Nursing, a career in high demand across many areas of the country, requires a sense of compassion and a bachelor’s degree. While some registered nurses are satisfied with their work and have no desire to work as an advanced nurse, others consider furthering their education, and seeking an advanced nursing career. The options for advancing your nursing career, both through education and career paths, are numerous, making it challenging to make the right choices for your career.
What Are Your Options In Advanced Nursing?
Before entering an advanced nursing degree program, it is important to evaluate your career options to ensure you are making the right choice. An advanced nursing degree beyond a bachelor’s degree opens many doors for registered nurses. While some registered nurses already specialize in a particular area, an advanced nursing degree narrows your specialties and allows you to mold your career into a specific area of medicine. Registered nurse specialties do not offer the same advantages as an advanced degree.
As you consider your options for an advanced nursing degree, you must research the career options that as a result will become available to you. Nurses who hold an advanced degree can choose from areas, such as:
Certified Registered Nurse Anesthetist
Advanced Nurse Practitioner
Certified Nurse Specialist
Nurse Attorney
Nurse Researcher
Certified Nurse Midwife
Nurses who choose to become certified nurse specialists can select just about any medical specialization, including hematology, managed care, occupational health, pain management and psychiatry. This allows each nurse to choose an area that best appeals to his or her interests.
Why Consider A Specialty Advanced Degree?
Employers are typically interested in hiring someone who is success driven and eager to advance. When you complete a specialty advanced degree, you increase your marketability, making you a more appealing candidate. In addition, you increase your earning potential and become a more valuable employee, improving your chances for future promotions.
Choosing Your Specialty
Some nurses seek out specialties that offer the highest rate of pay. When choosing your specialty, however, it is also important to look at your unique interests and then use those interests to determine the best specialty for your ideal nursing career. For instance, if you are interested in helping women, before, during and after the birth of a child, becoming a certified nurse midwife is likely the best option for you. Working with a career counselor, particularly one at a nursing school, will help you evaluate your strengths, weaknesses, and interests to find the perfect advanced nursing career so you can provide the best quality of care to your patients.
The Path To An Advanced Nursing Career
Once you know where you want your advanced nursing career path to lead, you must determine how to get there. The first step in the process is to choose a graduate school that offers an advanced nursing program. Before you choose a school, you should ask the following questions:
What are the prerequisites for the program, including GPA and GRE scores?
How long is the program and is it available full or part time?
Does the school offer online options?
What options does the school offer for financial aid?
What is the experience of the faculty?
Are there field experiences available?
Is the school accredited by the proper organizations?
Do they offer job placement assistance programs?
Registered nurses who wish to earn a master’s degree in nursing can expect to spend two to three years finishing the advanced nursing program. A doctorate typically takes three to four years to complete. The length of time to complete the program will vary depending on the school you choose, as well as your course load and other factors. According to CostOwl.com, advanced nursing degrees cost between $76,808 and $89,243, plus the cost of books and other fees. Most schools offer financial assistance through a variety of methods to help with these costs.
If you are considering an advanced nursing degree to advance beyond a registered nurse, you have plenty of options. Weight all the factors to make the best choice to advance your career and meet your goals.
This article was written by Inbound Marketing Coordinator Tiana Tucker on behalf of CAREEREALISM-Approved Partner, 2U – education-technology company that partners with higher education institutions such as Simmons College School of Nursing and Health Sciences to deliver their Master of Science in Nursing degree for aspiring Family Nurse Practitioners.
Is your job search turning into a grind with no end in sight? It may be time to take a step back and reevaluate your entire approach.
In cold weather climates, the beginning of spring is a time to clean the house and get organized—a practice known as spring cleaning. Through the years, spring cleaning has taken on a larger meaning with people using the time to organize and declutter things in their lives.
For professionals on the job hunt, a little spring cleaning (metaphorically speaking) could be a great way to reinvigorate your job search. Here are a few strategies your job search spring cleaning should include.
Reevaluate Your Job Search Approach
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Make a list of the last handful of jobs you applied for and see if you can identify any positive or negative trends. Consider things like:
How did I learn about this job?
How did I apply for the job?
Did I earn an interview?
What was the ultimate result?
A lot can be learned about your job search approach just by answering these questions and identifying patterns. For example:
Negative Trends
You discovered five jobs through job boards, applied to all of them via the job boards, and never heard back from any of them.
The common pattern here is applying through job boards. This isn't to say that job boards don't serve a purpose in the job search process, but they have their limitations, and you can't run your job search entirely off of them. When you apply through a job board, there's a good chance that your materials will never get past the applicant tracking system (ATS) and never be seen by an actual person.
One simple fix is to research who the hiring manager or recruiter is that posted the position and email your materials to them directly.
The more efficient fix would be to take a proactive approach by putting together a bucket list of companies that you want to work for and start making connections on LinkedIn with people who work at those companies. You may already know some people who work there or have connections that can refer you to some individuals.
This is a great way to network your way onto a company's radar.
Positive Trends
You applied to three jobs via referral, were invited to two job interviews, and made it through multiple rounds of interviews for one of the jobs before being passed over for someone with a little more experience.
The pattern here is that getting referred to a job by a professional acquaintance is a great way to land a job interview. This indicates that you're leveraging your network well and you should continue to focus on your networking efforts.
The next step is to review the interview process and determine what went well and what needs to be improved. Sometimes the interviewer will provide feedback, and that feedback can be valuable. However, not everyone is comfortable with giving feedback.
Chances are you probably have a good idea about areas of improvement and the skills you need to gain. Put together a plan for addressing those shortfalls.
The good news in making it deep into any interview process is that it indicates that the company likes you as a potential employee (even if the timing just wasn't right) and the experience could be a roadmap to a job with that company at a later date, or another similar opportunity elsewhere.
Give Your Resume & Cover Letter Some Much-Needed Attention
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Are you continuously sending similar resumes and cover letters to each job opening with only minor adjustments? If so, your strategy needs some serious spring cleaning.
The reason why it's so important to tailor your resume is that throughout your career, you acquire numerous skills, but the job you're applying for may only be focusing on 6-8 of those skills. In that case, those skills must rise to the top of the resume with quantifiable examples of how you successfully used those skills at previous jobs.
Remember, recruiters go through hundreds of resumes. They need to be able to tell from a quick glance whether or not you're a potential candidate for the position.
While updating your resume, you could also spruce up your LinkedIn profile by highlighting the skill sets that you want to be noticed for by recruiters.
As for writing a good cover letter, the key to success is writing a disruptive cover letter. When you write a disruptive cover letter, you're basically telling a story. The story should focus on how you connect with the particular company and job position. The story could also focus on your personal journey, and how you got to where you currently are in your career.
If your resumes and cover letters aren't unique, now is the time to clean things up and get on track.
Build Your Personal Brand
Just because you're looking for work doesn't mean that you don't have anything to offer. Use previous career experiences and passions to build your personal brand.
Ask yourself, "How do I want other professionals to view me?"
Pick an area of expertise and start sharing your knowledge and experience with your professional network by pushing out content on your LinkedIn and social media accounts. Good content can include blogs, social media posts, and videos.
By sharing content about your experiences and passions, you slowly build your personal brand, and others will start to notice. The content could lead to good discussions with others in your network. It could also lead to reconnecting with connections that you haven't spoken to in years, or making new connections.
You never know when one of these connections could turn into a job lead or referral. The trick is to get on people's radars. So, when you're cleaning up your job search, be sure to build a plan for personal branding.
Maintain Healthy Habits During Your Job Search
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Your job search is important, but it's even more important to know when to pull back and focus on personal health and spending time with family and friends.
There are actually things that you can do for your own enjoyment that could help your job search in the long run, such as:
Grab coffee with a friend - It's good to engage in light conversation with friends during challenging times. And if your job search does come up, remember that most people have been through it themselves and you never know when a friend may provide you with a good idea or lead on a job.
Volunteer - Volunteering is a great way to get involved in the community and help others. In addition, if you develop a little bit of a career gap while looking for a job, you can always talk about how you filled that time volunteering, if you're asked about it during a job interview.
Continue to focus on other passions - Are you a fitness nut? Blogger? Crafter? Continue to do the things that bring you happiness. And if you're in a position to profit from your passion through a freelance job or side hustle, even better!
Spring is the perfect time to clean up and improve your job search so you can land the job you want. If you're struggling to find a job, follow the tips above to reinvigorate your job search—and watch your career blossom!
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This article was originally published at an earlier date.