All Bent Out of Shape

You know how it is when you're seeing red and you feel like you just have to let loose or else you're literally going to blow up? Then after a few minutes, you're all "what the heck was I so mad about", well that's what this sarcasm laced letter is. Frustration got the better out of me and I should have just let it slide and moved forward without a peep but I just had to speak my mind for my own sake.

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Wow, I really was a fool to think that an elitist organization like yours would ever take me in...an average person who didn't graduate from your fine institution. One would think that people of your "stature" and intelligence could have handled that so called "screening" last Monday (May 26.2008) in a more refined and professional manner. It just goes to show that intelligence and good manners don't come hand in hand.

I never thought I'd be written off just like that, yet here I am. Hmmmm...I wonder what the criteria was for selecting 40 lucky candidates out of the almost 200 that was there? Oh, right! They didn't tell us what the criteria was. Could it be because some of the slots were already taken by people who had connections and all they had to do was go there and act as if they were applying? Could it be that they had preferences as to where the applicant graduated from?
Too bad, I'll never know because they didn't bother to tell us how they were going to make the selection.

It took them NO more than 2 HOURS to "screen" the almost 200 strong applicants. It took me longer to write my letter of intent than for them to "screen" 200 people. What does that tell me? hmmm. If I was a malicious person, I'd think there was some cooking going on in there and I definitely didn't like the food. The snide and unfeeling comments of the two facilitators only revealed their prejudice and partiality. To what? I don't know. But saying "Di naman kami Fatima na tumatangap ng madami" and "yung mga tatawagin naming pangalan, pwede na kayong lumabas at subukan nyo sa ibang hospital, baka kailangan nila kayo dun" is quite telling of their state of mind. So no interview or any kind of interaction with the applicants were done. They looked at our credentials and that was it. To add insult to injury, we had to do a walk of shame on our way out of the room as our names were called. It felt very much like being voted off the island and I didn't even know SURVIVOR had a [name of hospital] version.

Damn right I'm sour graping...that I'm not related to some politician or some [name of hospital] staff who's got some clout.

Good luck to those who'll be applying. You'll need it more than your above 80% board rating.

Thanks!!!

Of Slamming Doors and Dead Ends

It’s been almost six months since I decided to quit my CS job and focus on getting my act together as a nursing professional. So for the last 160 days or so, I was at home bumming around trying to finish some PSP game or I was bouncing from one hospital to another trying to get the latest "word" if hospital A (to Z) was hiring. Now if they weren’t, the follow up questions were did they need volunteers, were they conducting trainings, do they have on the job trainings and other substantial queries I could think of just to make my visit worthwhile. Yeah I could have just called to get the information that I needed but that didn’t get me anywhere the first quarter of the year when I tried to let my fingers do the walking. You get the idea that it was a tedious and grueling process and the summer heat didn’t help either. I wouldn’t have minded all that if I had something to show for it after, but I didn’t. Some of these hospitals had train-to-hire schemes for a fee not lower than P8,000 (yes, we’ll pay them to work our butts off) but even these programs were always full. I've probably submitted 7 packets containing my credentials and I've yet to receive an email or a phone call saying "not in a million years" or something to that effect.
I’ve learned quite a few things these past few months and the lesson that resonated so loudly is that in this time of over abundance of nurses, its not what you know but who you know that matters in order to simply start your career. It’s hard not to paint everyone with the same brush when you can see it happening right in front of you. Nepotism and favoritism is definitely part of our culture and I don’t think that’s going to change anytime soon. My only request to people who’re able to callously get their sons, daughters or other relatives into a training program or even a position in a hospital simply because they work there or know someone who can pull some strings is to think of the people that were cut from the program or circumvented from getting a job because your son/daughter/relative TOOK it from them.
I’m currently waiting outside a huge closed door as I write this. When it opens in order to commence the process of screening train-to-hire applicants, I will find myself either taking my first step officially into my profession or once again have a slamming door in my face.