Why is it so difficult to find a job!

[Faith.O]

So I've been a nurse for 4 years now in the same hospital. I got hired after I put my first application for a new grad nurse residency program. 

It's been a year that I'm trying to either transfer to another unit within my hospital or get hired as PRN in another unit or location of the hospital system I work for. The facility I work for is a huge facility and allow you to be hired in more than one unit/location.

The problem is all my applications got denied without even having phone interviews! 
I got an interview for one of my applications and that was it. 

I tried other facilities in my area; rehabs, SNFs, etc. and only got one interview. They asked for references after my interview and I added my references (ANMs & coworkers) but never heard back from them.

I'm confused! 
Is it normal to have such hard time finding a job as a bedside nurse or is it me who keeps getting denied without interviews? 
And if they didn't want to hire me why did they contact my references? They hired 3 of my friends with the same job experience as me for the same position!

[Catherine Hilton]

Try finding a job when you're 66 with 33 years experience. Firstly they are concerned that they'll put all the effort into orienting you and you'll either drop dead or retire. Secondly, they aren't interested paying what a 33 year nurse costs. Finally, we don't have the sexy nurse look and they think the arthritic limp isn't a good look. I tried to post my comment on the Facebook post, but they restricted me from commenting for a few days because I never entered the security number they never sent 🤬.  

Oh and if you want you can add the above comment to the Facebook post. 😆

[Faith.O]

Catherine Hilton said:

Try finding a job when you're 66 with 33 years experience. Firstly they are concerned that they'll put all the effort into orienting you and you'll either drop dead or retire. Secondly, they aren't interested paying what a 33 year nurse costs. Finally, we don't have the sexy nurse look and they think the arthritic limp isn't a good look. I tried to post my comment on the Facebook post, but they restricted me from commenting for a few days because I never entered the security number they never sent 🤬.  

OMG I'm so sorry to hear that! It is so frustrating how they are open to new nurses more that experienced ones! In the hospital that I work, you barely see nurses with 10+ yrs of experience and that's so unfortunate for other nurses and for the patients!

[pmaries1816]

 

Oh my gosh I'm experiencing the exact same thing right now! I'm sorry you're going through this though.

I have 4.5 years of experience and it's so hard to find any job opportunities! I'm not sure where you are at, but here in Texas they hire alot of new grads they are all about it. They figured out their brilliant solution to increase staffing was to hire new grads because they can pay them as cheap as possible instead of spending big money on travel nurses, and still staff nurses never got the pay they deserved. Anyways, I've been looking everywhere.

I even started looking out of state, and I can hardly find anything. One person replied to my post and said that once COVID cooled down all of the staff nurses that had left to travel nurse, started returning in droves back to their original hospitals and taking back their old jobs. Some jobs I've applied for, the HR people actually have told me they really only hire internal employees. The job market is not at all what it used to be, it is tough out here 😞

As for the hiring your friends and not you, I'm not sure I don't have a great answer, there must be more factors to that. But I'm really sorry 

What kind of nursing are you looking at?

[FolksBtrippin, BSN, RN]

My first thought is to check what is happening with your references