TurboNurse

I had my interview in the NICU today and totally nailed it!

I was so nervous while waiting but I did as they said and called them when I got off the elevators to let them know I was there. The lady I talked to, Rose, said that I was quite early (15 minutes) and to just sit back because the manager was still in another interview. So I sat there and let my mind just go. I couldn't tell you what I was thinking about while waiting but the wait sure went fast.

So Rose comes out to get me and I greet her with a smile and a friendly handshake. I was surprised to see her dressed in scrubs since she is an office assistant type of person.

We make our way back to Kathy's office and she leads me in. As soon as I came in, I made eye contact with Kathy and shook her hand and told her how honored I was to have an interview with her and that I appreciate her time.

The interview started off with an overview of the unit and what I can expect as far as orientation and education go. She also hands me a sheet explaining other opportunities as a nurse in this area. I didn't know there were so many possibilities!! I'm amazed!!

After that, she asked me if I had any questions so I pulled out my handy-dandy sheet that I made last night which is full of questions and just went down the list. She had already answered about half of them with the intro/information sheet.

Then she tells me that it's her turn to ask me questions. Luckily, when I was hired on as an extern at this hospital, the questions were exactly the same so I knew how to answer them and give the rigth answers.

As we get close to the end of the interview, she asks me if I can do the job without accomodation and I paused. Then she added.......with the appropriate training. And then I told her that with that qualifier, yes, I can definately do this job. :)

When we got through that, she started talking about how her priority to hire were people that already work there (check). She went on about this for a while and really insinuated to me that she wanted to hire me but she couldn't legally give me the job offer (HR/law/union stuff i assume).

She then asks me what my manager would say about me and I told her that I would get good reviews from my manager because I've always kept communication open and have built up a good rapport with her. Then she tells me that they got a hold of two of my references. Chris Cole, who did my pediatric rotation, and Traci Atkins who was my level 1 clinical instructor. She really emphasized the good word that Chris gave for me so I'm going to have to email her and say thank you! It seems that she really put a lot of weight into what my references had to say about me.

At the end, she's telling me again that she really wants to hire from the inside and that she wants us to start ASAP so that we can get into the NCLEX review class that the hospital puts on for new grads working there. She reiterated that several times.

It was kind of funny when she was talking about hiring from the inside. She kind of gave me "the look" and I picked up on it pretty quickly and smiled at her. You know "the look" not "the bad look" but the "we want you to work for us look".

I will find out later today for sure if I have the job. She said she had to go through the HR person to finalize everything but she sounded very concrete about me getting the position.

Who ever thought that I would be a NICU nurse?!?!?!?! I was always the one in class who was like "no, hissssssssss....babies scare me!". When I did my pediatric rotation though, I absolutely fell in love with it and told my instructor (Chris) that I was very surprised to see how much I really liked it! No other area spoke to me the way peds did and I'm looking forward to NICU just screaming at me "YOU ARE HOME".