101: Nursing on your terms as a Graduate Nurse - Grad Nursing Success Series
Nursing on your terms as a Graduate Nurse - Grad Nursing Success Series
Welcome to another episode of the Grad Nursing Success Series. In this latest episode, I talked about nursing on your own terms. As a graduate nurse, it's easy to follow traditional nursing pathways, but it's important to remember that you have the power to create your own unique path.
I want to remind you that failure is a natural part of the learning process, and I encourage graduate nurses nursing on their own terms to embrace it and not let it discourage them from pursuing their dreams and goals.
This episode is packed with valuable advice and takeaways for graduate nurses looking to forge their own paths in the nursing profession. Listen to learn how to create a fulfilling and successful nursing career tailored to you.
Key takeaways:
03:04 - Network and connection
05:15 - Create opportunities for yourself
07:08 - Importance of having a professional brand
09:57 - You must embrace as a nurse on your terms graduate nurse is your ability to fail
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**This transcript was automatically generated using Descript.**
I want you to fail a hundred times because the more that you fail, the more I know that you're trying and the more that you are trying, the more chance there is of success. Hello and welcome back to the Graduate Nurse Success Series with me your host, Liam Caswell. Welcome back. Today we are talking all things nursing on your terms as a graduate nurse. Did you know that you can do whatever the heck you want with your nursing career? So much fun. I feel like I should get that put on a t-shirt cause you guys won't believe me until you create the results for yourself.
So in this short episode today, I want to speak to the people that have listened to the graduate episode about graduate programs that have listened to the specialty episode, that have listened to the international nursing episode, even if you're not an international nurse, because there's lots of gold in there.
And then I want you to listen to this one and you're saying to yourself, mm, none of those three paths really resonate with me. I wanna do any of those things. You, my friend, are in the right place because we got you covered today. cause you, my friend, want a nurse on your own terms and I love that. I'm here for it.
I love, love, love it. Okay, so let's talk about what does it look like when you're nursing on your own terms? This's, just like a little fancy sentence for you're doing whatever the heck. Okay. And you can do that as a graduate nurse in Australia. And I think that it's worth putting out into the universe that you can do whatever the heck you want with your nursing degree because it is what it is.
Yours 100%. Once you get your iPads, yours. So what does it look like to nurse on your own terms? Is it even possible? Like how hard is it? What do you need to be thinking about? How do you even do it? All of those things gonna be covered in less than 10 to 15 minutes. Let's do it. Nursing on your terms is totally possible.
And if you're somebody that's thinking like, I need to create a unique path for myself because of X, Y, and Z family commitments, traveling, whatever you have going on in your life, give yourself the permission to explore nursing on your own terms. You could do this alongside applying for the graduate programs, just for the experience and just to see if they can meet your needs.
I never ever want you to rule anything out because you think it won't work. I want you to. Evidence that it won't work for you personally, cause everything works. It's just will it work for you? And we wanna make sure that you give yourself all the options. We want to have a beautiful buffet of graduate nursing options at the end of your graduate applications, whether or not your graduate nurse program, specialty program, international nurse, or your nursing on your terms.
There are four key kind of pathways. So the nursing on your terms path is one that is less traveled, but it doesn't mean that it's not doable. So what I want you to be thinking about when you are nursing on your terms, I've got four main things for you to take away today.
Number one is I want you to think about network and connection.
I don't want you to waste any opportunities where you are meeting people that are in the position of power where they could potentially hire you directly from your graduate nursing degree. Okay, so I want you to really think about who do you know in your network? Who do you know that knows somebody? That knows somebody?
Okay? It's all about who you know, especially in this path. How is your LinkedIn profile looking? Are you connecting with people who are potentially gonna be hiring you in the nursing on your terms world? How can you elevate that a bit more so that you can start connecting with people? Maybe you have a specific job in mind that you want to do that's not within a program.
How can you connect with those people either through LinkedIn, through cold outreach? Maybe you want to email them, maybe you wanna call them, maybe you want to nip in and have a coffee with them. I don't know what that looks like for you, but get creative. Allow yourself to come up with a hundred ways of which you could actually get into your dream job outside of a program.
It's totally possible. So it's very important that you connect with the people that are gonna be making these decisions and that you start networking and thinking outside of the box. I want you to be thinking about recruitment companies, I want you to send your CV to them and say, Hey, do you have any opportunities available?
I'm a graduate nurse. I don't wanna do a program. I don't wanna do X, Y, and Z. Here are my criteria. Do you have anything available? I want you to get off the traditional job boards and go and look at different job boards, go into LinkedIn jobs. I want you to go into Glassdoor. Indeed, seek all of these boards, have different job opportunities available to them.
I even want you to look at some of the recruitment agency boards cause they also have different jobs available to them. I want you to go to government organizations. I spoke to a graduate last year who called me at the end of the graduate and they were working in quality as a graduate. Like they had got a graduate project officer job in quality.
Amazing, perfect telehealth. Think of all the things you could do. I'm not gonna go into all the things, but you could do all of them. And it happens through networking, getting your name out there and sussing out in your local area. What's actually possible. Remember, we don't just create a story in our brain that something's not possible until we've collected all the evidence to prove that it is.
That's your challenge.
Number two feeds off number one, but create opportunities for yourself. I want you to think about this. You walk into the Apple store, if you're an Apple person, if you're a Samsung, Android, same thing. You walk into the Apple store and you're not going in to buy anything, right? You just got in for a look for a brow.
Those that can't see me, I'm inverted brackets for a brow, and you walk in and somebody approaches you and says, By the way, we've got this amazing new device that we've just released and it has all these features and it's gonna change your life. And you know, your nursing query light, it's gonna make so much easier.
You can calculate your drip like X one and you blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And they give you all the features and you're compelled and you're like, Oh, I don't need it, but maybe I'll buy it. Maybe I do need it. And you start convincing yourself that maybe you do need it, that my friend, is what you want to be doing.
If you're a nursing and your terms person, you wanna present yourself in such a way that you create a massive opportunities for yourself. You wanna show up and be like, You don't want this, like really like, have you seen this? This is incredible. I have so much to offer, and here it is. Here's the planner of why I'm amazing for this job, and that's not overconfident and that's not arrogant for those people that are gonna message me, that is called self-confidence.
That is knowing that you are incredible and that you have something of value to offer, cause you all do and it is different for each and every one of you. So if you're somebody that wants to get in to nurse on your own terms, think about how you can create opportunities for yourself where maybe they don't exist.
I've done this myself in my career. I've watched graduate nurses do this. Connect with the people that you like, that you want to work for, and then make them an offer. It's like business. Make them an offer. So good that they can't resist it. That they need it. That they want it, okay, that it has a reward for them.
If you can do that, you will create amazing opportunities for yourself. Now, how do you do that? Well, of course, I'm gonna tell you it's number three. It's the importance of having a professional brand. Communicating your awesome skills on your application, being very strategic in your outreach, and then selling your unique skillset at interview.
I cannot iterate enough, iterate. I cannot reiterate enough the importance of having an amazing CV cover ladder selection criteria and interview technique and belief in your abilities to deliver without any of those things. If you're missing something or you're maybe setting a life, 70, 80% belief in any of those things, they're gonna sniff it out a mile.
Like a little sniffer dog. They're gonna see it coming, right? They identify it, they can see the panel, have senses. They're human. Okay? They will sense it. So what I want you to think about is how can you elevate your professional brand? By professional brand, I mean your cv, cover letter selection criteria, LinkedIn profile.
You must have a LinkedIn profile if you're nursing on your own terms, people will try and find you. They will search you. Make it good. Not average, exceptional. Blow them away. cause here's the. You know, that analogy of walking into the Apple store, humans like nice things. If that new product was like absolutely stunning, and it was like, wow, oh my God, I can have that.
That's incredible. Like, that's with my budget. I can do that. Even if it wasn't that great, people would buy it. That's just the psychology of being human. That's what we do every day. We find stuff on Amazon. We buy it just for the look event rather than whether or not it actually works. So when you think about that, how can you, and you want to actually work and deliver, right?
But I want you to think about and take that learning in the delivery of you as an amazing solution to whatever problem they have. You are basically like a business. Think about it. You're offering them a service, the employer, and they're paying you in return. It's a business. You're self-employed until you're employed.
You get where I'm coming from, right? So professionally, brand yourself in a way that makes the employer want to have you. This applies for all of the pathways. If you think that you can send out a crappy application and people are gonna want it, think again, they don't want it, they don't want you, they will just rule you out straight away.
So nursing in your terms, you guys have to put more work into the space. You have to really show them cause you are going against the norm. Whenever we go against the norm, we have to be willing to go above and beyond. We cannot just sit at a hundred percent. We have to give them 110. So cv, cover letter selection criteria, and professional branding.
And then developing your skillset in your ability to tell the employer through compelling information why you're the best. Why should they take you? They don't even have a job, but why should they choose you? Because I'll tell you what, if you're incredible and they can see your potential even as a graduate nurse and they see a future for you in the organization, they will make a job available everywhere is short staffed.
Just remember that everywhere is short staffed. The final thing that you must embrace as a nurse on your terms graduate nurse is your ability to fail. I want you to increase your failure tolerance. Yes. I want you to go out there and. Multiple times. I want you to fail a hundred times because the more that you fail, the more I know that you're trying and the more that you are trying, the more chance there is of success.
Think about it. Apply for one job, fail. There's no other opportunities coming. Apply for 10 jobs and fail at five. You've still got five in the running. It's just a game. It's just a strategy game. But here's what most of you will do, and it will stop most of you from actually trying to nurse on your terms.
You'll apply for one job and then you'll fail and you won't get out because it is much harder on a nursing in your terms pathway because you're literally having to create opportunities for yourself and you're having to go against the industry. Hello. That's why it's hard and you will fail and people will say no.
And when you get a no, if you make that mean anything about you and your abilities and your capabilities moving forward, it will like literally strangle you. It will like stop you from taking the next step. So how can you invite in all the failure? How can you get used to accepting failure as part of the process?
You have probably been Ren conditioned your whole life to never. You probably have stories about how bad it is to fail, and here's this weirdo online telling you you could fail more. You do have to fail more. You must must embrace failure. You must increase your tolerance to failure. If it's currently at zero, you've gotta at least get it to 10%.
You've gotta be 10% willing to fail. All of you listening, whether you're on this pathway or any of the other three pathways we've talked about so far in the series, you must be willing to fail cause if you're not, it's going to eat you up. You will make it mean something that is not actually factually true and then you will not get the job or the result that you want.
Okay, so the more that you embrace failure, it's really funny. I've learned this to be true through my career and through watching hundreds of people develop their career. The more you embrace failure, the more likely you are to succeed. How is that even possible? It's because you give yourself more opportunity.
It's because you build self-confidence, self-belief, self resilience in the process. It's because you start to associate failure with a positive thing, like trying instead of a negative thing like your shit. That's not actually true. Some people fail and they're very happy about it. I just let that sink in.
Some people fail and they're very, very pleased with themselves that they failed. So I want you to build your failure tolerance. This is just through exposure, my friend, and it's through getting curious about the stories that you tell yourself when you do fail. cause it's inevitable. You will trip up as a nurse.
You will quote, unquote fail. You might give the wrong medication, you might do something, you might, you know, give the wrong information. You might not deliver the breaking bad news very well. You will fail. Something will happen. You might not connect that IV to the IV like it all happens, but you get to decide what you make that mean about yourself and whether or not it's gonna stop you from moving forward.
cause when we increase our failure tolerance, we increase our ability to succeed. So those are the four things that I wanted to share with you today. If you are somebody that is looking to nurse on your terms, make sure that you've downloaded or nursing on your terms free application guide 2023. It's pretty awesome.
There's free trainings in there. I step you through the workbook. I give you lots of things to think about. It's tailored uniquely to your path, and I want you at the end of that to see what is possible for you. If that is something that is of interest to you, go and download it right. It's free. It's 100% free.
It costs you your email. Free. And then I will send you lots of amazing resources through our email platform so that I can help you set up yourself for success as a nursing in your terms. Graduate in 2023. If you're somebody that's not in nursing in your terms, but you want one of those guides, remember, there are four different types of guides, four different trainers.
Come and get them. Come and join us and let us help you make it much easier to undergrad in 2023. Until next time, I been Liam. Stay safe, stay forever curious, and I'll see you in the next episode.
