and a proven track record of it. I bring leadership skills and the ability to communicate with all types of people (remember that we learned in Fundamentals that communication is key in nursing and previous careers generally build this skill quite a bit). I also bring time management, organization, etc. These are things that all career folks develop as they make their way up the ladder in their chosen profession. These things cannot be taught and, in my opinion, are built solely due to experience. This first paragraph is not to brag (though I am pretty darn proud of myself), but to show that age has no factor on lifestyle. I know tons of folks my age living as I do. I know tons of older folks living as I do. I also know lazy young folks with no direction and lazy older folks with no direction. I personally judge a person based on his or her own merits and I try (I say try because I am human) not to make assumptions.

When it comes to who gets the job, this is something we only have partial control over. It is really up to the hiring manager. For example, you could be a rockstar, but if your personality does not click with your interviewer, there is a chance that you will not get a phone call inviting you for a second interview.

[sofiesgrammy]

I would hire Sue or Jill. they both sounds great! Sue may retire in 15 years, but I doubt that any nurse is going to work in the same department for even that long. It happens, but it isn't the norm. Most nurses are going to move on to another role within 5 years regardless of age. Sue was a financial planner. She knows darn well that she is taking a pay cut, and she doesn't mind. She wants to be a nurse. She wants to take care of people and she is WILLING to take a PAY CUT to do it. That's MOTIVATION!

Jill may also be a great nurse. She shows compassion by working as a CNA. How do we know she won't get married and quit, or have a baby and call in sick every time the kid gets a runny nose?

I would not say that Sue is entitled to more consideration that Jill, but she is certainly entitled to equal consideration.

[LadyFree28, BSN, LPN, RN]

I want to say that you can be young and have a career. I have one and I am just 29 and have been going strong for nearly eight years. I am a journalist and web developer. It is my business that I created around the time the economy started to turn. I also hold two Bachelor's degrees (my nursing degree will be my third degree). I don't have a mortgage because I paid it off and own my home. However, a mortgage and rent is like apples and oranges. A mortgage is 10 times the responsibility because you just do not pay a mortgage. I have rented too, so I can compare the two. With a mortgage, everything is on you and you are not getting out of a mortgage for a fee like you can get out of a renter's agreement. Your mortgage is your mortgage unless you can sell and pay it off with the housing sale price. And, in today's economy, good luck with finding a buyer in a timely manner. I also pay cash and have zero student loans.

As for what I bring to nursing, I bring work ethic and a proven track record of it. I bring leadership skills and the ability to communicate with all types of people (remember that we learned in Fundamentals that communication is key in nursing and previous careers generally build this skill quite a bit). I also bring time management, organization, etc. These are things that all career folks develop as they make their way up the ladder in their chosen profession. These things cannot be taught and, in my opinion, are built solely due to experience. This first paragraph is not to brag (though I am pretty darn proud of myself), but to show that age has no factor on lifestyle. I know tons of folks my age living as I do. I know tons of older folks living as I do. I also know lazy young folks with no direction and lazy older folks with no direction. I personally judge a person based on his or her own merits and I try (I say try because I am human) not to make assumptions.

When it comes to who gets the job, this is something we only have partial control over. It is really up to the hiring manager. For example, you could be a rockstar, but if your personality does not click with your interviewer, there is a chance that you will not get a phone call inviting you for a second interview.

MHN...a ton of twenty something's and early something's are responsible, AND mature...it's no longer an exception, but the rule, IMHO.

I am glad that you shared being young and having a career...it sometimes believed that "young and dumb" is the gospel for our generation, when anyone at any age can be responsible-or not.

I also agree with your last statement as well. If it doesn't click, it doesn't. It's not necessarily a youth/experience situation.

[LadyFree28, BSN, LPN, RN]

I don't consider myself particularly old, but I did work for 5 years in a career completely unrelated to nursing, at a law firm, before going back to school to become a nurse. I don't necessarily think that having non-nursing experience should entitle a person to a nursing job, but all experience should be considered when hiring a candidate. Interpersonal skills, communication skills, time management skills, etc. are all incredibly useful skills for nursing that can come from having another job.

All new nurses basically start from the ground up when it comes to nursing skills like assessments, handling codes, and other areas that are specific to nursing, so the big question, in my mind, would be whether or not the second career nurse is able to bring something to table that makes her or him standout from the rest.

I really think your last paragraph hits a point that the OP had discussed pages ago, and a few posters, including myself had viewpoint about. Can a second career stand out? Sure...as much as one starting a career??? It can be relative...IMHO.

[sofiesgrammy]

Much of nursing is "therapeutic communication" transltation: psychology. Much of nursing is lifespan considerations in care of the patient. Translation: developmental psychology.

I was a psych major, and while there was one class titles "Abnormal Psychology", psychiatric disorders were also discussed in almost every other class. I took a class called "Juvenile Delinquency", "Clinical Psychology" and another called "Deviant Behavior". All of the developmental psych classes dealt with psychiatric disorders of children, mental retardation and autism. I took classes in physiological psychology, which dealt with neurotransmitters and their effects (hmmm, sounds like depression and schizophrenia to me).

You say you are in your mid 20's, but you sound like a 13 year-old who knows everything....