Ok. So I've had my license now for almost three weeks. Since I got the happy news that i've passed the boards and am now an RN, I have been applying for jobs everywhere. To date, only staffing agencies have been contacting me only to tell me that I need at least 1 year of experience. How do I get that experience if no one will hire me since I don't have that 1 year of experience? I don't suppose that the time spent during clinicals counts as experience. Does it?
Since I already had a great full-time job in a very prominent company, I didn't apply for a temporary license to work as a GN when I finished school. I'm thinking now that maybe that was a mistake and that maybe that's how a new nurse gets their foot in the door in the event that they do not already work at a facility as a tech or a cna. And if so, what do I do now that the opportunity has passed? Am I jumping the gun? Should I really be like ok it's only been 2 1/2 weeks, give it time?
I've always had the impression that people would be beating down my door trying to hire me because there's such a demand for nurses. OK, I really didn't expect that to happen, but the silence from my phone not ringing is discouraging. Now I'm thinking that maybe I need a higher degree to make myself more marketable, so I started applying to different schools for their RN-BSN programs.
I'm not looking for an answer really... I just needed to vent. But it would help to know if maybe there's someone else out there who's gone through the same thing and is now working as an RN. It would be very encouraging.
