Interview with Dr. Heather Fork

Today's presentation is a replay of Dr. Heather Fork's presentation in which she explains how to land an awesome job using LinkedIn.

Our Sponsor

We're proud to have the University of Tennessee Physician Executive MBA Program, offered by the Haslam College of Business, as the sponsor of this podcast.

The UT PEMBA is the longest-running, and most highly respected physician-only MBA in the country. It has over 700 graduates. And, the program only takes one year to complete. 

By joining the UT Physician Executive MBA, you will develop the business and management skills you need to find a career that you love. To find out more, contact Dr. Kate Atchley’s office at (865) 974-6526 or go to nonclinicalphysicians.com/physicianmba.

New Podcast

Dr. Fork hosts the weekly Doctor’s Crossing Carpe Diem Podcast. And she is passionate about creating new resources to make it easier for physicians to navigate their careers.

She previously described her Resumé Writing Kit here on the PNC Podcast.

How to Land An Awesome Job Using LinkedIn

Heather begins our discussion by explaining what LinkedIn is, and why it is unique among social media sites. She notes that when she started coaching, LinkedIn was not an essential tool for physicians seeking a new career. 

The biggest mistake physicians make is not getting “in the parade” and having fun. – Dr. Heather Fork

Today, she says that 100% of her clients use LinkedIn as an integral part of their career search strategy. That's why she found it so important to help her clients and other physicians by creating a LinkedIn course for them.

Summary

Dr. Heather Fork explains why LinkedIn is important, and how to land a nonclinical job by using it in new ways. She also explained its most critical functions and points out little-known tips, including her “Alumni Hack.”

IMPORTANT REMINDER: Heather has created her own “how-to” course called LinkedIn for Physicians that anybody can purchase if they need help setting up their profile properly. This is, by far, the best resource for quickly learning how to set up your LinkedIn page and use it to network, attract recruiters, and find a nontraditional job. [Note: this link is an affiliate link so I receive a stipend for promoting it that does NOT affect the price of the course to you.- JJ]

NOTE: Look below for a transcript of today's episode.

Links for Today's Episode:

• Doctor's Crossing Website
• Doctor's Crossing Free Resources
• Heather Fork's Linkedin for Physicians
• Your Resume is the Passport to That Desirable Job – 157
• Top Reasons to Use LinkedIn – 008
• NewScr!pt

Download This Episode:

Right Click Here and “Save As” to download this podcast episode to your computer.

Podcast Editing & Production Services are provided by Oscar Hamilton

Today's PNC Podcast Transcript

Email Download New Tab

Transcription PNC Podcast Episode 310

How to Land An Awesome Job Using LinkedIn

John: I'm very pleased to bring today's guest back to the podcast for the third time. She's been an awesome source of support for physicians struggling with their careers for many years and she's a very well-known ICF Master Certified Coach in resume and LinkedIn expert. Hello, Dr. Heather Fork.

Dr. Heather Fork: Hello, iconic Dr. John Jurica. Thank you so much for that very generous intro. And I have to say, I am a huge fan of yours. Yours is probably the first podcast I ever listened to.

John: Well, I'm happy to hear that and I'm glad to hear it. And it's mutual because I love your podcast. Oops. I shouldn't have spilled the beans that you have a podcast. That's one of the new things you're doing. But I love your podcast, I love your coaching, and your blog too has much good stuff on it. We're not going to go over all your past history because they can go back and listen to the previous episodes if they like. What I really want to know is since it's been about a year and a half, what new things have you been up to?

Dr. Heather Fork: Well, spoiler. A podcast.

John: There you go.

Dr. Heather Fork: Now, you inspired me with this medium that I've been putting off. And when I heard you and then Amy Porterfield, I thought this is so valuable. Especially since I don't really like to write and I've been blogging for 10 years, I just had to do something different.

The podcast started last October. And as you know, it's a lot of work to do a weekly podcast, but it's much fun and I love getting my former clients to come on and other guests because they're so fantastic. And what I hear from listeners is I don't feel alone anymore. Someone else feels the way I do. I don't feel like I'm damaged goods and I have hope.

John: Yeah. Well, it's been a while since I started, but one of the things I realized shortly after I started and I heard from people is that you are part of people's life. They know your voice. I was at a meeting once and someone came up to me and said, "Hey, I recognize you. Aren't you John Jurica?" We were at a meeting about nonclinical careers. But just that whole idea that you're talking to them directly.

Dr. Heather Fork: Yes, it's intimate. And I love it because you can really help people feel too what you're expressing and what the guests are expressing. I think it really changes the landscape from being something to just thinking about making changes, to feeling like it's really possible. That these people are really alive. Someone just didn't write a bunch of stuff and put it on a paper and made it up.

John: That's true. Now, oddly enough, there are some people that have never listened to a single podcast. I don't know how we get to them. But for those who are listening and want to learn about nonclinical careers or burnout or nontraditional careers or just, I don't know, feeling better about your life, definitely, you want to listen to Doctor's Crossing Carpe Diem podcast. Why did you pick that name?

Dr. Heather Fork: I just love the term "carpe diem". And my coaching program is called Carpe Diem because like Robin William said in that movie, "Dead Poets Society" that, "Before long we're going to be pushing up daisy's unless we carpe that diem." And we got on this path and our whole life has been planned out for us. And if we don't really question, is it what we really want to be doing? Is it making us happy? We'll be pushing up daisy's and saying, "Oh my God, I didn't get to have the life I wanted."

John: For sure. Yeah. Seize the day, right?

Dr. Heather Fork: Yes.

John: All right. Everyone's going to go listen to your podcast, but that is not really the main reason I wanted you to come on today because we discussed something a few years ago about creating different resources for people that we could share with our followers and our listeners and all that.

And then I saw that you, the expert in LinkedIn, recently created a course. But I'm going to just talk to you about LinkedIn. That's what we're going to spend the next 20 minutes doing, because I don't think that our listeners always understand the importance or why we should learn about it if we're not already using it. Just explain what LinkedIn is for those that have never used it, or have just dabbled a little bit and maybe why it's different from other social media sites.

Dr. Heather Fork: I'd love to. LinkedIn is considered the number one networking platform for professionals, and it has over 800 million members. So, it's worldwide. And I'd say the main thing about it, that's different from Facebook and Instagram and these other platforms is that it's really for those of you who want to have a professional platform, you can have your own profile, who want to network with other professionals with a really powerful search engine. I call it the Rolodex on Steroids. And also, be able to use your profile to apply for jobs and interact with recruiters. It's one-stop shopping and a platform that's continuing to evolve.

John: Well, I'm on LinkedIn fairly often. It's actually one way that I find podcast guests, for example. And being an introvert, I'm not a big networker per se, but it's an awesome way to network as is a podcast, of course.

But the thing is, I have never seen a nasty conversation on LinkedIn. People are like, they don't want to go to Twitter and Facebook because it's just loaded with sometimes some nasty stuff. And LinkedIn is, like you said, it's professional. It's a place where you can find jobs and post jobs, if you like. Does it come into play a lot in terms of the people you work with, that you coach or that you're teaching? I know you've done some speaking about LinkedIn. Does it seem to help them? And how often does it become a critical part of their career search?

Dr. Heather Fork: That's a great question, John. And I would say back in 2010 when I first started, LinkedIn was there, but it wasn't used as much. But now all of my clients use LinkedIn. And let me explain how it's helpful by painting a little scenario. Let's say we have two physicians and they're both applying for the same nonclinical job. One is on LinkedIn, one isn't. The one who isn't on LinkedIn applies through the regular channel, say maybe Indeed with their CV or resume. Then the other physician applies on LinkedIn. And the difference is when the recruiter gets a CV for that first physician, they just have the CV or resume. They don't see a picture. They don't see recommendations. They don't have this dynamic visual of the physician.

Then if they go to the physician who applied through LinkedIn or even has a link for their LinkedIn profile on their resume, that recruiter can click and then they already see this beautiful face. They see a lovely banner photo and then everything's right there that they need that would've been on the resume. Plus, there are a lot of additional things you can put on your LinkedIn profile. They might read a recommendation that describes exactly who they're looking for. That's not going to be on your resume.

John: Absolutely. Yeah. In my mind, I think about a Venn diagram, things overlap and a resume and LinkedIn overlap a lot, and then networking overlaps with your LinkedIn. And you're right. The LinkedIn profile is just so much more complete. Not that you want to send in a five-page resume. But if someone wants to look for that information, it's right there on LinkedIn.

Dr. Heather Fork: Exactly. So, the physician who's using LinkedIn, when they want to apply for a certain job, they could find a physician who's working in that company, and they can reach out to them for an informational interview. And then often those physicians get a finder's fee if they refer somebody who gets hired. So, there's an incentive for them to talk to you. If that person's applying and they were recommended by another physician, the recruiter already likes them because there's a much higher success rate for candidates found that way. It makes it easier. So, you can see how very quickly that physician who's on LinkedIn already has many advantages.

John: I had a podcast guest tell me once that submitting a CV on a website is the way of madness. She had literally said she had submitted a thousand resumes and had never received a response. And she noted that once she figured out that she just needed to have some connection with somebody, either find out who the hiring manager was or have somebody that she knows in the company, some touchpoint, then she had some actual jobs that were requesting she come and interview.

Dr. Heather Fork: Oh my gosh, that's such a discouraging story to send out thousands and not hear anything back. I'm surprised she persisted that long.

John: Well, I think it's misleading because it's just so easy. Oh, I'm just going to cut and paste and cut and paste and cut and paste. But no one's looking at those kinds of resumes, I don't think. My daughter is a recruiter for a big firm and they use LinkedIn constantly.

Dr. Heather Fork: Well, it's really becoming the go-to platform for recruiters. And when you apply for a job on LinkedIn, often, you'll actually see the recruiter that's connected to that position and you can reach out to them. You can attach your resume right there in addition to the formal application process. You can start a relationship. You could also just look at jobs you're interested in and you may not be ready to apply, but you can connect with that recruiter and say, "Hey, I'm not ready yet, but I'd love to establish a relationship with you."

John: Yeah, absolutely. That's so true. You mentioned how all of your clients use LinkedIn. Can you give us some examples of where it was very critical to a particular, without naming names, particular clients?

Dr. Heather Fork: Sure. Absolutely. I have some great stories. I had one client who wanted to transition into a certain nonclinical area. And we were on the phone together and we were both searching on LinkedIn. And because she wasn't having a lot of success at first, connecting with a couple of folks on LinkedIn. So, I said, "Here, let's find somebody." I found this person with her same specialty, and she sent him a message. She heard from him the next day. They had a chat. It turns out they knew a couple of people in common who were working at that company as well. She ended up getting an interview and it took a while because they didn't quite have an opening then for her specialty, but she got the job and she's working in the job and she's really happy.

John: Very nice.

Dr. Heather Fork: I have another story. This was a physician who was brand new to LinkedIn. When she came to me, she didn't have a profile or anything. She created it. It really doesn't take that long when you just follow the steps. And I taught her my alumni hack, which is one of my favorite little things to do on LinkedIn that's very powerful, is to search your alumni network. That could be people you went to college with, med school, even your training program, and see if they're working in the industry or at the company that you're interested in.

She found someone who went to her small liberal arts college who was working in the company where she wanted to work. She messaged him, he got back to her right away, and said, "Send me a resume. I want to give it to the hiring manager." She did that. The hiring manager reaches out, interviews within a week. Does another interview, gets the job. There was one and done. One application, a couple of interviews, got the job.

John: It's amazing. I think sometimes we feel like if we're reaching out to someone, we haven't seen in 20 years, they're not going to respond. But the reality is when I'm on the receiving end, if I get a note of any sort, whether it's an email or LinkedIn and they're from my Alma mater. I mean, invariably, I respond immediately. That's just human nature, I think.

Dr. Heather Fork: You are family, and those little connections are huge. It's funny how we're like that. The first time we had gone to the school, like I said, 20 years ago or before you, or after you, but you are buddies.

John: Yeah. Even if it's someone from two or three years, if you're at the same school, you just have that bond and can talk about the different things and you feel like you're somehow you owe that person for some reason in a good way.

Dr. Heather Fork: Yeah. You just feel this common connection. That really it feels like a blood brother or something.

John: Now, I hear another thing people tell me about LinkedIn is they create a profile and they should put certain keywords if they're looking to be found by someone. Is that a big thing? Is that a minor thing to consider?

Dr. Heather Fork: That's a great question, John. Now, there's something on LinkedIn called "Your headline". And this is what comes below your name, or you have your degrees and everything. And by default, LinkedIn puts in the company where you're working and your job title. That's just by default. But you can customize this headline with keywords that will help recruiters find you or the people you want to find you. For example, it might just say that you're a physician at Slippery Rock Clinic, or something like that. But you can put in, medical writer, consultant, physician advisor, you can put in expert witness, the side gigs that you might be doing. Even you can say, "Seeking position in drug safety".

John: Wow. Nice. That helps really to key off those who are actually looking on LinkedIn for someone to contact like a recruiter or something like that.

Dr. Heather Fork: You can do that. And then those keywords also are important to have in your "About section", which is like your customized bio. They can also go in your "Experience section". They can go anywhere on your profile and they are searchable.

John: That really helps. I'm telling you. Let me turn it around now. Here's the way I like to look at things sometimes is like, let's look at the other side of the coin. What are the mistakes? Now, we've kind of alluded to them in a way by what a good way to use LinkedIn is. But have you seen working with people and said, "Wait a second, this is why people aren't looking at your profile?" Any common mistakes that we make when we first start to use LinkedIn?

Dr. Heather Fork: I would say there definitely are mistakes like that, of not optimizing the profile. And there are lots of ways to do that. But some of the biggest mistakes are really just not getting in the parade and then shutting the parade down too soon. What do I mean by that? Not getting in the parade is saying, well, I'm a private person. I really don't like to put myself out there, or I'm really introverted. I don't like to network. Or you get on LinkedIn, you put up a basic profile. Maybe you send a few messages, apply for a few jobs, nothing happens. And you just say, well, this doesn't work and I don't have time. Which I completely understand. It is not the most intuitive platform. And these things that I teach in the course help you know how to use it and use it strategically so it's not wasting your time.

John: Okay. Now you mentioned the course. I mentioned it earlier and I do want to learn more about the course. I do want to remind my listeners though, of course of your website, doctorscrossing.com. That's where pretty much they can find everything. Now I understand also, you have a page there that has a bunch of free resources. That looked pretty awesome. Can you tell us about that first?

Dr. Heather Fork: Absolutely. On my website, under the freebie tab, there are these downloadable PDFs that you can have. One is a starter kit that's very extensive on how you can go from being overwhelmed at the crossroad to figuring out how to move forward. That has a lot of great information for your career process. Then there's one on medical writing. There's one on pharma. There's a chart review. There might be some others there. I can't quite remember, but you can go to the freebie tab and take whatever you want.

John: I went and looked today. I think there were at least six that were there and they address different things. I've downloaded several of them, of course, but I would recommend people to go. And you can go directly there at doctorscrossing.com/freeresources, or just go to the website and look for it.

Okay. Now you have a LinkedIn course. This is something that I have been looking forward to for a long time. One of those things that I thought we really needed. I have this little video that I made five years ago where I built a LinkedIn profile. It is so dated. It is so ugly. And then I just said, "I'm not going to do anything, because I'm waiting for Heather to come out with her course." So, it's called what? LinkedIn course for physicians?

Dr. Heather Fork: You always do quality work and you're also incredibly prolific. You put about a hundred things to my one.

John: Okay. I'm not going to argue with you except that this course is beautiful. I will say that it's a lot prettier than anything I've produced. It's just awesome. Tell us about how it's structured and what does it go through?

Dr. Heather Fork: Thanks for asking. And I have to say, this has been the hardest thing I've done in my business. It took me a year. It wouldn't take me that long if I was doing the second one, but the course is three hours of video that's broken down into 22 short lessons, five minutes to 10 minutes. And what it does is it walks you through creating your profile, then teaches you how to start networking and message people. There are specific examples and templates to use of, "Well, what do you say in that message when you only have 300 characters? What do you do when someone doesn't respond to that message, and then how do you write longer messages"? We cover networking and then we go on to "How to start searching for jobs?" Because that's another thing that really gets people in a twist is, "I see all these job descriptions and they want five to seven years and I'm not qualified" and that's another area of difficulty. I really talk about that.

And then I also show them how to apply for jobs and work with recruiters. And there's all these little things you don't really know about. For example, did you know, John, that you can put yourself in anonymous mode when you want to go look at people's profile, but you don't want them to see that you've been visiting them and then you can turn it back on and be visible?

John: No, no, I've never tried that, but it would be definitely a useful tool.

Dr. Heather Fork: It really is. You can stalk a bit on LinkedIn.

John: One of the things that I did find out though is if you have a profile and you want to make a change to it and you don't want your boss to be notified of the change, you can go in and turn that off temporarily or permanently where they won't be notified of new changes. You can be a little under the radar that way.

Dr. Heather Fork: Yes, that's 100% correct. You can stop those notifications to your contacts. A couple of other things about the course is that I really wanted to make it easy to use. With each lesson, there's a downloadable cheat sheet that goes over all the steps, and in the videos, I'll teach about how to do something. For example, how to write your "About section". And then I'll go on LinkedIn in the video and show them exactly how to do it, where to click, where to go, and then show examples of other physicians about sections.

My goal was to take the frustration out, make it doable. And I love people now responding to me saying, "Oh, the course was really easy to use. I'm really happy with my profile now," and they'll send me their profile. And it's so fun to see how great they look.

John: It's good to have someone who really understands how something like this is used telling you and teaching you about it because I've been using LinkedIn for a long time. And I was just in your course a couple of days ago and there was a whole section. I was like, "Oh, I could probably really get my connections up quite a bit using this technique that you described". Which is again, reaching out to alumni or other ways of networking. And then, there's different ways that you can connect. There are some with a message, without a message. And I just really was really impressed and I'm definitely going to go back and go through that section. Especially when I'm looking for a new podcast guest.

Dr. Heather Fork: Well, thank you. And that was my goal to just make it easy because we don't have extra time to waste and I don't want people to get frustrated and then give up.

John: No, absolutely. And it can be frustrating until you really get a feel for it. Well, there are different ways that they can access this course. They can get it from your website, but I happen to be an affiliate. I have a link for it. And the only reason the listeners might want to buy it through my link is that they also get a free bundle of courses from my nonclinical career academy worth a couple of hundred dollars.

I'll put my link for them to look at, nonclinicalphysicians.com/linkedincourse. And I'll probably put that actually on my website at some point permanently if you'll let me, but that's an easy way to go. If they happen to be at your website, they're going to obviously sign up there. You've got some other resources there as well. So, anything else you want to tell us about the LinkedIn course before we move on off that topic?

Dr. Heather Fork: Before I say anything else about the course, I do want to say, please get it from John because he's so wonderful. He works so hard and I'd really like to support him. Please feel free to use his link. And if you come to my site, and you forgot his, just email me and I'll send it to you. I want you to support him, but thank you for all you do for me.

About the course and LinkedIn in general, I would just like to say that if you feel that this is not what you're naturally good at, networking or putting yourself out there, just let go of that. Because a lot of my clients are introverted. They had the same feelings about LinkedIn. They would drop their shoulders and just feel like, "Ugh, do I really have to, Heather?"

But once they get on there and do things such as usually the alumni hack and they get someone to respond to them, they're really happy. It's a game-changer. And all of a sudden, they see that being on LinkedIn is like treasure hunting. We don't have to call it networking. Let's just call it treasure hunting because you do find these treasures of people who will definitely help you out and open doors.

John: Yeah, that's so true. That's so true. Maybe I'll make you step back even further, just in considering all the clients that you've known over the years and the people you're helping now, any other advice you have for physicians who just right now happen to be just kind of frustrated with the whole process of thinking about doing a side gig or trying to overcome burnout or anything like that?

Dr. Heather Fork: Yes. Yes. And if I can go back to my parade metaphor.

John: Sure.

Dr. Heather Fork: I would say, just get in the parade. Don't sit on the sidelines and watch other people's floats go by and say, "Oh, well, look what they're doing. Why can't that be me? They probably just knew somebody or that's not going to happen to me." I say, get in the parade, start building your float. And when you're building your float for the parade, you start with your platform. And you don't have to know where the parade is going. Just start with your profile or just start thinking about what you want to do, what's working, what's not working. Build your platform.

And then when you're actually on your float and riding in the parade, have fun. Don't look around at other people's floats and say, "Oh, theirs is better than mine. I'll never be like them." Cheer them on, dance on your platform, and have fun because it's not about getting to the end of the parade, we're all going to get there, but we want to be enjoying the parade while it's happening, which it's your life. I'm there standing on the sidelines cheering you on. Get in there so I can wave my pom-poms for you.

John: That is so cool, Heather. It is. And listeners can get a sense if they haven't read your blog or listened to your podcast, they're going to get more of what you just heard. That's a good thing. Let's go over that again.

The podcast is the Doctor's Crossing Carpe Diem podcast. They're going to find that on any app, Spotify, Apple, whatever. Definitely listen to that, go to doctorscrossing.com, and look for those free resources. And if you want to learn more about the course, go to nonclinicalphysicians.com/linkedincourse, and you'll have a page there where you can learn more about it. I think we've covered everything I wanted to cover today, Heather. This has been fantastic and fun. I'm always happy to be able to spend a few minutes talking to you.

Dr. Heather Fork: It's such an honor, John. I'm a huge fan of yours. And can I put a plugin for your new script app that you have?

John: Yes.

Dr. Heather Fork: I love all the things John does. If you haven't heard about his new script app is a community where you can join very, very affordably and get a lot of wonderful content, access to his courses, access to mentors. John, you can let people know the price and how they find it. But I think it's something to really look into.

John: Yeah. The nice thing about it too is it's not limited to physicians. And so, most of us work in teams, whether clinically or nonclinically. It's actually designed for any healthcare licensed professionals, psychologists, social workers, PAs, MPs, oral surgeons, and doctors. It's like less than $5 a month. It's newscript.app. I appreciate you bringing that up today, Heather.

Dr. Heather Fork: Yeah. How can you not? $5 Starbucks, miss that for one day, get the new script app and you'll be doing a jig.

John: Absolutely. All right, Heather. Well, thank you much. I guess we're at the end of our time now, I'm going to say goodbye and I hope to see you again soon and back on the podcast sometime.

Dr. Heather Fork: Thank you, John. I really appreciate you having me on.

John: You're welcome. Bye-bye.

Dr. Heather Fork: Bye-bye.

Scroll back to top

Sign up to receive email reminders, news, and free stuff every week!

Enter your name and email address below and I'll send you reminders each podcast episode, notices about nonclinical jobs, information about free and paid courses, and other curated information just for you.

powered by

Disclaimers:

Many of the links that I refer you to are affiliate links. That means that I receive a payment from the seller if you purchase the affiliate item using my link. Doing so has no effect on the price you are charged. And I only promote products and services that I believe are of high quality and will be useful to you.

The opinions expressed here are mine and my guest’s. While the information provided on the podcast is true and accurate to the best of my knowledge, there is no express or implied guarantee that using the methods discussed here will lead to success in your career, life, or business.

The information presented on this blog and related podcast is for entertainment and/or informational purposes only. I do not provide medical, legal, tax, or emotional advice. If you take action on the information provided on the blog or podcast, it is at your own risk. Always consult an attorney, accountant, career counselor, or other professional before making any major decisions about your career. 

The post Revisiting How to Land An Awesome Job Using LinkedIn – 310 appeared first on NonClinical Physicians.

In today's show, Dr. Mike Woo-Ming returns to the podcast to explain how to start and grow a successful cash based medical practice.

You’re a clinician and you know how to care for patients. Finding a way to provide clinical care for patients who are willing and able to pay us directly sounds pretty attractive.

Our Sponsor

We're proud to have the University of Tennessee Physician Executive MBA Program, offered by the Haslam College of Business, as the sponsor of this podcast.

The UT PEMBA is the longest-running, and most highly respected physician-only MBA in the country. It has over 700 graduates. And, the program only takes one year to complete. 

By joining the UT Physician Executive MBA, you will develop the business and management skills you need to find a career that you love. To find out more, contact Dr. Kate Atchley’s office at (865) 974-6526 or go to nonclinicalphysicians.com/physicianmba.

Benefits of a Cash Based Medical Practice

Since it eliminates the hassle of billing insurance companies, a cash based medical practice brings more autonomy and satisfaction. 

There are several types of businesses that follow this model, including:

• weight loss
• skincare and aesthetics
• medical spas
• concierge medicine

Reviewing the Steps

During the conversation, Dr. Woo-Ming describes how he started, how his business has adjusted to meet market needs, how he added new services, and how he grew the number of clinics over time.

His advice is to keep things simple, start small, leverage your team, and take advantage of opportunities when they arise.

Best of Both Worlds

As a physician, you invested many years of your life, and a potentially sizeable amount of money to learn your profession. When overwhelmed or burned out, removing payers from the equation can make your practice more enjoyable and meaningful. Our guest, Mike Woo-Ming is a living example of that promise.

NOTE: Look below for a transcript of today's episode. 

EXCLUSIVE: Get a daily dose of inspiration, information, news, training opportunities, and amusing stories by CLICKING HERE.

Links for Today's Episode:

• Dr. Mike Woo-Ming's New Course
• How to Build a Terrific Freelance Consulting Business – 145
• Entrepreneur and Business Owner – Interview with Dr. Mike Woo-Ming – 019
• NewScript Nonclinical Career Summit
• NewScr!pt

Download This Episode:

Right Click Here and “Save As” to download this podcast episode to your computer.

Podcast Editing & Production Services are provided by Oscar Hamilton

The NewScript Nonclinical Career Summit is coming soon. Access 12 lectures and live Q&A RIGHT HERE.

Today's PNC Podcast Transcript

Email Download New Tab

Transcription PNC Podcast Episode 293

How to Start and Grow a Profitable Cash Based Medical Practice

- Interview with Dr. Mike Woo-Ming

John: Welcome back to the podcast, Dr. Mike Woo-Ming.

Dr. Mike Woo-Ming: John, it's always a pleasure, my friend. It's been a long time since we talked, and thanks for reaching out and wanting to find out more information about this.

John: Well, I can keep in touch indirectly by listening to your podcast and even going to one of your webinars if I want to, so that's nice, but it's not as good as actually talking face to face. But I have noticed you're always busy and you're always doing something, and it was time to catch up with what's new in the world of Mike.

Dr. Mike Woo-Ming: Yeah, yeah. There's been so much. I have I guess my day job, which is overseeing a bunch of cash-based medical clinics. And in the last six months, we opened two new locations, one in Orange County, California, and one in a town called Murrieta, California by a half hour away. And yeah, we've been pretty busy.

John: Yeah. Well, we're going to want to hear about that today and I'll mention why to me this is such an important topic. When I think about cash-based practices, I think what is the biggest pain in whatever from practicing medicine? Sometimes its long hours, sometimes if you're working for a big corporation you can get burned out, but basically it's all the rigmarole you have to go through to get paid if you're using care through an insurer, Medicare, Medicaid, you name it. You have to add more staff. You get paid less and less each year, despite the fact that we're in the middle of an inflationary time. I am assuming that was one of the reasons that you started all this years ago. What were the main reasons that you started cash-based businesses?

Dr. Mike Woo-Ming: This is now our 11th year of starting my first practice. As you know I'm kind of wired differently. I don't want to go back into my history, but I was a primary care physician, worked for someone for five years, and just like you, I learned firsthand about some of the frustrations and complications of dealing with insurance-based medicine. From spending long hours with the electronic medical record to trying to get something what I believe was the best treatment for my patients, but then getting a denial letter and then just having to do that dance just to see what we could do to best help our patients.

And so, I said out from the beginning, actually starting it, and probably pretty naive, was, "What could I do where I didn't have to rely on insurance based medicine?" And I just basically looked and learned about what are different ways that I could get cash to make sure I could not only myself get paid, but my employees who are very hardworking and that they deserve their rewards, and that we can do this and make it viable. And we certainly have had our ups and downs just like any entrepreneur, but like I said, we just celebrated, this will be our 11th year and we're expanding. So, we must be doing something right.

John: Absolutely, you've made it work. If I recall correctly, you've tried different things in the cash-based arena. Maybe give us a look at some of that. You can either walk through what you've done over the last 11 years, or just pick and choose whatever you think are the highlights we should know about.

Dr. Mike Woo-Ming: Right. Just as yourself, family medicine, we wear many hats, we know lots of different things, experts at none. But the first thing that I wanted to do was I wanted to start a medical practice on things that I was interested in. And at the time, gosh, this is probably late thirties, early forties. And I was looking at my mortality as I was getting older, and I was like, "Hey, what can I do to live longer, be there for my kids?" So, I was looking at things and I know your audience may or may not agree on some of these things, but I was looking at things like testosterone replacement, being in primary care I had patients who benefited from that.

And that was my first foray into that. And then it moved into different things. Weight loss was obviously something that I've struggled with, and I learned that there were practices that had done these, who had did this. They didn't take insurance, and they were pretty successful. And there was one in particular franchise out of Texas that was dealing with men's care, men's healthcare, and they were introducing these things. And I actually happened to meet with the CMO from there. He was interested in hiring me to become a medical director and bridge things in Southern California. And we opened two or three locations back then, but I didn't learn, I didn't learn that it might be more difficult to do this. And they actually stopped. They actually stopped putting in the funding for these clinics.

If you know anything about me, and you do, I'm a bit stubborn. And I said, "Well, there are things that they did, and I could learn from their mistakes and I could do things my own way." I also happen to have a good friend who would help open some weight loss clinics also in Texas. And she showed me some information. And so, I got that as well before I actually started my own.

Those were kind of my first forays into cash based practices. Just dealing with things that I wanted to do personally, that I was particularly interested. And I think if you want to be successful in a business, you got to do something that you are interested in and hopefully that you love doing, and then you're going to be more energized and ready to make it work. And those are my first few ways that I got interested in cash-based practices.

John: Well, it's funny you say how you should be passionate about and interested in. You might remember that about, I don't know, seven years ago I started urging care centers with some partners. And I think we're getting ready to open our third, although I've not set foot in the clinic in over a year and I did come to realize about two or three years ago that I kind of hate this. So, I don't tell anybody. I'm trying to extricate myself. And it's not a good plan for being committed to something in an ongoing fashion. So, you started your first clinic. You were doing some of those things that you just talked about. Now, did it stay that way? Did it morph over time? Did you add a clinic right away, or did you have that one for an extended period?

Dr. Mike Woo-Ming: My clinic is a little bit different in that I had this thing that maybe it was that Kevin Costner, "If you build it, they will come." Field of Dreams. And we started off doing hormone replacement. We started doing weight loss. I also had done a lot of different, as yourself, probably a lot of different sports physicals. We did some occupational medicine.

I wanted to do services not only that people wanted to do, but stuff they had to do. So things like employment physicals, DOT physicals, those kinds of things. They don't pay a lot, but it started to give us some regular patients that had to come in every couple years, at least in terms of DOT physicals.

And then I started getting into veteran's disability evaluations. San Diego was a big military town, and there's a big base nearby. And those were areas where I got paid for doing disability evaluations. We just slowly introduced different things. And then we had some cross promotions sometimes, patients who were coming in. They were also looking at our different weight loss treatments that we had for them. Then they got interested in those different things. About three or four years in, we added aesthetics. And my thing was almost like a one stop shop. We started introducing different treatments, different things just to get people into the door. And now we're well established into the clinic.

And then last year I just said it, I want to do this all again in a new location where they don't know anything about me. And that's what ended up happening. But people are getting the word out. We've actually had some interest in investors and such. I think we got to make it work. And I think if there's one thing that I pride myself on ever since this journey is that I've always made payroll. I've always made payroll and making sure that my employees got compensated. Because let's face it, I wouldn't have a business if I didn't have outstanding employees who are dedicated and loyal.

I certainly don't know everything. I'm always continuing to learn. There's always new ways to get into, there's always increased competition. You got to stay on your toes. But yeah, so far, it's made it work. And now I've been recently doing more training and consulting and helping other doctors learn how to do the same thing that I'm doing.

John: When I get out of that, then say you started with some core services that you knew well, you liked doing, and they were cash-based, and then you just found other new services that you could add over time that were also cash-based. You're not pouring into the insurance world at all from what I hear. So, that's cool.

I just want to spend a couple of minutes taking a real high view. What you're doing obviously is starting a small business. There's a whole process to that. So if someone who's thinking of doing this, what are those things that one should think about? Whether it's planning, financial, legal at a high level, what are some of the things that as physicians we don't necessarily know about, but you're going to have to master in order to create something like this or get consultants?

Dr. Mike Woo-Ming: Anytime you're starting on any business, of course, there are some things that you need to think about. First off, should you do it? Is this something that it's for you? If you're looking to "Hey, here's something that I can do that's going to be making some passive income." Well, this isn't the place for you. There's always real estate. There's always different things, syndications. There's always other things that you can be doing and putting in your money. For me, it was more of I have a medical license and I feel that I still should use it.

As you know, I actually had left clinical medicine for some time, started my own company. And I hear my mom, her son is the doctor. I come from a family of doctors and I still wanted to be able to use it. And even when I was out of medicine, I would still do some volunteer work doing sports physicals for my kids' games and things like that. But this was a way that I could leverage what I had.

I know we talk about nonclinical careers. I still wanted to do some clinical aspects in my life. And this allowed me to do it. But I think an important distinction between what I did, and sometimes I get some flak from other doctors, is I didn't want to be the one solely performing all of the different services. And I think that's where I differentiate myself from being just a solo practitioner, the solo doctor who's seeing all the patients. I know for some it can be very rewarding, but it also doesn't allow you to grow. You're still dependent on your income on how many patients that you see, as I've said many times.

And so, I wanted to create where I've trained all of the employees and I wanted to make sure that they're highly trained, but then be able to see the patients. So, I have nurse practitioners. I've hired physicians' assistants, I have RNs, I've had LVNs, I've had medical assistants. I'm not always in the clinic. That's allowing me to grow and scale and focus on my intention of what I need to do is to make sure that we're viable, that we're continuing to grow, that we're paying all the bills on time, that we're paying all the employees on time. That's what I do. I've then slowly given a lot of those different tasks and then delegated to my office manager and things like that.

I know I went down a tangent on there, but I think the first thing is to see if you actually want to do this. If you're someone who wants to do this, if you want to become your own boss, and that was again, very important to me to have some control dictated on the revenue that's coming in. Those are the first things to actually think about. But you have to actually look in to see what you can do. And you can start out small. You can start out small.

On my podcast, I interviewed a doctor who became a very successful med spa owner. She was an emergency room doctor, and she just said "I wanted to do something on my own. I'm interested in aesthetics, so I'm just going to rent a room for half day a week." That was her first beginning of it. And that's what I would actually recommend is actually just trying it out. Or even if you have an opportunity, shadow somebody for a month. Remember we used to do that in third year medical school and then we decided our whole career based upon that. It's surprising that I still see docs who said, I'm opening up a med spa, but they don't even know if they actually even like it. And they haven't taken the time to shadow and to actually see it. It's more than just taking a Botox course over the weekend. It's like, "Okay, this is how you get trained to actually do this procedure. But what about being the owner? What about having to deal with all of the other aspects of being an employer as you know a lot about?

John: Yeah, there's definitely a lot to it but I think you're right. Shadowing is awesome. I never used to put that, even for a nonclinical career, advice. I thought good about get mentors, maybe get a coach, do this, do that. But it was only recently someone reminded me you could actually spend time with someone and see what they're doing, shadowing that way. And you're going to learn a whole lot more than just talking for 10 minutes to a mentor or an hour to a coach. So that's really good advice.

Okay. Now you did allude to a little bit ago that through all this now, because you've been doing it for so long, and you've been doing this for a while, you're teaching other people how to do things. You've always done consulting or coaching or the merger of those two. Tell us now what's going on with that. I know you help us with the podcast, but you do these consulting and courses and so forth. So just lay out for us what you've got going on now and what you plan on doing.

Dr. Mike Woo-Ming: Yeah, I've always done consulting in this aspect. I have a small number of clients who I've helped over the years, especially during COVID. I wasn't doing any training as most people were doing but I would always get inquiries. I'm helping a doctor in Northern California building up a weight loss clinic. Another doctor out of Florida and we've helped them build up an anti-aging direct pay practice.

I have clients like this where they work with me, they pay me quite a bit of money to help them do it. It's not a small thing. But then when you look at terms of some of the revenue that they're generating, the average is at least $500,000 a year to a million, million plus a year.

And I'm short-cutting their success to actually do it. I feel that they get a bargain. But that being said is, I enjoy consulting and I enjoy training, and I like working with people who are starting up. And one of the reasons that I wanted to do more of this is because there are some changes that are happening in California where you can be a mid-level provider. I know that's a term people don't like, but you can be a nurse practitioner. I know, I'm just upsetting your audience, half your audience already, but they can now open up their own clinics. They can open up immense spas. And there's been a lot more competition.

I still want more physicians to be more empowered and to think that they can actually do this because there are non-doctors who are opening these kinds of things. I just spoke to a young man recently who's starting as an IV therapy practice. Nice guy but he is not medically trained. In my opinion, I feel that physicians should take back the role as being the main healthcare educator and leader in this. And so, I wanted to create more training to help doctors do this and make it seem it's not as difficult as could be. Kind of follow my lead into this.

So, I am doing some free trainings and some, and some other trainings if they want to take it even further where they can learn more about and just to see if this is something that they want to do. I'm creating some live trainings that are coming up that we're doing to kind of help that. And now, through the power of Zoom and everybody's doing virtual trainings, these kind of things, this has been more accessible. And so, I'm always eager to do this. I always have my teaching hat and love working with other doctors. And if they're so inclined and want to learn more, we've got some resources where they can find out more.

John: Now, I know people in my audience, although we talk about nonclinical careers, reality is most physicians really enjoy medicine when it's done appropriately and in a way that is good for them and not some assembly line worker in a hospital. But they don't have the business knowledge or the marketing knowledge that you have. So, if they want to learn more about this kind of thing, where would they go to find that?

Dr. Mike Woo-Ming: Yeah, we'll have a link. I assume you'll leave a link in the show notes. It's called bootstrapmd.com/go/cashpractice. And that's all lowercase. And that'll take you to the resources. You can watch a free training, learn more about my story, and then decide if this is something you want to proceed, I can give you different ideas where you could start your own practice. And I've helped doctors in so many different locations. If you want to build a med spa, you don't necessarily have to be on Park Avenue or Beverly Hills. I've seen aesthetic practices grow out of Fargo, North Dakota that are making multi-millions of dollars.

My own location, my main location, it's basically in a small medical complex. My other office is on a six story of a 12 story building, medical office. I've got a weight loss clinic that's in front of a strip mall. But it doesn't have to be very flashy. It doesn't have to be very expensive. I think in that training that I do, if they decide to look at it, I have one slide of my first picture of my first practice. And this furniture it's like the cost plus rejects. The blood pressure monitor, the automated blood pressure monitor is on like a student desk. Because I couldn't afford to get something but we made it all work. Although my medical office manager still says they don't spend too much on furniture.

John: They don't get enough money, a budget for that.

Dr. Mike Woo-Ming: Yeah. One of my RNs who actually does this kind of thing, I gave her a budget and she was able to make it much nicer. That's one of my weaknesses in some of these things. I don't have a very good interior decorating.

John: I'm with you there. I talk to my colleagues here who are burned out and so forth and I bring up things like DPC, concierge medicine, start something like, "Well, no, this is the wrong area." It's like, man, there's people here that have money that want to get these services. They're driving up to Chicago an hour away to get these things. But it's a mindset thing. And so, I liked your idea earlier too, of starting small and if it's working, then you just expand it. If it doesn't work, you try something else.

Dr. Mike Woo-Ming: Yeah. Yeah. I always will try something just to see if it works. As Thomas Edison say we're one step closer to success after all the failures that he had in creating the light bulb.

John: Absolutely. Okay. I will put that link in the show notes. I pretty much always ask my guests what advice would you have just in general for physicians who are in a situation where they don't feel happy, they're unfulfilled, they're suffering? They might have burnout, maybe not, but they're just not getting out of medicine what they thought they were going to.

Dr. Mike Woo-Ming: Well, the one thing, if they're listening to this, then I hope they understand that they do have options. They're different opportunities. If it is truly burnout and depression, please talk to somebody for this. Talk to a professional to see what that is. But if it is that you're not feeling that you're being fulfilled, which I wasn't, and I know you weren't as well in your career at one time, is that there are different options and to seek what you want to do.

I got an inquiry from somebody who say "Where is the best place where I can find a mentor?" Well, the thing is, there are people who are doing what you want to do. Seek out those people if that's what you want to do. If you want to start up a cash based medical practice come follow me. If you want to start up, get really successful in real estate, well, there are people who are very successful at real estate.

I think it's been amazing since you were starting your podcast and how much everything has been grown, and you can actually find different people who actually happen to be doctors, which I love, who are actually doing these kinds of things. They're developing businesses, they're developing telemedicine practices and they're doing these kinds of things. So seek them out. And if they have products and they have courses, well, the best way you can become a student is to purchase those products and courses and then just to see.

One of the reasons why I created this is to make something that's a little bit more affordable. You don't have to come to me for one-on-one coaching, which I've actually kind of put that on the back burner these days. It's to purchase these kinds of things and then not just have it purchasing it. Because a lot of people think just because I purchased it, then I've done it. No, you actually watch it, actually implement these kinds of things.

One of my courses that I have, not in this field, but in coaching, it's 33 hours and it's a lot of information. But most of them, and this is probably on me as a coach, is they don't get through the first few parts of it. There are some people who do complete everything. But it's more than actually just going through the material. You didn't become a doctor just because you showed up to the class. You actually had to pass the classes to get you to become successful in what you're doing.

John: Absolutely. You got to make that commitment and actually devote the time and effort. The information is there for you. And usually someone like yourself is also willing to answer questions, emails, and what have you, because they want this to work. They want this person to get that new skill and implement it.

All right, Mike, this has been very fascinating. I really am glad we were able to catch up again. I'll be looking to see what you're up to in the next six to 12 months. All right, Mike, with that, I'll say goodbye then. We'll see you next time.

Dr. Mike Woo-Ming: Thank you, John. Have a good day.

Scroll back to top

Sign up to receive email reminders, news, and free stuff every week!

Enter your name and email address below and I'll send you reminders each podcast episode, notices about nonclinical jobs, information about free and paid courses, and other curated information just for you.

powered by

Disclaimers:

Many of the links that I refer you to are affiliate links. That means that I receive a payment from the seller if you purchase the affiliate item using my link. Doing so has no effect on the price you are charged. And I only promote products and services that I believe are of high quality and will be useful to you.

The opinions expressed here are mine and my guest’s. While the information provided on the podcast is true and accurate to the best of my knowledge, there is no express or implied guarantee that using the methods discussed here will lead to success in your career, life, or business.

The information presented on this blog and related podcast is for entertainment and/or informational purposes only. I do not provide medical, legal, tax, or emotional advice. If you take action on the information provided on the blog or podcast, it is at your own risk. Always consult an attorney, accountant, career counselor, or other professional before making any major decisions about your career. 

The post How to Start and Grow a Profitable Cash Based Medical Practice – 293 appeared first on NonClinical Physicians.

In today's show, John will provide an in-depth overview of some of the popular home based and remote careers.

There have been some significant developments in recent years. Multiple podcast guests have addressed remote careers and utilization management, in general, consulting, coaching, and so on.

Our Sponsor

We're proud to have the University of Tennessee Physician Executive MBA Program, offered by the Haslam College of Business, as the sponsor of this podcast.

The UT PEMBA is the longest-running, and most highly respected physician-only MBA in the country. It has over 700 graduates. And, the program only takes one year to complete. 

By joining the UT Physician Executive MBA, you will develop the business and management skills you need to find a career that you love. To find out more, contact Dr. Kate Atchley’s office at (865) 974-6526 or go to nonclinicalphysicians.com/physicianmba.

Benefits of a Remote or Home Based Job

Being able to work remotely or from home has several benefits:

• flexibility
• convenience
• lower costs for transportation
• availability for family members

Categories of home based and remote careers:

1. Chart reviews

   This includes utilization management, medical legal consultant, expert witness, clinical documentation improvement, and quality improvement.

2. Medical writing

   There are several major categories of writing, namely: technical medical writing (CROs and pharma companies), medical communication (marketing agencies), continuing medical education and continuing education for other healthcare professions, patient education, and journalistic writing for clinicians or for the general public.

3. Telemedicine

   This includes direct primary care services, specialty consults by expert physicians to other physicians, remote patient monitoring, remote imaging, and remote medical director services.

4. Consulting

   The options here are to develop your own freelance consulting business or work for a large national or international consulting firm, much of which can be done from home.

5. Coaching

   You can do one-on-one coaching and progress to group coaching remotely. You can work as an employee or as a freelancer.

Summary

There are both positive and negative aspects to working remotely. There is less structure with home based and remote careers, but with increased freedom and flexibility.

NOTE: Look below for a transcript of today's episode. 

EXCLUSIVE: Get a daily dose of inspiration, information, news, training opportunities, and amusing stories by CLICKING HERE.

Links for Today's Episode:

• How to Go from Surviving to Thriving in a Remote Healthcare Job – 278
• Why Part Time Remote Medical Director Is a Great Job – 240
• How to Find a Top Remote Nonclinical Career – 188
• How Do I Generate Awesome Income with Telemedicine Services? – 222
• What Is the Latest Telemedicine-Supported Specialty? – 173
• How to Use Consulting and Advising to Find Freedom – 249
• Why You Must Consider Starting a Medical Legal Consulting Business – 281
• How to Be the Best Expert Witness Consultant – 262
• How to Be a Life Coach and Professional Artist – 158
• How to Be a Shrewd Business Coach and Consultant – 111
• NewScr!pt

Download This Episode:

Right Click Here and “Save As” to download this podcast episode to your computer.

Podcast Editing & Production Services are provided by Oscar Hamilton

Today's PNC Podcast Transcript

Email Download New Tab

Transcription PNC Podcast Episode 291

5 Most Popular Home Based and Remote Careers

John: These are the most popular home-based and remote careers. And this is going to be an overview. There have been some new things that have come up in the last few years, and that's why I wanted to revisit this topic. I've had several guests who have talked about remote careers and utilization management, generally, consulting, coaching, and some of the other things we're going to talk about today. But today I want to also go ahead and give a broader overview and maybe mention some types of jobs that we haven't really specifically talked about in the past.

Before I do that, I do want to talk about the benefits of a remote or a home-based job. They're pretty self-evident. I could skip this part, but just to remind you of the convenience, for example, with childcare. It doesn't mean that you can work at home and attend to an issue, or an emergency while you're working. But being at home and working from home remotely allows you if you have school-aged kids and they need a little bit of supervision, but pretty much have things to do on their own, you're available.

Especially, this is true when you have other members of your family who need care and you can't be gone for days and weeks at a time or gone 8, 9, 10, 12 hours a day when maybe your next-door neighbor happens it'd be your senior mother or father or down the street, somebody close by. And it's nice to have someone like you at home working, but available if there's an issue if there's a problem. And so, it's convenient in that sense also.

Then there are cost savings. If you don't have to pay for a car and gasoline insurance upkeep on the car and so forth, it's going to save you a significant amount of money. In fact, one of the best advice I've ever heard is for someone new starting their career, one of the things you can do to maintain balance in your finances is trying to find a job or move your home to within walking distance of that job. And you can avoid all that expense and get a little bit of exercise at the same time.

Obviously, it's more flexible. And the flexibility means, okay, in the middle of the day, maybe you can answer the door and accept the package. Maybe you can let in a contractor who has to spend an hour or two in your garage fixing something and then you go back to work. So, having someone at home, it just adds a lot more flexibility.

In one form of that flexibility is the ability to travel. We are calling it home based or remote careers, but it can be remote from anywhere. A couple of examples. Probably the most extreme example is Dr. Chelsea Turgeon, who I've interviewed here on the podcast before. And she's also a mentor for the upcoming summit that I mentioned earlier.

And basically for the last four years, she's lived in various international locations building and now serving her consulting business. She consults mostly with people in the United States, but she does live in the United States. I don't think she's lived in the United States in over four years. I believe most of her travel's been in Europe, also the Far East. She worked in Korea for a year teaching English. I think she's lived in Central and South America.

And she continues to travel. She was actually changing her location monthly and now she's settling down to a one-year position in another foreign country. But she's able to work and make a really good living remotely while she's traveling. We've heard about my colleague at NewScript who oftentimes does telemedicine while he's on the road, whether it's in the East or in the West Coast or Texas or Florida. And so, that's a really good benefit for these kinds of remote careers.

Okay, let's get into the options. Some of these are going to be reviewed I'm sure again because I've had guests in the past who have done some of these jobs and we've talked about them specifically. But again, since we're doing an overview, I want to try to include everything that might fall into this category.

Some form of chart review. That's kind of a generic term, but it does cover a lot of things. I'll get into the specifics, but let me go over the major five because I did say we're going to have five categories or five jobs today. And the reality is I'm going to be talking about a lot more than five jobs, but there are five general categories of jobs.

The first is chart reviews, and the second is some form of medical writing. Third is telemedicine and telehealth, fourth is consulting, and fifth is coaching. So, you've probably heard me talk about all those and I've addressed specifics, but there have been some new things that have come up. So I thought I would expand on each of these and tell you what kinds of jobs are in these major categories.

So let's start with chart reviews. Again, I was starting to talk about utilization management. We've talked about that a lot. There's more utilization management typically if you're working for an insurance company or a third party that's providing those benefits management. But it is reviewing records a lot of times, and then sometimes you'll actually have to pick the phone and call somebody or receive a call from someone who's appealing something.

You're in the comfort of your own home. My daughter is a social worker and she does utilization review for mental health, or she had before remotely. And so, she was at home checking these things, approving, disapproving, calling, and sometimes attending. The same thing that a physician would do in this position. Sometimes it doesn't require actually calling different types of utilization management jobs, benefits management, case management, and so forth. But sometimes it does.

Then we have disability workers comp, which is basically a subset of utilization management, but there are different rules and sometimes it's just an up or down call on whether someone qualifies for disability for a certain type of insurance or whether they qualify for workman's comp when it turns out the accident they were involved with occurred in a time when they weren't at work, or the nature of it is an illness, not so much an accident. And so, they're definitely jobs in that arena that are slightly different from the usual UM jobs.

Then we've got all the medical legal type expertise or the typical classic expert witness. That part of their job is just doing a chart review and providing an opinion. In some cases they have to do a deposition, but those are usually remote or online as well. In rare cases, they will have to testify in court. And even some of those situations were able to be done remotely, especially during the pandemic, although I think that's more 50-50 or less in terms of you might actually have to show up in court, maybe even travel if you're working on a case that's at distance from your home. But technically speaking, that is a remote job. It doesn't require an office. Usually it's part-time because most expert witnesses also continue to practice part-time.

And then there's the other version of that, another form of forensic medicine called medical legal consulting, which is also done from home. It involves usually worker's comp and personal injury. It's pre-litigation. It does not involve depositions or testifying in court. It's almost completely remote, although in some cases you'll want to interview the client of the attorney who you're serving, which will mean either a Zoom call or a possible face-to-face. And there are rare occasions when you might have to go into the attorney's office to meet with a patient.

And then if you're doing something called an IME - Independent or insurance medical exam rebuttal, you might need to actually attend the IME visit. So, it's 99% or 95 plus percent remote, but sometimes you might have to do those other types of activities for that particular type of legal witness.

Another type is clinical documentation. Couldn't do this in the past when we had all paper charts, but now that all of our charts are electronic, you can review that chart anywhere. And as a result, a lot of CDI, clinical documentation improvement, or clinical documentation integrity jobs are remote. You can work remotely for an insurance company. You can work remotely as an employee for a third-party CDI service company and you can be a solo consultant. You can work one-on-one as a freelancer doing CDI for one or two or multiple hospitals. So, that's another type of chart review.

And then there are some chart reviews that are mainly focused on quality improvement. I think some governmental agencies like Public Aid and Medicare will sometimes ask for quality improvement reviews for various reasons. A lot of state licensing boards will hire people to review charts for purposes of determining whether there is a quality issue with one of its licensed physicians in that state. And there are other opportunities like that. There are some chart reviews you can do remotely that don't involve a lot of interaction with other people. You don't have to show up. And so, keep that in mind.

All right, the next big category we mentioned is medical writer. I've talked a lot in the past about medical writing and medical writers. You can categorize these by either freelance or employed. In freelance, you're starting slowly. You're learning how to be a medical writer. You're contacting different editors and publishers, and you're starting to write, you're creating a portfolio and eventually, you're just writing after you develop these relationships with these companies, usually if you have four to six or seven publishers that you work with or less oftentimes. You can have a regular income, lot of stability, and you can get paid well because a lot of times you'll get paid let's say as a CME writer, the hourly rate might be less because you're creating let's say a new CME program or event. It could be an enduring material, which basically is something that's available online or on paper.

But when it comes time to renew those things, a lot of times the upgrade and the review and the editing are very minimal. And you can actually make more money per hour doing that because you were the original author, it makes it a lot easier to do that second and third time around.

You can do the same thing as an employee. And remember, there are five or six major categories of writing, everything from technical writing for a pharma company or medical device company or, for a CRO (contract research organization,) which works for the pharma companies. And you've got the technical, then you've got things like educational. You can do CME or CE for different clinicians. You can write educational for patient education, put together brochures, and other forms of education for patients that different organizations need to produce and customize over time.

Then you can do more journalistic type of writing for physicians and other clinicians. Updates on certain medical conditions. There are a lot of articles written about COVID, for example, during the pandemic and still to this day. And then there's also education for the public and journalistic writing and newspapers and magazines and health magazines and all kinds of things like that. And again, you can develop relationships as a freelancer or you can go work for those companies.

And then you can also find a job as an editor who is really oftentimes called the medical director, for lack of a better term I guess. And that means you could be doing the classic editing that you would do, overseeing someone else's writing, but you might also be part of the management process for reviewing and coordinating with the other writers at your company.

I had a guest who went from really full-time podiatrist and she happened to have some leadership positions at the podiatry association that she was a member of, and she had been hired in as an editor for one of the podiatry magazines that get sent to physicians to podiatrists. So, don't forget about those editorial-type jobs other than just the writing jobs.

All right, telemedicine. This is a big area, but I wanted to mention it because it's not nonclinical, it's obviously clinical, but it's non-traditional. We always talk about non-traditional remote jobs and home-based jobs. So you've got the classical type of telemedicine jobs. You can do those either freelance or as an employee, just like most of these jobs can be done.

And we usually push the freelance version of this because it has a lot more flexibility, and takes more upfront work. It's fairly straightforward to obtain a list of the top 10 telemedicine providers, maybe talk to your friends about the ones that seem to be the best to work for, apply, get a job, and then they just start sending you, and you agree to a certain schedule and you just start seeing patients online in various ways, which I'll talk about in the moment.

But the freelance type where you're independent, you work for multiple platforms, and you're not really constrained with other things that you can do, there's no non-compete when you're freelance, generally if you sign the right kind of contract. So, being employed is fine, it's a good way to get your foot in the door. But as colleagues and NewScript mentors like Dr. Cherisa Sandrow have taught us and actually teaches others to do, the freelance form of this is usually much more lucrative. You can often work 20 or 30 hours a week and make a full-time salary. So, that's what we usually recommend.

Now the freelance form of that is being a primary care physician and doing one-on-one short visits, much like you would do in urgent care, not actually face-to-face, but remotely. That's probably the most common and the most lucrative. But there are other things that you can do. You can be involved in remote patient monitoring. RPM - Remote patient monitoring. Usually, the actual monitoring would be done by another type of clinician, a nurse, or a technician technologist. But a lot of times with the RPM, they'll need medical directors and need physicians to supervise and to create protocols and things like that.

So, keep your eyes open for remote patient monitoring companies that are growing. There aren't a lot of them, they're not that active, but I'm sure they will be more and more active over time. If you're a radiologist, you can do remote imaging. That actually was one of the earliest forms of telemedicine.

I've had a guest that came from Doctors For Providers. Actually two guests, the two co-owners. And this is a way to provide remote supervision. So, I'm including this as a form of telemedicine. I don't know if technically it is, but there are urgent care centers that employ PAs and NPs. There are independent APNs in certain states who have their own clinics. There are some legal constraints here. And buyer beware, make sure that your malpractice is covered completely and that you're not getting into a high-risk situation.

But there are many physicians currently doing remote monitoring, and collaboration supervision. They might be doing chart reviews to help with the quality improvement for the staff at the remote site, and they never set foot on the site, and they can do this even while they're working another job. Because as long as you can break away and do some collaboration and consultation, and also if you're doing chart reviews or doing reviews protocols, those are all done on unscheduled time at your own pace.

I would just remind everyone that telehealth is a huge field and there's a lot more to it than just face-to-face visits. The remote consultations also include specialists consulting with primaries, so they're not actually seeing the patient, but they're communicating with you as a primary if that's what you're doing to help you address a problem. And then obviously they can do remote consultations with patients as well, but sometimes I prefer just to work with the physicians rather than the patients in some situations.

Okay, now we've used the term consulting, but this time I'm going to focus specifically on the classical form of consulting, which again is either freelance or employed. Now, I threw boutique in here too because that's a term that's thrown around. But basically, the freelance is a one-person shop. Most of the time you have an area that you're an expert in, that you're passionate about. It could be inside the bubble of a medicine, inside direct patient care or it could be outside. Maybe you are an expert at marketing your practice. And so, you develop some courses, some consultation, and you can do these things remotely to help other practices do their marketing in an efficient and effective way.

On the other end of the spectrum, you have these national and international healthcare consulting firms. Places you may have heard like IBM has a large component, $50 billion-plus per year. Accenture, Deloitte, McKenzie, Ernst & Young, Huron. I've lifted these here. There are at least 40 more that do consulting to hospitals and health systems and large groups and telemedicine companies and other consulting firms and other delivery firms in healthcare and pharma and you name it.

I put the boutique in because you could start out as free freelance and then if you're doing that, let's say that marketing, you might end up hiring a copywriter part-time. You might end up hiring a social media expert. You might end up hiring an email expert. And then you're doing the basic marketing. And so, now you've developed a small free-standing consulting firm, which from the hospital side, health system side that I was involved with. And we would decide, do we want to get one of these huge international or national firms, or we want to find a boutique firm that has a smaller crew, but they're more focused on a very specific problem. So, that's another great remote and home based career. When you're doing freelance, it's probably more remote and more home based. When you work for a large firm, sometimes you do have an office to go to from time to time, and you do travel quite a bit. So, it might only be partially home based.

And the last category that I want to talk about today is coaching. 10 years ago, I think we were not aware that there were that many physician coaches around and there were some people who have been coaches for a long time, physicians coaching other physicians that are quite iconic. I won't mention any names, but nowadays there are literally thousands of physicians who are doing coaching.

There's a fuzzy line between coaching and consulting. But when we talk about coaching, we're talking about mostly starting with one-on-one coaching. It can be life coaching, it can be career coaching. There are at least 10 types of coaching, and there are probably more that I haven't even seen or heard about in the past.

But business coaching, professional coaching, and then even what you do as a consultant in a way is a form of coaching. But I've even seen yoga coaches in our physicians, meditation coaches, and success coaches. I've interviewed many coaches, and several of the coaches, in fact, at the summit that's coming up in April about seven or eight of the people that are presenting their formal job as coaching and training other people to do things that they've done and that they're experts. So we have a telemedicine coach and we have a locums coach and we have a pharma coach and so forth.

I won't get into the names right now, but suffice it to say it's a very popular type of job and it's one where you become an expert in something and you're just going to do one-on-one and help to train them. You can be employed. There are firms that employ physician coaches and that takes away some of the risks of building a business.

Most coaches that I know are either freelance or run some kind of a coaching business, and they may actually recruit other coaches, although they may not truly employ them. They might be more of a 1099-type relationship. So, technically, they're even sort of semi-freelance, although they have that relationship and they get some of their clients from this coaching company, they both exist.

And sometimes being employed first, as long as you don't have some kind of an exclusive contract that goes beyond a year or so, then you can move from employed to freelance if you want to do that.

Most coaching starts out as one-to-one. It oftentimes moves into group coaching. I've interviewed several successful very busy coaches, whether it's Heather Fork or Katrina Ubell who coaches for weight loss, or you name it, people that coach for doing real estate and coaches for starting a practice, coaches for being a medical legal consultant or for being an expert witness. There are all kinds of coaches and there's a blurry wall between coaching and consulting.

That's really what I wanted to do today. I've probably described at least 30 or 40 jobs depending on how you want to break it down.

Scroll back to top

Sign up to receive email reminders, news, and free stuff every week!

Enter your name and email address below and I'll send you reminders each podcast episode, notices about nonclinical jobs, information about free and paid courses, and other curated information just for you.

powered by

Disclaimers:

Many of the links that I refer you to are affiliate links. That means that I receive a payment from the seller if you purchase the affiliate item using my link. Doing so has no effect on the price you are charged. And I only promote products and services that I believe are of high quality and will be useful to you.

The opinions expressed here are mine and my guest’s. While the information provided on the podcast is true and accurate to the best of my knowledge, there is no express or implied guarantee that using the methods discussed here will lead to success in your career, life, or business.

The information presented on this blog and related podcast is for entertainment and/or informational purposes only. I do not provide medical, legal, tax, or emotional advice. If you take action on the information provided on the blog or podcast, it is at your own risk. Always consult an attorney, accountant, career counselor, or other professional before making any major decisions about your career. 

The post The 5 Most Popular Home Based and Remote Careers – 291 appeared first on NonClinical Physicians.

In today's show, John describes why a nonclinical job search is so frustrating and unproductive at times. And he suggests ways to overcome those frustrations. 

It can feel like we’re bogged down and not making any progress once we’ve decided to pursue that first nonclinical position.

Our Sponsor

We're proud to have the University of Tennessee Physician Executive MBA Program, offered by the Haslam College of Business, as the sponsor of this podcast.

The UT PEMBA is the longest-running, and most highly respected physician-only MBA in the country. It has over 700 graduates. And, the program only takes one year to complete. 

By joining the UT Physician Executive MBA, you will develop the business and management skills you need to find a career that you love. To find out more, contact Dr. Kate Atchley’s office at (865) 974-6526 or go to nonclinicalphysicians.com/physicianmba.

Why Your Job Search Is So Frustrating

Part of the explanation is that we may be expecting too much. When making such a drastic move the path is often not as straightforward as we’re expecting. And we must learn a whole new set of skills.

Common frustrations result from NOT doing the following:

1. Fully committing to the process,
2. Addressing your self-limiting beliefs,
3. Devoting insufficient time to the process,
4. Narrowing our search to one specific job,
5. Obtaining new skills to demonstrate your commitment,
6. Finding and engaging a mentor or two,
7. Growing your network and finding a sponsor at each company,
8. Optimizing your LinkedIn profile, and,
9. Converting your CV to a winning resumé.

Reflect on These Possible Barriers

If you're months into your job search and have submitted hundreds of resumés online with no response, you may have glossed over one of the above steps. And you'll find your job search is so frustrating at times.

Consider each step and determine which one might be undermining your efforts. The ones that I see limiting forward progress most often are not focusing like a laser on one specific job, and failing to identify a sponsor at each company that interests you.

Summary

Pursuing a first nonclinical job requires a number of new skills. Consider each step carefully since a weak link in the process of identifying, pursuing, and landing that first job can undermine the whole process.

NOTE: Look below for a transcript of today's episode. 

EXCLUSIVE: Get a daily dose of inspiration, information, news, training opportunities, and amusing stories by CLICKING HERE.

Links for Today's Episode:

• You Must Address 3 Big Issues Before Leaving Your Clinical Job – 282
• 8 Common Mistakes That Will Derail a Job Search – 180
• How to Overcome the Top Mindset Traps – 151
• Your Resume is the Passport to That Desirable Job – 157
• How to Use a Professional Organization on the Road to a New Career – 272
• How to Network Effectively on the Road to a New Career – 271
• How Do I Start My Search for a Great Nonclinical Job? – 285
• NewScr!pt

Download This Episode:

Right Click Here and “Save As” to download this podcast episode to your computer.

Podcast Editing & Production Services are provided by Oscar Hamilton

Today's PNC Podcast Transcript

Email Download New Tab

Transcription PNC Podcast Episode 290

Why Your Nonclinical Job Search Is So Frustrating and Unproductive

John: Let's talk about the content of today's episode. Let's say you've made a decision to leave clinical practice, and you've taken the steps necessary to identify some possible jobs, narrow them down, search through a variety of job listings, and submitted your resume to accompany your recruiter's website.

But in spite of submitting dozens of resumes, it's just crickets. No response other than an occasional acknowledgement that the resume was received. But no one is offering you an interview, even a screening interview. So, let's talk today about why that might be.

But I want to set the stage a little bit more tightly here in the sense that we're talking about leaving clinical medicine or nursing or another clinical field for a job that does not include direct patient care. That's what we're talking about in terms of a nonclinical or non-traditional job. But we're not talking about those of you who are starting your own freelance consulting, medical writing, or coaching business. I'm talking about the situation where you're looking for a nonclinical position in which you're employed by usually a medium to large size corporation, such as an insurance company, hospital or hospital system, a pharma company, a contract research organization, or even a consulting firm, or a large publishing company.

This is the formal process of finding a job and trying to apply and then get your first interview. That's the timeframe we're talking about. And I have talked to several people, many people who have gone through that process for month after month, have submitted dozens if not hundreds of resumes, and have received no kind of follow up other than an acknowledgement. So, what the heck could be going wrong in that situation? Because it just sounds like you're just spinning your wheels.

So, let's start at the very beginning. Things that might be going on that are keeping you from moving forward. Now, there's this whole category of mindset. Do you have the commitment? Have you already addressed the self-limiting beliefs? Have you gone through and convinced yourself that some of the myths around nonclinical jobs are false?

I'll talk about the myths related to physicians, which we've done an entire episode on before. But again, just quickly, it's things like the fact that there's no jobs out there. I don't have enough education. I need another degree. I'm going to be abandoning my patients. I can't make enough to pay my bills in a nonclinical job, or my gravitas or my reputation will be adversely affected. I won't be a doctor anymore.

Well, we've already dispelled all of those in past episodes. There are plenty of jobs. You have 70 to 80% of the necessary skills you need to become a medical director or physician advisor, or a chief medical officer or chief medical information officer or chief quality officer. You have to get past these mindset issues, and we've talked about that before.

And the other thing is, you really have to make that commitment. There's a difference between being upset, being burnt out, being dissatisfied, but at some point, you've got to say, "Okay, I've had enough and I'm going to keep working. I'm not going to burn my bridges, but I'm going to set time aside to really work on this problem." You can't do this spending a few minutes a week or an hour every two weeks trying to do some research, pick a job, do your application. It takes more time than that.

That's what I mean by commitments. It's the mental commitment and it's the actual time commitment. So you have to block time out. It could be two hours a week, it could be 30 minutes a day, but there's a lot of steps you have to go through before you can really make this process move forward. Otherwise you're just spinning your wheels.

So, how much time can you set aside and can you put that on your calendar? Now, if you're working a full-time job and you're working 40, 50, 60 hours a week, it's going to be difficult. But you might have to just take part of Saturday or Sunday when you're hopefully not on call or whatever day during the week that you have off and not really be doing your charts and things like that. And really set this time aside to do some of the other things I'm going to be talking about in the next 15 minutes.

The other part of that commitment is if you're really committed. You have to see if maybe you can carve out some time in your current job. Go to your boss, go to your manager and say, "Look, I signed up to work 40, 50 hours a week. I am spending 65, 70 hours a week with all the charting I have to do and the meetings and other things that are going on. That's not really fair. So, I need to pull back, but still within my contract so that I can free up time to do other things that I need to do, that I want to do."

And so, you just need to have a, a, a conversation with that person that's responsible for your schedule, if it's not you and carve out some extra time. Full-time job should not take 80 hours or 70 hours a week. It just shouldn't. Now, if you're in private practice and you run the practice and you're the owner of the practice, that's going to be tough, but I think you're going to have to say, "Look it, we're closing on Friday afternoons. We're not going to be open every week."

Now, what are you going to do at that time once you've made the commitment and you've convinced yourself it's doable and it can happen, and that you have the requisite skills? Well, there's some things you need to look at. You need to do some research early on, and this is not to just find the jobs that you are going to apply to. In other words, you're not just looking "Okay, I'm going to find them. That sounds really good, and I'm going to apply." No, you need to do significant research during that time that you've blocked out.

That research needs to be, "What do these jobs entail?" You have to get it called down to a small number of possible jobs. You have to read about these jobs online. Go to Facebook groups, get a book on nonclinical career careers, or at least five or six really good books. Talk to your friends and find out what the jobs entail, and then narrow it down to two or three.

And before you get real serious for applying this one job we're talking about, you got to get it down to one. So, let's say you want to try medical science liaison or another pharma job, or maybe a job in the hospital setting. What jobs are available? You look up physician advisor in a hospital, you look up medical director, you look up a medical director and pharma, and try and look at those job descriptions, not because you're looking for the one you want to apply for now, it's because you want to see what the keywords in those jobs are and what does the job entail. Can I work four days a week? Can I do it from home, or do I have to travel? And that kind of thing.

And so, get a sense of what's out there, and then try and narrow it down. And then once you narrow it down, do some other things. If you've got to narrow it down to one job, let's say you want to become an MSL. I'll use it as an example, because we talk about that all the time. We've done several podcasts on that. Then you need to find an MSL or two to be a mentor. And then you might consider looking at a professional organization that serves MSLs. And there's a good one that actually will teach you how to become an MSL. And there are books on becoming an MSL.

And this is true as a medical writer for a CRO or a pharma company. This is true if you're a medical director for a hospital. There are resources to learn what the job entails. And once you've got a sense that, okay, it's in person and it's 09:00 to 05:00 five days a week, that's one thing. If it's remote, it's at home on my own time, that's another thing. If I'm going to be traveling, that's another thing. How much travel is required? Try to get those things down path and your understanding and really pick the one to go for.

Now, it may not be the one you ultimately choose to take, and maybe once you get into the process, you're going to have to reassess and then shift gears and go to another job. But you only want to go after one at a time. So, now while you're in the process of doing that, you need to find that mentor that's going to tell you more about the job, how they got their job, pitfalls to avoid and so forth.

If you haven't done that and you don't have a mentor, then you're really going to be going into it blind. So, definitely you need a mentor. Maybe you found out that you need a certificate or some additional training. It can just be classes, it can be courses through the AAPL, it can be courses through a professional society, or it can actually be a bona fide, let's say 10 hour course with a certificate exam at the end, something like that. And this all can add to your resume. So you got to think about that.

And then get that additional experience and training while you're going through this process by either volunteering on a nonprofit or volunteering on committees so that you can get some experience, whether it's with quality on a quality committee, whether it's about policies and procedures, whether it is something about project planning on a committee that's putting in a new service line or something like that in the hospital. Or even on a nonprofit they'll have some project planning committees that you may be able to function on and learn from. You're doing all these things simultaneously. And that's where you're saying aside the five hours every two weeks or two or three hours a week to really do your research, find out what's out there, and then narrow in.

Now while you're doing all that and you're working with your mentor, once it's down to one area, now you need to go back and look at those job descriptions again, only this time for the specific position you want to apply for. If it's a remote position, it could be anywhere in the country. If it's in person, then you're going to need to find something either close to where you live or you're going to have to think about relocating if it's worth doing.

Most medical communication companies, for example, are in larger metropolitan areas. So if you're out in the country, you might have to move closer to city like New York, LA, Chicago, or even any big city. It doesn't have to be a multi-million-person city, but a metropolitan area. It could be Austin, it could be anything. The capital of most states are pretty big, but you want to see if they have one of those companies located there because you got to make some plans about actually moving.

Once you've resolved that issue, you should already be working on setting up your LinkedIn profile.

And you want a profile that's complete. And if it's not, and if it doesn't include some kind of description of what you're looking for, that's the first place someone is going to go to look if they're serious about hiring you. They may not look up every applicant on LinkedIn, but at some point they're going to actually probably look you up on lots of social media to see if you've done anything stupid, to see if maybe there's something out there that's embarrassing or shows something that might be alarming to an employer.

I won't get into the details of that, but look at all those sites and then make sure that your LinkedIn profile is 100% complete, has some of those keywords and a good description of what you're looking for. Unless your current employer might see that, in which case you might have to be a little bit more subtle about your profile on LinkedIn.

Then the next thing. Now you're looking for jobs, you've identified the type of job that you want and you've identified the region of the country you might need to work in. And then you're looking at the specific job listings, and you're really going to look to see if this is a job that you want to pursue. And when you do that, figure out the company.

And now you have to do more networking, your own network, the networks of your network contacts, first degree, secondary, third degree. It's just like in LinkedIn. You've got your first degree, and your second degree, and that's how you extend your network. You want to meet new people doing that job or having something to do with that job and whatever industry you're looking for. And then you have to reach out to some of them to see, "Okay, what's going on at that company? I've looked at this job description, I'm kind of interested. I see that you work there. I wonder if we could get on the phone or even just chat by email for a few minutes so I can get a little more information."

And somehow what you want to do ideally is to find a sponsor. I use that word for different things. If you're employed, let's say in a hospital and you want to move up the ranks into management, then you need a sponsor within that hospital or any other company that will help get the word out inside the organization that you're available, that you're interested, that you're capable, and those sorts of things. That's what we call a sponsor within a company.

But a sponsor when you're trying to break into a company is someone in that company who is either involved directly with the HR department, the hiring manager, or something like that, or even another person who's currently working in that company that can help be your sponsor, say, "Hey, I've got this colleague, I've got this friend, I've got this, cousin. I've got this associate that I know is really good at what they do. They're thinking of moving into this. In fact, they've committed themselves to moving into this particular industry. They've looked at a couple of our jobs, and I wonder, can I make sure that you get this colleague of mine, their resume? Can I make sure that you've at least looked at it? Is there something I need to do? Is there someone else I can send my friend or my colleague to learn more about this job?" And that's your internal company sponsor in that firm where you are now actively applying.

So, you definitely don't want to just start shoveling resumes into 5, 10, 20 companies, even a hundred companies. That's happened. I've talked to people that have done that and expect that somehow you're going to float to the top because your resume is probably going to look like a lot of other resumes. You want to follow a proper way of doing a resume no longer than two pages.

You want to make sure that you put in your resume the skills that you have as evidenced by things that you have accomplished, preferably those that are measurable. So, it could be something as simple as "I led a team that put together this service line in this hospital. Or in my clinic of 30 physicians, I led a team that created this new product, or this new initiative." That doesn't have a measurement, but it's a plus minus, it's an all or none. So, you went from not having that service to having it. Or I was working on the committee and became the chair of the committee that oversaw the quality for such and such, and we improved the number of complications in the surgery department by 10% or 30%. We eliminated never events. We did these measurable outcomes. That should all be on the front page.

And then after that, you'll have your listing of where you did your residency, your fellowship, your education, college. Other experiences that will demonstrate your transferable skills such as chairing a committee at a hospital, chairing a committee at a nonprofit, and being the president of the board of a nonprofit, things like that. Volunteering for something, and then the fact that there was something accomplished.

If you're not doing all of those things, there's a pretty good chance that your resume will not make it through the first or second screening where someone's actually looking at it, assessing it, trying to decide whether you can do the job that they're looking for. Now, remember, what is it that is going on here when you're looking for these kinds of jobs? You're back in the regular job market now. It's not like in medical school and residency where you're looking at grades and GPA and scores on certain exams and just checking off all those boxes.

The person who's hiring you for a nonclinical job, whether it's a utilization management, physician advisor or a medical director is "Can that person deliver to me what I need?" And in many of these jobs, you have to have a lot of initiative and leadership because as you get into more management jobs, they're going to need to see evidence that you were able to accomplish things on a team. But again, measurable outcomes.

My examples. Let's say for my time as a CMO, if I was applying for another job as a CMO, I would say, "Look, we put in a brand new comprehensive case management system, with different staffing and formal protocols, and we were able to get the length of stay down for the medical patients on any given unit or what have you, or even for the whole hospital by half a day or a full day. Or we reduce the mortality rate for heart disease or let's say acute MI or heart failure by such and such percent." What they want to see is that you can accomplish the goals of their department or the organization that they're hiring you too. And if you can't demonstrate on your resume and you can't verbalize it when you do get the interview, it's going to be hard to get that job.

I guess I would stop there because the other things I would mention that might be interfering might be things that have to do with the interview itself or the things that happen after the interview. Maybe I'll spend a little more time on that on another episode. But for now, those are the things that I would focus on. You need to be committed. You need to carve out time every week or every other week to focus on this. Some of that time needs to be spent doing your research to find out what you really want to do.

You have to spend some time narrowing it down to one particular type of job, customizing your resume, and customizing your LinkedIn profile. Find a mentor or two to help you and do your networking, and grow your network. Make as many contacts as you can that might help you get into one of those jobs. You might need a contact at multiple different companies if you're applying at multiple different companies. That's where your sponsor comes in and gets someone to look at that resume.

And then by doing that, you'll be in a much better position to have someone actually send you an email, pick up the phone and say, "Hey, we've looked things over. I have a few questions for you, but if this goes well, then we're going to set up an interview, a series of interviews, really. Maybe the first one will be a remote online interview, and then hopefully after that, potentially even a live interview face-to-face."

All right. Well, that's all that I wanted to say today about why your job search is so frustrating and unproductive. And by addressing these things that maybe have not been addressed in a really consistent way, you can overcome some of that frustration and the lack of progress.

One other thing to consider that might be adding to the frustration that doesn't really have to do directly with the process is having the right expectations. Sometimes in these job searches, it's going to take a while. It's something new, you haven't done it before, and you're going to need to learn the whole process. You're going to get better at the process. Every step of the process takes practice. And the other thing is that you're going to have to send in a lot of resumes and do a lot of digging before you're going to get that first interview. That's normal. And also chances are you're going to have to do multiple interviews before you get that first job offer. Because doing an interview is a skill that takes a little bit of practice. You can do role-playing. Other things that we'll talk about another time.

Scroll back to top

Sign up to receive email reminders, news, and free stuff every week!

Enter your name and email address below and I'll send you reminders each podcast episode, notices about nonclinical jobs, information about free and paid courses, and other curated information just for you.

powered by

Disclaimers:

Many of the links that I refer you to are affiliate links. That means that I receive a payment from the seller if you purchase the affiliate item using my link. Doing so has no effect on the price you are charged. And I only promote products and services that I believe are of high quality and will be useful to you.

The opinions expressed here are mine and my guest’s. While the information provided on the podcast is true and accurate to the best of my knowledge, there is no express or implied guarantee that using the methods discussed here will lead to success in your career, life, or business.

The information presented on this blog and related podcast is for entertainment and/or informational purposes only. I do not provide medical, legal, tax, or emotional advice. If you take action on the information provided on the blog or podcast, it is at your own risk. Always consult an attorney, accountant, career counselor, or other professional before making any major decisions about your career. 

The post Why Your Nonclinical Job Search Is So Frustrating and Unproductive – 290 appeared first on NonClinical Physicians.

Here are the top 4 questions John has received in recent months about nontraditional careers, and his answers.

Every three months we will answer three or four questions from subscribers, podcast listeners, and mastermind members.

Our Sponsor

We're proud to have the University of Tennessee Physician Executive MBA Program, offered by the Haslam College of Business, as the sponsor of this podcast.

The UT PEMBA is the longest-running, and most highly respected physician-only MBA in the country. It has over 700 graduates. And, the program only takes one year to complete. 

By joining the UT Physician Executive MBA, you will develop the business and management skills you need to find a career that you love. To find out more, contact Dr. Kate Atchley’s office at (865) 974-6526 or go to nonclinicalphysicians.com/physicianmba.

Top 4 Questions

John responds to these questions in today's recording:

1. What are the highest-paying nonclinical jobs? Physicians who have developed their own independent, freelance businesses and have been able to scale them make the most money. A career that allows you to monetize your abilities and enthusiasm. Another advantage of starting a business like that is that you may be able to sell when you retire.
   
   The highest-paid position in pharma, hospitals, or CME firms, on the other hand, is something with the term “chief” in it. Chief medical officers, chief medical information officers, and chief quality officers are examples. 
   
   
2. Are there affordable resources for those pursuing a nonclinical job? Yes, there are numerous low-cost options. John has discussed this idea in several podcast episodes. There are at least five or six wonderful books that talk about everything from the mindset to preparing and pursuing the most popular nonclinical. You can also find Facebook Groups, online courses, and mastermind groups.
   
   
3. What nonclinical jobs can an anesthesiologist pursue? The majority of nonclinical positions are open to almost any physician. These jobs are available because of the need for someone with a medical degree, clinical experience and knowledge of the healthcare system. Most nontraditional jobs do not rely on experience in one particular specialty.
   
   
4. What are the options for a side gig? There are numerous examples of physicians who have developed side gigs around their clinical activities. However, the process is essentially the same as beginning any other business. In simple terms, the process involves finding a product or service that you have expertise in, that excites you, and that meets a need that clients or customers are willing to pay for.

Summary

In this week's show, John provides his thoughts on 4 common questions he gets from subscribers, podcast listeners, and mastermind members.

NOTE: Look below for a transcript of today's episode. 

EXCLUSIVE: Get a daily dose of inspiration, information, news, training opportunities, and amusing stories by CLICKING HERE.

Links for Today's Episode:

• Why Being Health System Chief Value Officer is More Fun Than Being CMO – 201
• The Interesting Life of the Chief Information Officer – 092
• What Is It Like to Be CMO for a MAC? – 165
• The Eight Essential Abilities The CEO Wants In A Chief Medical Officer
• Five Reasons to Become a Hospital Executive
• NewScr!pt

Download This Episode:

Right Click Here and “Save As” to download this podcast episode to your computer.

Podcast Editing & Production Services are provided by Oscar Hamilton

Today's PNC Podcast Transcript

Email Download New Tab

Transcription PNC Podcast Episode 287

Top 4 Questions from Clinicians About Nonclinical Jobs for February 2023

John: I often receive unsolicited questions from listeners and subscribers, and I also get questions through surveys that I send out from time to time that some of you may have actually received. And since there are trends that I see over and over again in the questions being asked, I sometimes actually devote an entire podcast episode to address one of them. However, sometimes the questions really don't deserve a full 20 minute plus episode, but I still think they're worth answering.

So, I decided to start presenting an episode every once in a while, devoted to a Q&A where I take three or four questions, if it's appropriate. So, if it goes well, and if the response is good, I plan to devote future episodes to other questions like this in the future. So, let's get right into this week's Q&A. All right, here we go.

Here is the first question. "What are the highest paying nonclinical jobs or careers?" That's an interesting question and I understand. I have the same question as I was thinking about doing something from a nonclinical standpoint. In fact, one of the reasons I actually made the leap was the pay was so good as chief medical officer and even as VP for medical affairs, particularly compared to my salary.

Are there certain jobs, certain careers that pay more than others? Well, obviously there are. Now I don't advise that be your primary reason for selecting a career or a job that you're going to pursue. It has to align with your passion or your purpose in life. It has to align with your values, and it should align with your personality and what you're interested in. If you're not really interested, it's going to become either boring or tedious very quickly. So, we don't want to go down that path.

It's also something that should have a need. Obviously, if there's a job out there and jobs are being posted by the different industries, then there's definitely a need from that standpoint. But sometimes that need does relate to the pay. In other words, the higher the need, the higher the pay, as long as it's an industry that can support it. So there might be really huge needs for physicians in rural America as we know on the clinical side, but sometimes it just can't afford to pay enough to get people to go there given the other considerations.

But going around this question and tap dancing a little bit, let me see if I can answer the question as concretely as possible. First thing is, if you look at the highest paid people in general in terms of what they do, there's a big category that we normally see that really generates the most income, and that's usually business owners. Now that's not really a particular job, but I just wanted to start with that because really the same thing is true for physicians.

The physicians who make the most are those who have created their own independent, often freelance business and have been able to scale it. I know of, let's say, for example, physicians who have become coaches. Coaching and an hourly rate doesn't put you at the top tier of earnings. But if you create a business that hires other coaches and leverages your skills and their skills and brings them together, those people who have created an actual LLC or a corporation and a business, they're going to make more income. And instead of it being a W2 type of income, it's going to be income or profits from that business.

Because in general, in the United States, people that ultimately make higher amounts of money are not those that are working for other people, but those that have created their own business and then that business actually hires and leverages other people. And none of this is bad or good, that's just the fact. If you can do that and it's a set of skills that are not easy to acquire, then you can make more money. And I actually think we might be getting to one another question that kind of relates to this, but if you're the type of person that can do a lot of different things, not only do you have the personality, do you have the endurance, do you have the drive, but maybe you have a knowledge of finances, maybe you've worked in other businesses before becoming physicians.

So, if you can think of a job where it'll apply your skills, your passion, and it can be scaled at a big level, then you'll make more money. And some of the people I've interviewed in the past have actually been those who were really going for some company that would eventually be publicly traded. Now, you don't start that way, but there are people that have done startups in technology and informatics and that kind of thing. Also, people who are doing recruiting, or matching physicians to locums. There are all kinds of options. And if you can scale that, then chances are you can build a business that's going to ultimately be worth a lot.

And the other advantage of building a business like that is you at the end of that process can sell it. So even if it's generating let's say $200,000 - $300,000 to the bottom line, that's not an enormous amount, but if that continues and it's growing after 10 or 15 years, you would decide to sell it, well, you're going to be able to sell it at a multiple of that. So maybe your cash out will be a million or more dollars. And you can even go bigger if you are a startup and you look for venture capital or angel investors, things like that, to build let's say a business that depends a lot on technology or you need to hire a lot of people to get it going. So, that's the one answer.

Now I think what most people are thinking when they ask that question though, is what about just routine or standard kind of jobs where I'm working for some company in pharma or in hospitals or in CME companies or what have you? What are the highest paid? Well, the highest paid, typically, if you're looking at the position, is something that has the word "chief" in it. Like chief medical officer, chief medical information officer, chief quality officer.

Now, those are all positions that can be held in hospitals for sure, and they pay very well. I think I just talked about this in an episode or two ago where just the average salary for a chief medical officer as a generic term is over $400,000 a year according to salary.com. But it depends on where you're working. If you're working as a CMO in a federally funded clinic, then it's kind of a misleading term. But there are some people in those situations or the organization, the local sites rather small, and they might call you as the main physician there, chief medical officer but that's not really the same as working in pharma or a hospital or an insurance company, as I said, which have the highest salaries across the board if you're looking at just the title.

That would be my advice. Now, the thing is you have to plan ahead because most people don't go from a fully clinical job to a chief job. And by the way, this applies to chief nursing officers as well. And again, as I may have mentioned in a previous episode, there are more chief nursing officers who go on to become chief executive officers of hospitals than there are chief medical officers as far as I know. The CNOs becoming CEOs in the past at least has been much more common than a CMO becoming a CEO for whatever reason.

But anyway, what you'd want to do then is to understand that that's a possibility. And if that's your goal is to at least optimize your salary to some extent, then look for the jobs. And in the hospital setting, there's a natural transition from let's say a half-time to a full-time medical director and then to some kind of VP level and then to the chief medical officer or chief quality officer or something along those lines.

When you get to that level, you're going to have to invest a little bit more in some education, the CPE or maybe a master's degree of some sort can be helpful, but you don't have to have that completed before you start on that journey. I don't recall that there's other occupations in major industries like let's say in utilization management or clinical documentation improvement or any of those things that pay above average. They do pay well and they compare very well with the physician's salary. The bottom line is start your own business or become a chief medical officer in some large organization. And again, they have those in life insurance companies, health insurance companies, pharma and hospitals and health systems for sure. I guess I'll leave it at that for now.

All right, I'm going to go to the second question that I saw recently and the question was "Are there affordable resources for clinicians when it comes to pursuing a nonclinical career?" Well, a simple answer to that is, yes, there are a lot of affordable resources. Now we could have an argument about what is affordable.

And I'll go off on this tangent for a minute. I'm not going to promote right now any of my own products or any of the products that many of my guests produce but I will say the thing about purchasing a high priced resource such as an expensive course or a yearlong coaching, is that it really puts you in the game. In other words, we don't all have $5,000 or $10,000 just laying around to invest in coaching or an online course that goes on for six months with live meetings and videos and audio files and homework and workbooks and so forth. But you have to understand that if you're going to make a major commitment, and you do one of those programs, it is going to psychologically motivate you to try to get as much out of it because you see it as such a huge investment.

But that really wasn't the question I was asked. The question is "Are there affordable resources?" And the answer of course, there are a lot of affordable resources. I've addressed several podcast episodes to this concept. I think I have one when I talk about the nine very low-cost resources. But if you haven't spent a lot of time researching this, you're going to find if you do research that there are books, there's at least five or six great books that talk of everything from the mindset, to preparing, to looking to actually what are the most common nonclinical jobs out there.

Sylvie Stacy has a book that was published by the AAPL. Heidi Moad has a book. And then there's books about specific fields like Andrew Wilder's book about locum tenens. I haven't seen a great book about telemedicine, but there's other resources obviously. I consider books to be pretty inexpensive. I buy books, the drop of a hat, and I'm usually reading something or another. On one hand I'll read a how-to book one week and the next week I'll read a fiction, a novel. So, I like both. But there's lots of books that talk about different nonclinical jobs and also a lot of side businesses.

Well, here you're listening to a podcast. This is cheap as it can be other than your time. It's free. And there are many podcasts that deal with helping you to learn how to do different nonclinical jobs. And so, I'm not going to list those all. I will put some links in the show notes though today. I'll link back to some of my previous episodes and other resources that I'll touch on today.

"How does it cost to find a mentor?" Now, I've talked about this before, but it's almost an essential thing. If you want to do a certain job, let's say you've boiled it down to two or three different jobs. I don't know. I want to be in a big organization and I want to have that opportunity maybe to have my salary go up over time. I really want to be in pharma or medical device or in a hospital or an insurance company.

And so, basically early in that process, what you should do is find a mentor, somebody who's working in that very industry, doing as close to the job that you'd like to do as possible. Now, to take an extreme example, it would be easy to find the situation that I just described about those different industries. But what about if I wanted to become a chief medical officer for MAC, which is a Medicare Administrative Contractor? Well, I can tell you right now you can easily find someone who's a CMO for a MAC on LinkedIn. Because they're MAC, there are 15 or 16 regions in the United States. And I think each one has a CMO, possibly, and maybe more than one. Probably not likely that someone you went to med school or residency is doing that. It's possible.

But my bottom-line answer to the question is mentors are super valuable and you need to take advantage of the other free tool, which is your network and explore your network and find some mentors that are doing the exact job you might want to do. And if you're looking in two or three different industries, then find someone in each of those industries and try to engage, not excessively, but just ask them what did they do, how did they end up in this job. Sometimes it's just random, sometimes it's luck, but most of the time there's a process. And so, there's no one better to teach you about that process than a mentor who's done it already.

I have people all the time to ask me what I would do to become chief medical officer. Well, I can pretty clearly say, here's what I did, number one, number two, here's how I would do it a little different maybe to accelerate the process.

The other low cost one, relatively low cost, are professional organizations. I always push the AAPL for those looking to become leaders in one of these companies. There are professional organizations for medical writing for pharma, for medical science liaisons. I've gone into these before, but you can find an organization for almost anything out there.

And sometimes the organization doesn't focus on those that don't already have the job, but some of them do. The MSL Society, for example, has a whole section on how to become an MSL, how to get your first MSL job. Others might not. But as a member you start to hear the lingo, you can go to the meetings, you can hear what's important to them in terms of what they're learning, what their skill sets are. And even though you're not in the industry yet, by virtue of going to the meetings, whether they're online or in person, then you're going to learn what it takes to apply for and land that job.

And then we also have another resource, our Facebook groups and memberships like NewScript. NewScript right now is still slightly under $8 per month. You can be in a group with 500 or 600 other people that are doing different kinds of nonclinical jobs, happen to be all kinds of professionals in there from PAs, NPs physicians, dentists and podiatrists and so forth. It's a low membership fee, so you're getting a lot of access. Anybody in there could end up being a mentor. We have formal mentors there, but it's very similar to a Facebook group. And I've talked about some of the Facebook groups.

If you're not aware of all these things, and maybe I'm not aware of everything either. So, what you do is you go to your favorite search engine and you throw in nonclinical careers or nontraditional jobs for physicians or for nurses or for pharmacists and then put books or websites or podcasts or Facebook groups, LinkedIn groups. Just put those terms in and you'll see a lot. And some of them will obviously be appropriate and some will be an ad or some high-cost product. But there are many, many affordable resources out there for clinicians looking for nonclinical jobs.

Okay, I'm going to try and get a couple more questions in here. The next one is "What nonclinical jobs can an anesthesiologist do?" Now, I've been asked this question many times with a different term in there than an anesthesiologist. It could be a pediatrician, it could be a cardiac surgeon, it could be a general surgeon, anything. I get the same question, but with a different specialty in it because there's sometimes a misconception that certain jobs are only open to certain professionals, certain specialties in medicine or certain backgrounds in nursing. And it's basically just not true.

Now, there are some that will say, "Look, we're looking for a family physician or an internal medicine doctor because we need a generalist for whatever reason." But I've seen anesthesiologists and radiologists and OB-GYNs in doing utilization management, in benefit management, in doing pretty much any job, any hospital management job.

It would be rare for let's say a strictly outpatient type of physician to end up doing work as an administrator in a hospital because a natural progression is you start working in the hospital as a physician or a nurse or a pharmacist, even a psychologist or a social worker. And you progress in the organization and there are jobs which have much higher levels of responsibility, much broader, knowledge base in terms of not only the clinical, but then melding that with the nonclinical and that it's not dependent on your specialty.

Now, if you're in a specialty where you can generate $400,000 or $500,000 a year working, let's say 50 hours a week, you're probably not going to get that really high salary that's going to match your clinical. But as I've mentioned before, remember, keep the hours in mind. Keep the fact that the mental drain and the burnout and the intensity is much less in these administrative jobs and you're not going to be sued in an administrative position. So, what's that worth to you? It pretty much eliminates the potential of being sued. That to me means a lot.

So, the bottom line is most jobs in nonclinical that I ever talk about and others talk about are open to pretty much any physician. It's mainly dependent on your MD, DO or MBBS or equivalent. It's sometimes based on your knowledge of the healthcare system, it sometimes helps that you have some clinical background and residency. Again, just to get a little more in-depth knowledge of the clinical side.

But to a large extent, any physician can do that with some additional training or experience. If a consulting firm is looking for a physician who's worked in the OR because they're doing a lot of consulting in the operating room setting of a hospital, okay, fine. Then it might be anesthesia, general surgery or ENT or others who are in the OR. But in general, any physician has access to thousands and thousands of nonclinical jobs.

All right. I'm tempted to stop there, but I had one more question on my list and I will address it briefly here. "What are the options for a side gig?" That's another pretty open-ended question. I could give a lot of examples of physicians who have done side gigs that were built on their clinical activities. Let's say owning a practice. So, one side gig is coaching and consulting to teach other practices how to do their marketing. One might be doing a similar thing in showing them how to install their EMRs. Another one might be a physician who just loves the finances and is consulting with other practices and how to create business financial reports and how to track those financial reports to make sure that their business is being successful and maybe enable them to find if somebody's embezzling or see if they can make sure that their account receivable is not getting out of hand.

But basically, when you're starting a side gig, it's like starting any business. And we go back to what I mentioned at the beginning, you need to have some purpose or passion or strong interest in that number one. Number two, you have skills that enable you to teach someone else how to do something. And then number three, there's some customer out there who is willing to pay for it. So, it's three and four. There's customers and they have the ability and willingness to pay.

You could look at ikigai, that Japanese term. That means your purpose for being. Look that up on your favorite search engine and you'll see those four quadrants and how they overlap and what does it mean. And so, if you spend some time looking at those concepts and thinking about it, it should become fairly obvious what side gig you might pursue.

But you're going to have to in some ways create your own consulting or coaching or teaching or advising job and learn how to run a business, talk to an attorney about setting up a proper structure, talk to an accountant about setting up your books. There are some obvious ones. Expert witness consulting is a given. That's a type of consulting side gig that I talk about a lot. There's a new type of medical legal consulting that doesn't involve working with malpractice cases. You can do informatics, do consulting and side gigs on that. These other ones are more one off. They're not so clearly articulated and commonly known as the expert witness type.

But that's basically what I'll say today about starting a side gig. If you can get some help and just a whole conscious of starting your own business, you read a book or watch some videos on YouTube about starting your own business, even if it's not a healthcare business, those things pretty much apply. You just have to apply those business principles to something that you're interested in and have a background in which is more likely to be something like healthcare.

All right. That's it. Those are the four questions I wanted to answer today. I think I'll leave it there.

Scroll back to top

Sign up to receive email reminders, news, and free stuff every week!

Enter your name and email address below and I'll send you reminders each podcast episode, notices about nonclinical jobs, information about free and paid courses, and other curated information just for you.

powered by

Disclaimers:

Many of the links that I refer you to are affiliate links. That means that I receive a payment from the seller if you purchase the affiliate item using my link. Doing so has no effect on the price you are charged. And I only promote products and services that I believe are of high quality and will be useful to you.

The opinions expressed here are mine and my guest’s. While the information provided on the podcast is true and accurate to the best of my knowledge, there is no express or implied guarantee that using the methods discussed here will lead to success in your career, life, or business.

The information presented on this blog and related podcast is for entertainment and/or informational purposes only. I do not provide medical, legal, tax, or emotional advice. If you take action on the information provided on the blog or podcast, it is at your own risk. Always consult an attorney, accountant, career counselor, or another career advisor before making any major decisions about your career. 

The post Top 4 Questions from Clinicians About Nonclinical Jobs for February 2023 – 287 appeared first on NonClinical Physicians.

This week, John explains how to develop a coaching or consulting business as a health advisor without creating a formal physician-patient relationship. In doing so, he mentions six guests from his podcast who are improving their clients' health or wellness while generating income outside the traditional medical setting. After reviewing each of their businesses, he offers recommendations for launching your own such business.

Each of the physicians offers wellness and health improvement guidance and coaching. Some obtained special training in Lifestyle Medicine, Functional Medicine, Meditation, or Yoga. 

Our Sponsor

We're proud to have the University of Tennessee Physician Executive MBA Program, offered by the Haslam College of Business, as the sponsor of this podcast.

The UT PEMBA is the longest-running, and most highly respected physician-only MBA in the country. It has over 700 graduates. And, the program only takes one year to complete. 

By joining the UT Physician Executive MBA, you will develop the business and management skills you need to find a career that you love. To find out more, contact Dr. Kate Atchley’s office at (865) 974-6526 or go to nonclinicalphysicians.com/physicianmba.

Being a Health Advisor

As professionals, physicians are dedicated to addressing patient health issues.  However, at times we'd like to do the same for individuals who aren't our patients. Rather than treating illnesses and injuries, we might emphasize prevention, health maintenance, and well-being. 

Lastly, by working outside the formal physician-patient relationship, we avoid certain regulatory and liability threats.

Six Examples

John describes six examples of physicians who focus on health and wellness coaching and consulting. Each of them enjoys the satisfaction of assisting clients in improving their health and preventing illness in their own unique way. 

1. Dr. Lara Salyer – Episode 120
2. Dr. Jessie Bensen – Episode 158
3. Dr. Jill Wener – Episode 172
4. Dr. Heather Hammerstadt – Episode 185
5. Dr. Rachel Beanland – Episode 250
6. Dr. Shelly Bhowhmik – Episode 257

Todays Quote About Mentors

…talk to someone who's doing what you would like to do. It gives you a real reality check as to whether it's doable and how difficult it is…

Summary

It is definitely possible to create a business as a wellness coach or consultant, or health advisor. It meets a physician's desire to help clients feel better and improve their overall health and fitness. But the flexibility, avoidance of regulation, and lack of medical liability make for a more enjoyable experience for the former clinician. 

John recommends consulting an attorney to be certain that you avoid the appearance of medical care. The health advisor may need to publish formal disclaimers. And in most cases, it is important to remind clients that before adopting any new diet, exercise, or use of supplements, they discuss these plans with their personal physician.

NOTE: Look below for a transcript of today's episode. 

EXCLUSIVE: Get a daily dose of inspiration, information, news, training opportunities, and amusing stories by CLICKING HERE.

Links for Today's Episode:

• How to Reclaim the Best Parts of Your Career – 120
• How to Be a Life Coach and Professional Artist – 158
• Can Meditation Offer Help for Burned-Out Physicians? – 172
• Can Lifestyle Medicine Help Me and My Patients? – 185
• Find the Fulfillment of a Freelance Remote Yoga and Meditation Teacher – 250
• Why Preventive Medicine and Lifestyle Medicine Make for a Great Career – 257
• Inspiration from the Author of ‘How to Lose Weight for the Last Time’ – 279
• NewScr!pt

Download This Episode:

Right Click Here and “Save As” to download this podcast episode to your computer.

Podcast Editing & Production Services are provided by Oscar Hamilton

Today's PNC Podcast Transcript

Email Download New Tab

Transcription PNC Podcast Episode 286

How to Become a Health Advisor With No Physician Patient Relationship

John: I would like to spend another 20 minutes or so addressing a question that came up in my nonclinical career mastermind. And the question is this, "How do I create a business that allows me to provide advice to clients without creating a physician-patient relationship?" The question is, "Have other physicians successfully done this?"

Now, the factors that sort of underline these questions are the following. As clinicians, we enjoy and are committed to helping address health issues in our patients, but we'd like to do the same thing to help others, maybe who aren't our patients. We would like to focus more on prevention and health and wellbeing rather than treating illnesses and injuries. And we like to be able to control our hours, work remotely and not be exposed to medical liability.

Let me just put this as a disclaimer. To some extent, these issues, these questions, fall into the area of legal questions. They should be discussed with an attorney. If you're really having a hard time deciding whether the kind of services you're providing fall in the area of physician-patient relationships, then you might want to sort through that with an attorney.

I would suggest to see an attorney anyway if you're going to develop a business like this because you'll need the attorney for other things that I'll talk about in a minute. But let me try and address the issue to some extent by making a few comments and by presenting six physicians that I've spoken with that have created that kind of business. They're all a little bit different. They all have different kinds of things that they promote and teach and advise on.

All of these physicians make it very clear to their clients that this is a business relationship. It is not a physician-patient relationship. And in fact, I think most, if not all of them advise their clients to discuss what they're planning to do with their personal physician if there's going to be, let's say, some recommendations for certain types of foods, certain types of activities and so forth. In some cases, the kind of advice being given is clearly not of a medical nature. But let's say I were to tell you that, "Oh yeah, you should start training for a marathon once we get you healthier." That should obviously be discussed with your own personal physician.

And even if some of these I would say coaches or consultants, advisors are making advice about, "Well, maybe you should consider getting on certain medications", they usually are saying, "Talk to your personal physician about using those medicines and getting prescriptions for those medicines."

They definitely, clearly, from what I know, separate those two domains. And so, they can avoid the issue of liability. They cannot have to be on call and still provide very, very valuable, meaningful, and often very successful kinds of consulting services to their clients.

All right. As I said, I want to talk about six specific examples of physicians that have done this. I will say even before I start that I think at least three of them have what you might call board certification. Now, I don't think these boards are recognized by the American Board of Medical Specialties, but they are boards. And so, they're a fairly in-depth type of certification. One is in functional medicine, two are in lifestyle medicine, I believe. I think all of them have some kind of extra training. And so, we'll get into it as I explain each of these physicians and their businesses.

With that, let me go back. The first physician that I had spoken to on the podcast about an issue like this was Dr. Lara Salyer. I believe she's a family physician, and she was searching for something to do just like this that we're talking about. She became interested in functional medicine and I believe she became certified in functional medicine and she set up a solo consulting business.

And I think it was set up initially very much like a private medical practice in the sense that she had a clinic and she had regular appointments. But if I recall correctly, in speaking with her, I found that she did a lot of remote work. She did a lot of work offline. She created a lot of standard written materials. And so, the amount of face-to-face time, either in the clinic or even remotely was limited and once she really got things going.

Now you can find her in my podcast list as episode number 120. But again, I'll put links to all of these in the show notes as well as a link to these different websites. I'm going to mention the two certifications that I mentioned a minute ago but I'll show you that website right now for those on the YouTube channel. This is the Institute for Functional Medicine and it does provide for certification and the program is listed right here for those on YouTube. And again, it's something you might consider in the process of moving towards this kind of a career. Okay, that's the first one.

The second one is Dr. Jessie Benson. Now she's very interesting. She was in episode 158 and she is a life coach. She's also a professional artist, which you might be able to see some things on her website here for those on YouTube. She's also a musician. And so, she obviously does life coaching and she integrates that all into what she does. And again, she is not a practicing physician per se, and she has successfully built this business over a period of years.

The third one I wanted to mention is Dr. Jill Wener. Now her training is in meditation. I think she might actually do some yoga, but her claim to fame and as you can see from her website here, she provides meditation services. She has pre-recorded services, she has live services. She does something called tapping. And so, those of all come out of her training primarily in medicine and meditation.

Now, the next one I want to mention is Dr. Heather Hammerstedt. She created something called Wholist Health. And she has a pretty vigorous program or two. She has a lot of coaching. She employs or engages other coaches to help her. And a lot of what she does is remote. She's also one who is trained in lifestyle medicine.

Let me switch over to that for one second. There's the American College of Lifestyle Medicine in this slide. And you can obtain education, you can get certification. There are some other benefits of membership that you can access including educational programs other than in preparation for certification. So, there is definitely a site to do that. And if we look here on Dr. Hammerstedt's site, you'll see that there's all kinds of programs from weight wellness and personal coaching, fitness mindset. There are some culinary sessions and some dedicated strictly to physicians. That is the fourth example.

The fifth example of a physician who has moved into this kind of coaching or consulting is Dr. Rachel Beanland. She presents The Mindful Doctors Coach. Dr. Beanland is a yoga instructor. Let's see, I'm just looking at different pages here. She was trained as a physician as a public health medicine specialist but she teaches now mindfulness meditation and yoga and other similar health enhancing programs. And again, she's not responsible as a physician-patient relationship, but as a consultant or coach.

And then finally, the sixth one today is Shelly Bhowmik. Oh, by the way, Rachel Beanland was in episode 250. And Shelly Bhowmik is in episode 257. She's trained in preventive medicine and she's also certified in lifestyle medicine. Now she does provide services for wellness, overcoming burnout and so forth. And she really focuses a lot on the corporate side working with medical groups, specialties, societies and specialty groups and health systems and hospitals to bring programs to prevent and overcome burnout in their clinical staffs. So, that's another approach you can take. And again, building on her background in preventive medicine she's able to do that.

The answer to the question "Do these kinds of practices exist?" is yes. They appear to have successfully separated the legal liability associated with the patient physician relationship, reduce or eliminate that while creating more of a client and consultant relationship. I do have a few recommendations if you're thinking about moving into something like that, chances are you already have an area that you'd like to focus on such as meditation, yoga, fitness, lifestyle, maybe we would call it a multi-specialty approach.

But anyway, here's what I would do. First of all, I would really think about what you want to do. And the first step, once you have a good idea what area you're going to focus on, I would consult an attorney to discuss two major questions. First, in your state, can you set up a business like this that does not result in the establishment of a physician-patient relationship, but rather a coaching or non-medical consulting relationship? And the second question would be, what is the business structure for that type of business that you're proposing? In Illinois, it would probably be some type of LLC, but each state is a little different.

Number two, try and consider early in this whole process if you might need additional training and or certifications. You don't have to have those to get started and you can even start doing this while you're working on that additional training and certification. But certainly, if it's something that's going to help from the standpoint of marketing your services, and helping add to your authority, then you should start that early because it might take several months to a year or two to complete that kind of training and or certification.

It's okay to do this sort of as a hobby if you like, but I would say if you're serious, you should prepare a written business plan. It can be pretty high level. You can look at examples of business plans online, but you would definitely want to think about and write down how you might approach these issues. Number one, identifying your intended customers. Who exactly are you going to do this for? Is it a certain age group? Is it a certain gender? Is it a certain background?

Number two, do a financial projection for the business. What do you think you might charge for your services? What kind of services? Will there be all one-on-one? Will they be face-to-face? Online? Remote? Will they be done in group sessions? Will there be anything that you can record ahead of time to provide that can be an ancillary service or even standalone?

And just try and see if this is even something viable. Because then you can do a pilot and try and get some clients and see if it works out the way you think it'll work out. How long does the average client stay with you? Is it something that's one and done or that goes on for three months, six months, a year? And really think through those things ahead of time and do a high-level marketing plan to figure out how are you going to reach out. Are you going to be using social media? Are you going to be using email? Are you going to do word of mouth? Will you be doing presentations, free presentations, paid presentations to try and establish some authority? So, it's good to think through those things before you really spend a lot of time and energy and money on pursuing this.

And then somewhere in that whole mix, and you can do this through LinkedIn, through word of mouth, through going back to old medical school and residency cohorts that you were with. Try to find someone who's a mentor. Try to find someone who's doing what you would like to do. It's a lot easier to envision it and to visualize what it will look like if you've talked to someone who is doing it or has done it in the past.

Even rather than say just contacting a business expert about how to set up your books and set up your business, but actually talk to someone who's doing what you would like to do. It gives you a real reality check as to whether it's doable and how difficult it is, whether the time constraints, what would you do differently? Just remember that with a mentor, usually a mentor is someone that you ask to help you. They usually volunteer. They usually do it for free. So, you don't want to monopolize their time. You just want to learn what you can and little bits here and there as you move along the journey towards your chosen destination.

That's basically what I have to say about answering that question. The question did come from one of my mastermind group members. So, you might consider joining one of my mastermind groups because we do answer these kinds of questions and we also deliver mentorship, encouragement, brainstorming, accountability and a built-in network of other clinicians to speed your career journey. So, if you want to learn more about the mastermind, go to nonclinicalphysicians.com/mastermind for that. I think I'll leave it there for today's episode of Physician NonClinical Careers.

Scroll back to top

Sign up to receive email reminders, news, and free stuff every week!

Enter your name and email address below and I'll send you reminders each podcast episode, notices about nonclinical jobs, information about free and paid courses, and other curated information just for you.

powered by

Disclaimers:

Many of the links that I refer you to are affiliate links. That means that I receive a payment from the seller if you purchase the affiliate item using my link. Doing so has no effect on the price you are charged. And I only promote products and services that I believe are of high quality and will be useful to you.

The opinions expressed here are mine and my guest’s. While the information provided on the podcast is true and accurate to the best of my knowledge, there is no express or implied guarantee that using the methods discussed here will lead to success in your career, life, or business.

The information presented on this blog and related podcast is for entertainment and/or informational purposes only. I do not provide medical, legal, tax, or emotional advice. If you take action on the information provided on the blog or podcast, it is at your own risk. Always consult an attorney, accountant, career counselor, or other professional before making any major decisions about your career. 

The post How to Become a Health Advisor With No Physician Patient Relationship – 286 appeared first on NonClinical Physicians.

In today's podcast episode, John answers this question: How do I start my search? He describes his experiences moving from practicing family physician to hospital chief medical officer.

Based on his conversations with podcast guests, and his own transition, he outlines an approach that works for most clinicians.

Our Sponsor

We're proud to have the University of Tennessee Physician Executive MBA Program, offered by the Haslam College of Business, as the sponsor of this podcast.

The UT PEMBA is the longest-running, and most highly respected physician-only MBA in the country. It has over 700 graduates. And, the program only takes one year to complete. 

By joining the UT Physician Executive MBA, you will develop the business and management skills you need to find a career that you love. To find out more, contact Dr. Kate Atchley’s office at (865) 974-6526 or go to nonclinicalphysicians.com/physicianmba.

The Highlights of John's Stepwise Approach

Given that no two people are exactly alike, here are John's experiences and some of the first steps you might take.

• Acknowledge something is wrong.
• Commit to addressing the problem.
• Look for a solution in your current world.
• Look for a solution near your current world.
• Look for a solution out there somewhere.
• Then learn about what’s possible, what’s been done before, and how did it work out?

Before Transition Process

Spend at least three to six months exploring your options. Depending on your circumstances, you may want to check out jobs in the pharmaceutical industry, hospital management, medical writing, consulting, working for the government or public health, or starting a small business.

And after you have knowledge of 10 to 20 alternatives, you can limit your choices to two or three, and really do your research. Then narrow it down even more, and learn how to pursue the particular career that you are most interested in.

Summary

There are a few logical steps one should take when first trying to identify a nonclinical career to pursue. Devote time to learning about nonclinical options through reading books, journal articles, or blog entries, and listening to podcasts. Use your network and talk to others about their nonclinical jobs. 

NOTE: Look below for a transcript of today's episode. 

EXCLUSIVE: Get a daily dose of inspiration, information, news, training opportunities, and amusing stories by CLICKING HERE.

Links for Today's Episode:

• Get Ready for What Will Happen When You Quit Your Miserable Job – 213
• Discover Your First Nonclinical Job Even If You Don’t Know Where to Start – 200
• Top Five Start-Up Secrets for the Physician Entrepreneur – 087
• NewScr!pt

Download This Episode:

Right Click Here and “Save As” to download this podcast episode to your computer.

Podcast Editing & Production Services are provided by Oscar Hamilton

Today's PNC Podcast Transcript

Email Download New Tab

Transcription PNC Podcast Episode 285

How Do I Start My Search for a Great Nonclinical Job?

John: For today's presentation, it's just me. I got this idea for today's episode because I received a number of questions from listeners like you, plus email subscribers and mastermind members. Some of those questions come up time and again, so they're kind of repetitive because they're things that we commonly think about when we're frustrated or trying to start a new career. Today I'd like to spend 20 minutes or so addressing one of the questions that I've encountered recently, because I know that many of you have the same question.

All right, let's get going. The question being asked today is in the title of today's episode - "How do I start my search for a great nonclinical job?" I get the question "How do I get started? Where do I begin?" They don't always throw in "great." I'll tell you a little secret. The reason that I sometimes put words in my titles is because they're more easily found and searched on Google and other search engines, and they give me a little higher score. There are the scores that you can apply to how well titles are received. I started with "How do I start my search for a nonclinical job?" and I had to throw the word "great" in there because it gave me a higher score, a headline score, you might call it. Anyway, you know what we're talking about today.

Now the assumption is this, as I talk about this topic, is that I'm going to take it from the perspective of myself, where was I when I found my first major nonclinical job. Because I did a lot of nonclinical things before I started, one that I spent more than a few hours a weekend. The assumptions that I'm making today and that I think are belay or behind that question that comes to me is that I'm unhappy, unfulfilled, maybe bored, maybe burnt out, frustrated, unhappy, or depressed. And I'm thinking as a physician that this is coming because I'm feeling that way about my job, about my career. I've got long hours. It's hard work. I don't feel that I'm being appreciated. And in retrospect was this really the thing I wanted to do for the rest of my life?

Now, sometimes that can be just the situation you're in, the temporary situation, your current colleagues or the person you're reporting to, or maybe the organization and just switching to a different organization would solve the problem. But I'm talking about someone who's really kind of already gone through that thought process to some extent. And I'm feeling that changing my job or my career is really the only option, or at least maybe the best option.

So, how did I answer that question? That question of how do I start my search for a great nonclinical job? What did I do? Looking back, did I do it the best way? Did I do it the quickest way? And I'll answer that question right now by saying no. But I think there were things I learned along the way, and it goes into my helping people now move along in their journey.

How are we going to approach this? How did I approach it? And can we learn from what I did way back when at the very beginning of my career transition? The transition that I'm kind of focusing on is when I really started out full-time practice, did some part-time side gigs, and ended up going into really a two-thirds time position as a VP of medical affairs, and then ultimately a full-time chief medical officer.

That was where I went through the process. And if it's having those feelings, I think most of you are having in terms of you are being very frustrated, or you're starting to really not like clinical medicine, or you've been sued a couple times, and I had been and really didn't think "Why am I spending all this time working long hours only to get sued because some patient is unhappy or feels like they didn't have the perfect outcome?" That's what I'm going to focus on today.

Let me summarize now at the beginning, and then I'll do it again at the end, some of the steps in this early process that you may need to go through. Not everyone's exactly the same. These are the things then looking back that I went through. I'll get into a little more details specifically about how to approach them and what they mean but here are the steps that I'm talking about.

Acknowledging something is wrong, making a commitment to address the problem, looking for a solution in your current world, or I was looking for a solution in my world that I was in at the time that might be called some other things we'll talk about in a minute. If that doesn't work out or doesn't seem possible, then look for a solution near my current world or your current world, or look for a solution out there somewhere.

When you get to that point, if that's what it's going to take, and this is where I think some of the other people get these questions, is where do you start? They're asking, what are my options? So that's kind of a brief overview of the steps, but let me go through each of these and maybe use myself as an example.

I don't remember being burned out in residency. It was hard work, but even then, I volunteered for extra things. In fact, in our program during our third year, you had the option of being the chief resident if you were selected. And actually, we had an election, and the current residents all three years selected the chief resident for the coming year. And so, my good friend and I actually both threw our hats into the ring. It was kind of a friendly competition. I don't think either of us would've been really unhappy if we weren't selected. And I think we even had to give like a five-minute speech, so to speak, or suggest why we wanted to do it.

But anyway, I was selected as a chief resident, so clearly, I didn't feel overwhelmed if I was willing to take on those extra responsibilities. And I did that. And, again, I don't think I felt burnt out during residency. There were some rotations that were frustrating. There were some periods of time where sleep was difficult but I didn't leave residency, like not looking forward to practicing. In fact, I was looking forward to it.

But once I got into practice, the first part that kind of made me think about something being wrong is that I was a little bit bored. I spent the first year or two in residency, as many of us do, still learning how to practice and how to work with my partners. I was in a small group. There were two that hired me. So, there were three of us, and after two or three years, they made me a partner.

But even from the beginning, I was moonlighting a little bit and sometimes those moonlighting jobs were in nonclinical. So, I ended up moonlighting as a physician advisor for utilization management. I'd spent an hour or two in the mornings, a few days a week helping the hospital meet its utilization management requirements for Medicare patients, basically because that's how CMS works. It puts the onus on the institution to make sure that you're keeping those patients within a reasonable length of stay and not overdoing the testing and so forth so that you can actually break even or make a little money as a hospital. But I wasn't doing it because I was burnt out. I had some free time and I wanted to make some extra money.

But there came a point that, I'd say two or three years later where I just very gradually increasingly became more and more frustrated with my practice. I had two partners and we were all working harder, just three of us, and we were doing OB for the first eight years I was there. We had a lot going on, and we were doing a lot of different things. We did start to all get kind of fried after a while. And part of it was the payments were going down for Medicare. We had switched to a DRG system several years before that. And that took a while to get used to on the inpatient side. And as family physicians, we were doing nursing home rounds and nursery rounds and hospital rounds and outpatient, and working a clinic for a local college. So, we were keeping super busy.

But I just began to get frustrated with my patients because I felt like I was just spinning my wheels. They weren't listening to what I was doing. I don't know, it just was the constant increase from year over year to working harder and feeling like I wasn't making that much progress, and that my income wasn't really going up the way it should, which is partly why I was doing moonlighting, which I think probably aggravated the frustration and the burnout.

I reached a point, and I think I remember telling somebody this or thinking this, that I really reached a point where I hated my patients. And I've said that several times before, and I don't think I really hated them. I was doing the best I could and a lot of my patients really, really liked me, and that was part of the problem. I would never fire my patients no matter how ornery or uncooperative they were. And so, I just kept building this larger panel of needy patients. But I did start to feel that.

And so, the first step is acknowledging that something is wrong. A lot of us, we put that thought off. We're in denial, let's put it that way. Things can be really bad and we haven't told anyone, we haven't told ourselves that, we haven't discussed it with our spouse. We haven't really made any changes. We figure it's just going to get better later, or this is just the way it is. And so, really the first step in this whole process is acknowledging that something is wrong. And obviously when I get the question from you and others that I work with "How do I start?" they've gotten to that point. They know that something is wrong. And sometimes it's okay to put a word on it. You don't have to name that something, but it could be any of the things I mentioned before. Moral injury or you feel underappreciated but you know something is wrong and something has to change.

Now, that doesn't mean what has to change is your entire career, but once you acknowledge something is wrong, the very next step that should follow shortly thereafter is for you to make a commitment to addressing the problem. And sometimes that doesn't happen. That could go on for years, feeling something is wrong and not really say, "Well, wait a second, it doesn't have to be this way. And I'm going to make a commitment to myself that I'm going to fix this, I'm going to make it better. I'm going to find a solution to this, whether it's in clinical medicine or outside of clinical medicine, but I have a problem. It's not necessarily of my doing, but it is of my doing if I don't make changes. And so, I'm going to commit to myself maybe even this year." Give a timeline like "I'm going to solve this problem. I'm going to find out how to solve it, number one, and then I'm going to take steps to make a change. And if it has to be a big change to a new job or a new career, so be it."

Now, as I try to remind people too, remember that sometimes when you're unhappy in a job, it's either because the people you're working with, in general terms, it's usually your manager. That's the number one reason. A lot of physicians don't technically have a manager, but there's somebody you're reporting to, whether directly or indirectly part of the hierarchy, particularly if you're employed by a large hospital organization or hospital system.

But if you can sometimes switch different department, different location, if you're in a super big system, you might be able to move to a different part of the system. But let's say you've contemplated that and you say to yourself, "Well, it's not really that, I just need a new boss. The way I'm practicing, the way medicine is practiced in general in this country, for the most part is not compatible with me being happy." And I've come to that conclusion.

All right, that was the second thing. Now you have to start looking for a solution. And again, this is where the questions come up. "I don't know where to look. How do I start?" Okay, very logical. I know there's a problem. I know I'm going to fix this problem, but how do I fix it? Where do I look? Well, okay, the next step usually is to look for a solution in your current world.

As I mentioned earlier, I was doing moonlighting at my hospital and I didn't mind it. In fact, a lot of times I liked the moonlighting more so than I liked the clinical practice. As a medical director for a family planning clinic, it didn't take a lot of hours but I was responsible for protocols. I was responsible for interfacing with the medical staff at the two hospitals in our town when we had patients that we couldn't find a physician for. We were doing pap smears and really well woman care and pregnancy tests. And sometimes we'd have a pregnant woman who needed to get in and it was difficult. And we developed solutions to that problem.

I actually kind of enjoyed those things. I was helping people on the administrative side as well as the clinical side as I was providing care in there. But I was also supervising several physician assistants, probably mostly nurse practitioners. It was natural for me to look within my current world, say, "Well, maybe I can do more things like that." Somewhere in there I got a mentor and he told me some things that I might consider. And so, I enrolled to get a master's degree in public health, mainly because I was working as an occupational medicine physician part-time in addition to working in my practice.

This brings up another point I want to make here, and that is some people don't get to this step very quickly because they feel like, or they believe that their partners, their organization, their clinic, people around them are not going to understand. And this is one thing that I'd like you to remember early in the process is that if you approach almost anybody in your organization in a positive way, in a curious way, in an honest way, don't assume they're going to not react in a positive fashion. In other words, some people say, "Well, I can't talk to my partners. They're going to freak out when they find out I'm thinking of leaving. Or this practice is pretty traditional. We all take 100% call that we're responsible for. We rotate for every fourth, every fifth, whatever it might be. They're not going to let me pull back a little bit and try some other things."

Because that is part of the first step is to look around in your current world. And for me it was in the hospital. I was part of a practice, it was independent from the hospital, but I was doing these things like working for the hospital as a medical director and for the family planning clinic. And then I was volunteering for other things. And as I said, I had worked as a physician advisor for UM so the hospital saw me as someone who was willing to do some of the jobs that other physicians wouldn't do for them.

Now, the part where the conversation might become challenging was when I had to explain that to my partners, because here I am, I'm in a 33.33% of a three-person group obviously, and we shared everything equally. So how could I do the moonlighting and do the part-time medical directorships? And to be honest, none of that income ever went through the practice. It came to me as like moonlighting income.

And so, as long as I was covering call, as long as I was seeing about the same number of patients and bringing in about the same amount of revenue in the practice, I was able to do these other things and they didn't really put up much of a fuss. But that's part of the burnout there because when you're doing other things, nonclinical things, maybe you have hobbies and you have a family and all kinds of things going on, and you're still trying to maintain that facade of being a full partner. Most people that get into business need to focus on one business at a time if you're a consultant or a business owner. And to kind of fool yourself into thinking you can do three or four different things equally well it's not true.

So, there came a point when I did have to have those conversations and I was asked to be the VP for medical affairs of the hospital. And this is where we get into the second bullet. You look for a solution in your current world, and if not in your world, like my practice, then you look for a solution near your current world. And someone might call that your zone of influence. Zone of control is things around you, the things you're responsible for, my practice, my partners and all that. But then I was looking outside of that zone of control into the zone of influence where I was already putting my toe in the water.

Now, this might be a little bit too easy because the situation I was in at the time made it very easy to do this because the hospital needed people. There weren't others willing to step up. And so, I just stepped into that gap and it worked out well. But I did have to have some pretty good conversations, pretty honest and straightforward conversations with my partners. And I just explained to them that I would continue to do what I could to maintain my share of the burden.

We did have a setup where if we did produce less revenue and did see less patients, then our income would drop. And we had a formula for that. That kind of automatically took care of that. If you don't have that right now, then there's going to have to be that difficult conversation.

But as I've told others that have brought this question up along the way here, even if you're in a large organization, they see the writing of the wall, they see that people are burned out, they see that people are requiring more freedom and a little more control and are requiring maybe a little more maternity and paternity leave. And then you've got FMLA and they've got to be more flexible.

I think if you go to your superiors, if you go to the people you work with in your group, even if it's in a large system and you have a conversation that's not threatening, you say, "Look, I'm really starting to get burnt out. And plus, it's not only the burnout, but I really would like to try some other things. I'd like to carve out a little bit of time without burning myself out where I can try these other things and maybe I can help the organization."

Now, you may not want to work for the organization in those roles, and so you might just have to say, "I just want to be honest. If things keep going the way they're going, something's going to give because I just can't do this. I don't want to do this. I don't mind working, I don't mind doing the specialty I'm doing right now, but not the way I'm doing it now. So, I'd love to figure some way for this to work while I'm still working with you and for you."

Most of the time they will listen, they'll say, "Look, we're aware of these things. We're trying to become more flexible." I've talked to many physicians who are doing job sharing or taking sabbatical for two, three months at a time or working halftime and then doing some side gig the other half. So, it can work out and don't be afraid to have those conversations.

That's what I did with my partners and it worked out. And so, eventually then I had to have a really tough conversation. I did it a little bit differently. I ended up leaving my partnership and still maintained my practice. And I went through that conversation and I said "Because I'm going to really split my time 50-50 with the hospital and I understand that for you guys, it's not going to make sense because I can't work 1/6 time and you guys somehow carve up the other 5/6." It wasn't going to make any sense.

And so, my plan was to cut my practice way back and to about half time and run it myself. And that's what I did. That probably added to my burnout, but that's why I did it. And it took me a long time to take all these steps and I see a lot of people getting into their new careers a lot quicker than I did. And that's why I'm here is to try and help you figure out the shortcuts to do that.

But to get back to the list of steps here, if you can't find something in your current environment, maybe work within your practice and become the managing physician of the practice and then cut your hours way back and then end up doing almost all nonclinical or just leave. Yeah, that's where you got to look for a solution out there somewhere. So, if you can't find it in your current situation or outside of it, but nearby, then you just got to say, "Okay, then I'm going to keep doing this until I find the plan and make the plan and I find the solution, but I'm going to have to leave this job."

That brings us to the next step, which I think also is included in this question about "How do I start?" A lot of people ask that question when they want to know what their options are. So, what are my options? I've figured out I'm not happy, I've made a commitment to solve this problem. I've looked locally, there's no solution here. What are my options? Because we don't need to limit ourselves to what we know about.

If we were just fresh out of residency and we kind of knew what a physician advisor was, we kind of knew what a medical director was, but there's thousands of jobs out there that we know nothing about that still depend on your knowledge of healthcare and on your medical background. And so, the next step in my opinion is that now is the time to really spend some time learning what's possible, what's been done before, how did that work out? Did those solutions sound like it's something I'd be interested in?

So, what you should spend your time doing, in my opinion, is becoming an expert in nonclinical options. And you start reading books. You start reading journal articles, you start listening to podcasts if that's your thing. You start reading blog on a blog posts, you decide whether you want to do something that's really on the fringes or completely nonclinical, like get into real estate or investing or things of that nature. I've talked to guests that have gone into essentially full-time investing, working as a representative, and a private equity firm or something like that, a partner, and actually still practicing, if you can imagine that. But you just need to learn what's out there.

Now, there's an infant number of things you can do, so you don't really have to spend years learning it, but you should spend at least three to six months figuring out that there's a whole pharma industry, figuring out that you can do a lot of things in hospitals and health systems that maybe you weren't aware of. Figuring out medical writing, consulting, doing something in government, including things in public health.

There are small businesses physicians can run or start. There are startups you can do, there's a lot of things. There's an infinite number of things you can do, but you should spend three to six months looking at those. I produced live content that will show you what's out there. A lot of other people do too. I'm not going to get into that right now.

But again, let's go through those steps just to make it clear. Acknowledge something is wrong. Commit to fixing or addressing the problem. Look for a solution in your current world. Don't assume it's not malleable, I guess is the way I would put it. Something in your zone of control. Maybe you can bend it to your will. Look for a solution near your current world, something that you're already aware of or know is out there, or have an inkling that it is and get a coach, get a mentor or something. Find out more, read, look at videos online. Take some courses if you would. Look for a solution out there somewhere if those two don't fill it.

And especially if you think "I really want to do something different" or "I want to combine something, that avocation I had in the past, art, music, something else with my healthcare background", go for it and look out there. But what you're going to have to do is look for the options, spend some time learning what's possible, what's been done before, and how did that work out for those that did it? How happy are they? What are the pros and cons? And once you've got a knowledge of 5, 10, 15, 20 possible different options, you can narrow it down to the two or three and then narrow it down even further and then learn about how to go through the process of pursuing that particular career that you're looking at. All right, I'll stop there.

Scroll back to top

Sign up to receive email reminders, news, and free stuff every week!

Enter your name and email address below and I'll send you reminders each podcast episode, notices about nonclinical jobs, information about free and paid courses, and other curated information just for you.

powered by

Disclaimers:

Many of the links that I refer you to are affiliate links. That means that I receive a payment from the seller if you purchase the affiliate item using my link. Doing so has no effect on the price you are charged. And I only promote products and services that I believe are of high quality and will be useful to you.

The opinions expressed here are mine and my guest’s. While the information provided on the podcast is true and accurate to the best of my knowledge, there is no express or implied guarantee that using the methods discussed here will lead to success in your career, life, or business.

The information presented on this blog and related podcast is for entertainment and/or informational purposes only. I do not provide medical, legal, tax, or emotional advice. If you take action on the information provided on the blog or podcast, it is at your own risk. Always consult an attorney, accountant, career counselor, or other professionals before making any major decisions about your career. 

The post How Do I Start My Search for a Great Nonclinical Job? – 285 appeared first on NonClinical Physicians.

Dr. Heather Fork makes her third appearance on the Podcast in today’s interview with an important message about using LinkedIn.

Our Sponsor

We're proud to have the University of Tennessee Physician Executive MBA Program, offered by the Haslam College of Business, as the sponsor of this podcast.

The UT PEMBA is the longest-running, and most highly respected physician-only MBA in the country. It has over 700 graduates. And, the program only takes one year to complete. 

By joining the UT Physician Executive MBA, you will develop the business and management skills you need to find a career that you love. To find out more, contact Dr. Kate Atchley’s office at (865) 974-6526 or go to nonclinicalphysicians.com/physicianmba.

New Podcast

She hosts the weekly Doctor’s Crossing Carpe Diem Podcast. And she is passionate about creating new resources to make it easier for physicians to navigate their careers.

She previously described her Resumé Writing Kit here on the PNC Podcast.

Using LinkedIn

Heather begins our discussion by explaining what LinkedIn is, and why it is unique among social media sites. She notes that when she started coaching, LinkedIn was not an essential tool for physicians seeking a new career. 

The biggest mistake physicians make is not getting in the parade and having fun. – Dr. Heather Fork

Today, she says that 100% of her clients use LinkedIn as an integral part of their career search strategy. That's why she found it so important to help her clients and other physicians by creating a LinkedIn course for them.

Summary

Dr. Heather Fork explains why LinkedIn is important, and how to use it in your professional life. She also explained the most critical functions to utilize and points out little-known tips when using it, including her “Alumni Hack.” She has created her own “how-to” course called LinkedIn for Physicians that anybody can purchase if they need help setting it up.

NOTE: Look below for a transcript of today's episode.

Links for Today's Episode:

• Doctor's Crossing Website
• Doctor's Crossing Free Resources
• Heather Fork's Doctor's Crossing Linkedin for Physicians
• Your Resume is the Passport to That Desirable Job – 157
• Achieve the Life You Want with Career Coach Dr. Heather Fork – 018
• Follow These Steps to Create an Awesome LinkedIn Profile – 009
• Top Reasons to Use LinkedIn – 008
• NewScr!pt

Download This Episode:

Right Click Here and “Save As” to download this podcast episode to your computer.

Podcast Editing & Production Services are provided by Oscar Hamilton

Today's PNC Podcast Transcript

Email Download New Tab

Transcription PNC Podcast Episode 232

How to Land An Awesome Job Using LinkedIn

John: I'm very pleased to bring today's guest back to the podcast for the third time. She's been an awesome source of support for physicians struggling with their careers for many years and she's a very well-known ICF Master Certified Coach in resume and LinkedIn expert. Hello, Dr. Heather Fork.

Dr. Heather Fork: Hello, iconic Dr. John Jurica. Thank you so much for that very generous intro. And I have to say, I am a huge fan of yours. Yours is probably the first podcast I ever listened to.

John: Well, I'm happy to hear that and I'm glad to hear it. And it's mutual because I love your podcast. Oops. I shouldn't have spilled the beans that you have a podcast. That's one of the new things you're doing. But I love your podcast, I love your coaching, and your blog too has much good stuff on it. We're not going to go over all your past history because they can go back and listen to the previous episodes if they like. What I really want to know is since it's been about a year and a half, what new things have you been up to?

Dr. Heather Fork: Well, spoiler. A podcast.

John: There you go.

Dr. Heather Fork: Now, you inspired me with this medium that I've been putting off. And when I heard you and then Amy Porterfield, I thought this is so valuable. Especially since I don't really like to write and I've been blogging for 10 years, I just had to do something different.

The podcast started last October. And as you know, it's a lot of work to do a weekly podcast, but it's much fun and I love getting my former clients to come on and other guests because they're so fantastic. And what I hear from listeners is I don't feel alone anymore. Someone else feels the way I do. I don't feel like I'm damaged goods and I have hope.

John: Yeah. Well, it's been a while since I started, but one of the things I realized shortly after I started and I heard from people is that you are part of people's life. They know your voice. I was at a meeting once and someone came up to me and said, "Hey, I recognize you. Aren't you John Jurica?" We were at a meeting about nonclinical careers. But just that whole idea that you're talking to them directly.

Dr. Heather Fork: Yes, it's intimate. And I love it because you can really help people feel too what you're expressing and what the guests are expressing. I think it really changes the landscape from being something to just thinking about making changes, to feeling like it's really possible. That these people are really alive. Someone just didn't write a bunch of stuff and put it on a paper and made it up.

John: That's true. Now, oddly enough, there are some people that have never listened to a single podcast. I don't know how we get to them. But for those who are listening and want to learn about nonclinical careers or burnout or nontraditional careers or just, I don't know, feeling better about your life, definitely, you want to listen to Doctor's Crossing Carpe Diem podcast. Why did you pick that name?

Dr. Heather Fork: I just love the term "carpe diem". And my coaching program is called Carpe Diem because like Robin William said in that movie, "Dead Poets Society" that, "Before long we're going to be pushing up daisy's unless we carpe that diem." And we got on this path and our whole life has been planned out for us. And if we don't really question, is it what we really want to be doing? Is it making us happy? We'll be pushing up daisy's and saying, "Oh my God, I didn't get to have the life I wanted."

John: For sure. Yeah. Seize the day, right?

Dr. Heather Fork: Yes.

John: All right. Everyone's going to go listen to your podcast, but that is not really the main reason I wanted you to come on today because we discussed something a few years ago about creating different resources for people that we could share with our followers and our listeners and all that.

And then I saw that you, the expert in LinkedIn, recently created a course. But I'm going to just talk to you about LinkedIn. That's what we're going to spend the next 20 minutes doing, because I don't think that our listeners always understand the importance or why we should learn about it if we're not already using it. Just explain what LinkedIn is for those that have never used it, or have just dabbled a little bit and maybe why it's different from other social media sites.

Dr. Heather Fork: I'd love to. LinkedIn is considered the number one networking platform for professionals, and it has over 800 million members. So, it's worldwide. And I'd say the main thing about it, that's different from Facebook and Instagram and these other platforms is that it's really for those of you who want to have a professional platform, you can have your own profile, who want to network with other professionals with a really powerful search engine. I call it the Rolodex on Steroids. And also, be able to use your profile to apply for jobs and interact with recruiters. It's one-stop shopping and a platform that's continuing to evolve.

John: Well, I'm on LinkedIn fairly often. It's actually one way that I find podcast guests, for example. And being an introvert, I'm not a big networker per se, but it's an awesome way to network as is a podcast, of course.

But the thing is, I have never seen a nasty conversation on LinkedIn. People are like, they don't want to go to Twitter and Facebook because it's just loaded with sometimes some nasty stuff. And LinkedIn is, like you said, it's professional. It's a place where you can find jobs and post jobs, if you like. Does it come into play a lot in terms of the people you work with, that you coach or that you're teaching? I know you've done some speaking about LinkedIn. Does it seem to help them? And how often does it become a critical part of their career search?

Dr. Heather Fork: That's a great question, John. And I would say back in 2010 when I first started, LinkedIn was there, but it wasn't used as much. But now all of my clients use LinkedIn. And let me explain how it's helpful by painting a little scenario. Let's say we have two physicians and they're both applying for the same nonclinical job. One is on LinkedIn, one isn't. The one who isn't on LinkedIn applies through the regular channel, say maybe Indeed with their CV or resume. Then the other physician applies on LinkedIn. And the difference is when the recruiter gets a CV for that first physician, they just have the CV or resume. They don't see a picture. They don't see recommendations. They don't have this dynamic visual of the physician.

Then if they go to the physician who applied through LinkedIn or even has a link for their LinkedIn profile on their resume, that recruiter can click and then they already see this beautiful face. They see a lovely banner photo and then everything's right there that they need that would've been on the resume. Plus, there are a lot of additional things you can put on your LinkedIn profile. They might read a recommendation that describes exactly who they're looking for. That's not going to be on your resume.

John: Absolutely. Yeah. In my mind, I think about a Venn diagram, things overlap and a resume and LinkedIn overlap a lot, and then networking overlaps with your LinkedIn. And you're right. The LinkedIn profile is just so much more complete. Not that you want to send in a five-page resume. But if someone wants to look for that information, it's right there on LinkedIn.

Dr. Heather Fork: Exactly. So, the physician who's using LinkedIn, when they want to apply for a certain job, they could find a physician who's working in that company, and they can reach out to them for an informational interview. And then often those physicians get a finder's fee if they refer somebody who gets hired. So, there's an incentive for them to talk to you. If that person's applying and they were recommended by another physician, the recruiter already likes them because there's a much higher success rate for candidates found that way. It makes it easier. So, you can see how very quickly that physician who's on LinkedIn already has many advantages.

John: I had a podcast guest tell me once that submitting a CV on a website is the way of madness. She had literally said she had submitted a thousand resumes and had never received a response. And she noted that once she figured out that she just needed to have some connection with somebody, either find out who the hiring manager was or have somebody that she knows in the company, some touchpoint, then she had some actual jobs that were requesting she come and interview.

Dr. Heather Fork: Oh my gosh, that's such a discouraging story to send out thousands and not hear anything back. I'm surprised she persisted that long.

John: Well, I think it's misleading because it's just so easy. Oh, I'm just going to cut and paste and cut and paste and cut and paste. But no one's looking at those kinds of resumes, I don't think. My daughter is a recruiter for a big firm and they use LinkedIn constantly.

Dr. Heather Fork: Well, it's really becoming the go-to platform for recruiters. And when you apply for a job on LinkedIn, often, you'll actually see the recruiter that's connected to that position and you can reach out to them. You can attach your resume right there in addition to the formal application process. You can start a relationship. You could also just look at jobs you're interested in and you may not be ready to apply, but you can connect with that recruiter and say, "Hey, I'm not ready yet, but I'd love to establish a relationship with you."

John: Yeah, absolutely. That's so true. You mentioned how all of your clients use LinkedIn. Can you give us some examples of where it was very critical to a particular, without naming names, particular clients?

Dr. Heather Fork: Sure. Absolutely. I have some great stories. I had one client who wanted to transition into a certain nonclinical area. And we were on the phone together and we were both searching on LinkedIn. And because she wasn't having a lot of success at first, connecting with a couple of folks on LinkedIn. So, I said, "Here, let's find somebody." I found this person with her same specialty, and she sent him a message. She heard from him the next day. They had a chat. It turns out they knew a couple of people in common who were working at that company as well. She ended up getting an interview and it took a while because they didn't quite have an opening then for her specialty, but she got the job and she's working in the job and she's really happy.

John: Very nice.

Dr. Heather Fork: I have another story. This was a physician who was brand new to LinkedIn. When she came to me, she didn't have a profile or anything. She created it. It really doesn't take that long when you just follow the steps. And I taught her my alumni hack, which is one of my favorite little things to do on LinkedIn that's very powerful, is to search your alumni network. That could be people you went to college with, med school, even your training program, and see if they're working in the industry or at the company that you're interested in.

She found someone who went to her small liberal arts college who was working in the company where she wanted to work. She messaged him, he got back to her right away, and said, "Send me a resume. I want to give it to the hiring manager." She did that. The hiring manager reaches out, interviews within a week. Does another interview, gets the job. There was one and done. One application, a couple of interviews, got the job.

John: It's amazing. I think sometimes we feel like if we're reaching out to someone, we haven't seen in 20 years, they're not going to respond. But the reality is when I'm on the receiving end, if I get a note of any sort, whether it's an email or LinkedIn and they're from my Alma mater. I mean, invariably, I respond immediately. That's just human nature, I think.

Dr. Heather Fork: You are family, and those little connections are huge. It's funny how we're like that. The first time we had gone to the school, like I said, 20 years ago or before you, or after you, but you are buddies.

John: Yeah. Even if it's someone from two or three years, if you're at the same school, you just have that bond and can talk about the different things and you feel like you're somehow you owe that person for some reason in a good way.

Dr. Heather Fork: Yeah. You just feel this common connection. That really it feels like a blood brother or something.

John: Now, I hear another thing people tell me about LinkedIn is they create a profile and they should put certain keywords if they're looking to be found by someone. Is that a big thing? Is that a minor thing to consider?

Dr. Heather Fork: That's a great question, John. Now, there's something on LinkedIn called "Your headline". And this is what comes below your name, or you have your degrees and everything. And by default, LinkedIn puts in the company where you're working and your job title. That's just by default. But you can customize this headline with keywords that will help recruiters find you or the people you want to find you. For example, it might just say that you're a physician at Slippery Rock Clinic, or something like that. But you can put in, medical writer, consultant, physician advisor, you can put in expert witness, the side gigs that you might be doing. Even you can say, "Seeking position in drug safety".

John: Wow. Nice. That helps really to key off those who are actually looking on LinkedIn for someone to contact like a recruiter or something like that.

Dr. Heather Fork: You can do that. And then those keywords also are important to have in your "About section", which is like your customized bio. They can also go in your "Experience section". They can go anywhere on your profile and they are searchable.

John: That really helps. I'm telling you. Let me turn it around now. Here's the way I like to look at things sometimes is like, let's look at the other side of the coin. What are the mistakes? Now, we've kind of alluded to them in a way by what a good way to use LinkedIn is. But have you seen working with people and said, "Wait a second, this is why people aren't looking at your profile?" Any common mistakes that we make when we first start to use LinkedIn?

Dr. Heather Fork: I would say there definitely are mistakes like that, of not optimizing the profile. And there are lots of ways to do that. But some of the biggest mistakes are really just not getting in the parade and then shutting the parade down too soon. What do I mean by that? Not getting in the parade is saying, well, I'm a private person. I really don't like to put myself out there, or I'm really introverted. I don't like to network. Or you get on LinkedIn, you put up a basic profile. Maybe you send a few messages, apply for a few jobs, nothing happens. And you just say, well, this doesn't work and I don't have time. Which I completely understand. It is not the most intuitive platform. And these things that I teach in the course help you know how to use it and use it strategically so it's not wasting your time.

John: Okay. Now you mentioned the course. I mentioned it earlier and I do want to learn more about the course. I do want to remind my listeners though, of course of your website, doctorscrossing.com. That's where pretty much they can find everything. Now I understand also, you have a page there that has a bunch of free resources. That looked pretty awesome. Can you tell us about that first?

Dr. Heather Fork: Absolutely. On my website, under the freebie tab, there are these downloadable PDFs that you can have. One is a starter kit that's very extensive on how you can go from being overwhelmed at the crossroad to figuring out how to move forward. That has a lot of great information for your career process. Then there's one on medical writing. There's one on pharma. There's a chart review. There might be some others there. I can't quite remember, but you can go to the freebie tab and take whatever you want.

John: I went and looked today. I think there were at least six that were there and they address different things. I've downloaded several of them, of course, but I would recommend people to go. And you can go directly there at doctorscrossing.com/freeresources, or just go to the website and look for it.

Okay. Now you have a LinkedIn course. This is something that I have been looking forward to for a long time. One of those things that I thought we really needed. I have this little video that I made five years ago where I built a LinkedIn profile. It is so dated. It is so ugly. And then I just said, "I'm not going to do anything, because I'm waiting for Heather to come out with her course." So, it's called what? LinkedIn course for physicians?

Dr. Heather Fork: You always do quality work and you're also incredibly prolific. You put about a hundred things to my one.

John: Okay. I'm not going to argue with you except that this course is beautiful. I will say that it's a lot prettier than anything I've produced. It's just awesome. Tell us about how it's structured and what does it go through?

Dr. Heather Fork: Thanks for asking. And I have to say, this has been the hardest thing I've done in my business. It took me a year. It wouldn't take me that long if I was doing the second one, but the course is three hours of video that's broken down into 22 short lessons, five minutes to 10 minutes. And what it does is it walks you through creating your profile, then teaches you how to start networking and message people. There are specific examples and templates to use of, "Well, what do you say in that message when you only have 300 characters? What do you do when someone doesn't respond to that message, and then how do you write longer messages"? We cover networking and then we go on to "How to start searching for jobs?" Because that's another thing that really gets people in a twist is, "I see all these job descriptions and they want five to seven years and I'm not qualified" and that's another area of difficulty. I really talk about that.

And then I also show them how to apply for jobs and work with recruiters. And there's all these little things you don't really know about. For example, did you know, John, that you can put yourself in anonymous mode when you want to go look at people's profile, but you don't want them to see that you've been visiting them and then you can turn it back on and be visible?

John: No, no, I've never tried that, but it would be definitely a useful tool.

Dr. Heather Fork: It really is. You can stalk a bit on LinkedIn.

John: One of the things that I did find out though is if you have a profile and you want to make a change to it and you don't want your boss to be notified of the change, you can go in and turn that off temporarily or permanently where they won't be notified of new changes. You can be a little under the radar that way.

Dr. Heather Fork: Yes, that's 100% correct. You can stop those notifications to your contacts. A couple of other things about the course is that I really wanted to make it easy to use. With each lesson, there's a downloadable cheat sheet that goes over all the steps, and in the videos, I'll teach about how to do something. For example, how to write your "About section". And then I'll go on LinkedIn in the video and show them exactly how to do it, where to click, where to go, and then show examples of other physicians about sections.

My goal was to take the frustration out, make it doable. And I love people now responding to me saying, "Oh, the course was really easy to use. I'm really happy with my profile now," and they'll send me their profile. And it's so fun to see how great they look.

John: It's good to have someone who really understands how something like this is used telling you and teaching you about it because I've been using LinkedIn for a long time. And I was just in your course a couple of days ago and there was a whole section. I was like, "Oh, I could probably really get my connections up quite a bit using this technique that you described". Which is again, reaching out to alumni or other ways of networking. And then, there's different ways that you can connect. There are some with a message, without a message. And I just really was really impressed and I'm definitely going to go back and go through that section. Especially when I'm looking for a new podcast guest.

Dr. Heather Fork: Well, thank you. And that was my goal to just make it easy because we don't have extra time to waste and I don't want people to get frustrated and then give up.

John: No, absolutely. And it can be frustrating until you really get a feel for it. Well, there are different ways that they can access this course. They can get it from your website, but I happen to be an affiliate. I have a link for it. And the only reason the listeners might want to buy it through my link is that they also get a free bundle of courses from my nonclinical career academy worth a couple of hundred dollars.

I'll put my link for them to look at, nonclinicalphysicians.com/linkedincourse. And I'll probably put that actually on my website at some point permanently if you'll let me, but that's an easy way to go. If they happen to be at your website, they're going to obviously sign up there. You've got some other resources there as well. So, anything else you want to tell us about the LinkedIn course before we move on off that topic?

Dr. Heather Fork: Before I say anything else about the course, I do want to say, please get it from John because he's so wonderful. He works so hard and I'd really like to support him. Please feel free to use his link. And if you come to my site, and you forgot his, just email me and I'll send it to you. I want you to support him, but thank you for all you do for me.

About the course and LinkedIn in general, I would just like to say that if you feel that this is not what you're naturally good at, networking or putting yourself out there, just let go of that. Because a lot of my clients are introverted. They had the same feelings about LinkedIn. They would drop their shoulders and just feel like, "Ugh, do I really have to, Heather?"

But once they get on there and do things such as usually the alumni hack and they get someone to respond to them, they're really happy. It's a game-changer. And all of a sudden, they see that being on LinkedIn is like treasure hunting. We don't have to call it networking. Let's just call it treasure hunting because you do find these treasures of people who will definitely help you out and open doors.

John: Yeah, that's so true. That's so true. Maybe I'll make you step back even further, just in considering all the clients that you've known over the years and the people you're helping now, any other advice you have for physicians who just right now happen to be just kind of frustrated with the whole process of thinking about doing a side gig or trying to overcome burnout or anything like that?

Dr. Heather Fork: Yes. Yes. And if I can go back to my parade metaphor.

John: Sure.

Dr. Heather Fork: I would say, just get in the parade. Don't sit on the sidelines and watch other people's floats go by and say, "Oh, well, look what they're doing. Why can't that be me? They probably just knew somebody or that's not going to happen to me." I say, get in the parade, start building your float. And when you're building your float for the parade, you start with your platform. And you don't have to know where the parade is going. Just start with your profile or just start thinking about what you want to do, what's working, what's not working. Build your platform.

And then when you're actually on your float and riding in the parade, have fun. Don't look around at other people's floats and say, "Oh, theirs is better than mine. I'll never be like them." Cheer them on, dance on your platform, and have fun because it's not about getting to the end of the parade, we're all going to get there, but we want to be enjoying the parade while it's happening, which it's your life. I'm there standing on the sidelines cheering you on. Get in there so I can wave my pom-poms for you.

John: That is so cool, Heather. It is. And listeners can get a sense if they haven't read your blog or listened to your podcast, they're going to get more of what you just heard. That's a good thing. Let's go over that again.

The podcast is the Doctor's Crossing Carpe Diem podcast. They're going to find that on any app, Spotify, Apple, whatever. Definitely listen to that, go to doctorscrossing.com, and look for those free resources. And if you want to learn more about the course, go to nonclinicalphysicians.com/linkedincourse, and you'll have a page there where you can learn more about it. I think we've covered everything I wanted to cover today, Heather. This has been fantastic and fun. I'm always happy to be able to spend a few minutes talking to you.

Dr. Heather Fork: It's such an honor, John. I'm a huge fan of yours. And can I put a plugin for your new script app that you have?

John: Yes.

Dr. Heather Fork: I love all the things John does. If you haven't heard about his new script app is a community where you can join very, very affordably and get a lot of wonderful content, access to his courses, access to mentors. John, you can let people know the price and how they find it. But I think it's something to really look into.

John: Yeah. The nice thing about it too is it's not limited to physicians. And so, most of us work in teams, whether clinically or nonclinically. It's actually designed for any healthcare licensed professionals, psychologists, social workers, PAs, MPs, oral surgeons, and doctors. It's like less than $5 a month. It's newscript.app. I appreciate you bringing that up today, Heather.

Dr. Heather Fork: Yeah. How can you not? $5 Starbucks, miss that for one day, get the new script app and you'll be doing a jig.

John: Absolutely. All right, Heather. Well, thank you much. I guess we're at the end of our time now, I'm going to say goodbye and I hope to see you again soon and back on the podcast sometime.

Dr. Heather Fork: Thank you, John. I really appreciate you having me on.

John: You're welcome. Bye-bye.

Dr. Heather Fork: Bye-bye.

Scroll back to top

Sign up to receive email reminders, news, and free stuff every week!

Enter your name and email address below and I'll send you reminders each podcast episode, notices about nonclinical jobs, information about free and paid courses, and other curated information just for you.

powered by

Disclaimers:

Many of the links that I refer you to are affiliate links. That means that I receive a payment from the seller if you purchase the affiliate item using my link. Doing so has no effect on the price you are charged. And I only promote products and services that I believe are of high quality and will be useful to you.

The opinions expressed here are mine and my guest’s. While the information provided on the podcast is true and accurate to the best of my knowledge, there is no express or implied guarantee that using the methods discussed here will lead to success in your career, life, or business.

The information presented on this blog and related podcast is for entertainment and/or informational purposes only. I do not provide medical, legal, tax, or emotional advice. If you take action on the information provided on the blog or podcast, it is at your own risk. Always consult an attorney, accountant, career counselor, or other professional before making any major decisions about your career. 

The post How to Land An Awesome Job Using LinkedIn – 232 appeared first on NonClinical Physicians.

On today’s show, I provide 8 Tips to Help You Prepare for Your First Job Interview. This is a critical part of your nontraditional job search. 

Our Sponsor

We're proud to have the University of Tennessee Physician Executive MBA Program, offered by the Haslam College of Business, as the sponsor of this podcast.

The UT PEMBA is the longest-running, and most highly respected physician-only MBA in the country. It has over 700 graduates. And, the program only takes one year to complete. 

By joining the UT Physician Executive MBA, you will develop the business and management skills you need to find a career that you love. To find out more, contact Dr. Kate Atchley’s office at (865) 974-6526 or go to nonclinicalphysicians.com/physicianmba.

Preparing for Your First Job Interview

It is important to prepare sufficiently for the interview. This preparation includes:

• Adopting the right attitude,
• Understanding the organization and the job, and,
• Knowing that performing well may take practice (i.e., attending several interviews).

Listen to the entire episode to hear all of the details. There is also a transcript below.

Eight Great Tips

1. Bring Copies of Your Resume

Not everybody may have received a copy. And some interviewers may have left it behind. So, be prepared, and bring copies to share.

2. Dress Properly and Present the Right Body Language

Your appearance and demeanor are important. Do NOT dress down, even if the company appears to have a relaxed atmosphere. And present an open posture. Avoid crossing your arms. And sit forward attentively.

3. Do Your Research

Prepare yourself using sources such as:

• Annual reports,
• Online searches,
• Guidestar for nonprofits,
• Standard & Poor's or other online stock reports for publicly traded companies,
• Hospital Compare and other quality reporting sites,  and,
• Speak with your own colleagues at the organization.

4. Be prepared to Describe Your Selling Points

Memorize a few traits, success stories, special training, and other factors that make you the ideal candidate for the job.

5. Line Up Your Questions

Be prepared to ask pertinent questions. Demonstrate that you have a good understanding of the organization. Be sincerely inquisitive about big initiatives underway. And try to pinpoint the skills and experience they are looking for in a candidate.

6. Start and Stay Positive 

Be happy and enthusiastic about being there. Offer appreciation to each interviewer.  Never go negative about a previous employer or manager.

7. Be Assertive But Not Pushy

Try to make all of your points. Get answers to all of your questions. But be patient and do not dominate the conversation. You should listen more than you speak.

8. Close with CLARITY

Make a clear statement about your interest in the job. Be sure to have clarity about the next steps. How long until a decision is made? Who will be contacting you? Can you call in a few days to check on your standing?

Summary

Interviewing can be stressful, especially at first. If you get to the point of an interview, you’re almost at the finish line. Don’t expect perfection in the first few interviews. You will get better with practice.

Try to learn from each interview. If you don’t get the job, follow up later for constructive feedback. It could be your demeanor or approach. Or maybe you lack a particular skill or certification that can be addressed before future interviews.

NOTE: Look below for a transcript of today's episode.

Links for Today's Episode:

• Guidestar
• Medicare Quality Reporting (hospitals, nursing homes, hospices)
• Five Tactics for a Powerful Interview

Download This Episode:

Right Click Here and “Save As” to download this podcast episode to your computer.

Podcast Editing & Production Services are provided by Oscar Hamilton

Today's PNC Podcast Transcript

Email Download New Tab

Transcript for PNC Podcast Episode 223

8 Great Tips to Help You Prepare for Your First Job Interview

John: In today's show, I'm going to give you eight great tips to help you prepare for your first job interview. Preparing for that first interview is a critical part of our non-traditional job search. You've narrowed your choice down to a single job at this point, you've convinced someone that you're qualified and now you've been set up to have an interview. This could be primarily in live interviews, generally in-person. Some of these pointers don't necessarily apply to an online interview. Remember that interviews can come in different sizes and shapes also, even live interviews.

There are individual interviews, there are group interviews, and each one is a little bit different. I personally am not a big fan of group interviews, but if you encounter them, then you're going to have to be ready to participate. Let's just go through my list of eight tips to prepare you for your first job interview. Some are going to be fairly straightforward and simple, and the other ones are going to require a fair amount of explanation.

The first one I want to get off my list right now is to bring a copy of your resume to every interview. Obviously, if you're attending a live interview, then you're going to need to bring those copies. Why? Because although many of the people that are interviewing you, if not all, will have received it ahead of time, sometimes they don't get the message. Sometimes they don't download it. They forget it. They come to the meeting, which is not in their office or something.

And so, it's always helpful to bring extra copies so that you appear to be prepared and it can trigger questions in the interviewers that you're going to be meeting. It's just basic, just bring a folder and a briefcase or something with papers where you can write down notes, if you need to, and also with extra copies of your resume. You might as well bring 10 or 20 because you just don't know how many people are going to ask for it. That's number one.

Number two, dress properly and present the right body language. This is all about appearance. Even though you're interviewing somewhere that is fairly informal, like some places out west. Everybody goes to work in their informal attire, but the thing is, you don't know who you're interviewing and you don't know ahead of time necessarily how formal the attire will be unless you've worked there before and you know the culture and you know the attitude of everybody there.

It doesn't hurt for you to be overdressed. Wear business clothing, and I would not even say business casual, but actual business. If you're a man and you want to wear a suit, that's awesome, with a tie generally. I guess you could think about taking the tie off if it seemed overly formal during the interviews. But you might be interviewing everybody from a manager or a coworker up to the CEO of the company or a board member, depending on what kind of job you're looking for. In general business, attire is in order.

I would say for the women as well, some type of a business suit. I wouldn't necessarily get too creative. I'd be a little bit subdued unless you're doing some kind of job that really requires you to demonstrate your creativity. But since we're not talking about applying for a job as an actress or something like that, then I think keep it simple and air on the side of formal attire, not black tie, just formal business attire.

The other thing is, remember your body language. I'm lumping these together, but all is about appearance. Looking people in the eyes when you're speaking with them, not crossing your arms, having a posture, and an appearance where you're open. Your arms are open. You're looking forward, maybe leaning forward a little bit during the interview so that it does not appear that you're closed lip and tight and nervous and that kind of thing. It's okay to be nervous. Everybody is nervous, but unless you've done a lot of interviews. So, don't worry about that, but try to have an open attitude and that makes people more comfortable with you and trust you a little bit more.

Now the third one is a big one that I'm going to spend some time on here, at least five minutes. And that is to do thorough research before the interview. When you go into the interview, you don't want the organization to be unknown to you. You don't want to learn the first thing about the organization during the interview process. It would be ridiculous to go in there and say, "Well, what exactly do you do here?"

The idea is that you're applying for this job because you have a pretty good understanding of the job based partly on the research, but partly just on the job description and maybe talking to the HR manager or the recruiter or something like that. You need to be prepared and be able to answer questions and demonstrate that in fact, the skills, attitudes, background that you have aligns with the things that are put in the job description.

One of the questions they're going to ask you most likely in almost every interview is why are you applying to this organization at this time? And so, the answer to that question should be prepared and it will have to do both with what you know about the organization and also what you know about yourself and how those two match up. Can you deliver what you think this organization needs?

You should know at some level, not that you can recite it right off the bat, but its mission, its vision, and its values. That's usually published in various locations, which I will talk about in a minute.

You need to understand the culture if you can. Now that takes a little more research and actually talking to people ahead of time that work at the company, but maybe you've already done that, maybe the way that you even first landed this interview was by having a connection at the company, someone who put in a good word for you, someone who may be pointed out your resume or gave the HR department an extra copy of the resume with an endorsement. So, you should learn what the culture is, if at all possible, ahead of time.

You should know something about the financials of the company. There are ways to figure this out, but if it's a publicly-traded organization, then you're going to be able to know whether it's growing or shrinking or stable, is it a cyclical organization or an industry that might be cyclical? Health care and let's say pharma companies and hospitals, they're not that cyclical. And sometimes they grow in countercyclical ways, for example. It wasn't unusual for our hospital to do better during a recession and to do worse during a growth phase in the economy. And there are lots of reasons why that might be. But you do not necessarily want to interview in a place that's on the brink of going bankrupt or is having such severe financial issues that they're likely to do a layoff in the near future. So, it's best to understand that ahead of time. And again, I'll talk to you about where you can find this information.

If you can, and it is a healthcare-related organization, which most of them should be, or could be, based on who you are. Obviously, you've got a background in healthcare, and even if you're working in a nonclinical or nontraditional job, it probably relates to something in healthcare again, whether it's a hospital health system, pharma, insurance company, or something like that. Even as a medical writer, that's probably not as big an issue as in those other areas.

Some of the ways that you can learn about these things is to number one, try and find the most recent annual report. It's not going to be that timely, but it's definitely going to have information that will be useful. And usually, they will talk about who the board members are, who the leadership is, who manages the company. And to some extent, the financials of course, and big initiatives going on or are planned for the future.

Just go online and do some searches and do some recent searches, just plug in the name of the company and see what comes up. When you're doing a Google search, you can look for news, you can look for other things. Just do a general search and see what's going on. You might as well look at any resources you have access to. If you read Kevin MD, go look up and see if there are any articles about the company, or if it's been mentioned. You can look in Doximity. Sometimes there are articles there that talk about certain industries, and those are based on the physician's perspective.

I definitely recommend you use guidestar.org. It's a site that publishes all of the IRS 990s for any nonprofit organization. So, that won't apply to a for-profit pharma company or insurance company, but it will apply to many hospitals, hospices, health systems, and other nonprofit healthcare organizations. And then you definitely want to see if there's any kind of history of mergers and acquisitions as you're doing this research that can tell you if I have a local hospital here that's not more than 20 minutes from my house that has been part of four or five different systems, in the last five or six years, maybe 10 years, I guess.

That's not a real stable situation and it makes it difficult because what happens in those mergers and acquisitions is let's say you're applying for a job as a chief medical officer. Well, now you're the chief medical officer, and then they have a cutback. Their finances are not great, they've merged. So now you're going to have a regional CMO and they're going to let the local CMO go. And then you're going to find out that your regional CMO, maybe this is a job you're applying for. You're actually covering for three different hospitals, all of which are at least 45 minutes apart. So, it's a different lifestyle. It's a different job than being let's say a dedicated CMO at an individual organization. And this applies the same in other non-hospital organizations as well.

If you're looking at joining a hospital or health system, then one of the things you should do is go to www.medicare.gov/care-compare. This is basically a hospital comparison. There are similar sites like hospice compare, nursing home compare, where they really look and publish the quality based on their treatment of the Medicare patients. Another resource that you should do the research on.

I had someone lately who told me that she went to her interview for a clinical job and she asked them questions and I had asked her to delve into a little bit, and that had to do with the quality. And when they asked her about why she wanted to be at that organization, she said, "Well, I'm looking to work for a high-quality organization that does X, Y, and Z. And I know from looking at your reports on hospital compare that your hospital is the best in this region, of which was a pretty large area".

They were impressed and she apparently got points for that. She ended up being offered the job that very day. When you know the company, when you understand the company, and when you have intelligent questions about the company that you're applying to, all of which depend on doing your research, then you are going to come out of the interview much better. I think that's enough for doing your research at number three.

Let's go to number four. Be prepared to clarify your selling points. I'm going in this interview and I'm going to make sure that I point out this and that aspect of my job in the past, my education, my experience. Be prepared to answer a question and write these out and practice. Why are you good for this organization? Why do you think you're a good fit for this organization? Be prepared to answer that question.

What are your skills and abilities and background and training that enables you to solve a problem that we're trying to solve in this organization? Why do you think you'll fit in? How do your skills help meet our goals? Are there accomplishments that you have that you can point to that demonstrates those skills?

It's one thing to say that "Well, I'm always on time and I have a really good knowledge of managing medications, or I have a lot of experience with quality improvement or length of stay, reducing complications", things of that sort. Or "I have a lot of experience with leadership and management".

You really need to be specific. Those are the types of things that should already be on your resume, but be prepared to answer those questions. "Well, give us an example". - We had this issue when I was chief medical officer, where we really had two or three very disruptive physicians on our staff and these weren't just people that had some personality quirks. They were really dangerous in some ways because they were difficult to work with. And it got to the point where the nursing staff wouldn't call them, wouldn't engage with them because they were afraid they were going to be yelled at constantly.

And so, I led a team that put in place a program to identify and deal with the dysfunctional physicians on our staff. It was one that over a period of a year or two, really helped solve that problem, reduced the episodes that were leading to nurses avoiding these physicians, and improving the outcomes in the end, in terms of response times to phone calls and things like that.

So, if you can give a concrete example, if that example can also have data in it, in terms of there were 20 incident reports the year before, and then later there are only three. Those things go a long way. So, you might want to talk mostly about how you're going to help them. It's okay to talk about how you're aligning with this organization and working for this organization. It will meet your goals. That's fine too because you want your goals to align.

You can get a little more specific about why exactly you want this particular job. In particular, we're talking non clinically here. People want to know why you're leaving medicine. And that can be a tricky question because you don't want to seem overly negative. You don't want to be running away from something. You wouldn't say, "Well, I'm severely burned out. I hate my job and I just have to try something else".

The company that you're applying to, and during this interview, you have to demonstrate that you are going towards them. That it's a positive choice you're making because of the attributes of the company and the opportunities that it's going to present to you and for you to help them with, not that you're running from something which usually doesn't lead to a permanent or a long-term relationship. Again, come up and practice stories about when you showed teamwork, initiative, making a difficult decision, solving a challenging problem, and those who go a long way. And they need to be customized to each particular industry in each particular job interview.

Some people are trying different things and they might go on an interview in a pharma company on one hand and then a few weeks later go for an interview for a utilization management job. That happens. Some people are trying to try different things and see how the interviews go. But you have to customize your responses to those two, obviously.

Number five, have your questions for the interviewers lined up, or at least some questions. Be prepared because you should spend most of the time listening during this interview and then asking direct questions, and not that you should be very brief during your answers, but to fully answer their questions. But at the same time, there are going to be plenty of opportunities to ask questions of the company and the people that are interviewing you.

Things that come to my mind, depending on the job, again, are what are the big strategic initiatives going on this year? What is the major focus of the organization right now? Is there one? Somebody might say, "Well, we're just doing what we always do, which is bring meds to the market and market them". But there may be some big strategic initiatives going on.

You can even ask questions like what characteristics do you feel are the most essential for this role that I'm applying for in your opinion? And then you may be able to respond and give examples to that interviewer about why you align with that and are compatible with that. But that also gives you an ability to go in and be proactive and address those things with other interviewers, even before they've asked the question and then you'll be pretty proactive in terms of their impression of you and in this interview process.

At some point you need to ask people why they like working there? How long have they been there? What do you like about the job? You'll get some good information. You can write these questions down and have them ready. It doesn't hurt to say, "Hey I had a few questions I wanted to get answered. Let me look at my notes". That's fine. But if you can get at least four or five, six questions, and remember, you can ask these questions, different types of questions from different interviewers.

Like someone who's let's say going to be a peer. You might ask other questions than someone who's going to be your immediate supervisor versus someone who is the CEO, the CFO, or the COO of the company that you're applying to if you interview with those people.

One thing I didn't mention, I guess I would say here just as an aside, is that in some organizations, in some industries, you're going to be asked to do a presentation. I think this is more common in pharma jobs. If you look at pharma, a lot of the jobs in pharma, they're really academic positions besides MDs and Dos. There are PhDs and PharmDs. And there's a lot of well-educated people.

There's a lot of times in different jobs in pharma where you're doing a presentation. And so, they may ask you to do a presentation. They may tell you ahead of time to be prepared, or maybe they'll just spring it on you while you're there. But think about it if you were going to pick a topic, or in the pharma situation a particular drug or drug class you want to talk about. Just have those ideas in your head, write an outline ahead of time, go through it a few times at home, and then be prepared when you get there.

Now, number six is to start with a positive statement and stay positive. Never complain, never go negative. I think I alluded to this a little bit earlier with the body language and so forth, but when you're interviewing, everything needs to be from that perspective. You don't want to fall in the trap, even if they ask you why you left your current job, what's going on, you need to frame it in a way that's more focused on the positive aspects.

Like I've been there for a long time. It seemed like I was stagnating, the company wasn't using all of my skills and I've done some additional certifications and different training. Or I was in clinical medicine and I made a decision that I wanted to leave clinical. I'd done that long enough and I wanted to try and express some other interests that I have, and I've taken some classes to learn new things. I'm really more interested in management and leadership or I'm really interested in drug development and bringing new drugs to the market because I think I can help a lot more people doing something like that. But always positive.

Never get into a description of how nasty your boss was, how you couldn't get along. Nobody understood you. There's no point in criticizing your old employer or current employer, because to someone hearing that just feels that you're going to turn around and do the same thing to them if things don't work out. In reality things just sometimes don't work out. And if the other company culturally was not a good fit or had some negative attitudes, maybe they're more focused on the bottom line or whatever it might be, that's fine. It's good to learn that and to move on to a company that more aligns with your vision and your passions.

You want to have a lot of energy. You want to start by expressing thanks and appreciation for the interviewer's time. It seems a little odd, perhaps because that's why you were asked to come, but it does take time to do an interview and it's disruptive. It's not something most of us do on a regular basis. We have to actually change our schedule, fit in an interviewee for 30 minutes or 60 minutes or whatever it may be. And so, it's good to be appreciated by the interviewee when they come in and it sets a positive tone.

The other thing is you might start with a very positive comment about the organization. "I've been really looking forward to this. I've read about your company. I hear the quality is really good. The turnover in the employees is really low," or "I hear you have this new initiative going on," or "I hear you've been growing and I'd really like to be a part of an organization like that." Those are some ideas. Positive, positive, positive, and be prepared to engage right off the bat with each person that's interviewing you.

Now you should be assertive, but not pushy. You're not there to have, let's say a laundry list of 20 or 30 questions to just go through and check the box on. You need to be interactive. You need to give your interviewers time to ask their questions, give thoughtful responses, and don't hurry yourself. Don't be pushy. You can be proactive about the stories, about your initiative, but leave plenty of time for them to get their questions answered. Be a little patient. And if there's a lull in the conversation, then feel free to jump in and highlight one of your strong points that maybe they haven't heard about.

Now, number eight, the final tip. And believe me, there are a lot more tips and I'll probably have to do a follow-up to this sometime in the future. But there are a lot more things that go into preparing for and performing well during your interview. Some specific tips to doing group versus one on one and other tips may be specific to your screening interview, which might be on the telephone over a Zoom call.

But for now, I'm going to end with tip number eight, and that is close with clarity. I've had people come back after an interview and tell me, "Well, I'm not really sure when they're going to get back to me, I'm not sure if I was supposed to call them or not". What I mean here is, at the end of the day, with the last person, usually it's going to be someone who's been helping to take you from interview to interview or coordinating the whole process.

And so, there should be some closing. You should say, "Look, I really enjoyed interviewing today. I really liked all the people that I met. I feel I can be a very strong contributor to this team. I'm just curious when do you think you'll be getting back to me? And if I haven't heard from you within three or four days, would it be okay if I call you at this number? And make sure you've got their number so that you don't go home and think, "Oh, let's see now. When was I going to hear and how do I know? Are they going to interview more people?"

I wouldn't necessarily ask how many more people are being interviewed, but you might ask when the process is expected to be closed and when the decision will be made and an offer made. And so again, once you get beyond that point, you're justified in calling and confirming. Obviously, they should call and tell you that you're not being considered or that you are a very good candidate, but there are so many other good candidates that they decided to go with someone else.

It also wouldn't hurt to ask at that point, if that happens, about things that you could do better during the interview process, or maybe make that a separate call. But my main point here is to close with clarity, your expectations, their expectations, and what the next steps are.

So, that's it. Those are my eight great tips to prepare for your first job interview. That'll get you pretty much through your interview. There are other things we might talk about in the future, but I think most of them fall into those eight areas. That's it for today. If you get to the point of an interview, you're almost there. Don't expect perfection in the first few interviews, we all get better with practice. The only way you're going to practice is if you're not necessarily getting that job on the first interview.

Again, I consider going back and talking to one or two of the people if you don't get the interview, just to find out why. Not so much because of your performance, but maybe the experience that you have didn't quite fit, and there might be a way for you to gain more experience that would make you a better fit the next time at the next company.

Scroll back to top

Sign up to receive email reminders, news, and free stuff every week!

Enter your name and email address below and I'll send you reminders each podcast episode, notices about nonclinical jobs, information about free and paid courses, and other curated information just for you.

powered by

Disclaimers:

Many of the links that I refer you to are affiliate links. That means that I receive a payment from the seller if you purchase the affiliate item using my link. Doing so has no effect on the price you are charged. And I only promote products and services that I believe are of high quality and will be useful to you.

The opinions expressed here are mine and my guest’s. While the information provided on the podcast is true and accurate to the best of my knowledge, there is no express or implied guarantee that using the methods discussed here will lead to success in your career, life, or business.

The information presented on this blog and related podcast is for entertainment and/or informational purposes only. I do not provide medical, legal, tax, or emotional advice. If you take action on the information provided on the blog or podcast, it is at your own risk. Always consult an attorney, accountant, career counselor, or other professional before making any major decisions about your career. 

The post 8 Great Tips to Help You Prepare for Your First Job Interview – 223 appeared first on NonClinical Physicians.

But I was drawn to leadership opportunities. At our program, the chief resident was elected by the other residents. I “ran” for the position against one of my good friends in a low-key, respectful race.

I was very pleased when the residency director announced that I had been elected to the position!

I enjoyed attending the meetings with residency leadership, contributing the residents’ perspective to important conversations. I took on additional work planning events. I updated manuals and created a more comprehensive list of elective rotations available to the residents.

I had no inkling that these pursuits would be repeated later in my career. At the end of my residency, my only concern was to find a good position with a small independent family medicine group. I wanted to continue to hone my medical skills and practice family medicine, including obstetrics. I did not give any thought to being involved with management or leadership.

Eight years later, I started a process that would lead me to a full-time non-clinical position as a hospital executive. Physicians are being drawn to non-clinical careers for a variety of reasons. Some are disenchanted by long hours, declining insurance payments, greater paperwork burden, and burnout. Others find that clinical medicine is not as exciting or fulfilling as expected and are interested in work that is more entrepreneurial, innovative, flexible or challenging.

This has resulted in an explosion of physicians seeking part-time or full-time non-clinical careers. And it is not always easy to decide which potential job will be the most rewarding.

I’d like to describe why I chose a career as a hospital executive, and the pros and cons you may want to consider as you explore new career options.

Five Factors for the Potential Hospital Executive to Consider

I briefly contemplated moving into several non-clinical areas. One of my colleagues was doing chart reviews for an insurance company. Another had begun doing surveys for the Joint Commission. Consulting seemed to be exciting, but I worried about all of the travel that might be required. And I had read about other jobs like medical writing or working as an expert witness.

All of these options are legitimate, respectable jobs.  I listed other options in a previous post (Options for a Non-Clinical Career).

But there are several factors that drew me to a career as a hospital physician executive.

Leverage and Impact

I enjoy providing medical care to patients, addressing their fears and concerns, watching them respond to treatment and sensing their gratitude. But it often seemed so incremental. And with some patients, care was almost trivial – treating the common cold, minor injuries, insignificant infections, and the worried well.

I became very interested in helping groups of patients with illnesses where reductions in mortality or complications could be achieved. Working as a hospital executive provides that kind of impact because of leverage.

The leverage involves leading teams, engaging staff and physicians, developing protocols and implementing best practices. Effectively leading and managing can produce big improvements in outcomes.

Quality of Life

Physician executives are busy. But, we generally have better control of our schedule. Vacations can be taken without the need to find coverage for patients.

Staffing is handled by the HR department. The stress of malpractice is gone. Continuous learning is necessary, just as in clinical medicine, but it is easier to find time to attend educational conferences.

Financial

This career as a hospital executive has a good chance to maintain or improve income, especially for primary care physicians. As an experienced and valued vice president or chief medical officer, it should not be difficult to achieve salary and benefit levels that easily exceed the income of the average family physician, pediatrician or psychiatrist. The same may not be true for a busy cardiologist or surgeon.

Growth

Once in an administrative position, there is still opportunity to grow.  New challenges occur daily and opportunities often arise, moving into the chief operating officer (COO) position, for example. Also, many of us make a lateral move to the same position, but in a larger hospital or health system.

And there are more opportunities for the physician executive to fill the CEO role as well. Such opportunities for growth don't often arise in many of the other non-clinical jobs.

Some of us shift into a different type of healthcare organization, like a large medical group or an insurance company. This is not something the chart reviewer or writer has as an option.

Stability

My research indicated to me that there was a new trend in hiring physician executives when I initially began my transition. I was the first VPMA and CMO at my hospital.The number of hospital CEOs continues to grow.

It seemed a fairly safe choice to make when I started, and it continues to be an area of growth and continuing demand.

Final Decision

A decision to move into one of these areas is not set in stone. Try different activities. See what you really enjoy doing. But if you're like me, and are looking for a career that offers an ability to impact patients, improve your quality of life, enjoy financial stability job security, and growth, a career as a physician executive is worth considering.

What are the other factors should be considered?

The post Five Reasons to Become a Hospital Executive appeared first on NonClinical Physicians.