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PREFERENCE FILTERS: HOW

WILL YOU WORK?

In addition to understanding your natural aptitudes and strengths, it’s
useful to consider your personal work preferences. There are many
ways to think about these, many filters through which to consider your
options. These include types of nursing work, types of organizations, your
workplace environment, your individual working style, your preferred way
of dealing with interpersonal relations, your professional and employment
expectations, and job-specific considerations.
Keep in mind that some considerations may be more important to you than
others. Consider the following “filters” to be examples to help you start
exploring the criteria that are most important to you. Remember that your
responses will most likely fall on a continuum that will indicate a preference
rather than an absolute, and that some items might be critically important
to you while others are not at all. It’s the critical ones that need to drive
decisions for you.
As you think through your feelings about each of these choices, make
notes about your reactions. As you do so, you want to think about two
different types of responses: first, how do you react to the choice, and
second, how strongly do you feel about that reaction, or how important is
this question to your overall career happiness.

Organizational characteristics. There are many ways to characterize
organizations, having to do with their missions, their markets and
constituencies, their size, and similar criteria. Consider the following
choices regarding a potential employer, and note which options seem more
appealing to you:
• Medical institution or organization vs. non-medical. For
many nursing professionals, working with and within the medical
community is central to who they are. For others, the work they do
is more important than where they do it (for example, they would be
comfortable being an on-staff nurse for a corporation).

• Profit- or mission-driven. If mission is an important consideration for
you, it may take some research to find the right job, but you’ll be much
happier aligning your skills with your values.

• Emerging industry/discipline vs. established industry/discipline.
Organizations based on emerging industries and disciplines (for
example, medical data analysis) tend to offer exciting and challenging
opportunities, while those in established or maturing disciplines often
provide calmer workplaces. You’ll also want to carefully check out the
corporate culture of any potential employers.
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