Ep #20: Job Hunt: Know Your Worth

Welcome to Becoming a Stress-Free Nurse Practitioner, a show for new NPs and students that want to pass their board exam the first time and make that transition from RN to NP as seamless as possible. I’m your host Sarah Michelle. Now, let’s dive into today’s episode.

Hey, hey there friends. I haven’t done a solo episode in a while and definitely felt it was time to talk to you guys one on one about something that’s been laying heavy on heart here recently. As you guys know I recently released a brand new course all about the ins and outs of the job hunt. And the reason I created that course for you is because I’ve seen so many of you over this last year fall into one of two traps after passing boards.

Number one, either it takes you a really long time to find a job. Like we’re talking several months, maybe even an entire year. Or number two, you quickly accept the first job you’re offered and potentially end up in a job that wasn’t your best fit. And so why do we do this to ourselves, guys? How do we end up in one of these two traps of the job hunt?

Well, just like with your board exam today we’re going to be talking about your mindset and ultimately knowing your worth. Remember how your mindset so deeply impacted your ability to take your board exam and pass? Your mindset regarding the job search is going to impact what job you land just as much. And so let’s spend this episode together rebooting just a little bit and helping you to find the job that you truly want and the job that you deserve.

And we’re going to spend the bulk of this episode talking about trap number two, which is accepting any job offer that is offered to you. I want to start off this episode with a story that I also tell in my new course, which is about my first real job opportunity in the nurse practitioner world.

Y’all, I was pumped about this opportunity. It was in a small private practice, and I was intimately familiar with their inner workings because I completed clinical rotations there for almost nine months. I had rotated my clinicals with several providers at this practice and thought it would be the ultimate place to be supported and nurtured as a novice nurse practitioner as everybody already knew me and I already knew them.

I was very green, so to speak, to my surroundings. Especially since all of the providers that worked there had worked there for years. It was such a small practice that hiring anyone new very rarely happened and so when I finished up school and they told me they had a job opportunity for me if I was willing to wait a couple of months I clung on really, really tight and bid my time.

And so when the big day finally came, and I got the call that it was finally my time to be a real deal nurse practitioner I was absolutely blinded in every way possible by my excitement. I was going to be the real deal and it was going to be in what I felt was my dream job.

I drove out to the clinic the very next day after the call to discuss with the main physician my salary, my benefits, and all the details of the position. I sat down across from the main physician bright eyed and bushy tailed, ready to do whatever it took to win his approval and keep this job. And so suddenly I found myself agreeing to things in this meeting that didn’t sound like a job that I even wanted, but I desperately didn’t want to give up the opportunity.

And so let me give you all a quick run down of what was offered to me. I wasn’t going to be offered any orientation time. Even though I had hardly ever charted there before and my last clinical at that practice was almost a year ago by the point of this meeting. There were no benefits of any kind except for vacation when I hit the two year mark at the practice.

I was entirely responsible to fund my own DEA number and my practice insurance. There would be no admin time offered. And the icing on this cake was $40 an hour with no room for advancement with performance. There would also not be a set contract in place for either of us. And everything was going to be agreed to verbally between me and the owner of the practice.

Guys, the scary part of this story is not this job offer, even though it’s horrendous. The genuinely scary part is the fact that I took an entire week to mull it over and consider it. An entire week of pondering this offer. No one had ever prepared me for what job offers looked like in the nurse practitioner world and since I was the first nurse practitioner in my family and in my group of friends, I had no basis for what would be considered a good offer and what would be considered an offer to run from.

In an act of literally true desperation, I had no idea what else to do, I called up Molly B. from podcast episode 4, frantically looking for any and all advice that she would possibly give me. And our conversation snapped me into reality almost immediately. Molly began challenging not only the offer itself, but also challenged why I was even considering such an offer in the first place.

And when we discussed this same conversation months later, she actually told me she felt really bad because she felt she had burst my bubble so quickly. But guys, all I could do was thank her. And I am still thanking you Molly B. for being exactly the push that I needed to not take that job.

Because what Molly did for me in that phone call was bring me down off of that teetering edge to remind me of all the things that I couldn’t be sure of myself at that time. I would find another job, which I did, by the way that would meet all of my needs. If I fell into this chaotic job, I would be putting myself in my best position to fail in this profession, not to grow, not to learn and definitely not to succeed.

And don’t we all hope to truly grow, learn, and succeed once we’re finally out of school and practicing on our own? Absolutely. What Molly acknowledged for me was my own self-worth, that I wasn’t willing or really quite ready to recognize yet. I thought my worth was negated by the fact that I was a new graduate nurse practitioner and had no experience to bring to the table for this employer.

But I truly had it all backwards, guys. And so these days I strongly encourage new nurse practitioners to be a bit picky in their job search,
as crazy as that might sound to some of you. And that is with the sheer hope of you falling love with this profession, instead of falling out of it almost immediately.

So in this episode, and in my new job hunt course that just released I’m here to be for you who Molly was for me back then. If being picky about your job search and not just taking any job offer to you sounded entirely bananas, then you’re in the right place. You are in the need of a mindset shift so that you can truly articulate your worth, not only to future employers but also to yourself. And when we take just any job offer out there, it is rooted in a mindset of lack and scarcity, which just simply means you feel like you have to take this job because there won’t be any other offers to come behind it.

Over saturation of the job market is not actually the problem for new graduate nurse practitioners. Instead, if you’re not getting those job offers, it’s likely related to how you’re searching. There are several statistics out there to support that there are plenty of nurse practitioner jobs available for you if you know how to find them.

And one of the best ways to find that job that you want is to start by looking introspectively at yourself and really capturing your sense of self-worth. If you believe you are worthy of the job of your dreams it will be easier to find it and accept it when the time comes, you’ll be ready. We must affirm to ourselves that we are deserving of the right opportunity and the right fit for a job. And there are plenty of jobs out there for us.

I used to tell myself that very mantra daily, I will find the right fit for me and deserving of the job that I actually want. I don’t have to settle because there are plenty of opportunities out there.

Now, I do want to make the point here that knowing your worth doesn’t mean you have to be like the king or queen of confidence. You’re new and you’re nervous, and maybe you’re not the most confident quite yet. And guys, that’s totally okay. It is 100% normal to be feeling this way as you’re making one of the toughest transitions of your career and you’re also now in an elevated job search in an up leveled market that you’ve never been in before.

However, knowing your worth can show up in a lot of ways without you having to reek confidence out of every pore. During the job search specifically, knowing your worth can look like not applying for jobs that don’t even meet your bare minimum requirements because you already know deep down it’s not a good fit for you. Knowing your worth is showing up to interviews prepared with a list of tangibles of why you deserve a job and why you would be a good fit. And that’s something I talk very heavily about in my new course, you know, how to build that list and how to be ready for interviews.

Then when you’re in the thick of the job search knowing your worth can show up a bit differently. Knowing your worth means that you don’t accept a low ball salary offer just because you’re new and nervous. Knowing your worth means that you don’t step into a four year contract that you didn’t want just so that you can have a job. Knowing your worth means negotiating your contract, which spoiler alert for the course by the way, you can, and you should negotiate as a new grad nurse practitioner.

And lastly, knowing your worth certainly means that you get an orientation as a new graduate nurse practitioner. Because even if you’ve done clinicals there before, you absolutely deserve that dedicated time to learning your new role in its fullest capacity. That gives you your very best opportunity to truly grow within this profession and take it on in the best position possible.

And by the way, if you’ve already done one of those things that I just listed off, there’s no shame, there’s no guilt. You made the best decision with the information you had at the time, and that’s okay. But let’s work on that together moving forward, so that you can make your next decision around worth on more solid footing and with the most information possible. And definitely not in a mindset of lack or scarcity.

And so to tie up this quick episode, friends, I invite you to join me on my new job hunt course. We deep dive into how to find a job, interviewing, breaking down job offers, contract negotiations, and ultimately how to overhaul those old negative thought loops like the market is over saturated or no one is hiring new grad nurse practitioners that only hold you back and are only opinions. They’re not facts, guys. They’re absolutely not facts and we debunk all that in the course.

Truly, you know I have cheerleadered so many of you out there listening through your board exam. And really now my goal is to cheerlead for you again and get you into the right job for you, not just any job out there. You have the power and the capability to find that job. And I have all the tools that you need to do so. And so let’s join forces together in this new course to get you through this job search. As always, I’m rooting for you guys. And I’ll talk to you again next week.

As an extra bonus, friends, if you’re looking for support no matter what phase of your nurse practitioner journey that you’re currently in I have communities available for both students and new nurse practitioners. In these communities we work to uplift one another and grow this profession together every single day. Links to join will be included for you in the show notes.

Thanks for listening to Becoming a Stress-Free Nurse Practitioner. If you want more information about the different types of support we offer to students and new NPs, visit https://www.npreviews.com/resources. See you next week.