Sorry but we require at least 1 year experience

[Nursebetty2007]

That's all I keep hearing from jobs, from the people that call me back for interviews, to the applications I fill out on line " Must have one year experience" but how can I get the experience when no one is willing to give us new grads a chance!? Granted I get it, we are a huge reliability and the way people are suing today is a joke! But it seems to me,(and I could be wrong) that more and more facilities are requiring this " one year experience" stuff, was it always this way? Or we're new grads offered jobs straight out of school and employers realized they made a huge mistake? I'm in NJ btw...

[SionainnRN]

Off topic but you may want to change your picture. You never know who is reading these posts, including HR. Good luck with the job hunt.

[amoLucia]

Ditto re changing your pix.

You are correct that employers do recognize new nurses as having a greater liability risk than experienced staff nurses. Hence the 1 year experience requirement, esp for hospitals. For those facilities that do hire new grads, you'll note that many typically offer long orientation periods or internships for new grads.

LTC appears more amenable to hiring new grads, yet they freq offer short orientations in the hopes that the new employee will be a 'diamond in the rough'. They expect new nurses to be 'up and running' quickly and able to handle all the skill sets nec to be a safe, competent and skilled employees.

You'll notice that most states are at-will employers. If the new employee just isn't making it, employers can just easily terminate the employee at will. (In the good 'ole days, this was the purpose of the 'probationary period'.) The usual reasons that 'it wasn't a good fit' or the employee 'wasn't progressing quickly enough' are the norms. It doesn't matter to them as they can go to the file and pull up a new employee eager for the chance at the job. Of course, there are those situations when the new employee has been making mistakes, can't handle assignments, makes questionable decisions, 'doesn't play well with others' etc, so there is cause. And employers know that they hold all the trump cards.

This has been going on for some time - in some places the process is more brutal than others r/t to the glut of nurses. Other fields of nsg fall in the continuum somewhere. Some just want a warm body with a still 'ink hasn't dried yet' license.

Even experienced nurses out there are facing unique problems also.

On an old TV series, the theme song sang "it's a jungle out there'. Yeah, it is and it's a Catch 22 for many.

[Concerto_in_C, BSN, RN]

Employers have become risk-averse. Orienting a new grad is very risky. They want the candidate to be the only party that assumes the risk of changing jobs, because changing jobs is risky even if you are the most experienced nurse in the world. I'd say a majority of the times my colleagues who changed jobs ended up regretting the change. Generally they would try to come back, usually not our unit, but other unit at the hospital. All kinds of reasons are given, sometimes it's problems with management, sometimes working conditions. One girl told me "on paper everything was great there, but the staff did not make me feel welcome".