Arguments against the BSN are over as the market has decided that BSNs are the better hire over RNs experienced or not. I graduated in 2010 and landed my first job in a nursing home through an agency in 2012. I did half a year there and absolutely hated it! That ended up getting stuck on my resume as the only experience I had which is probably why I got no interest from employers. I decided that I needed to get my BSN if I ever hoped to get into a hospital so I enrolled into a program and got my BSN within a year since I already had a BS in another discipline. Just before graduating I managed to land a job through my excoworker from the nursing home who had moved on to a top hospital in the city. While I was finishing up my BSN, she told me to drop off my resume one evening, and I met with her supervisor who has a lot of pull in the unit. She told me she would get me in. That informal meeting was in April. After graduating, I had an interview at another hospital that didn't go very well, and I was feeling pretty bummed out, especially since I had a lot of hooks in the organization. That same day, I got a call from my friend's unit manager to come in for an interview later that week. It went so well that she hired me right at the end of our meeting before I left and she told me she would e-mail the recruiter to start the hiring process. It took a month from the interview to actually get a meeting with the recruiter she had e-mailed, and even then I had to initiate the contact with the recruiter via e-mail after waiting for a call from HR for 3 weeks (I had tried to figure out her e-mail through trial and error). Lessons learned? Take the nursing home job to start networking with other nurses and form friendships that go beyond the workplace. Get your BSN. Try to get informal meetings with unit supervisors or managers. Look your best. It's so difficult to get into a hospital with no experience unless you're the best of the best. Very few people are the best of the best, therefore everyone else is your competition and that's why it's so important to have hooks. Jobs don't just fall into people's laps, especially not in NYC. Even if you have all the hooks, you still have to present yourself as if you're competing against other highly qualified candidates, but be humble about it. If you're lucky enough to be hired, don't wait for HR to call you - you must call them, but be tactful. That's what I've learned.
