Who ordered this recession?

I have never had so much trouble trying to get a job in my life. I am a nurse, an Emergency Department nurse! They are in short supply- so I've been told! Everywhere I have lived, I have gone to whatever hospital I wanted (which is usually the closest one to me), asked to see the director of the ER, got shown into their office, talked to them briefly and was hired, end of story. Not here! Nope! Not one hospital has even allowed me to see a director of nursing, let alone get hired that way. Everyone says, "you have to go through Human Resources." And Human Resources says, "you have to do everything on-line. If there is not a job opening posted, you can't apply." Since the job position I want (As needed ER nurse) is rarely posted, I haven't had much luck. I have tried to talk reasonably to Human Resources and ask them to please check with the department, but it all ends in nothing. See, ER's generally like a large pool of As Needed nurses to choose from, but they rarely think about posting a job for that position. It is one that most nurses just slide into when they get tired of working full time.
Well a job finally opened up and I hurried and applied. I had to go do a job interview (what, an interview? What is that?) It didn't go fabulously, but I kept calling back and finally got a hold of the director. I think she was too nice to say, never mind, so instead she set me up for a job shadow and another interview. When I got to my interview/job shadow, I was told I would have to job shadow first and then interview. Didn't matter to me which way, except I was told that since I wasn't really hired I really could do nothing. This was just for me to follow the nurse around and watch. I watched for 5 hours before they said I could go home. I was so bored, I thought I would die. And how much time did I get paid for- that's right, the big fat zero! The lady I job shadowed with seemed impressed with me, even though I didn't do anything except watch her run around with her head cut off and ask questions. But she said she would make sure that the director (who had already left) knew that she approved. As for the interview- never happened!
I know I should be grateful for the chance to even interview. There are a lot of people out there that can't get a job at all. I can only assume that a lot of them went back to nursing and took my job away. Or maybe this place is just really slow moving and it generally takes a year to get a job. Who knows! I've decided, either way, to blame it on the recession instead of my lack of interview skills!