52// Why You Can't Break Free From Nursing Career Stagnation & How These 5 Actions Can Advance Your Career As An Experienced Nurse (Replay)

This podcast was one of the top 10 podcast episodes of 2024. I am bringing it back as a replay for your enjoyment as I work on new episodes for 2025. 

Are you tired of feeling stuck in your nursing career despite having advanced degrees and qualifications?

 Join me, Bonnie Meadows, as I reveal essential strategies for overcoming career stagnation and moving into leadership roles. Discover why your resume might hold you back and learn how to align it with job descriptions to get past HR screening systems. 

I’ll share practical tips to highlight your experience and bridge perceived gaps in leadership, ensuring your resume stands out.

Learn about the power of proactive career steps, navigating workplace politics, and knowing when to seek sponsorship or new opportunities. Whether dealing with micromanagers or advocating for policy changes, this episode is packed with actionable advice. Plus, I offer personalized career guidance—schedule a one-on-one call to discuss your path and get tailored advice.

Let’s work together to help you achieve the nursing career you desire and make a lasting impact in the profession. Don’t forget to share this episode with fellow nurses and leave a review on Apple Podcasts!

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Join me for a **1:1 Nurse Career Clarity Coaching Call**—a 1:1 coaching session where we’ll get you unstuck and find clarity to make the next move in your career.

Transcript

2:06

There are instances where you have the degree, you have the qualifications slash experience, but they still won't give you a chance at that level. You either need to leave your organization. or find someone to sponsor you and give you the guidance on how to navigate the politics of the situation. Are you feeling stuck in your current clinical environment? Do you want to make a change in your nursing career but not sure what to do next? Exhausted, burnt out, and maybe even ready for different leadership? I'm Bonnie Meadows, a Board Certified Nurse. Clinical Nurse Specialist, Influential Leader, Career Coach, and Well Being Coach. Being in the nursing and healthcare profession since 2004, I have felt stuck and unsure about what was next for me. I wanted to be fulfilled in my purpose, to have a voice at the table. And to be a resource for others, I kept telling myself I wanted more, but didn't have the direction I needed until I found clarity and career growth strategies for experienced nurses like me. In this podcast, you will find. Simple tactical steps that allow you to gain the clarity you need, solutions for how to grow even without supportive leadership, and guidelines for setting boundaries at work so that you can grow purposefully in your career as a nurse with a graduate degree who makes a huge impact in the profession. So get ready to trade your scrubs for yoga pants. Pop in those earbuds and let's chat. Welcome back. My fellow nurses. So glad to be here with you today. Just to talk about a few reasons why your nursing career might not be growing and a few things you can do to get on track. So I had a nurse manager ask me. About an individual who had a master's in nursing leadership and was applying for a clinical supervisor position. And we were having this conversation, because she was inquiring about, if I knew that person, I will tell you. I probably get asked that question maybe about once a month. Hey, do you know so and so? And usually it's from a nurse manager. You know, just to get my opinion or it could be, maybe not a nurse manager, but someone who is interviewing, doing a peer interview and it could be on a master's degree level or something of the sort, especially if they worked in cardiac. Then usually people will tend to ask me. And so this individual was applying, she had, well, this nurse manager had had some conversations with the person who was applying for the clinical supervisor position. And she said that this nurse had been applying to nurse manager positions, but was not getting hired and was frustrated. It was mainly because she didn't have any leadership experience. Now, I will say, and I will give this disclaimer even, further in the podcast again, there have been times where you have the degree, you have leadership experience, but then The nurse managers will come up or the leaders, not the nurse managers, but the leaders will come up with some, bogus, excuse as to why you shouldn't be in a position of operations. And we all know. That just because you've had a position in operations doesn't necessarily mean that you have leadership skills. But many of our nurse leaders make this excuse that, Oh, I can't hire a nurse manager because they haven't been a clinical supervisor yet. They have learned to work with teams. They've learned how to collaborate with others. They've learned how to work with different personalities. The only thing that they don't, that they've never had to do was sit down and create a budget. Well, half of the time, even a clinical supervisor hadn't had a chance or an, or an assistant nurse manager hasn't had an opportunity to do that. And they have to learn that on the fly. They have to learn on a, on the job. And sometimes it takes them about a year. Whereas this nurse who has a master's in nursing leadership has taken a full on class on. Financials in healthcare management. So I've gotten on my soapbox already about that. So just know that's already at the top of my head. So what I'm getting ready to tell you is you might be fighting up against that or you might not, but these are some points that you really need to consider. when you are trying to grow your career. So let's get started. I'm going to start with one. Cause I've seen this a lot. Your resume doesn't match the job description or the career trajectory. That you want to go. So what does this mean? Meaning you're applying for positions. Your resume doesn't necessarily speak to how it matches up with the job description. on that particular website. Nor is there like any objective or summary at the top that says in your career, this is the trajectory that you want to go. You just look like that's where you're going in your career. Why is that important? One, because you can't get, you can't even get past the, API machine that they run your Resume through in order to see if your resume is a match for the actual position. So most large companies, most healthcare companies that we're working for they are usually large companies at this point. Some of them small, but majority of them are large enough to have a pretty moderate size HR department. And with that H. R. Receives your resume through their online portal, and then the machine that they put it through matches up your resume to the job description. So if you are applying for a leadership position or you're applying for a quality position, but nothing in your resume says that you have any experience with quality doing per quality improvement work, or nothing in your resume matches up with the job description and not saying that you need to copy and paste the job description, but you do need to pretty much match up your resume with the job description. So, how do you do that? Really, I suggest that you one, always create, just have your baseline resume. Always have your baseline. That's what you're always working off of. Then when you see a job or two that you like, if they're kind of in the same sector. You look at that job description and then you change it slightly to showcase the work that you've done in that particular area for that job that you are looking for. And it really is like full on in the description of either what your current job is or what your previous job has. But your previous jobs have been to say, oh, they have some of the job qualities that meet this job description. So showcase it. I'm gonna change it to slightly showcase your work differently for that particular healthcare sector. Point two, you have the degree, but you haven't been somewhat involved in the work in your current role. That particular individual in the story that I told earlier, she was working at the bedside, had no experience. No experience leading a unit based council, no experience using, leading a hospital wide council, no experience leading a project. She just decided I'm ready to leave the bedside. So I'm going to go and get a master's degree. I don't want to be a nurse practitioner She probably did want to be a nurse manager. But had no experience leading or. As an assistant nurse manager or clinical supervisor or whatever we want to call ourselves these days, it's very important again, to make sure your resume and your experience lines up with the role that you are looking to, the area that you're looking to break into, even if it is a totally different specialty. Here's another, for example, I, as a clinical nurse specialist, if I work my job right, I can apply for a project manager position because I've led projects. That's what I do. That's what I've done. Even as a nurse educator, you lead projects. You can apply for a project manager position because you're facilitating teams and you are leading the project of building the education. or building the quality improvement project or implementing the process. That's what you do. But I would have to go in and change the language of my resume to meet that of the job description. Again, I would duplicate my baseline resume and then revise to create a resume that matches the jobs that I'm looking for in that area of project management. So in whatever way you pursue the degree, you should be doing the small things at your current role or in a previous role, to apply the knowledge that you have. Leaders not only want to see you have the degree, but they also want to see the experience you have with the work. A few more examples. This is in the clinical sector. You just graduated from NP school. You want to work as an NP in the current unit that you're on, or maybe in the same hospital, but you're lazy with how you take care of your current patients. Or you're not working on your decision making. You're not using what you've learned in your NP program to upscale and up level and level up. The way that you critically think about your patients, so then that chief NP sees you around, sees how you're working, you try to apply to work with them, and they're like, no, we can't. I'm sorry. We can't. We can't hire you. Yeah, you've been working in the ICU But you've not demonstrated skills of leadership. Because even as an NP, you're a leader and you've not demonstrated skills of critically thinking and managing your patient. So just two examples of what I mean by got the degree, but you're not really involved or really developing in your role. So if you're thinking about going back to school, these are some things that you need to think about of connecting that degree with whatever roles that you're thinking about going into. Point three, you're not visible to your leaders. Why is that important? Because when you're not visible to your leaders, they think that you're not doing anything. They think that you don't want to grow. They think that you just want to do your work and go home. They think that you don't want to be involved and you might not want to be involved in that particular unit. You really might be afraid that if you even step a toe into doing the work that you might get pulled in too far, but that's where boundaries come in and you go in knowing what you want to get yourself into and where your cutoff is of, yep, I can't do that. Nope. I'm not available to do that. When we set boundaries, it's really uncomfortable at first, but people respect you when you set the boundaries. So it's just really important for you to be visible to your leaders so that they can one speak highly of you, which will make it easier for you to grow your career. And it helps you to get exposure to other things because they tend to pull you into things again, that you really might be interested in. And it allows you to get exposure to other areas of healthcare. You get more visible by not doing what everyone else does. You start volunteering to showcase what you can do inside your current position and Some skills that you may have that you don't think relate to your current position, but they do. The other thing is, and I see this a lot in nurses with master's degrees who are just in the background doing the work. You're doing the work, but you don't mention to your boss. And what you're currently involved in with others. So they don't think you want to grow when in actuality you were the co lead in that work. And so you are mad because other people are getting promoted because they're tooting their horn. But there is a healthy way. To be able to brag on yourself with that small elevator pitch, or to at least make others aware of the work that you are doing and your level of professionalism in the workplace, when they start to connect what you're doing in other areas. I don't know what it is, but when people appreciate you and appreciate your work in other areas, it just gives your leaders a light bulb to think, Oh, well, I might need to consider them for this or might need to consider them for that, which will help you to grow your career. I'm at point number four. You're not involved in your professional organization. Why is that important? Being involved in your professional organization, not just a member. But Involved helps you to grow your career because you are now exposed to people outside of your organization. And they get to see how you work. So even if the people in your organization don't appreciate you and the value that you bring to the work that you do every day, the people outside of the organization appreciate the work that you do. They see you in a different light. And sometimes When other people highlight the work that you do and appreciate how you do that work, then your leaders tend to see you differently. Trust me, I know that's been my experience. So how do we do that? What does involvement look like in a professional organization? Not only do you need to join, but when they call for committees, join the committee. When they have a call for elections, run for a position. You can start locally in your city if you can, and then grow to the state or the national level. When I started my journey I didn't start the journey with the intention to run for president elect of my state nurses association. However, I started the journey because I wanted to be involved and I wanted to make an impact and my impact was very local. It was really literally just within my region. I was on our regional advisory committee, and so I was able to just be involved in events that we did at the regional level. And then from there, the person who was elected to the board told me, she said, I'm going to get you ready for a board position. Now she couldn't elect me. All she could do was get me ready for it, which meant. That she talked about me, she exposed me to other people within the state who then saw how I worked. And from there, once people saw me as a familiar face, they understood that my desire to be heard. to serve the organization was greater than just a power, a power rush. Then they elected me to the board for two terms. And then from there I was able to run for president elect. Now you don't have to do that path, but either way that allowed me to gain exposure inside of my organization and outside of the organization. So last point, you're waiting for your leader to do it. You're waiting for your leader to recognize you and to say, Oh, I want to promote that person or I want this person to do this, or I'm going to nominate you for this. Here's my why of why you should not do that. Don't ever give someone else the power To dictate how you grow, the power is in your hands. It is up to you and the good Lord to grow your career. Not anyone else. He can use those people, but it is up to you to put one foot in front of the other, to put yourself out there, but don't wait on someone else to grow your career because one, it might not be in the way that you want to grow your career. They might be thinking about you growing in one way and you're like, I don't want to do that. I've had plenty of leaders say, Oh, well I'm trying to set you up or I'm trying to prepare you for a, the such and such position. I'm thinking to myself, I don't want to do that. I don't know why you thought I wanted to do that. You didn't ask me. Let your leader know about your desire to grow, but don't always expect them to jump in, jump up and down and say, yes, yes, I want to see, they want to see you grow, but they don't want to see you leave. Not all of them. Not every leader wants you to grow. It's selfish on their part. And we can't blame it on them because they want a well oiled machine. The good leaders, they understand that people grow. They're sad when you leave and they're like, shucks, but they want to do everything that they can to make sure that you grow and that you fly and that you do what you do because they see what you can do and they don't want to be the ones to hold you back. So you can sometimes, see that you're dealing with a leader that doesn't want you to grow. And you can also let them know your desire to grow without telling them, but by volunteering for projects you like, and even some that you don't like, so they can at least get a glimpse. Of how you work from a different perspective. Here is my bonus tip slash disclaimer. I said this earlier in the podcast. There are instances where you have the degree, you have the qualifications slash experience, but they still won't give you a chance at that level. You either need to leave your organization. or find someone to sponsor you and give you the guidance on how to navigate the politics of the situation. Those are some things that I do help people with in one on one coaching. I help you to navigate the politics of your situation, especially if you're looking to grow because why I've been there, I've had to navigate the politics of a situation. Several times. And so I've learned a lot about what to expect, what not to expect. I was actually talking to one of my leaders the other day and I was, and this is a, a leader that I don't directly report to, but, her and I are just involved in a lot of work. Our, our work is kind of like a, a cross of things, and. You know, I was running this idea by her, by her and she said, great. And then she started to expand on it. You know, we were just talking through some things and, and I told her, I said, you know, I'm very glad that I reached out to you for this. I said, I don't mind dealing. I honestly don't mind dealing with politics. I just need to know what I'm dealing with. Just let me know what I'm dealing with and I can navigate politics. Micromanagers. I can't necessarily navigate. Ah, I'm still working on that one, but I will tell you this, I can manage it from the outside better than I can manage it from the inside because of what I've learned. The problem is, when I am in those situations, which I try not to be, because I'm just really bad with micromanagers, my emotions get in the way. And I try not to, and I understand it's a little bit of an ego. It's a little bit of a power struggle. I can see right through it and what you're trying to do, especially if it's with bad, if it's with terrible intent. But I think I've gone off into a little tangent here. So I'm going to circle back when you figure out that you need to navigate the politics of the situation, there probably needs to be a change in the policies of how they hire. You could be the one to help them to make that change if you're up for it. All right, so I'm going to wrap up and recap. Here's some reasons why your nursing career might not be growing. Your resume doesn't match the job description or career trajectory you want to go. You have the degree, but you haven't. If you have not been involved in the work in your current role or a role prior to, you're not visible to your leaders. You're not involved in your professional organizations and you're waiting for your leader to do it. I've given you some good direction on how you can maneuver around those things. Some of these things you can implement very quickly. Some of them, I'm just going to take a little time to develop. But if you need help with any of this, feel free to jump on a one on one call with me, set up a one on one call with me and we can talk through these things until next time. I'll see you later. I hope you enjoyed today's episode. If so, would you take 30 seconds and share it with another nurse who may be unsure of where to go next in their career or maybe need some career clarity? Also, please leave a quick review for the show on Apple podcast. It brings me so much joy and so much encouragement to know this podcast is helping you. Now go get the career you want and not the one you settle for. And I'll meet you back here next Thursday for another episode. See you soon!