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by
allnurses (Editorial Team / Admin)
In this insightful interview, Sarah Wells, founder of "New Thing Nurse" and collaborator with the American Association of Critical Care Nurses (AACN), shares her journey and mission to support the nursing community.
Sarah offers valuable guidance on building the best resume, providing tips on navigating applicant tracking systems (ATS), and overcoming common obstacles in the hiring process. She discusses the unique challenges nurses face at different career stages and emphasizes the importance of career strategy, wellness support, and advocacy. Sarah's passion for fostering a supportive healthcare system shines through as she talks about her evolving business and her vision for the future of nursing.
Join us for an in-depth conversation filled with practical advice and inspiring insights for nurses at all levels.
Meet the Founder of New Thing Nurse | Sarah Wells
allnurses: Start off, tell me your name and your organization.
Sarah: Yeah, my name is Sarah Wells, I'm the founder of "New Thing Nurse", and I also work with the American Association of Critical Care Nurses (AACN).
allnurses: What is "New Thing Nurse" — give me an overview of what that is.
Sarah: I started "New Thing Nurse" in 2017, and it's an academic and professional coaching company and services company for the nursing community. So basically, I work with everyone, from nursing students to executive-level leaders, to help them achieve their professional and academic goals.
Founding Motivations and Hiring Insights at New Thing Nurse
allnurses: What motivated you to start "New Thing Nurse"? Was it an experience you had or someone came to you looking for help?
Sarah: It was kind of a combination of those things. "New Thing Nurse" started out of my own experience of not having the professional preparation for how to get a job, what is the process of navigating job applications, interview preparation — how can I advance my career, how do I network — and that was mostly from nursing school. Once I got into professional nursing, I found some of those resources from nursing associations, but nothing that was tailored exactly to what I needed.
The thing that really pushed me to say, "Okay, fine, I'm just going to make this happen. I'm going to fill this gap myself,” was when I saw the evolution of technology — applicant tracking system software (AST) that HR portals use to help navigate or help select candidates or interviews.
So basically, when you write a resume, you upload it on a website after you've created a login for a hospital organization, because I want to apply to this cath lab nurse job. A lot of people think you upload your documents, and a human reviews all those candidates, but what actually happens is their software that has been created to sift through applications. The predominant way they do that to kind of rank candidates is by scanning the resume, checking for keywords, calculating a score, and then they rank the top 10 of 100 candidates. It's only those top 10 candidates who get pushed to human reviewers who then go, "Okay, I want to set up interviews for XYZ people.”
So, what I was seeing was that in my community circles of friends, really qualified nurses, who are completely qualified for jobs, who are never getting called for interviews, even though we were in a staffing shortage — and it was all because their resume wasn't compatible with ATS. And so I started doing some research, started creating some resume templates, started writing for some friends —and that's really how "New Thing Nurse" was born. I had a skill set and an interest in this tech intersection of technology and career growth, and that was the foundation of "New Thing Nurse.”
allnurses: Yeah, that's so important because I feel like not that many people know that, and they just think, "I'm gonna submit my resume, and I'm gonna get a response,” or whatever, and it's like, no, not really.
Sarah: It's still a big gap in information, so I do a lot of speaking at nursing schools now, both virtually and in person, to help educate nursing students. Can you imagine coming out of nursing school, saying that we're in a historic staffing crisis, and then you start applying to jobs, and no one is calling you back for an interview? They are like, 'Something's wrong with me. I'm not qualified,' even though they have all the qualifications or more.
And so I've worked with new grads who've applied hundreds of times to positions and never got called back — I call it the black hole effect. They're just throwing their application in this black hole. They come to me and they're like, "I really think I'm just not going to do nursing.” So a completely qualified nurse that we need in this historic staffing crisis, can't even get an interview. I reformat their resume and they get a call back immediately. I mean, it is so fulfilling for me, but also so frustrating that this information is not more pervasive out there.
allnurses: And that the hospitals are just like, head down, and keep doing this without looking at it and going like, "Hey, is there anything that we're doing that's contributing to this?”
Sarah: Well, a lot of times, leaders, nursing leaders, or hospital leaders are completely unaware of it either. If you think of how siloed departments are, and like big corporate organizations, which are like hospitals — HR is one silo, my critical care department is one silo, my ED department is another silo — and so they don't understand how those transitions happen.
allnurses: Yeah
Sarah: There are organizations that are looking at this now and either re-constructing or revamping their ATS systems to be more equitable and more inclusive of completely qualified nurses so that they can interview them. Some people are getting rid of their ATS altogether. I think ATS technology also has been aware but there's been more and more awareness.
I feel like over the last three or four years, especially about the biases and ATS and how it's just not supportive of our staffing workforce development, which is really exciting to me because like I would love for "New Thing Nurse" to just not be needed. I would just love nurses to be able to apply for a job and get the job that they're qualified for.
But a lot of it is that initial resume piece. Then also interviews, interview preparation is key to getting any job — and that is based on culture, the language you speak, the vocabulary you speak, because there's definitely some pieces and concepts that they're looking for in interviews.
As an early career nurse, as a nurse transitioning from direct care to leadership, sometimes they don't know how to say the things they want to say in the best way. I can work with them just a couple of times, and often they go from, "I'm not getting these jobs,” to suddenly they're in their leadership position, or they're in their new specialty, or they're getting remote work for the first time.
My mantra is,
Quote"There's a place for every nurse to work.”
If you have a space you want to work in and you can tell me about it, my goal is to help get you placed into that job. Because we can't afford to lose a single nurse just to bureaucracy, or technology.
Overcoming Hiring Biases: Strategies for Nurses
allnurses: What specific challenges do you see facing nurses at the different stages of their career — new grads versus someone with lots of experience looking to change roles?
Sarah: It's a hard thing. I think there's bias in every single transition. If you're looking at a new grad, sometimes there's bias based on where they went to school. Or maybe there's bias based on where they did their clinical rotations, which they had no control over. Where they did a preceptorship, they just get assigned to a preceptorship — but some organizations, like for an OR residency, really give preference or have a bias for applicants who had a preceptorship in the OR — but not every school has access to that.
I think there's a lot of bias based on how your resume looks because humans do review them. And so if they see things like typos, you might get precluded just because, like, "They have a typo; they can't possibly be a good nurse.” And I'm like, there's not a one-to-one comparison between how well I can spell and how good of a nurse I am. Because don't ever look at my documentation from when I was in the emergency department — there were so many misspellings there.
I think there's also a lot of challenges in looking for opportunities and knowing what's out there. I have talked to a lot of nurses who say, "I really think that my ideal role would look like helping support other nurses, maybe in an education space, but I really don't want to work in the hospital anymore.” They're unaware of opportunities to work remotely for other companies—maybe writing content, doing remote education in some way, or consulting.
People really don't know how to start those first steps of starting a business or getting connected with other mentors or people on LinkedIn. I do a lot of work on social media, helping people optimize their LinkedIn profiles and navigate how to promote themselves. Because while we nurses are "superheroes" — I really hate that term but people feel that way and elevate us in that regard — we also go to work every day and save lives. And so we are in this weird dichotomy of literally working in a magical miracle space of bringing people back to life, but that's our nine-to-five. So, we wind up being very humble about things. It's not inherent to us to be self-promotive online or to humble brag effectively online, and that's a skill set that's pretty crucial for getting opportunities now. I try to help people understand the value, safety, and importance of leveraging a professional social media presence, and how to navigate personal social media in a way that doesn't cause risk for their career.
QuoteI think it's very empowering for nurses to know, "I really do incredible things, and I can see that now on my rewritten resume or on my LinkedIn profile.”
They just don't know how to articulate it sometimes, and so it's a coaching, editing kind of space where I tell them, encourage them, and help guide them on how to speak to it in an interview. I just really love it, I love working with all spaces of nurses—like all experience levels, from new grads to really advanced career nurses.
There is ageism, also, in nursing. So sometimes people with 40 years of experience want to make a transition, but they don't know how to do it. And if you put 40 years of experience on a resume, sometimes people say, "Ooh, they've been around too long. Maybe this isn't the person I want to invest in for this role." And so there's a strategy on how to write your resume if you have a really big career, focusing in on more recent experience — not precluding all that other stuff — but how to get at least into the interview, where you can speak well to all of your experience and also show that you're still very relevant in the field.
Key Resume Advice and Common Pitfalls for Nurses
allnurses: What are the biggest red flags you see on resumes and cover letters?
Sarah: Okay, so objective, let's talk about the objective section. The objective of any resume is to get a job so we can just get rid of the objective section.
Professional summary. That's the paragraph that usually goes right under your contact information, that's really important to have, mostly for keywords loading for the ATS software we were talking about earlier.
Also, email addresses that are not professional. So I'm like, if you're using [email protected] you are not going to get called for the interview my friends. We need to have a professional email address that we can have respectfully on your resume.
I also see a lot of non-inclusion of certifications, licensure, and trainings that really make you stand out as an applicant, I think people forget to add those on because they think, "Oh, that's just routine training I had at my job,” — but if you've had diversity, equity inclusivity training that's really important and will help you stand out depending on what kind of job you're getting. If your special certification is in some sort of space, or if you're a certified nurse, those need to be on your resume and at the top advertised because that really will help you stand out.
Other things I see are special skills lists that might include non-healthcare experience or a non-healthcare skill. I saw one recently that had crocheting and braiding hair special skills, and as a nurse, that's just not going to help you get an interview, and it's definitely not going to help you with the software, right? Nothing's keyword-loaded for hair braiding.
Also, the biggest thing I see most commonly is a really long resume. Your resume should be maximum two pages, printed front and back, that should be the absolute longest you get. I've literally seen people with less than 10 years of experience with a seven-page resume — not an academic CV, which is something different, but a professional clinical nurse resume. I get into arguments all the time online, trying to encourage people that two pages are all they're going to get. The average reviewer only spends six seconds or less looking at a resume, so if the good stuff is not on the first page, maybe the back page, it's not going to be seen.
Those are some of the big ones.
allnurses: How important do you think it is to have nurses tailor their resume or cover letter to this specific facility?
Sarah: For a specific facility, I don't think it's required for the resume. You could do that in the cover letter, and that's fine. The resume's goal is really to get past the software, to get an easy, at-a-glance read by a human reviewer, and to get you an invitation to the interview. That's why you don't really have to tailor the resume too much.
I think the cover letter is read more in detail, and that's where you can tailor it to the facility. Now, for the role, I think sometimes it has value to tailor the resume — especially if you're going from direct care to a remote position, from direct care to a leadership position, or from one specialty to another — you can put certain things on there that will help. But generally, you shouldn't have to update your resume too much from role to role unless it's a very big change in the actual position that you're applying to.
allnurses: You kind of already covered because it's probably a hot topic — but how can nurses ensure that resumes are optimized for getting through the ATS?
Sarah: "New Thing Nurse" offers a whole series of templates that you can look at online. Otherwise, you definitely want to look for templates that offer formatting specific to ATS optimization. There are a lot, Microsoft Word has a ton of resume templates, but they might not all be optimized for ATS.
There's a ton of templates on Etsy that you can buy, but there are certain things that are non-compatible with ATS, which not all those templates are created for. ATS generally cannot read files that have a colored background, so the white background is really the most universal. They can't read complex graphics, so photos, like if you put a telemetry strip on there or some other graphics, often are not compatible.
The most compatible file type is PDF. So when you're uploading it, don't upload a Word.doc; don't upload a Note.doc — you need to be uploading a PDF.doc.
Those kinds of simple things are really important, and I think sometimes people are looking at templates and going, "That's really pretty," but pretty is not important. We need compatibility with software and then easy to read at a glance for a person.
So text-heavy or text-dense is not good, you want some good spacing. You don't want to use colors that people might associate with body fluids or being really juvenile, so I always say stay away from, like, poopy green, poopy brown, urine yellow. You also don't want to use bright pink or bright purple because that's kind of associated with Barbie, which is associated with toys, and that's childlike. There are just certain things that can help support you with the technology and with the people.
allnurses: That's really good advice. I feel like oftentimes the little things make a huge difference — and if it's five little things like a novice, and you're 0 for five, on what you actually need to have done.
Sarah: Yeah.
Combating Burnout: Tips for Fulfillment in Nursing
allnurses: What advice do you have for nurses who are feeling burnt out or unfulfilled in their current role — as far as changing or next steps?
Sarah: I think a huge thing that's helped me in my clinical career has been being engaged as a member of a nursing associations. When I first started, I was in the emergency department. I joined the Emergency Nurses Association a few years in on the recommendation of a friend. I found a great community there, I found people who understood where I was coming from on a good day, bad day. They knew the language I was talking.
It's really hard sometimes as a nurse to express yourself in a way that your spouse, your family, and your non-nurse friends can understand. Some of your stories are gross, some are very startling, or some might have private information that you're legally not allowed to share. So your coworkers all of a sudden become the only people you can talk to who were involved with that case. So I find nursing associations to be super helpful.
I'm a big advocate for nurse wellness and mental health. I came out of what I call, "the mental health closet" years ago. I have a long history of depression and anxiety. I write a lot about that and talk a lot about that. What I love about the American Association of Critical-Care Nurses (AACN), and why I came to AACN first as a member, was their healthy work environment infrastructure and knowing that there was a nursing association that is doing work and education on burnout and moral distress. That a nursing association was investing huge amounts of time, money, and space to educate organizations about appropriate staffing. Because these are the things that impacted my wellness day to day and definitely contributed to my burnout overtime because I would go through phases of burnout and then recharging my nurse battery.
The AACN also has a commitment with other nursing associations like the Wellness Initiative, where we have resources for nurses to help support their wellness. We also have safe spaces that offer community to nurses to learn and ask questions in spaces that are not associated with their place of employment. We have online communities tailored to clinical practice nurses, nursing educators, and future and new nurses, which I help moderate.
I help run the art blog team with AACN, and that's one of my main roles on staff. We do content written by an art nurse authors who are AACN, in our nursing community at large, who talk about topics like — "Is it okay to feel not okay.” "Can we talk about what it's like to be a nurse from a non-binary trans background?” "How do we address working with patients with non-English preferences?” These are things that are super important and are also written about and other places and offered, but I think we really uniquely offer kind of a comprehensive community for our members and non-members to come in and get those resources — whether it's at the chapter level in person, at conferences in person, or online virtually — and get it in safe, inclusive spaces that really offer a feeling of support and safety that reflects back to their wellness and mental health.
The Evolution of New Thing Nurse
allnurses: Going back to the business side of it — what was the first version of your website or your templates like versus how they are now? How have they evolved?
Sarah: Great question. I run my own website, and the first time I did it, I think it took me about seven days. I think I pulled out half my hair, and my husband got yelled at a lot—and it looked okay. I've revamped it several times and refined it over time.
Also, I've evolved as an entrepreneur, as an influencer, as a public figure, and as a person. So, the topics I cover and focus on and my ability to write have become a lot more improved over time. I added a blog, I've added social media, and things like that. And so, I think it looks pretty modern and timeless now. I haven't done a whole lot of major overhauls in the last couple of years since COVID. I feel like COVID kind of pivoted me in several different directions, like it did with everyone in healthcare. And so, it's kind of where it is now, and I really like it. That's the thing — you have to like the look of your business. You have to feel good about what you're putting out.
I talk to some business owners, and they're like, "Ugh, my logo's alright,” and I'm like, "Oh, no, like, I love my logo.” My logo was drawn by a doctor who was in medical school at the time, out of Georgia, where I was from originally, and I love it. And that's been my logo, and I don't change it because I don't want to. I haven't ever needed to rebrand because my product and my services are supportive and inclusive of my audience, and I evolve and adapt when they tell me things need to change.
The templates were part of that. I originally was the only one to do one-on-one services because that's what I enjoyed doing. Over time, I saw that I couldn't work with everyone, so I started on-demand template products as a way to be more inclusive of my clients and people interested in my services. I also am able to make them a lot cheaper than my one-on-one concierge services, so it's much more economically accessible. And I run random sales and discounts all the time. So, like if I talk to a nursing student who's like, hand to mouth, "I literally have no dollars, what can I do?” I'm like, "Well, there's an amazing coupon code where you can get this for $5,” or for free, or whatever.
I think digital products make you able to offer things to a wider audience, and it doesn't tie the service and support to just you as an individual. It's much more scalable. I see it as a movement in a lot of career resources because there's a lot more nurses doing it. When I started, I was one of like three people I knew of doing it and people are often like, "You're a career coach for nurses? I don't understand.” Now I see it all over the place, and I love it because we're five and a half million nurses, and lord knows I can't work with everyone. So, like, the more the merrier.
Now I see a lot of digital products out there. Some are better than others; you know, there's always a little bit of, "Maybe I could do that better,” but I love my products, and I stand by them. I hear back from thousands of people that they're helpful in supporting them and getting the interview that they need, so I know they work. I have more demand than I can cover — there are only so many hours in the day — so I think that's a good sign.
I love that it's a growing industry. I think career strategy for nursing is something that we need from nursing school throughout our careers. Mentorship is such a big piece of success and evolution in nursing and keeping nurses happy. You were talking about combating burnout—mentors and a career strategist or career coaches can help you overcome burnout, prevent burnout, and help you stay in the field of nursing because it's a hard career, and so you need all the help you can get.
Balancing Acts: Insights from a Nurse Entrepreneur
allnurses: Yeah, for sure. What are some of the challenges that you faced as an entrepreneur, small business owner, and nurse?
Sarah: It's balancing everything and choosing what to take on. I have a small child, a two-and-a-half-year-old. I have a job that I really like. I also work clinically. I love my business. Like, I'm just one. I think that's why I went to the emergency department; I like lots of things. So, choosing where to focus your energy and the time of day is important.
Different times of my life, my business has been more prominent, less prominent, I'm able to do more with it — I love that it evolves with me and what I want to do to impact healthcare. My mission is I want to foster a more supportive healthcare system and nursing culture throughout everything in America. And so, that's a lofty goal, but I think it really comes back to — we have to support nurses, we have to support our patients, we have to support our clinicians. And that's how we'll always be successful in being a healthy nation.
For me, my part of that comes back to career support and strategy, wellness support and strategy, advocacy work, and creating digital content that resonates with a wide audience. And I'm really passionate about diversity, equity, inclusivity, most recently, and educating nurses about technology. So, I think the challenge sometimes is myself, like, what do I want to do? Where do I want to go with it? How much do I want to do? And that work-life balance blend is really a piece of that too.
Expanding Horizons: New Thing Nurse's Next Steps
allnurses: That leads to my next question — what's next for the business? And what's that big picture, what do you want "New Thing Nurse" to look like in five or ten years?
Sarah: Yeah. So, one thing I'm watching is—I've been working with clients with "New Thing Nurse" now for seven years, and some of them are now going into leadership and executive leadership. So, I started WellGan Consulting with a friend of mine, a partner of mine, and that's going to be more of our leadership service line and also more consulting work in the future. That's new and evolving as time allows and as clients come to us.
What I really want to see is it grow by offering more collaboration opportunities with other organizations because I think the mission of improving health care for all is something that resonates with a lot of organizations and a lot of individuals. Whether it's from an individual or organizational level, that's really where my heart is. I want health care to be the best it can be because I work in it, one, and then two, I'm a patient in it, and my family are patients in it. So, I think we all have to be invested in that journey for the success, health, and wellness of our nation.
Contact Sarah
allnurses: I think that's pretty much it, but where can our audience find you?
Sarah: Yeah. You can find me at:
- Website: www.NewThingNurse.com
- Instagram: @NewThingNurse
- Facebook: @New Thing Nurse
- LinkedIn: New Thing Nurse or Sarah Wells
It was a pleasure speaking with you. I'm really excited to connect with anyone who wants to on social media. I hang out there a lot, so hope to see you there.
allnurses: Sweet. Thank you so much.
