113: How to stand out as an aspiring graduate nurse - Grad Success Series
How to stand out as an aspiring graduate nurse - Grad Success Series
Join me, your virtual graduate coordinator, guide and online nurse unit manager, as I simplify the process of standing out as a graduate nurse in this episode.
Learn how to embrace your uniqueness and overcome self-doubt by applying the ABC formula.
Discover strategies to speak the language of your desired nursing specialty, effectively brand yourself, and build self-confidence.
Don't miss out on this actionable advice to make a lasting impression and excel in your nursing career. Tune in now and unlock your potential as a standout graduate nurse.
Key takeaways:
01:12 - Embrace Your Uniqueness and Stand Out
02:22 - Mastering the ABC Framework
04: 19 - Master Your Personal Brand
05:20 - Unleashing the Power of Self-Confidence
08:58 - Allowing Yourself to Experience the Spectrum of Emotion
11:40 - Have Your Own Back
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**This transcript was automatically generated using Descript.**
Liam Caswell: Being willing and open to experiencing a human experience and a human emotion, whether it's good or bad, is what helps you build self-confidence. Hello and welcome back to the Graduate Nurse Success Series here with me, Liam. You're a virtual graduate coordinator and nurse unit manager. We are talking about how you can go about standing out as a graduate nurse. I have had lots of questions about this recently and I thought, why not talk about it for the fourth hundredth time?
So if you haven't already, Caught up with all of the grad episodes. Go and check all of them out. We're releasing these every Thursday and I'm diving into common topics, common things, common questions that come up in response to what you guys tell me online that's happening in the industry. And then I'm here to break it all down and give you some actual tangible advice moving forward.
Okay. So how do you stand out? We've covered this, right? We've gone over this, but we're gonna go over it again today. We stand out by applying. The ABC formula to your applications and your interview and your grant process. I just wanna make this as simple as possible for you. There's no need for this to be complex.
So how do you stand up? This question usually comes from a place of like, fear and lack of maybe worthiness or worry about not. Being enough is the first thing that I want to acknowledge, and I want you to really get curious with yourself if that's where this is coming from. Are you telling yourself a story that what you already have is isn't enough?
And I want to give you permission to lean into the belief and start practicing believing that you are 100% worthy, 100% whole, 100% capable, and you have all of the things and you stand out on your own because you are the only unique being like you on this earth. And in nursing, and you have something unique and different to offer.
That's the first thing here. Lean into your uniqueness and your awesomeness, and what makes you stand out is just you being you. Trust me, that is real. It's not where we, it's real lean into it. The second thing that I want to talk about is our A B ABC framework. So, Having done this now hundreds of times, like we're over 400 times now with grads in our G C P, we work with them and we apply this framework, and I'm giving it to you here today.
I'm gonna give you a little secret behind the scenes, but if you want more of this and you want all of the things and you want to guarantee yourself a 70 KK rise in like two hours of your time, come and join the G C P. Alrighty. But our A b ABC framework, let's talk about it. Number one is making sure that your applications speak the language of the graduate panel.
What do I mean by that?
Applications need to be aesthetically pleasing and amazing at selling your skillset, but they also need to speak the language.
They need to speak the language of intensive care. Palliative care critical care ed, mental health. Wherever you're planning to apply for, you've gotta start speaking the unique language, using the unique words and terminology that they use in those areas or in that organization so that you can really communicate and stand out from the pack.
This is what takes a generic, bland, boring, tedious application that we get thousands of. And turns it into an incredible irresistible application. So how do you do this? You dive into the position description, you look at the keywords that they're using. You think use your amazing critical thinking skills to think about what do they do in I C U?
What do they do every day? How can I show them the transferability of my skills from what I've done already and bring it across to icu? You start to learn the language of the specialty. The organization. The department. The program. Because some of you're gonna say, but I'm applying for PM CV and I can only apply for X level, and I can't pick the nitty gritty places, or Queensland Health only lets me pick the hospital, speak the hospital's language.
Do your research, get online, have a look at their website, and see what they have to offer and take what you can from there and put it into your applications. And when you do that, it will allow you to then transform into the next step, which is branding. How do you stand out your brand? You brand your documents, you brand your cv, cover letter selection criteria, your graduate summary, you brand the video that you put on.
Now, I'm not talking about you're starting a fashion line or you're selling some products on these videos or through your, through your work. You embody the version of you that you want to present forward, and you present that in a professional, respectful, articulate way through your applications, and you also continue that through the interview process.
So branding, if you think of anything that's been successful in the world, it's. It's built upon a brand, right? And you can create and foster a personal brand too. It's very, very important that you have this deep sense of understanding of who you are, what you're offering the employer, and why you are the best pick.
That becomes part of your branding, which leads into the third thing, which is confidence. How do you stand out? Confidence, my friend and in particular, Self-confidence cuz a lot of you tell me that you don't feel that confident in what you've been taught so far. You don't feel confident in your experiences so far.
And I want to acknowledge that it's actually okay for you to borrow confidence from other people. you can borrow my confidence coming onto this podcast. You, if you're listening to this, I'm sending you all of the confidence. I want you to take it. Borrow confidence from people that give you compliments.
I love that idea. Somebody gives you a compliment, like just pinch a little bit of confidence from that and stop building and stacking your confidence if that's something that's appealing to you, rather than thinking that when you get that graduate job there, then you'll feel confident, like it's this big moment of validation.
But in relation to how do you stand out, it's about leaning into your self-confidence, which is different from. Confidence. Confidence is acquired typically through repetition of a task, and then we decide cognitively, there's no rules that we're confident now and we can do this. Okay? That might be three for me.
It might be 300 for you. Who knows? It's very subjective to the individual. Now with our self-confidence, that's where we have and hold all of our power. And this is where a few of you might be giving that power away. So our self-confidence is important to acknowledge because when we lean into our self-confidence in standing at, in the application interview, graduate process, we allow ourselves to have all of the thoughts that we're gonna have and recognize that we're a human with a human brain.
And then our brain's gonna offer you all of the crap, like, I'm not good enough. I can't do this. How am I ever gonna get a job? She's better than I am. He's better than I am. All of the things that come up, because we're going through a huge period of change. So that's the first thing, is acknowledging the duality of our thoughts.
We have those thoughts that we've practiced believing for the last three years. Like, I don't know if I'm gonna get a grad program. I'll take whatever I can get. Right. Those thoughts are not serving you, my friends, and they're not gonna help you stand out. If you're going into your graduate applications and you're thinking, I'll just take whatever I can get that energy, you are putting that in into the world, and guess what?
You will get. Anything. You will just get, and then what will happen? You will complain about it. You're like, oh, I got a job and I didn't like it. And then the whole cycle issues. So we wanna make sure. That the thoughts that we're having about our ability to succeed are building our self-confidence, right?
So, I don't know if I can do this, becomes I'm gonna learn how to become a registered nurse in this job. I've been able to learn over the last three years that I can do this. Whatever reframe you need to be able to get you to that place where you can then embody self-confidence. Cuz self-confidence is a feeling that's generated through your thoughts.
And if your thoughts are negative and your thoughts are not serving you, you're of course gonna feel low in confidence. Right now, we're not shitting on that here. We're not saying, Hey, you need a brain transplant, cuz your thoughts are total Waco because I have them too, and everybody around you does, even though they probably don't tell you.
So I want you to acknowledge that. Normalize that we don't use this as an opportunity to beat ourselves up, and we just see it for what it is. Oh, I'm having that thought again, that I'm not good enough. I'm having that thought again, that I can't do this. And the first step is just awareness. And then when we have the awareness, we can go, oh, here it comes again.
Here's that thought. And we get to decide consciously and intentionally about what we want to think instead because there are thousands of other options. Okay, so that's the first part of building self-confidence. The second part of building self-confidence is all about allowing yourself to experience the spectrum of emotion.
The reason why a lot of us don't feel confident is because we actively avoid the things that are gonna be difficult. We actively refrain from and resist the things that are gonna challenge us because we're hashtag human right. That's fine until it's not fine. And that's why we have bar cuz we have a whole heap of people that are not emotionally connected to what's going on in their brain and they are just buffering and indulging in all the things they think externally will make them feel better.
All the while they're actually not feeling their feelings, and it's a simple fix. So I want you in this process of building self-confidence to think about what would happen if I just allowed myself to feel all the feelings. What would happen? I'll tell you what'll happen. A vibration in your body. That's it.
Think about any feeling you've ever felt. What does it feel like? Where do you feel it? Is it that scary? Have you done it before? Can you do it again? When I think about shame or embarrassment, like I get sweaty pants and like I get a bit of a, frog in my throat and like I get a bit of tachycardia, but like I've been here before.
I've done that, that's happened heaps of times. It's not gonna kill me. I didn't die. I. There was 50 times before that I experienced nervousness. I didn't die. Being willing and open to experiencing a human experience and a human emotion, whether it's good or bad, is what helps you build self-confidence.
Knowing that in the moment you might feel total embarrassment and you might stuff up, but having your own back and going, oh, this is shame. Like I can see how I feel shame here instead of what most of us do, which is like, oh my God, I'm ashamed. I'm terrible. I can't do this. I should just quit. Maybe I should just quit.
What do you think? Right. That's just what we do when we're not leaning into the human experience and allowing ourselves to feel all the feelings. And it's very important in this process of grad, cuz on the first day, you're gonna feel all the feelings. You're gonna feel pride, excitement, happiness, sadness, fear, worry, stress, overwhelm, anxiety.
You're gonna feel joy. All of the things in one day, probably in the first hour are you set up to deal with that. I mean, you'll deal with, you'll be there, you'll manage it. But do you have the tools to be able to navigate that? And here's the thing, if you don't, you probably won't even land the job. That's what I've found to be true.
The people that don't have that capacity to feel and to process their emotions and to allow them, they struggle in landing their dream job. Okay? But it's learnable like everything is. So we're managing our thoughts. We're feeling our feelings. The third thing that we need to do, the third and final thing that we need to do to build self-confidence is to have your own back.
So many of us go for something and then we either we regret it, right? I'm gonna go and do this. I'm gonna apply for this graduate program, and we apply for it, and then it doesn't work out the way that we thought it would work out, and we're like, oh my God, I can't believe I did that. Are you kidding me? I wasted all that time.
I'm so disappointed in myself. All of that is totally optional. It's not necessary. The only person you're that's suffering is us, right? It's you. So having your own back and going all in on your decision, regardless of what happens, is like the biggest dopamine confidence booster. Imagine if you could apply and you get a no, and you're like, I'm proud of myself.
I went all in. I gave it my absolute best. Instead of what most people do, which is I'm terrible. Like I just, you know, I just knew they were gonna give it to the other people. Like it's my age, isn't it? It's my age. Oh my goodness. It's my age. No, no. It's because I failed that first module in first year.
Right. And we make all of these stories up. They don't even know you failed in first year, but we're convinced that's what it is. They don't even know your age, but we're like, oh, they think I'm 60 and you're, you, you're not. None of that really matters. It all just stories and thoughts that we're creating in our mind from our lived experiences.
But when we allow ourselves to go all in and we allow ourselves to just be willing to feel all of the feelings, and we look at our thoughts and we identify what is our a bullshit thought to be quite frank, and what is an empowering serving thought? And when we have our back regardless and we choose to not beat ourselves up, that's self-confidence.
That's me coming on this podcast, tripping up on my words, having a brain fart, stuffing it up, saying something I shouldn't have said, and just going, well, that's what I did. And I, that's what I wanted to do, and that's what came out. And I trust that process. I trust myself. I believe in myself to say the right thing.
And that's it. I don't need to beat myself up. So I really want you to think about that. That is how you stand out. You embody the deepest sense of self-confidence. Now, you are all gonna say to me, but isn't being confident, arrogant? No. The short story is no, it is not arrogance. Arrogance is, I know better than you.
I am the best crowd in this room, and everybody else in here is terrible. You should hire me because I'm the smartest and these people are dumb. That's arrogance. Self-confidence is, I can respect everybody's experience in here, but I also know and hold space for the fact that I'm incredible because you are.
Why would you choose to think any differently? How is it serving you to choose to believe that you are not good enough, that you're not worthy, that you're not capable, that you can't do it? Really sit with that question. What's the upside? And I'll tell you what the upside is. the upside is that we don't have to do the work.
When we tell ourselves that we're not good enough and we can't do this and we're never gonna get the job that we want, our brain is like, phew. We don't have to apply. We don't have to interview. You don't have to put yourself through the paces. You don't have to grow and evolve. You don't have to face rejection, you don't have to face all of the mind drama.
Let's just go back to the cave and put the comfy blanket on and like sit there and have our kapa. That's what happens in our brain, right? So when we are self-confident, we're like, yeah, well, I'm gonna do all of that anyway. I'm gonna do it because the option to not do it is not gonna serve me. The option to not stand out and stand in my power.
I'm gonna be like, I'm here and I'm ready to walk and roll. That self-confidence is what's gonna get me closer to my goal. Versus the opposite path that we've just talked about. Okay, so how do you stand out? You be frigging you, you're badass. You, you start to learn to love yourself. You start to learn to see that you have everything that you need, that nothing else is gonna give you what you want and need.
There is nothing else that will give you anything externally to help you move closer to this goal Nothing is gonna help you do that. No extra courses, no extra programs. You don't need them. You don't need to postgraduate qualification before you're finished, right? You don't need to do all of these e-learning courses.
You don't need to learn these advanced nursing skills before you've even mastered the basics. You've gotta lean into your applications, really finesse them and get them to a place where you are an incredible offer. Think of yourself like your most favorite restaurant, and think of how. When you go into that restaurant and you're like so excited to buy something, cuz you know they're gonna deliver, you know it's gonna be good in yummy and tasty, you know that you're gonna get the best service.
You know that you're gonna leave there feeling satisfied and full. That is the kind of experience you are creating for the people that are receiving your application. They want to see your belief in yourself through your writing. They want to feel your passion through your writing. They want to see your experience and how it all pulls together.
They want to see that you've used your critical thinking. They want to meet you at the interview and feel your energy, and they want to feel it at that level. That's like, I'm here for it, let's go. Versus like, please give me a job. I need a job. I really need a job. It's just not gonna work. They want to feel the confidence in you that you can move forward and do this and deliver.
They want you to embody that whole experience for them it makes their decision making much easier. They don't wanna hire people. They're not, not emitting on that level. They're not emitting that frequency. Do you wanna work with those people? I don't wanna work with them. I wanna work with people that go half fasts.
Cuz if you half fast your applications, you're gonna half fast your nursing care. That's a sweeping generalization, but I mean, what else are you to conclude from that, we've gotta go all in. We've gotta make sure that you embody the ABCs of your application process and trust in that process, that that's how you stand out to many of your thinking, that having an extra course is gonna make you stand out.
Sure it's gonna add benefit I I undeniably, but they're gonna measure the wrong thing because a course teaches me that you know how to study a course teaches me that you know how to study and train your brain. But it doesn't teach me that you're a good nurse. Just tells me you're a good student. Right.
So we've gotta give them examples of times where like really think about speaking their language. Examples from your experience, your lived experience, practical experience that you can then show them and say, Hey, this is what I've got. Do you want it? And if they don't want it, we move on to the next one.
And we say, Hey, this is what I've got. I'm incredible. I'm amazing. This is what I've got. You're not saying that out loud, you're saying that to yourself, right? But you're leaning in and you've been self-confident, and then you offer a game. And they say yes or no, and you move on to the next thing, and that is the life of your career.
But never at any point is it mandatory that you believe that you are less than or not worthy because of not getting a job. Less than not worthy because you don't know how to stand out and that you think that you don't stand out. Okay? That in itself is a thought error. I don't stand out. Of course you do.
You stand out every day, okay? Lean into your power. I believe in you. If you are somebody that is looking for support, if you want coaching support, if anything that I've talked about today resonates with you, and you're like, Oh my God, that is what I'm dealing with. Come and join us in the G C P. We have got your back.
We are gonna be closing our applications in mid-June. We're closing it because we effectively, we need to make sure we have the time to help everybody before the applications actually close, right? So come and join us. Join us now. We have pays, we have six month payment plans. We have 12 month payment plans.
I wanna make sure that money is not a barrier to entry for this program this year, because It's incredible and you need it. I just got off the call today with a graduate nurse who's been a graduate for a couple of months and they're having the hardest of times, and a factor in that is what I've talked about today.
Okay is even though you get the job, do you have the tools and the skills to be able to then manage the job? And we teach you all of that in the G C P as well as guarantee you Your dream graduate job, multiple job offers the confidence that you've always wanted. It's in the G C P. So come and join us.
We'd love to support you. All of the links from the show notes, and I'm curious to find out what you thought of this episode, and I will see you next week. If you need any graduate support or you want to ask any questions or you wanna come join G C L P, come and chat with me on Instagram at Hope, perform nursing, and let's make it happen to your graduate success.
