itri4vt

MPHGirl, that's great! see you there.

I'm on Med/Surg. I got everything taken care of today and ready for orientation on Aug 1. See you there!

August 1! Very quick turnaround time. I feel badly for the scheduler at my current job, since she has a ton of shifts to cover for August. What unit are you on?

Speaking from experience, it is tough and frustrating and takes a lot of patience. Today was finally a breakthrough for me - I was offered a residency position at Mary Bridge Children's in Tacoma. I moved here in March (graduated accelerated BSN in December) from Virginia. I had several interviews over the past few months. The "locals" certainly have an advantage... whether it be because they went to a familiar school, they did their clinicals at certain hospitals, or they worked on a unit as a tech. Internal hires ALWAYS have an advantage. Locals also have the advantage of just plain knowing more people... getting in touch with other nurses, managers, recruiters.. can make a world of difference. Residencies and new grad positions get probably well over 100 applicants. It is important to make yourself stand out on paper - highlight those strengths! Even as a new grad, find ways that your past work experience relates to nursing. Brag about your clinicals and internship... I wrote the total # of hours on my resume and written that way it seems like a lot! If you have a good GPA, write it! If you did an accelerated program, write it! If you have a BSN, write BSN after your name at the top of your resume and in your signature line on your emails and cover letters. Bookmark all the hospital job websites and make it a routine part of your day to check every single one every day. Those residencies can be posted for just 1 day and fill up! You can also set up job agents to email you when new ones are posted, but check those to make sure they're working every so often. Save personalized copies of cover letters for each hospital on your computer so you can change the date and the position to make it easy to apply to every new grad opportunity quickly. Don't waste your time applying for any other job that doesn't specifically say "new grad" or "resident" or "residency". Next, be open to finding an intermediate job. It may take baby steps to reach your ultimate goal of peds nurse in a hospital. I'm currently working with pediatric homecare patients. You can get experience, keep up with some of your nursing skills and make some money and still be looking. I found this job from a posting on Craigslist. Lots of clinics, nursing homes, and home health agencies post on Craigslist. You can apply for jobs on there that don't specify experience. Check with Alliance Nursing, Total Care, and Maxim. And finally, here is some info about specific hospitals: Swedish: They are moving to a system of only offering resident RN positions twice a year or so as a big cohort spanning different units (whichever have room to hire new grads). It will be 12 week residency, and the residents won't necessarily have guaranteed jobs afterwards. It's a paid training that will make the residents qualified to apply for staff RN positions on those units. The next one will be in October, look for postings in August. A Swedish manager told me not to try to make contact with the managers. There are too many applicants nowadays, so that tactic is a thing of the past. However, feel free to get in touch with the recruiters! Swedish will do a phone interview with the recruiter usually first, then call you back for an interview with the hiring manager. Be patient... sometimes it takes a month for them to get back to you about the phone interview. Kindred: They have one hospital I know of, plus some clinics and long-term care facilities. A brand new sub-acute unit in Seattle Northgate opened in April. It's like a nursing home within the hospital. A new unit means staff that actually wants to be there (as opposed to grumbling about their job they've had for 30 years). They are hiring! If you don't see openings online, maybe actually go to the hospital and try to apply in person. The subacute unit is on the bottom floor. Providence (Everett): I heard they were going to add some resident positions soon. Don't waste your time applying for any other positions than a residency. Franciscan (South Sound area): You can apply for .8, .9. 1.0 FTE positions. They will consider new grads for those jobs (per the recruiter). I applied to a ton of jobs there and only got a call back once when I was still in Virginia and they didn't want to do a phone interview first. Someone mentioned on this forum this week that the CEO is cracking down on hiring, so... good luck! Multicare (South Sound area): This is the system I finally got an offer for. Only 1 interview, and the nice thing is the computer will send you an automated email when the recruiter sends your app to the manager for review. It's nice to know where you are in the process. Eastside hospitals - Overlake, Evergreen. Evergreen was rumored to have a residency posted but it was only for a day I guess because I never saw it. That was about a week ago. Overlake had one posted maybe a month or 2 ago, for several units, and I never got a call back from them about it. Children's - they will post "new grads welcome to apply" on some positions. I'd only apply to those, most other Children's jobs require 3-5 years of experience UMW and Harborview - I honestly think they really favor their own grads. They just had a residency posted within the last month, too, so I wouldn't expect another one for awhile. Plus the application online is screwy... lots of open-ended questions. Virginia Mason and Northwest - Never saw a residency posted in the 4 months I've been here. Or maybe I saw one but only for internal hires. Valley Medical Center - search for this hospital on the forum. Some not-so-nice things were said about it. I had a terrible interview for a residency here. They advertised it as a "meet and greet" but it was basically a panel interview combined with a group interview of 15 candidates. It was awful and I'm not sure the best way to find the best candidates. oh well. Well. That was long! But I need to stay awake all night for this home health gig, so I have the time! Good luck!! Oh! One more thing. If you're interviewing for a job you know isn't your top choice, find a way to fool yourself and your interviewer that it is your top choice. If you can come up with reasons why you chose that hospital, that unit, and that position, and sell that well, then you will shine in your interview.

Wow, you sure hit the nail on the head!! However, just as I got comfortable with caring for the family I started with and I had actually had some fun conversations with them, my car was broken into, and I didn't want to go back to their neighborhood. I offered to drive to a friend's house 2 miles away and park there if my nursing agency would pay for a $7 cab ride... but they chose not to do that, and left the family hanging on those nights. To top it all off, one of the higher up's in the agency told the person who communicates with parents to tell them that it "just wasn't working out" and didn't want to tell them the real reason why I wasn't coming back. Luckily though I had gone back to the neighborhood to search for my stolen stuff and post flyers, and I had stopped by their house to give them a flyer and warn them to not leave stuff in the cars. So the parents called back and asked: Was it because her car was broken into?? Poor family communicator person was caught in a lie... I took a ventilator class last month so I was able to start working with vented kids. The home I'm in now is completely opposite. Parents are not involved in the care at all, it's all left up to older siblings (as well as all the cleaning of the house). I was glad to be on nights at first because of the rest of the family... so many people running around, it's chaos! The poor kid is sorta neglected whenever a nurse isn't there. I have switched out with some other nurses that forget to document meds, leave without changing poopy diapers (only to sit for 8 hours before I arrive), mix up the tubing so that the temperature probe is on the external tubing... I am only working nights, so my opportunity for learning new things is limited. In fact, now that I have mastered mixing G-tube meds, changing diapers, doing in-line suctioning and cough/assist machine, emptying urinary cath bags... I don't have much more I can learn. Luckily my boss got me scheduled to do the monthly trach change! I'll finally feel a little more comfortable knowing what it feels like to insert a trach. However, I may ask to start working days at a new home so that I can get practice with the routine trach care and other daily activities. I think one of my strengths as a nurse is being able to communicate with patients (esp peds) on their level, and I enjoy talking and working with them. On nights, I don't get that rewarding opportunity. Anyway thanks for reviving the thread so I can give an update!

Lucky you! Good job and congratulations.

I think there is a a night-and-day difference in jobs for experienced nurses vs. for new grads (or with only non-acute experience). I was not selected for the Swedish residency. I prepared for and executed answers to her questions just as I did for my other excellent interview for the ED position. I was the last interview of 7, and frankly I believe she had already made her mind up on someone else... and was just going through the paces with me. I may consider military nursing, or finding some accelerated EMT course to take, or I may just find a new city to move to. I hate to say it but I wish I had just sucked it up for another 6mo to a year and gotten a job in Virginia where I came from. Most of my classmates there have had jobs since January or February...

Interview is tomorrow... send me good thoughts!! The manager I interviewed with last time put in a good word for me through an email to the manager I'm interviewing with tomorrow... that was really nice of him. Hopefully that helps.

Wendy, the residency is paid at the normal starting pay for a nurse. If the nurse going through the residency is hired into the unit s/he did the residency in, then I'm sure the orientation is shorter. However, after the residency, those nurses can apply to any unit, but would of course need an orientation. Do you have a year or greater of hospital experience? There are lots of jobs available at Swedish, which unit do you have experience in? I've set up a job agent to email me every time new jobs are posted, and I get an email probably 4 times a week. Also, Swedish in Edmonds is a different system for jobs, so be sure to search through their separate system if you want a job there.

It is for different med/surg units... it is a big cohort of like 34 new grads, so they all do different shifts, every other weekend, and she said they'll try to make them "floatable" to other units so they'll get a taste of other units as well. I went in to talk to the manager I interviewed with for the other position and he said all the managers at Swedish were told to not make any resident positions until October. And at that time it will be another big residency like this one thats starting in July, with no guaranteed job afterwards. So definitely still be on the lookout for the straggler Resident position but don't be expecting much to be posted until August or so. Kind of a bummer, I know.

The phone interview went well! I have an in-person interview next week. Not the ER dream job - it's actually just a residency for 12 weeks that would make me qualified to apply for Staff RN positions there. It's still 100x better than the home health I'm doing right now.

I have one too. Here's a post from my last phone interview: https://allnurses.com/graduate-nurse-forum/phone-interview-scheduled-561801.html Good luck! Try hard to sound confident, it will show in your voice. Smile and be happy - you have an interview! Smiling definitely shows in your voice.

I graduated in December. And yes, Swedish only takes new grads into their residency positions.

daisy, Did she know someone within the hospital or do her clinical there? Or did she apply using the conventional methods?

Chemdawg, the recruiter was correct. They don't have specific "residency" programs or positions posted. I also graduated in December from a school in VA, and I got one call about St. Clare's ED while I was still in VA, but since I couldn't drop in for an interview they didn't choose to go the phone interview route. Since moving here I've had 4 interviews, and I've applied to probably 200 jobs, maybe 30 of those being specific to new grads. I was very close to getting a Swedish ER job, but was beat out by an internal candidate who had been a tech there. Extremely disappointing... I took a job in home healthcare and I'm going to keep doing that until I find a hospital job. I suggest looking on Craigslist and apply to clinics, community programs/health departments, skilled nursing facilities and home health. Also, I would avoid telling whomever you're applying to or interviewing with that your husband is military and that you'd be moving in 3-5 years. Nobody wants to hire someone that may only be temporary (esp a new grad that they're gonna drop 10-15,000 on to train). Good luck!