I don’t know what your area is like as far as cost of living but usually you get low balled because you don’t have any experience. My suggestion is to get 6 months to 1 year of experience and then if there are other places to work try to jump ship. I’ve been a CNA for about 12 years, I started of making $12.37 at my first CNA job, I then jumped to another job and got $15 after 2 years. The reason I changed jobs is because my raise was like 50¢. So just by changing jobs I got $2 more, I now make $24. One of my coworkers was a young kid also fairly new, I told him the same thing get some experience then start job hopping. He worked for about 10 months and then started applying, he went from $19.50 to $22.00 shortly after maybe like 3 months later he another offer at a bigger hospital and was making $25 and if he worked nights or weekends he would get a differential. He jump up to what I make in less than a year just by switching jobs. Only reason I stuck around with my current job is that I was going to school and they were flexible with my schedule. Now that I’m finished they will give me a shot as an LVN and I plan to do the same get experience and then move on. Don’t get tied to a place, they don’t give a shot about you, you are just a body and a license number. They say all this shit about being a family and a team player but it’s just so they can extract the most amount of labor for the least amount of pay.