http://www.campusrn.com/jobblog/ en mmoore@campuscareercenter.com Copyright 2013 2013-06-14T20:59:00-05:00 http://www.campusrn.com/jobblog/study_skys_the_limit_for_nursing_grads/ /jobblog/study_skys_the_limit_for_nursing_grads/#When:20:59:00Z Less than a month after earning their degrees, 60 percent or more of North Dakota State University’s newest nursing graduates already have jobs. And that’s before they take the required licensing exam. “It’s a great outlook, and it’s a great career,” said Carla Gross, chairwoman of NDSU’s nursing department. “The sky’s the limit as to what you can do with that degree.” But recent landscape architecture graduate David Eisenbraun said the 20 students in his class can’t look forward to that kind of abundant job market. So far, only two have found work that will count toward their licensing requirements. “Myself and one other person got actual landscape architecture jobs since we graduated,” he said. Not all college degrees are equal when it comes to finding work, according to a recent report from researchers at the Georgetown University Center on Education and the Workforce who researched 2010 and 2011 U.S. census data to find which majors had the best job prospects. Gross said the latest “Hard Times: College Majors, Unemployment and Earnings” report, released last week, was hardly a surprise. Recent nursing graduates had the lowest unemployment rate of 4.8 percent. NDSU’s nursing department has seen 95 to 96 percent of its prelicensure graduates land jobs in their field for the past few years, with the rest either going on for advanced education or choosing not to enter the workforce. “All we’re hearing is they need more nurses, and there’s a critical shortage across the nation for nurses,” she said. Recent architecture graduates didn’t fare as well in the study, with 12.8 percent unemployed – the second-highest rate by major in this report. Further darkening the outlook, employed graduates weren’t necessarily working in their field. Recent graduates with information systems majors had the highest unemployment rate of 14.7 percent, but Limin Zhang said that finding doesn’t fit with what’s happening at NDSU. The assistant professor said management information systems majors have the highest employment rate of all majors in the business college – about 93 percent for those who graduated during the 2011-2012 academic year. “For those students who graduated in May, almost all of those have jobs already,” Zhang said. “For the juniors who plan to graduate in the next year or so, I think almost everybody went for summer internships in companies around the region.” A majority of programs at Minnesota State University Moorhead continue to boast high employment rates, even during the recession, said Sarah Miller, director of MSUM’s Career Development Center. She said 96.3 percent of graduates from the class of 2011 who entered the workforce found a job in their field. MSUM surveys its recent graduates, asking if they’ve been able to find related employment within a year. “The overall news is it’s really good for graduates,” Miller said. “I think students who want to get a job within 12 months after graduation do.” Cindy Urness, interim chairwoman of NDSU’s architecture program, said unemployment in the field was “very high” in recent years. It’s closely tied to the construction industry and follows that cycle of growth and downturn, especially during the nationwide recession. The NDSU Career Center’s 2012 annual employment report shows that just 42 percent of the 26 landscape architecture graduates had jobs and 48 percent of the 58 students who earned a master of architecture degree found work by the time the report was compiled. Many graduates didn’t respond to the survey, which can lead to an apparent employment rate that’s lower than reality. Urness said architecture students here have one big advantage: a stronger than average local economy that kept the impact of the national downturn to a minimum. “Our graduates have fared better in seeking jobs, here in particular,” she said. “We’ve had a lot of our Minnesota students actually decide to stay in North Dakota to start their careers.” Urness said the other good news is that graduates from recent years who couldn’t find related work after college are now landing good jobs – and prospects are looking up. “The prediction about our professions in general is that we’re actually perhaps going to start to see a shortage as early as 2014,” she said. Read Full Article National, news, Employer News 2013-06-14T20:59:00-05:00 http://www.campusrn.com/jobblog/nursing_jobs_prove_plentiful_for_graduates/ /jobblog/nursing_jobs_prove_plentiful_for_graduates/#When:12:29:00Z Nursing school graduates have one of the lowest unemployment rates for any profession in the country. Researchers at the Georgetown University Center on Education and the Workforce examined 2009 and 2010 U.S. census data to determine what college majors are most likely to lead to jobs. “Hard Times, College Majors, Unemployment and Earnings 2013: Not All College Degrees are Created Equal” says the unemployment rate for recent nursing grads is 4 percent. Meanwhile, the typical unemployment rate for majors in many liberal arts fields is double that, and that of architecture and fine arts graduates is more than triple at 13.9 and 11.1 percent, respectively. What the researchers don’t know is if the graduates were working in their major. Some college majors don’t have clear career paths. That was reflected in unemployment rates for ethnic and civilization studies (10.1 percent) and philosophy and religious studies (10.8 percent). Other majors, such as architecture, have suffered in the economic downturn, although their unemployment is gradually getting better, said Tony Carnevale, director of Georgetown’s education center. In fact, only 50 to 54 percent of recent college grad work in their majors, Carnevale said in an interview. Read Full Article Career, National, news, Employer News 2013-06-10T12:29:00-05:00 http://www.campusrn.com/jobblog/how_to_get_a_job_as_a_new_grad_nurse2/ /jobblog/how_to_get_a_job_as_a_new_grad_nurse2/#When:21:51:00Z Alright new grads, I am a straight shooter and a bit of a cynic (I like to call myself a realist, personally) – but that is possibly why I scored myself an RN job with a residency, before I graduated, on the floor that I wanted and chose. This is geared for people that know how to get down and dirty, will be great new graduates, and know that a little hard work can go a long way, and aren’t scared to put some effort into the job search. Not for those of you that are halfway through nursing school and still “hate” giving bed baths (buck up!)… 1st – Come to terms with reality and what you have to work with. My boyfriend of three years lives in SF, and I went to school here in the Midwest because it was much more economical; I simply couldn’t afford to live the CA lifestyle while in school. Therefore, I of course set my sights only on getting to the Bay Area while in nursing school. And then…my sights started getting set on anything in California…and towards the end of school (and after a few close nabs at a CA residency spot, dangit!), I realized if I wanted employment right out of school, it would mean having to stay here in the Midwest to get some experience. And I have to, because I don’t have a pot to **** in or a roof over my head if I don’t have an income, I was living off loans through school. No rich mommy and daddy to hand me things here. Note though, that I am in a pretty big urban city that is still quite competitive – so this article is definitely applicable, I wasn’t handed a job in some Kansas farmtown. Anyways, this is sort of a new grad analogy to the first step in AA…come to terms with what you have and things will start to be more realistic! It is 100x easier to get a job where you are going to school. 2nd – Be flexible, but have some goal ideas as well. Just like a diet or exercise plan, it’s a lot easier to gets things accomplished when you have specific goals. I started to realize during clinicals that I was flexible, but really didn’t have interest in OB or Peds (which is great, since these are so ******* popular…not sure why, hehe). I really liked working with older populations, I liked more acute and sick populations, and I liked roles where there was a lot of teaching involved (I like to get up on my soapbox and preach about diet, nutrition, and mind-body health…yay, Medicine floors!). From here, I picked a few specific floors and went from there. Read Full Article National, news, Employer News 2013-06-06T21:51:00-05:00 http://www.campusrn.com/jobblog/nursing_grads_have_best_employment_prospects/ /jobblog/nursing_grads_have_best_employment_prospects/#When:21:49:00Z About a month after passing his state licensing exam, Arthur Greenbank was cashing a paycheck in his field. The University of Akron (Ohio) graduate is not alone: Of all the majors that students can choose, nursing offers the best chance for employment. “I tell graduates not to worry, that they almost certainly will land a job within a few months of graduating,” UA nursing administrator Cheryl Buchanan said. “If they would go to Florida or Michigan, they would find a job immediately.” Researchers at the Georgetown University Center on Education and the Workforce examined 2009 and 2010 U.S. census data to determine what college majors are most likely to lead to jobs. “People need to pay attention to this,” center director Tony Carnevale said. “It tells you that if you really want to be an architect, that’s fine, but you’re going to have to think more about what your plan is.” “Hard Times, College Majors, Unemployment and Earnings 2013: Not All College Degrees are Created Equal” says the unemployment rate for recent nursing graduates is 4 percent. Meanwhile, the typical unemployment rate for majors in many liberal arts fields is double that, and that of architecture and fine arts graduates is more than triple at 13.9 and 11.1 percent, respectively. What the researchers don’t know is if the graduates were working in their major. Some college majors don’t have clear career paths. That was reflected in the unemployment rates for area ethnic and civilization studies (10.1 percent) and philosophy and religious studies (10.8 percent). Other majors, such as architecture, have suffered in the economic downturn, although their unemployment is gradually getting better, Carnevale said. Read Full Article National, news, Employer News 2013-06-06T21:49:00-05:00 http://www.campusrn.com/jobblog/be_careful_on_social_networks/ /jobblog/be_careful_on_social_networks/#When:23:56:00Z There was another recent posting - thread now closed - by a nurse who got in trouble over a Facebook posting. I have some direct experience with this - as a union steward - and a fair amount of second hand knowledge. Here are a few basic things to keep in mind: 1. Your Facebook “friends” may very well not be your actual friends - in every case that I’ve dealt with, management became aware of the offending posting when a “friend” of the poster brought it to their attention. And your privacy settings are no protection. 2. You do not have rights of “free speech” related to your work - the First Amendment protects you against the government intruding on your free speech rights - it says nothing about your employer. 3. If you are not covered by a union contract, in most parts of the US you are an at will employee and can be fired for any reason or no reason - except for a very small number of protected reasons like your age or race. 4. If you post something that would make anyone reading it think they might not get good care at your hospital, that would almost always be a legitimate reason for action against you. Here are a few real life examples: “We were so understaffed it was scary” or “If another person comes into the ER just to get narcs, I might punch them out” or “I got so frustrated with one patient I wanted to take her call light away”. Yeah, we’ve all had feelings like that, and we might say them to a real friend face to face - but posting them online for all to see - and, no matter what your privacy settings are, it really is for all to see - is just foolish. Save those rants for your truly private conversations. Read Full Article National, news, Employer News 2013-06-03T23:56:00-05:00 http://www.campusrn.com/jobblog/nurse_friendly_hospitals_have_better_patient_outcomes/ /jobblog/nurse_friendly_hospitals_have_better_patient_outcomes/#When:23:53:00Z A group of US hospitals that are certified as nurse friendly because of their work environment and staffing levels have better patient outcomes than other hospitals, according to researchers. They compared staffing factors and patient outcomes at 56 so-called “Magnet” hospitals with 508 other hospitals across four US states. The Magnet Recognition Program is a voluntarycertification programme overseen by the American Nurses Association. Its hospitals are recognised for their nursing excellence and practice innovation as well as for having higher levels of job satisfaction and less burnout. The researchers found the Magnet hospitals had slightly higher nurse-to-patient ratios and used fewer temporary staff. They were also rated as having significantly better work environments and had more nurses with degreesand more with specialisms. Analysis of more than 600,000 surgical patients revealed that mortality rates were 20% lower at Magnet hospitals and they also had better performance on “failure to rescue”. Of the surgical patients in Magnet hospitals, 1.5% died within 30 days compared with 1.8% in non-Magnet hospitals. In addition, 3.8% of the surgical patients with complications died in Magnet hospitals compared with 4.6% in other hospitals. Read Full Article Career, National, news, Employer News 2013-06-03T23:53:00-05:00 http://www.campusrn.com/jobblog/find_the_right_career_for_you/ /jobblog/find_the_right_career_for_you/#When:22:12:00Z Feeling like you are no longer passionate about your career? Do you wonder if you are in the right career? Want a change of pace? You need to find what your career destiny has in store for you! In order to find the career that’s right for you, you need to analyze your work skills and learning style, define your true interests, and reassess your economic expectations. Here are some tips on how to make it happen! Match Your Interests, Skills Would You Pass the NCLEX? NCLEX Tests NCLEX Review: Part I NCLEX Review: Part II NCLEX Review: Part III NCLEX Review: Part IV NCLEX Vocab Review NCLEX Math Review You need to know your true interests before you make a career decision. Career experts believe matching your interests to actual job tasks is most fulfilling long-term. But knowing your interests is harder than it seems. Many have a ready-set list of things they do or don’t like without fully examining why they feel this way in the first place. For example, many confuse their enjoyment of shopping with the ability to become a clothing designer. It’s possible a shopper can learn how to become a designer, but the part of shopping that engages her might be the research involved and not the clothes. She might have terrible aesthetic sense but an astute business capacity. Essentially, people need to make an honest personal assessment to know what they want. In order to know your career competency, you also need to assess the level of your current skills. Meeting with a career counselor, taking aptitude tests, or seeking advice from an industry expert will help you find out. You can then figure out how to improve your skills through education. Before you pick a school, you need to determine the type of learning style that best suits you. Education experts have found that the three most common ways of learning are auditory, experiential, and visual. Knowing which way you learn will help you learn new concepts most effectively and maximize your time in school. It will also help you determine your job suitability. A visual learner is more likely to find architecture or design work more fulfilling and fun. Read Full Article National, news, Employer News 2013-05-30T22:12:00-05:00 http://www.campusrn.com/jobblog/how_to_pick_a_career_you_actually_like/ /jobblog/how_to_pick_a_career_you_actually_like/#When:22:09:00Z Most career problems stem from the fact that we are terrible at picking jobs. We think we are picking a good job and then it turns out to be a bad job. It’s almost impossible to pick a good job on the first try, actually. So don’t think you’ll be the exception. Economist Neil Howe says that only 5% of people pick the right job on the first try. He calls those people “fast starters” and in general, they are less creative, less adventurous, and less innovative, which makes a conventional, common path work well for them. So it’s questionable whether you should even aspire to be one of those people who picks right the first try. But, that said, we all still want to be good at choosing paths for ourselves. So, here are some guidelines to think about—whether it’s our first career or our fifth career. We have a grass-is-greener approach to professions that are not our own. For example, this award-winnng video from Chipotle about farmers becoming more animal-friendly pretends that it’s just a mental and emotional evolution for farmers to realize that going back to nature, and being good to animals, is what feels best, so they should do it. It’s so easy, for example, to take the pigs out of an assembly line. The Chipotle video is total crap, to be honest. It’s not that farmers don’t know that pigs on pasture is nicer. It’s that there is no market for pigs on pasture because consumers won’t pay enough to eat humane meat (without farrowing crates, for example, pork prices would quadruple). So the idea that being a farmer is so beautiful and back-to-the land is just absurd. Being a farmer is actually really complicated, hard entrepreneurial work with very low wages. Another example of a hyped up job is a lawyer. You see their exciting life on TV: a gloriously safe path from college to law school to a high paying job. But behind the scenes, each year the American Bar Association conducts a survey to ask if lawyers would recommend their profession to other people, and the vast majority of lawyers say no. Pick a Lifestyle, Not a Job Title Look at the lives you see people having, and ask yourself whose life you would want. That’s easy, right? But now look deeper. You can’t just have the life they have now. You have to have the life they lead to get there. So, Taylor Swift has had great success, and now she gets to pretty much do whatever she wants. But could you do what she did to get there? She had her whole family relocate so she could pursue her dreams in Nashville. Do you want a life of such high-stakes, singular commitment? Look at the successful writers you read. Most of them wrote for years in obscurity, risking long-term financial doom in order to keep writing. Do you really want that path for yourself? Marylou Kelly Streznewski, author of Gifted Grownups, finds that most people who are exceptionally creative have to give up almost everything else in order to pursue “creativity with a big C.” For most people, that path is not appealing. The same is true for startup founders. It’s a terrible life, to be honest. Your finances will be ruined, you won’t have time for anything else in your life, and your company will probably fail. So when you decide you want to do a startup, look at the life the person had before their company got stable. Most people would want to run their own, well-funded company and control their own hours. Very few people would want the life you have to live to get to that point. Don’t Overcommit Testing out lots of different jobs is a great idea. Job hopping is the sign of someone who is genuinely trying to figure out where they fit. Quitting when you know you’re in the wrong spot is a natural way to find the right spot. A resume with lots of wrong turns is not cataclysmic. You can hire a good resume writer to fix the resume so it looks like you actually had focus and purpose. (Really, I rewrite peoples’ resumes all the time. It’s about telling a story and everyone has a way to tell a good story about their career no matter how many times they’ve changed jobs.) The important thing is to not overcommit to one path. Graduate school, for example, is overcommiting because if you don’t end up liking that field, you will have spent four years gaining entrance into the field. Taking on college debt is overcommitting because you are, effectively, saying you will ony take jobs that are relatively high paying in order to service the debt. Read Full Article National, news, Employer News 2013-05-30T22:09:00-05:00 http://www.campusrn.com/jobblog/making_change/ /jobblog/making_change/#When:00:02:00Z Navigating your way to success Do you remember the wooden labyrinth game from childhood? Or maybe you even still have one. It’s that game in which you move a metal ball around a maze without letting it fall into any of the holes. Knowing the path to the finish is clearly not enough – there are those darned holes that you need to get around! Attaining your goals is a lot like that game. You might know some good advice about how to open your own business, lose weight, or develop a loving relationship; but, ultimately, success is in how you negotiate obstacles and pitfalls. Success – in both the game and in your endeavors to meet your goals – is dependent upon knowing the “field” (the best route to your personal finish line) and knowing how to move through it. The path is something you get to know by thinking critically about your circumstance so that you can learn to manage problems and move toward your goal. For instance, losing weight will likely include some change in diet and regular exercise. Finding the love of your life might include efforts at self-improvement and/or finding out where you can meet potential partners. You can learn more about these kinds of solutions by googling the topic, finding related self-help materials, or talking with friends. The next step of actually following through with your plans is much trickier – like trying to successfully roll that ball through the maze. The best way to do this is by developing compassionate self-awareness – a combination of self-awareness and self-compassion. In the section below, I address how you can increase self-awareness. Consider each suggestion, working on one at a time. You can do this by either thinking in-depth about the topic, journaling about it, and/or talking with someone you trust. Pay attention to your thoughts. People’s thoughts flow almost continuously throughout the day. So, knowing and understanding yourself requires that you be mindful of them. To do this, make it a point to occasionally make note of your thoughts through the day. You might find it helpful to do this at particular times, such as when you are driving to work or preparing dinner. You might also find it enlightening to attend to your thoughts when you are particularly distressed. Listen to them as you would listen to someone else talking. You might notice particular themes in content or ways of thinking (e.g. being optimistic/pessimistic, rambling/focused). At this point, you don’t need to try to change anything: just observing is a big enough step. Your thoughts about you, others, and the world are guided by your beliefs. For instance, if you believe that people will take advantage of others whenever they get a chance, your thoughts will be filled with suspicions about how they might be doing this to you. Or, if you believe that you are somehow flawed or inadequate, many of your thoughts will be related to these self-perceptions. As you make the effort to attend to your thoughts, your underlying beliefs might become apparent. Pay attention to your feelings. Your emotions are as much a part of you as your thoughts. While thoughts can affect your emotions, emotions can also very much affect your thoughts. For instance, your suspicions that your boyfriend is cheating on you will likely leave you feeling angry, hurt, and sad. And, continuing to carry feelings of being betrayed from a previous relationship might lead you to be more suspicious of your current boyfriend’s actions. Of course, this can also affect your behavior; perhaps leading you to check his text messages or snoop in his jacket pockets. Just as with your thoughts, you want to just pay attention to your feelings without the intention of trying to change them (be mindful of them). Practice being aware of your emotions, as well as identifying them. And, observe the consequences of your emotions, such as how it affects your thoughts and behaviors. National, news, Employer News 2013-05-29T00:02:00-05:00 http://www.campusrn.com/jobblog/overcoming_obstacles_to_happiness_and_success/ /jobblog/overcoming_obstacles_to_happiness_and_success/#When:00:00:00Z In my last blog, Navigating Your Way to Success, I compared attaining success to navigating the labyrinth game in which you roll a metal ball around a maze, trying to avoid holes along the way. I basically explained that by being self-aware, you can see some of the pitfalls in your own path to success. Nobody gets through the maze – or life – without falling at least sometimes. So, it’s important to be able to handle those setbacks well. By being self-accepting and having compassion for your struggles, you can remain calm during difficult times and be resilient when you fall in one of those holes (getting back to negotiating that maze). Self-compassion can prove to be a real challenge if you tend to relate to yourself in a negative way; but it is a worthy goal that can be reached. A good way to begin is by practicing acceptance of your experiences. Whether you are comfortable or not with your thoughts and feelings, you are experiencing them. So, take time to allow yourself to be aware of, and curious about, them. Acknowledge them without judgment. When you do judge, note how being harsh makes you feel worse; and return to just being aware. When you struggle with being critical of yourself, it might be helpful to imagine a child in a similar situation; and how you would respond. For instance, you might be stressed at work and angry with yourself for not doing as well as you’d like. If you cannot stop beating yourself up, you might want to consider how you would respond to a child who was struggling at school. Would you tell her what a failure she is? Would you berate her for not being smart or capable? Or, would you wrap your arms around her and tell her you care, letting her know that you are there to help? If you treated her the way you treat yourself, she would certainly feel worse about her situation and herself. However, you probably wouldn’t do that. Instead, your actions would be more similar to the second option. And, as a result, she would eventually stop crying and, even though she still had a problem, at least feel loved, hopeful, and supported in trying hard again. Read Full Article National, news, Employer News 2013-05-29T00:00:00-05:00