brimmck

I finally passed by NCLEX in CA after over 2 1/2 years of being out of nursing school. I have a BSN and recently got updated certifications for ACLS and BLS. My concern now is that I've been out of school for so long that no one will want to hire me. I always had hopes of getting into a new grad program because I really wanted the extra training to enhance my skills but I've pretty much lost hope at this point because of how long it's been since graduating. Most programs have a strict policy that you must have graduated within 1 year. I have also lost contact with all my college professors and have no letters of recommendation. I'd say my resume doesn't look so great. I'm desperate to find a job so I'm looking for any advice. I don't know that without a preceptorship that I will be competent in all of my skills since I haven't used them since school. Do hospitals hire new nurses aside from a new grad program? Or do long term care or acute facilities want nurses with no experience and if they did hire me would I have to start out being completely independent or would they train me? It's already so competitive in CA so I'm feeling a little lost in this job hunt... Any ideas or help would be greatly appreciated!

I've been looking through this forum for quite some time now and I decided it was my turn to ask for help. I realize that everyone has a different process and study methods but any real advice could help me at this point. Here is a little bit of my background... I graduated nursing school about a year ago and took my NCLEX a few months later in May 2014. At the time I was not very focused because I was working a lot but I led myself to believe that I would still be ok because I did well in school and I have always been a good test taker. I was using ATI's greenlight program but was finding it hard to keep up with the amount of hours required to study to I stopped that and switched to Kaplan because some friends recommended it. This switch in my opinion ultimately threw me way off because of the different style of studying and questions. I took my NCLEX in California in the afternoon and ended up taking the entire 265 questions, which was around 5 hours. I will say I was in NO way prepared to be there for that long as all of my school friends assured me that it wasn't that bad and they all passed at 75 questions. Being in the test center that long made me start questioning everything and I was too tired to focus by the end. I felt so burnt out and I went home and tried the PearsonVue trick and realized I did not pass because it was allowing me to sign up again for the exam. I was so embarrassed. I didn't want to talk to family or friends for weeks. Once I was finally over the embarrassment I tried get back to studying but almost every time I sat down I was so overwhelmed with not knowing which program to use this time around. I had a new test date but at this point I've rescheduled so many times because I have no confidence and I don't want to have to redo a third time. Like I said its been a year since I graduated and I feel so far removed that I'm having a hard time focusing once again. I have many resources to study from at this point but I feel like that's even more distracting because I'm going back and forth and can't pick one to focus on at a time. Sorry for the long backstory.... So now I'd love anyone's help/advice on which program is most recommended to start with? What time of timeline did people give themselves to study, how many hours? I have the Kaplan Review Book, Davis's NCLEX success book, Saunders review book, old ATI review books, a few study guides, and I have recently purchased the NCSBN 3 week program to see how it is. Any tips on how you stayed motivated/hopeful/confident after failing once would also be much appreciated. Thanks for anyone's help!!