1 year, 2 years, 3 years experience...

Nurses Career Support

Published

I'm just moving into third year of my nursing program. I know I have lots of time before I need to think about jobs, but I often go searching online out of curiosity. Every job I look at, they're looking for the completion of a specialty program, or 1/2/3 years experience in acute care, O.R., whatever area the job is in (except perhaps medical and surgical floors).

I don't particulary want to start on a medical or surgical floor (yes yes I know everyone should do it, it's the gold standard for experience, etc). My question is if I try to apply to these jobs that want experience, will they take one look at my resume and chuck it, or will they read on and consider if I'm worth orienting? It seems possible because I see threads all the time about new grads starting in PACU, ICU, and all sorts of things. Do I have hope or am I delusional...

Up Vote Up Vote ×
Specializes in ----.

I'm sure your experience will depend on the local hospitals in your area. When I graduated, some hospitals would take GNs into ICU and specialized areas while others would not. In some cases the same health system would allow some people and not others. I think the best thing you could do is to network with the nurses and nurse managers in your clinical rotations. Make some contacts. If there are units you like that you are rotating through make sure that you let the manager know that you would be interested in working there.

There were several nurses that I graduated with that got jobs in the ED and ICUs that I wanted to work in but were "not accepting GNs". In those cases they knew someone, did well in their clinicals on that floor and expressed their interests while they were there. I managed to land an ICU job out of school, which is what I wanted.

Also, if you don't have nursing experience there are other ways to make your resume stronger so you have a shot when you graduate. Consider a nursing internship or even working as a CNA or something health related while you finish school. Anything will help I think. Good luck!

Up Vote Up Vote ×
I'm sure your experience will depend on the local hospitals in your area. When I graduated, some hospitals would take GNs into ICU and specialized areas while others would not. In some cases the same health system would allow some people and not others. I think the best thing you could do is to network with the nurses and nurse managers in your clinical rotations. Make some contacts. If there are units you like that you are rotating through make sure that you let the manager know that you would be interested in working there.

There were several nurses that I graduated with that got jobs in the ED and ICUs that I wanted to work in but were "not accepting GNs". In those cases they knew someone, did well in their clinicals on that floor and expressed their interests while they were there. I managed to land an ICU job out of school, which is what I wanted.

Also, if you don't have nursing experience there are other ways to make your resume stronger so you have a shot when you graduate. Consider a nursing internship or even working as a CNA or something health related while you finish school. Anything will help I think. Good luck!

Thank you for your response, very helpful. I am definitely going to try my darnest to get clinicals in the area I want to go into.

Up Vote Up Vote ×
+ Add a Comment