HOW TO INTERVIEW WHEN YOU ARE CHANGING SPECIALTIES

Your best internal candidates are getting screened out for telling the truth.

A nurse with four strong years asks to move specialties. You ask why she is leaving her current unit. She answers honestly: the ratios, the schedule that changed three times in a year, the night she had nine patients and no tech.

Every word accurate. And somebody writes “running from, not running toward” on the sheet.

I spent twenty years on the hiring side and I have watched this cost good nurses jobs they would have been excellent at, while the candidate who said “I’m ready for a new challenge,” which means nothing at all, moved to the next round.

Two fixes, both yours to make. Ask the ramp-up question directly instead of waiting for candidates to guess at it: how long until you carry a full assignment, what transfers, what will you need to learn? And stop reading honesty about a previous employer as a character risk. The 2026 NSI report puts average RN time-to-fill at 78 days. You cannot afford to screen out capable people for being candid.

This week on Nursing Matters, the five moves that make a specialty change read as a plan.

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Nurse Career Resources: Earn More, Get Hired Faster

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