How applying works

Residency or regular new grad job?

A new grad residency is a paid RN job that comes with a training program for your first months on the job. Hospitals hire a group of new nurses at a time, so they take applications only during set windows. A regular new grad job is one opening. It can be posted any day, and you start when you are hired. Both are worth applying to. This site tracks the residencies.

Why big health systems are confusing

Large health systems, like CommonSpirit, Kaiser and Providence, post jobs for many hospitals on one shared careers site. On those sites a hospital can be filed under a region name instead of its own name. For example, CommonSpirit lists St. John's in Oxnard under “Central Coast.” If you can't find your hospital, look for its region. When we know the heading, the program page tells you.

Why a posting can show up late

A date on a hospital's page is the day they plan to open. The posting itself can go up later than that. Once it is up, some windows stay open only two or three days, and many stay open one to two weeks. So have your resume, transcripts and references ready before the date.

How our alerts work

• We read most hospitals' pages and job lists every day, usually several times.
• You get one email the day it opens, for the programs we can monitor.
• Every automatic alert is checked against the hospital's own page, word for word, before it sends.
• Some pages can't be read automatically. Their program page here says so, so you know to check that one yourself.
• We don't guess dates. When all we know is the month a hospital usually opens, we say “usually” and give the month with no day.

What to do now

Find your hospitals on the program list, read the How to apply box on each page, and turn on alerts for your area.