Despite the fact that nursing is a fast-growing industry with an overall positive career outlook, finding the right job isn’t easy. To search for openings, most nurses take the approach of preparing their resume and using web searches.
This ultimately leads them to job boards, which aren’t the best resources when looking for the right long-term career fit. Here’s a closer look at the job board process, and some of the inherent issues with using a job board to find your nursing positions.
How Do Job Boards Work?
Job boards are tools used by companies and recruiters to advertise open positions. Because their goal is to reach the broadest pool of candidates, their listings are often generic. Many times, they lack key information about the position such as hours. They may also fail to list the critical qualities they need in a candidate, which in the field of nursing, could include specialty certifications, experience levels, or other important qualifications.
Nurses use job boards to browse through openings, often applying to as many as they can. After applications are received, an employer will use an applicant tracking system (ATS) powered by bots to rank candidates based on how well their resume and application match up to the job posting. This approach introduces some issues for both the nurses and the employers, however.
The Problems with Using Job Boards for Nursing Positions
While the ATS is meant to save time and streamline the hiring process, it has several weaknesses. For instance, if the applicant’s resume isn’t formatted in the precise way the system requires, it could cause a good candidate to be overlooked. Moreover, only a handful of candidates are even looked at—sometimes in the order they’re received—which could cause employers to miss out on the most qualified nurses.
Lack of communication is also a major barrier to job board success. Candidates who don’t get the job are rarely informed if the position is filled, so they’re left wondering whether they’re still actively being considered. Plus, because bots process the applications and not humans, candidates struggle to find an actual person with whom they can follow up.
Nurses may have specific scheduling requirements but can’t list this information in a resume when trying to secure a job. Likewise, job postings may not include all of the requirements they need in a nurse. The process is time-intensive and drawn out; generic job boards may attract an extremely wide pool of candidates or have a large volume of nursing positions open, and it will take a long time for either side to sift through information and find the right match. The screening and onboarding processes can be lengthy and still result in a poor fit, leaving both the nurse and employer having to start from scratch. Nurses are left to perform the time-consuming task of scrolling through job boards just to find something that might be a good fit.
A Better Alternative to Job Boards
Fortunately, there’s a better approach for pairing nurses and employers. Mutual Nursing provides job matching services exclusively for nurses, instead of all occupations (as with generic job boards). We ensure a precise fit by taking the nurse’s needs into consideration first, from scheduling requirements to preferred work environments. With this information, we pair qualified nurses with the openings that satisfy their preferences. Instead of having nurses scour through job boards to find openings, we allow the facilities to search for them. This ensures nurses find the right position from the start to save time and hassle for everyone.
Allow Mutual Nursing to search for the right career fit based on your preferences, by joining the network and filling out your application.