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How Dating Rules Can Get You a Nursing Job

Treat Him Mean, Keep Him Keen

Don’t Bash Your Ex

Dating Tactic: Reminiscing about your ex’s tyrannical rampages and bad cooking to a potential beau is just bad form. Your rude remarks raise red flags for the person you should be trying to impress. While you’re spewing insults, he’s wondering if you’re still hung up on the former flame, or worse, imagining these flaws will pass into your new relationship. A pity party in honor of your ex only reflects badly on you.

Cubicle Tactic: You’ll almost always be asked why you left your last position. You want to come off as a mature, competent health care employee looking toward the future, not a sniveling schemer who just can’t move on. Bad mouth your former boss and your interviewer has no choice but think you’ll do that same about him when the time comes. Also, when the time does come, make sure you exit with grace. What might be a cathartic parting shot now can become a negative reference letter later. Always be diplomatic.

Don’t Expect to Change Him

Dating Tactic: If he’s a frog, you aren’t going to turn him into Prince Charming. Period. Don’t assume a year down the road you’ll have morphed your man into who you’d imagine he’d become. Men change only if they want to. Know what you signed up for and have realistic expectations. Most ingrained behaviors are permanent, so either leave that fixer upper for someone else or learn to cope.

Cubicle Tactic: You’re continuously doing stellar work, clocking in overtime and tackling new patient cases. And yet there’s no whiff of a raise or promotion. Plus your supervisor seems perfectly content with stealing credit for you work while keeping you under her thumb. Hospital culture is a tough nut to crack. Remember, there’s no shame in moving on to a new position or hospital if you find you’re not going to get what you want out of your current situation. Better yet, assess the organization’s capacity for change before you sign on. Don’t help build your own glass ceiling.

Play Hard to Get

Dating Tactic: For most men, it’s all about the thrill of the chase. And there’s nothing more enticing than a picky woman. If you give in too easily, he’ll assume you’re liable to be conquered by any old shmo. Dangle that forbidden fruit and make him battle for your affections. That way when he finally wins you over, he’ll know you’re the best of the bunch. Plus, he’ll work harder to keep you if he knows you can find someone better.

Cubicle Tactic: Williams suggests a good way to become indispensable is to make yourself scarce. That is, become an expert or specialist in an area of nursing that brands you the go-to person for the job. Building a reputation based on this unique quality makes you in-demand. And when you’re in-demand, you’re high in management’s mind for top hospital initiatives and promotions. Just be sure to deliver.