Episode 41: How to get your first graduate job in nursing, with Annabel Smoker

February 21, 2016 Podcast

In episode 41 of the Graduate Job Podcast, I am joined by Annabel Smoker, author of the excellent new book, ‘Launching Your Career in Nursing and Midwifery’. As a lecturer in nursing and faculty lead for employability at the University of Southampton, Annabel is ideally placed to share exactly what you need to do to get your first job as a graduate nurse. We explore the current job market for graduate nurses, how you can explore your career options, how to create a brilliant application which will you get you results, through to the impressing at the interview stage. If you’re studying nursing or thinking of it as a career, this is an episode for you.

Before we start many thanks to those of you who have completed the survey over at www.graduatejobpodcast.com/survey, your feedback helps me to create the episodes you want to hear. I’ve timed it and it takes less than 90 seconds to do, so please do get on over to www.graduatejobpodcast.com/survey and help me out. I look forward to hearing your thoughts. But in the meantime, let’s crack on with the show.

MORE SPECIFICALLY IN THIS EPISODE YOU’LL LEARN ABOUT:

  • The current job market for graduate nurses
  • How to explore your career options
  • How to be proactive and make connections with employers
  • The importance of a great job application
  • How to write a nursing personal statement that will get you the job
  • What the graduate nursing selection process
  • Top tips to ensure you get your first choice job

SELECTED LINKS FROM THE SHOW:

    • NHS Jobs – Annabel’s website recommendation 1
    • NHS Careers – Annabel’s second website recommendation
    • als@soton.ac.uk – Annabel’s email if you want to get in touch and tell her you enjoyed the show

Transcript – Episode 41 – How to get your first graduate job in nursing, with Annabel Smoker

Announcer:  Welcome to the Graduate Job Podcast, your home for weekly information and inspiration to help you get the graduate job of your dreams.

James: Hello and welcome to the Graduate Job Podcast, with your host James Curran. The Graduate Job Podcast is your weekly home for all things related to helping you on your journey to finding that amazing job. Each week I bring together the best minds in the industry, speaking to leading authors, entrepreneurs, coaches and bloggers who bring decades of experience into a byte size weekly 30 minute show. Put simply, this is the show I wish I had when I graduated.

In episode 41 of the Graduate Job Podcast, I am joined by Annabel Smoker, author of the excellent new book, ‘Launching Your Career in Nursing and Midwifery’. As lecturer in nursing and faculty lead for employability at the University of Southampton, Annabel is ideally placed to share exactly what you need to do to get your first job as a graduate nurse. We explore the current job market for graduate nurses, how you can explore your career options, how to create a brilliant application which will you get you results, through to the impressing at the interview stage. If you’re studying nursing, or thinking of it as a career, this is an episode for you. As always, all links to everything we discuss and a full transcript are available in the show notes at www.graduatejobpodcast.com/nursing. Before we start many thanks to those of you who have completed the survey over at www.graduatejobpodcast.com/survey, your feedback helps me to create the episodes you want to hear. I’ve times it and it takes less than 90 seconds to do, so please do get on over to www.graduatejobpodcast.com/survey and help me out. I look forward to hearing your thoughts. But in the meantime, let’s crack on with the show.

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James:  A very warm welcome to Annabel Smoker; a lecturer in nursing, faculty lead and leader of employability at the University of Southampton and author of the excellent new book ‘Launching your career in nursing and midwifery’. Annabel a very warm welcome to the Graduate Job Podcast.

Annabel:  Thank you very much James

James:  So before we start talking about your new book ‘Launching your career in nursing and midwifery’, maybe if you tell us a little bit more about how you came to write the book and how you came to be a lecturer in the subject.

Annabel:  In terms of my background, I trained and qualified in 1989 as a registered nurse at Southampton hospital and I have tended to sort of stay fairly local for work. I’ve worked in clinical practice, cardiac care, high care, elderly care and more recently dermatology in a more independent specialist role and I went into education in 1994. So, I have been within the school of nursing and now within the faculty at the University of Southampton for quite a long time. I wouldn’t say my career has been mapped out or planned and I’ve been fortunate and something that is important for students is that sometimes things come along when you’re least expecting them and sometimes being in the right place in the right time in terms of going into education because now the requirements, like we are looking for people with PhD’s to come in and lecture so the kind of route that I came into education is no longer available. But I’m very lucky to have been supported through a degree and a master’s programme and now looking to do a PhD. So, the employability role I have been able to carve out for myself, when we think about some roles, it’s very easy to think about some roles that exist now but a lot of us are in roles that we have made for ourselves. Each faculty in the university has an employability lead and I started to get involved in the employability sort of side of things about 10/12 years ago and it sort of started as a study day for nurses to help them in the transition to qualified employment and with a small representation of employers coming to talk to them to now running an employability week across the faculties. So not just nursing and midwifery and our allied other health professionals within the faculty; so that’s dietary, physio, health care science, audiology, physio, and that’s all coming together to look at wider issues within them to hopefully make an interactive week of activity with motivational speakers, talks with trusts, we have an interactive theatre to look at some of the common issues people face when they are interviewed. We have leadership activities that the army normally get involved in running for us and that’s all followed up a few weeks later with a huge career fair that we run. It’s certainly one of the biggest careers fairs on the south coast, we have about 75 employers come in to see our students. So yeah, we run a very successful set of activities for our students and we are always looking to innovate and expand and do things differently so the book really is a combination of all that experience and a desire to reach a wider audience, so yeah, exciting times.

James:  Thanks, now I have read the book myself and even as a layman I really enjoyed it and it’s easy to read. If you’re into nursing or looking for a career in nursing, then this is definitely the book for you. You touched upon career planning when you were talking there, and that’s something we are going to get to in the interview later on as it plays a big part in the book, but let’s start at the beginning. How is the current job market looking for nurses?

Annabel:  We are right in the middle of the recruitment cycle; certainly for nurses who qualified in September or in their final year who started last September. Although some institutions have outputs in Spring but for the main bulk of student nurses who will be qualifying in September who are right in the thick of things so it’s a very busy time. I have to say, in terms of choice, there’s a huge amount of choice, it’s a very buoyant market. There are lots of vacancies, there is a shortage of nurses across all the sectors and it’s great that students have that choice but it does actually make the decision making harder. It’s like being in a sweetie shop and you can look around and there’s lots to tempt you.

James:  So obviously the main opportunities are going to be in the NHS, how is the private sector looking as well for nursing opportunities?

Annabel:  I think across all the sectors there are lots of opportunities, I can’t think of anywhere were there isn’t. If you look on any jobs board; you’ve obviously got the NHS jobs site, you’ve got the Standard Nursing Times, you’ve got websites and journals which are packed full of jobs, you’ve got big college fairs like the Liverpool College of Nurses and they will have representatives there from the independent sector as well as the NHS. There’s a very wide variety for students working within mental health or learning disabilities where the private sector is a key provider of services and company’s like partnership in care, The Priory Group, charity groups like Rethink are delivering key services, so there are opportunities. I think for students who would have traditionally gone down the route of a career in the NHS a number of their placements may have well been in with the independent sector, providers, services, so they will have experience working in the independent or charitable sector already. I’d say for adult services, traditionally most people went to work for the NHS and I still think that’s where most people, will be the first choice where people will look but that’s not to say that the independent sector for residential care, for care for older people, for specialist services, they are key places. So I think students need to look at all the other different options and way up the pros and cons, it’s a busy market place and as I said before there is a huge amount of choice so doing your homework is important. For example, if you want to go, if you’re looking at a career in the armed service, most recently students have started to do their homework. The application process is a long process there is a lot of screenings, a lot of hoops to jump through, it’s not a straight forward you apply to get a job offer, there are many components to the selection process. So students need to prepare for that and need to understand that it’s going to take time to get all the bits in place. So if they are interested in a career in the armed forces, for example, starting in year one and two into making enquiries and finding out what that is going to entail, to make sure it’s the right career choice for them is important that they are talking to recruiters early.

James:  You mentioned just then about the wide variety of choice is there around out there within the different roles. How important is it that people are really hungry about a particular and field and they do make the right choice about which area to go down?

Annabel:  It’s interesting isn’t it, the term ‘hungry’. It’s important to work where you are going to be happy, where your passions lie, were your heart lies really. For some students they have a clear idea about where they want to be. You have to think about where you thrive and when we talk about ‘hunger’ it’s all about ideals and desires in the book but thinking about where you thrive in a personal sense; do you like working with families? Do you think you’re a good listener? Do you like to work in a very organised environment? Or do you like an element of the unexpected; where workload will vary? So say like trauma and orthopaedics or front line services like ED were you don’t know what you are going to get in through the front door. It’s really important to be in a job that you like, a miserable nurse will not be a good nurse and finding somewhere you are suited and when you find that area you might feel that there are still gaps in your training and that’s setting you up for long term goals. But one of the challenges for students is the people around them, so their nearest and dearest, their family and friends, may well have different ideas about where they think somebody should work. Sometimes we find that the some of the best in the world, their colleges and the people they meet in practice can sabotage ideas. So for example, we have some new and exciting posts coming up in the community for newly qualified nurses as a first post and the same in practice nursing but sometimes we find that for the keen student, their excitement is dampened by people who say ‘you need two years in a NQ hospital before you go into community care’, ‘it would be better to get acute experience’ but that’s not what employers are asking for. Employers are asking for newly qualified staff, they are prepared to take on the student who has maybe limited experience in community care or practice nursing and train them up and if that’s where the student feels they are going to be their happiest, where they are going to thrive and they like working in the community, they can see themselves in that role. It’s quite a big leap of faith, you’ve got to be courageous to do some of these moves because not everyone around you may be as supportive, does that make sense James?

James:  No, I completely agree and you can see that in many different career choices were people feel they are being pushed by internal scripts they have got about what their family want, or what sort of career they should be going for, or what sort of wage they think they should be going for which might guide them more than what their heart is telling them the most that they should go down.

Annabel:  Traditional paths, say into community care, things are changing and employers want the fresh eyes and the new ideas of the newly qualified graduates and they’re prepared to invest and support that.

James:  So one more question on career planning before we move on to the application process itself. So imagine a group of students have decided what area of nursing they want to focus in and want to spend their career in, how can they begin to be proactive in beginning to make the contacts that are going to make that happen?

Annabel:  There’s a number of paths they can take. First of all, we encourage from our first year students onwards, to start attending careers fair because as much as you need to identify what you want to do, you also need to cross off the things you don’t want to do, if that makes sense? So, exploring options, starting to go to job fairs, starting to look at websites, talking to employers, getting used to asking for advice, getting used to approaching employers, that in itself is a skill and thinking about where they want to be long term. As you say, students will have a clear vision that they want a career in surgical nursing or they want a career in a mental health community role, in forensics services or something very specialist and they need to understand the stepping stones to get from A to B. Increasingly graduates are looking long term at nursing specialist roles, some have a very clear vision of where they want to be but the earlier you start asking what is required, what kind of experiences will I need, what’s the best way to get from A to B the easier it is to plan that. Some students will want to stay in education, we have some clinical academic career pathways now that are quite different, so that’s a mixture of research, clinical practice and education, coming out ultimately with a doctorate and if you’re going to be serious about that, the earlier you recognise the opportunity, you understand the grades you’ve got to get to be eligible you can start aiming for that. It’s no good in year three suddenly realising you need a 2:1 or a 1st to be considered so from my perspective seeing students early to give them timely career advice is really important so they can understand the depth of their opportunity so they can start whittling it down to the job they would ultimately like to have. But there is a mass of resources. Some students will still by the end of second year or in their third year be struggling to come up with a small selection of areas they want to work in because they’ve enjoyed every placement they’ve had and that’s great and it’s lovely to hear that they’ve had a good breath of experience and can see themselves working in any of the areas but it starts to get to the crunch and you’ve got to start having some ideas, but ultimately there will be one or two areas that have ultimately stuck out in the course of your placement or your education and you’ll think ‘you know what, I really liked it there’. But there’s a rider with that, that areas can change, services can be restructured, managers can leave, the team can change completely so what your experience was in first year, that you loved, when you go back in year three the environment could be completely different so staying in touch is another thing I would say, being visible, being in contact with previous mentors and placements, some students will go through agency work, they may be on NHS professional heath care/support worker contracts so they’ll be able to request to work in areas they are interested in, just so they can maintain visibility and are also still comfortable in that environment and are ensured that this is the right career move and that they are going to get the right type of support. But if it’s a new area, some students might choose to go as a first job in an area that they have never worked in before, I went to work in cardiac surgery and I had never had a placement there as a student, I went to some informal visits, made contact with the staff, made sure that I was going to be happy in that environment because it was going to be completely different from any placement I had been on before although you can bring transferable skills you’ve still got to be certain that you are going to like the speciality. So it requires, again a lot of the same thing, a lot of time and effort invested on the student’s part to make sure that the choices they are making are the right choices for them and they are going to be happy there.

James:  Such a good point and you’ve got to be putting the time and thought in early on to what you want to do and what you enjoy doing, what did I enjoy about that, why did I enjoy it? It just stands you in good stead for later on when you’re making those important choices. So moving on to the application process, and I loved a comment from your book that ‘no matter how good the nurse there needs to be a good application’. Could you just expand on why that is the case and what the application process looks like?

Annabel:  Fundamentally, and I sit in on interviews with our local trust so I actually have the opportunity, and enjoy actually, seeing sort of the finished product; seeing the student performing at interview and picking up on tips that I can see and then feeding back into the process, it’s really helpful. But the job application process really starts before anything goes on to paper and so any communication that people have with potential employers needs to professional, personable and polished; the three P’s actually. That in every opportunity they are impressive and are making the right overtones to employers because it’s very easy to scupper your chances because you might look good on paper but that doesn’t mean they are going to employ you. But ultimately, we don’t know who has written the personal statements, one would expect that it comes from the pen of the original applicant, but we know there is a lot of help out there. People will be supported, and should seek support getting their personal statement right and that’s appropriate but what appears on paper may not necessarily translate into the person you see, and we see that pretty much in interviews. We get glowing personal statements, recommendations, yet when the person turns up we get ‘this person is a good communicator, passionate, enthusiastic’ but comes over as a wallflower; they are meek and aren’t forthcoming, as you would expect them to be. They’re not the same person that you read about.

James:  Everyone is a good communicator on their CV

Annabel:  (laughing) yes. But in terms of what makes a good applicant, it’s the applicant who has put the effort in at every opportunity uses their time wisely to ask the right questions, if you are offered an informal tour of a department even if you have worked there before and I really stress this to students, accept! Accept the offer, the worst thing you can do, and I know because it’s been reported back to me is when students say ‘oh I don’t need to come because I’ve worked there before and I know it’. Well actually you are being offered the opportunity to go back there as a perspective employee, you should be hungry to find out what those opportunities are and use that time to engage with staff and see it from the perspective of somebody who is going to work there for a time as a newly qualified nurse. It’s very different to being there as a student on placement. So understanding the mechanics, understanding what you can capitalise on, that opportunity to have the corridor conversation with the employer as you are walking around the unit, to ask the right kind of questions. That is as important as what actually appears on paper because what appears on paper in anonymised, it’s through NHS jobs were everyone is given an ID number so the recruiter, if they don’t know that student personally, if they have never met them won’t recognise the individual that is on paper.

James:  Yes, building those personal relationships is priceless. Just as you said, even if it’s just talking as you walk around the hospital being able to build the links with them and network is crucial.

Annabel:  You know, they’ll be looking at you like what will this person be like on the ward if a relative or patient needs help, is this person going to engage quickly, do they smile, are they going to make you feel uncomfortable? Are they easy to talk to? All the sort of subtle things you can’t put a price on. You’re imagining this person as one of your team, as a member of your staff. Are they going to fit in? Do they share the same values and beliefs? And that’s what comes through in informal conversation as much as direct questions at interview.

James:  Of course and the classic preverbal question ‘would I want to work with this person? Can I get on with them?’ And if you can find something you have in common or you come across as a nice person that they will want to spend time with, it will make it so much easier. You mentioned earlier, Annabel, about the personal statement; what makes a good personal statement in nursing?

Annabel:  It takes time and effort to get the personal statement right, the personal statement needs to fit the job, it needs to fit the application. Earlier on in the year when we started briefing students about writing personal statements we were encouraging them to get a framework of ideas together and in the book there is a list of some of the aspects that one would expect to see contained within the personal statement but it does need to be tailored to the application and there is a number of examples in the book of the number of styles. What you don’t want is that every personal statement reads the same, not like a set format and rather like an essay it needs to have an introduction, a middle bit and a conclusion but what needs to come from that is clearly the passion for the career choice, that this person wants to be part of your team, that they want to deliver high quality care. There must be reference to what accountability means as you transition from a student into a staff nurse role, you need to be talking about evidence based practice, the kind of personal skills and experience you bring to the role. The wise student will already have their CV up together, that’s really what I would regard as the pre-curser to compile your personal statements as your CV will have a résumé of all the clinic placements, maybe electives you’ve undertaken and you will use that information to develop the discussion within the CVs we’ve been talking about, the clinical experience, what you got from your programme, you’ll be talking about transferable skills, particularly students who have got long career history and more mature students; late entrants who have made career changes and also your interests because employers want well rounded people who are resilient who can cope with the pressures of working within the modern health care services, they want people who they know have an outside interest and they know have a means of de-stressing after work. So when we say ‘all work and no play make John or Jill a dull person’ they want to see a well-rounded applicant who has mechanisms for managing the stresses that come with the job.

James:   And again that will go back to can I see myself working with this person, you want someone who has a life outside of work and is fun, as you mentioned

Annabel:  Yes, with any of this James, with the CVs and personal statements and the actual application that goes online, it is really important to get it peer reviewed because it is all down to the quality, not quantity of words; it’s down to what you say. On the personal statements there may be a restriction on word count. The personal statement sits within that box as an additional information support on applications and it’s really important to get it right. We frequently see people who forget to talk about accountability on a personal statement and forget to mention at interview; these are key things that employers are looking for and they’ve got a checklist of essential things that they want and desirable and the sensible applicant sits down with the job specification and it’s a bit like ping pong, you know if they want someone who has great communication skills and is a good listener make sure you include that in your personal statement. It’s a skill and getting a critical friend or your mum/dad or boyfriend/girlfriend to read it, someone who is going to give you constructive criticism and help you to refine it will make a difference.

James:  That’s a great point and linked to that, would you recommend that the values of the trust always need to be referenced in the personal statement?

Annabel: Absolutely, it’s really important. Students can refer firstly to the NHS trust constitution, the trust values or the organisation values if they are looking at the independent sector or the charitable sector. So, all organisations will have a mission statement, a set of bench marks where by the quality of care is measured and a set of values and beliefs which are embedded within the organisation which they expect applicants and employees to embrace and to deliver on. So, if they are expecting, for example, compassionate, compassion is a value, so it’s not just about giving it cursory mention; the six Cs in nursing kind of trip off the tongue, you know there has to be substance behind it; what does compassion mean to you? What does it look like? How do you deliver compassionate care? By giving an example of this is what you want, this is how I interpret that and this is what it looks like when I do it, it is really important so that people can see that you actually understand what is required of you and obviously making sure you re-read your personal statement before you go into the interview so that when they ask you questions…

James:  You don’t sound surprised

Annabel:  None of it, the interview isn’t there to trip you up. If you’ve done your homework, and there are checklists in the book you can go through to make sure you have crossed every T and dotted every I, you should be well prepared. That being said some students get offered on the spot interviews but that’s your choice as to whether you choose to take that opportunity and you feel ready for it. But it’s about being able to justify and provide evidence and examples from your practice so keeping a reflective diary as you go through your course is really helpful too so that you can draw upon them as quite often questions are situational as they’ll ask can you give me an example of…when you managed a particularly challenging situation and how did you deal with it and how did you deal with stress? How might you deal with a relative who is upset? Those kinds of things. Being able to confidently refer back to examples from your practice of from your academic study is really important.

James:  Definitely. So we’ve got a great personal statement, we’ve put it out there to all the employers we want to work with and we have got through to the selection process; what would the selection process look like, Annabel, and what should people expect?

Annabel:  Selection process can vary, so finding out what is going to happen on the day is important. I would say If you are going to an open day or a recruitment event that a trust or an organisation is running one of the questions you should ask is if you are doing on the spot interviews and I know from our careers fair that students were given provisional offers based on a subsequent interview but that kind of on the spot interview can happen, so applicants need to be aware of that. In terms of the formal selection process, which is when you are given a date and a time to turn up to a venue, it is wise to ask what format will be used. Some organisations will use a mixed format so they will have mini interviews with a number of recruiters sat in a room or in different rooms and will see a candidate in turn. I always use the analogy of speed dating, were you have five minutes to establish a relationships and a rapport and impress; that can feel quite stressful just thinking about it, never mind doing it, so students really need to be prepared for that. Sometimes you’ll get scenarios. So there will be face to face scenarios or group activity or an activity based around a scenario; you’ve found a patient lying on the floor, how are you going to deal with it? The book contains some typical examples of the kinds of things we know students encounter at interviews as I get students to feedback from their experiences. So there is many and varied, sometimes from the obscure and abstract questions which are difficult to rehearse for. Sometimes the very straightforward panel interview, you’ll have clinical staff like the matron and the manager for the unit plus maybe one or two others, possibly a service user increasingly, we use service users to help us with selections for pre-registration undergraduate programmes and the trusts are using services users are reference so you might get questions from a variety of people on the panel. So knowing who the people are on the panel is really important and knowing what their role is and making sure you engage with all of them and the service user will be coming from a different but very valuable perspective of how the recipients of this individual’s care will be feeling. So they are looking particularly for attitudes, the way a person engages, is there any evidence of discrimination, difficulty communicating, would they feel uncomfortable with this person? Hopefully that’s not the case but they play a really important role and we value their feedback as part of the selection panel. So yeah, typically still the traditional interviews, some will have numeracy and literary tests as students did at pre-registration, some might have questions around medicine management and safety issues. It’s about making sure people know their limitations, that they know what accountability means, that they would ask for help in a situation that they were unfamiliar or found incompetent to manage, you’re not going to be employing someone who is a risk because they lack self-awareness, so none of the questions should be a surprise, there is a plethora of them in the book which should give students a feel for the things they could be asked during the interview. Psychometrics aren’t used massively in recruitment at this level although that’s not to say they might not have a test, although you should expect that there shouldn’t be anything in there that isn’t reasonable to expect a newly qualified nurse to do competently.

James:  Definitely, and having talked about preparation it’s about having the conversation both with the trusts, so you know what to expect but also your colleagues in the process or people who are a couple of years down the line and understanding the process they went through and just being as prepared as possible, which all comes from putting the work in early and reading excellent books such as yours.

Annabel:  Why, thank you. As nurses go up the ladder the format of interviews might change slightly so it would be unreasonable to expect someone to do a presentation, for example, and there would have been skills the students would have rehearsed in their university programmes. But the wise student would have spent time rehearsing the questions, rehearsing the answers and using tutor support or career service report to go and practice that face to face with somebody because you might think you have a good answer but actually the answer is jumbled but you get there in the end. There is a definite knack to answering questions and we suggest people use the car framework so they look at the context, they look at the actions and they look at the result. So that, just as you would when you are handing over a patient when you are flagging up a deteriorating patient you use a framework for structuring the information, you use a framework for structuring the response to the question so that you make sure have got in all the points that you want to get in including the whole issue about accountability and making it very clear that you understand what that means.

James:  Definitely, that makes so much sense. Unfortunately, Annabel time is running away with us but speaking of questions a couple of final weekly staple questions for you before we finish. Firstly, what one book would you recommend that our listeners read?

Annabel:  This is interesting as I had a quick look at my bookshelf to see what I had read recently and I quite like non-fiction books and you said it didn’t have to be nursing related and I’ve found I have a particular liking, when I look at titles, at books with strong women who have overcome adversity. I have a couple of books like Philomena and Park’s book about a North Korean’s journey to freedom and that’s what I have read recently, but I thought what do I actually recommend to friends and colleagues and actually it’s a fictional title written by former pop punk star, Jim Bob Morrison, have you heard of him?

James:  That’s a new one on me

Annabel:  Oh right, you can only get it on kindle or hardback and my copy is quite frequently on loan but it’s ‘The extraordinary life of Frank Derek aged 81’ and it was title published the year before last. It’s a story about an elderly gentleman whose circumstances change when he is run over by a milk float, he breaks his arm and fractures his foot and it means that he needs home help although he doesn’t want help and into this life enters Kelly Christmas who is his carer and she has an amazingly cheerful resilience and ability to connect with Frank and change what is described as an extraordinary life. I suppose what comes out of this is the skills it takes to connect with people when they are vulnerable and the desire as practitioners to find the person behind the patient and the resilience that you need in order to survive as a professional and if you’re thinking of how does that apply to what I do well it’s all the characteristics employers are looking for in the people they want to take on in their organisations and it’s one of those books, its one that you could sit and read in the bath or on the train, it’s a very easy read but it’s about humanity and for me it’s about the passion behind the disciple and why people should want to get up and work as nurses and their contribution to people in their time of need. So, it’s a light hearted read and I’m hoping the audience, assuming that they’re coming from a very diverse background would find something in it, there is something in it for everyone.

James:  Excellent. That’s a new one on me and one for listeners when you are not doing your personal statements to read. And new one Annabel, what website would you recommend listeners to visit?

Annabel:  It’s got to be either NHS jobs or NHS careers. NHS careers as it really maps out the diverse range of opportunities for student nurses and there will be jobs that don’t exist at the moment that will be coming up in 10/20 years’ time so it’s a really exciting time for students. So set your sights high, look at what you can become and start mapping that journey out. These sites really give you, don’t just look at the band 5 job adverts, look at the band 6, the band 7, the band 8 and start thinking about how do you get there.

James:  That’s really good advice and everything that Annabel has discussed will be linked to in the show notes as well as a full transcript, so get yourself over to graduatejobpodcast.com/nursing and you’ll be able to see everything we have talked about. Finally Annabel, what one tip should listeners implement today to help on their job search?

Annabel:  Get going! If listening to this has made you pull your finger out, then you need to make it a priority. It’s very easy in default position to say I’ll sort my essay out first or I’ll get my final year project sorted first, it’s a very busy time the recruiters are out there, the open days are happening, the advertisements are going up, the applications are coming in, the deadlines will be set. So you need to get yourself into a position to jump, and of course there is always serendipity, one of my students went to an open day recently and was offered a job on the day, she had a two-day notice of this open day, so hats off to her it was great, an absolutely brilliant outcome. It’s just being ready as you never know what is around the corner. Maybe that’s several top tips, sorry James! It really is the chance encounter, the recommendation, the personal introduction, you can’t put a value on that and who knows when that’s going to happen. You may have an idea that this is where you want to be but always walk around with an open mind as sometimes the opportunities will present themselves at a time when you are least expecting them.

James:  That’s a great point to finish on. Annabel, what is the best way people can get in touch with you and the work that you do?

Annabel:  Well you are more than welcome to email me, my short email address is als@soton.ac.uk and I’ll try and respond to people within a day or two. But anything or any ideas, I’m already thinking about the second edition as we are now looking at student loans and replacement bursaries, the market place is changing. I keep getting nuggets of wisdom passed on to me by students or employers and I think ‘gosh that has got to go into the second book’ so if anyone thinks that there is anything missing from the book or that something needs to be covered in more depth then I’m very open to constructive criticism and would welcome any feedback people have.

James:  As I said before, it’s a great book so I would highly recommend it as its full of many many things that we couldn’t even touch upon today so it’s well worth a read. Links to the books are in the show notes so get yourself over to graduatejobpodcast.com/nursing. Annabel, many many thanks for appearing on the graduate job podcast.

Annabel:  Thank you very much for the opportunity and good luck to all the applicants when they start going through the process and as I said, aim high!

James: Many thanks to Annabel Smoker for her time today.  If you’ve enjoyed the show today then definitely check out Annabel’s book which takes it all on a level, you can find links to her book and a full transcript at www.graduatejobpodcast.com/nursing.  One key take away from me, and I mentioned it in the show, it doesn’t matter if you are the modern day Florence Nightingale and the best best nurse on your course by a mile, if you don’t have a decent application then it won’t count for anything. No matter how good you you’ve still got to do the work. Listen back to the episode again and put Annabel’s advice into practice. You’ll have the pick of all nursing jobs in no time at all.

So there you go, thanks for listening, please leave me a review on iTunes if you’ve enjoyed the show, if you want to get in touch you can contact me on twitter @gradjobpodcast, or hello@graduatejobpodcast.com let me know if you’re enjoying the show and I love to hear your success stories of jobs and internships you’ve got. Please do check out my short couple of questions at www.graduatejobpodcast.com/survey it will be a big help! Stay tuned next week when I have Andras Banath who takes us through how to get a job working for the European Union. I hope you enjoyed the show today, but more importantly, I hope you use it, and apply it. See you next week.