How Mentoring Can Influence the Nursing Profession

If you are an entry level nurse, it might be wise to find someone who can help guide your career: a mentor.  Who knows, by learning from a more experienced nurse, one day you could become a mentor and impact another person entering the field.

There is a saying in the nursing profession that “nurses eat their young” – referring to a certain way veteran nurses are said to treat colleagues (and sometimes, new nursing graduates). Often called horizontal bullying, it can take many forms: verbal insults, a condescending attitude, unwarranted criticism, gossiping or spreading rumors or withholding information in a way that sets someone up to fail.

This kind of bullying occurs in all professions and industries, but it’s especially troubling when it occurs among nurses.

A nurse is someone who has devoted his or her life to caring for other people’s physical, mental, social, spiritual and emotional health. Nurses not only take care of their patients, but also take care of their co-workers.

“Nursing is like a club and all nurses want to be recognized as being an accepted member,” says Joy Green-Hadden, DNP, APRN, assistant dean for graduate studies at American Sentinel University. “When a nurse is bullied, one may wonder why they spent all those years studying and question whether it is time to get out of nursing, even at a time when we are facing a nursing shortage. Continue Reading

19% of Female Professionals Have Never Had a Mentor

LinkedIn surveyed nearly 1,000 female professionals in the U.S. and found that 19 percent of respondents had never had a mentor. LinkedIn asked the women who hadn’t had a mentor why that was the case. Fifty-two percent of the women noted they hadn’t had a mentor because they had, “never encountered someone appropriate.” As part of the survey, LinkedIn also asked the women who had never been a mentor why they weren’t mentoring another professional, and sixty-seven percent of those respondents said they have never been mentors because, “no one ever asked.” Continue Reading

5 Tips for Millennials Who Are Looking for Work Or Recently Hired

	Alexandra Levit posted a great list of tips for Gen Y / Millennials at her Water Cooler Wisdom blog, along with a good description of each for those who want more:
Focus on acquiring transferable skills. Use your initiative one small contribution at a time. Take charge of your own career path. Make your boss look good. Look for a mentor with a generosity of spirit who is just a few years ahead of you on the ladder, ideally in another department.

5 Tips for College Recruiting

ERE.net just published another great article for those engaged in college recruiting. This article was written by Kevin Wheeler, President and Founder of Global Learning Resources, Inc.

Kevin’s article first made the point that college recruiting hasn’t been as easy for employers during this recession as one might expect for a variety of reasons. For example, instead of graduates looking for work like they would in a normal economy, many more have chosen to stay in school for a double major or to go to graduate school while still others have chosen to travel or work abroad.  Kevin then provided employers with the following five excellent suggestions:

1. Focus on brand building and on getting your best employees to engage with students in discussions, webinars, and in ongoing interactive conversations. This builds trust and starts to develop a relationship that can lead to high interest in a job offer.
2. Let managers do the recruiting. If HR is doing more than 50% of your college recruiting, you do not have an effective program. By using HR staff, you are adding expense and reducing the quality of the interaction that the candidate could have with a potential boss. Avoid the temptation of thinking that HR has some “magical” ability to psyche out candidates or do something a hiring manger couldn’t do. It isn’t true! No one knows the job better or can get a sense of whether a student might be a good candidate or not than a manager.
3. Don’t focus your attention so much on the school itself. Developing a relationship with a particular school usually means getting known to the placement office. This may have some limited value, but it is far better to get students to join your Facebook fan club or your Twitter stream.
4. Develop a longer-term approach to recruiting college students. Start your initial contact with a candidate when they are in their freshman year. Build an internship program and invite candidates in to work, even if only for short one- to two-week stints, so you can establish some face-to-face understanding. Follow up with email by offering them research help, mentoring via the Internet, or whatever makes sense and meets both of your needs and abilities. By the time they have entered their third or fourth year of school, both of you will know if there is any commitment in the relationship.
5. Use print, video, and even campus television to drive candidates to your social media and websites. Don’t waste time on campus-based job fairs. The best campus job fairs attract only a few candidates, most of whom have no interest in your firm at all. Create a virtual job fair that you advertise via the print media. Do this job fair every few weeks and keep up the advertising.

Source: 5 Tips for Getting Ready for College Recruiting in 2011 – ERE.net.

Sidestepping the Mentor

QUESTION:
I’ve been assigned a mentor and coach for my internship as well as my real job search. While this person is very talented and knowledgeable because of their vast amount of experience, I simply do not like them. As a consequence, I do spiteful things like pretending to have been working on a work assignment in order to have an excuse for not following the coach’s advice. In the alternative, I simply ignore what they’ve told me. The other thing I do is talk to them about coaching I’ve received from other people and how well the other advice proved to be.

Should I just tell them that I have no respect for them and that it’s best that we part ways?

Continue Reading

Observing National Disability Employment Awareness Month

The month of October is a busy month as relates to observations. Of the several, Roy Grizzard, Assistant Secretary for Disability Employment Policy of the Department of Labor today released an announcement of the Department’s recognition of individuals with work differences.

There are resources, recognition dates, and programs to assist employers, job seekers, and college career counselors in opening the diversity doors and creating employment empowerment for those typically called “disabled.” One of the most significant programs encouraged by the Department is mentoring. Having a counselor who can guide a worker through the intricate employment maze and over the rungs of success is imperative to anyone’s career. One who can help an intern or “young” worker navigate these trails is a proven factor to success on both sides.

So many times individuals with disabilities are rejected from employment opportunities because of their observed impairment without testing or asking if they feel they can perform the essential functions of the job with or without reasonable accommodation. It would behoove us to face the facts of workplace access and the opportunities that abound in creating a diverse environment.