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How To Know If You Will Love Medical Writing

John Jurica — Tue, 06 Feb 2024 12:51:58 +0000

Interview with Dr. Morgan Leafe – Episode 338

In today's episode, John interviews Dr. Morgan Leafe to help you determine if you will love medical writing as much as she does.

Dr. Morgan Leafe shares her journey from clinical medicine to medical writing, emphasizing the flexibility and opportunities the field offers.

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Dr. Debra Blaine is a physician like many of you, and her greatest challenge was fear. The whole concept of leaving clinical medicine was terrifying. But she is so much happier now as a professional writer and a coach. According to Debra, “It’s like someone turned the oxygen back on.”

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Exploring the Diverse World of Medical Writing

Dr. Leafe discusses the wide spectrum of medical writing, starting with the distinctions between regulatory and non-regulatory writing. She delves into various roles, from crafting content for Continuing Medical Education (CME) activities to covering advisory boards, web content creation, journalism, and manuscript writing. Dr. Leafe provides valuable perspectives on the creative aspects, work pace, and client interactions, offering a comprehensive overview for aspiring medical writers.

Navigating the Path to a Freelance Medical Writing Career

Morgan also outlines the steps for physicians interested in entering the medical writing field. From joining professional organizations like the American Medical Writers Association to conducting informational interviews and gaining practical experience, she highlights the significance of networking and connecting with fellow medical writers.

The discussion extends to the advantages of having a medical background, efficient work practices, and the potential for recurring relationships with clients. Dr. Leafe offers insights into maintaining a freelance business, emphasizing the role of flexibility and adaptability in the dynamic field of medical writing.

Dr. Morgan Leafe's Advice

I am so enthusiastic about medical writing. Changing careers was one of the best things I've ever done in my life. And it's a great fit for folks who want to travel, part-time, full-time, freelance, employed. There's so many different options and I'm just a big advocate of getting as many physicians as we can into the field, especially because so much of the content that is generated is intended for us.

Summary

You can visit Dr. Morgan Leafe's Personal Website and for more information about Dr. Morgan Leafe and her work in medical writing, you can check her portfolio.

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

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Today's PNC Podcast Transcript

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Transcription PNC Podcast Episode 338

How To Know If You Will Love Medical Writing

- Interview with Dr. Morgan Leafe

John: Medical writing is a good field to understand because it offers you a way to leverage your education background and training in a variety of genres. It's got a lot of flexibility and it's generally done remotely. And it's also one of the things you can do part-time to see if you like it. So it's really a good career or side gig for physicians and other clinicians. Today's guest is perfectly suited to tell us about that and see if she agrees with my assessment. And so, I want to welcome to this show for the first time, Dr. Morgan Leafe. Thanks for being here.

Dr. Morgan Leafe: Hi, John. Thanks for having me. I'm happy to be here.

John: Yeah. I really like talking to medical writers. Everyone has a different way of doing things. Some specialize, some do a lot of different things. I do want to pick your brain today specifically so that we can get a little bit into that. But why don't you just start by telling us a little bit about your background and how you made your way into the world of medical writing?

Dr. Morgan Leafe: Sure. Like a lot of your guests, I would say my path from clinical medicine to where I am now was not a direct route, which is not a surprise to anybody probably listening to this podcast. I did know for a while, I'm a pediatrician by training, and I did know that staying in the clinical world was not my ultimate goal in my career. And so, I started to think pretty early on in my attending career about what I wanted to do nonclinically. And actually, initially I was interested in informatics. Interested enough that I got a master's degree and became board certified and I thought my career path was taking me maybe into a leadership role within informatics.

And then one thing led to another. I was always that kind of person, probably also like a lot of your listeners who always had a side gig going on. And I ended up with a side gig where I was the pediatric medical editor for a board review company. Not even knowing that that really was in this world of medical writing that I didn't quite yet know about. And as the wheels were turning and I was saying, "I'm getting ready to leave clinical medicine, what should I do?" I found myself at the SEAK conference which you're very familiar with. And through the SEAK conference I learned specifically about the field of medical writing from Mandy Armitage, who's a fellow physician medical writer, who's been in the field for a while. And I said, "Wait, I'm kind of already doing that and I really like it, and this can be a whole career." And from there, all the pieces of the puzzle fell into place.

In 2020 I had my planned exit from clinical medicine, which ended up being very fortuitous because I actually planned to leave my job at the time in April of 2020. And my job happened to be connected to the school systems here in California. And so, when COVID hit in March of 2020, I would've been out of a job anyway.

John: Wow, great timing.

Dr. Morgan Leafe: Just with all this interesting series of events. And here I am working as a full-time freelance medical writer now.

John: Okay. Have you ever been employed as a medical writer or have you always done it as a freelancer?

Dr. Morgan Leafe: I have not. For me, freelancing was my goal from the get-go. My husband works from home, he runs his own business. I also have a sister who runs her own business from home. And so, to me, that lifestyle aspect of it was very appealing. I never considered an employed role because of that.

John: I see. Now, just as a side note, you and your husband are both kind of not tied to an office. Do you ever just travel and work while you're traveling? Can you do that?

Dr. Morgan Leafe: Absolutely. All the time. I'm talking to you today from Santa Barbara, California, where we primarily live. We're originally from the East coast and we have our house in Philadelphia still where we met. And we rent that out on a short-term basis. And then for a few months out of the year, we drive cross country with our dogs and stay at our house in Philly and see our family and friends there.

John: Nice.

Dr. Morgan Leafe: Everything I dreamed of when I was working those 80 hours weeks.

John: Every once in a while I talk to someone who has a remote job, but they have a remote job that they have to do from home. It's kind of a weird scenario. But if you work for an insurance company they might give you a computer and say you have to work from that site. And it's like, "Well, what's the point?"

Dr. Morgan Leafe: Yeah. Not in medical writing. You're your own boss. You're a freelancer.

John: All right. Well, let's see. We're going to get into learning a little bit here. Just from your perspective, maybe you can describe the types of medical writing. And I kind of got the feeling from reviewing your LinkedIn. You've done a lot of those, so you could either go through it as an academician or just the different things you've done. You take your pick.

Dr. Morgan Leafe: Yeah. When I'm talking to folks, from the get-go, what is medical writing? I always say I like to divide it into two buckets from the top. And those buckets are regulatory writing and non-regulatory writing. The regulatory writing bucket, as you know John, is writing sort of very official paperwork, submissions for the FDA, working for pharma, for biotech. And there are certainly physicians who do that. I would say out of all the physician medical writers out there, more sway towards the non-regulatory areas. But regulatory writing is an option. Most people will tell you it's a little bit easier to get started in regulatory writing by taking an employed position because there's just so much to learn. It's a little hard to pick up on your own. And then the other bucket of the non-regulatory writing is really a very large bucket with many, many items in it.

Those of us in the non-regulatory world, one of the primary things that I do is create content for CME activities. I write a lot of blogs, I cover advisory boards. If folks are familiar with the advisory boards that take place, maybe when a new medication is coming out and all the key opinion leaders get together, usually in a nice city, and have a big meeting about it, they usually hire a medical writer to cover that event for the day and then write up a report.

Web content is a big thing for various kinds of websites. And by the way, I'll add because I think it's important to your listeners, you just never know where your experience is going to come in handy. And believe it or not, that's where informatics has really come in very handy. Even though I would not consider myself in practicing information at this point. People see my background in informatics and ask me to write about health IT issues a lot, which has been great.

There's journalism. And some people focus just on writing content for patients or light audience. And some people kind of vary between, "Oh, I write some for clinicians, I write some for patients." And of course, manuscripts are another big area of medical writing. Grants manuscripts, anything in the academic publication realm. I shy away from the manuscripts. That's a little bit of just a big long project for me. I like things that are a little bit shorter, quicker and more creative. But there's options for everyone.

John: Now, what would some typical kind of journalistic type of writing be?

Dr. Morgan Leafe: Yeah. It's interesting because journalism in the sense as it relates to medical writing can have a few different definitions, I would say. And by the way, if that's something that interests anyone who is listening, there is, I hope I don't get the acronym wrong, the American College of Healthcare Journalism - ACHJ. I think there is a professional organization for healthcare journalists. And when you think healthcare journalist, what might come to mind is Sanjay Gupta or somebody on the ground reporting on the news. And that's certainly part of it too. There's also a lot of web content to be generated in the journalism and news area.

And then the other angle too would be covering conferences. All the big meetings for the different specialties have somebody cover them for the different internal outlets for that specialty. That's actually another aspect of journalism that I don't think comes to mind for some people when they think about that area.

John: Yeah, that's interesting because I know someone who actually spent 10 years as a physician doing just that while he traveled and scuba dived and did other things. He made a living and then he went back into clinical medicine, if you can imagine that.

Dr. Morgan Leafe: Wow. Those meetings are fascinating. Those big oncology meetings and all. There's so much excitement and the stories are so big. Yeah, it's a really interesting world.

John: Now, let's see. Can you give me some more comparing and contrasting? Because it was pretty obvious that the regulatory it's just, I don't know, I would call it tedious. It's very particular. A lot of rules or regs. And if you can't do it, they're not going to hire you. You got to be right on. But what are some of the differences in your mind between the other types of writing that you have done? And then I'll get into more questions once you take this first stab at it here.

Dr. Morgan Leafe: Yeah. There are a lot of angles to consider when you are thinking about what type of medical writing you like. And one thing is how fast do you like to work? How fast do you like to turn around things? I like writing journalistic pieces, but to be honest, I'm so busy I don't do a lot of them because they have a quick turnaround. And right now my calendar is booked out a month. Nobody wants a new story a month from now. How much pressure you like to work under as part of it.

I think how creative you like to be in your work is a big part of it. What I love about making CME content is I'm getting the opportunity to make some really fancy slide decks and help a graphic designer make interesting graphics and really make content kind of come to life in that sense. So, if you have that sort of creative side to you, I think CME content is really appealing.

I think a lot of physicians come into medical writing with a passion for communicating with patients because that's ultimately why a lot of us became physicians. There is definitely room for that as well. It's a skill to hone and there are courses out there on that. But if you feel like my passion is really talking more to patients and helping them understand disease processes, then it is maybe teaching or informing my fellow clinicians. I think that's one thing to consider.

Who you want to work for and with is probably another consideration too. What kind of clients do you like? If you're a freelancer, do you want to freelance for a large medical communications company? I prefer smaller clients I have a personal relationship with, and that definitely plays a factor and is part of the learning curve of becoming a medical writer.

John: Yeah. When you were talking earlier, and I just want to expound on that and have you expound on that a little bit. The way I was thinking about it too is for my limited exposure, some things tend to be a little more involved. You were saying that you like the creativity of let's say the CME writing. Now I do some editing for a CME provider. And I would never write an article for them because they're a hundred pages long, they're 10 hours of CME and they have usually 100 to 200 references. And I'm like I would blow my mind.

Dr. Morgan Leafe: That's not what I do.

John: Yeah. And also tell me what you think about this in terms of how efficient can you be in certain genres and how's the pay associated with that? It kind of always boils down to an hourly rate, I guess, but what's your thinking on that?

Dr. Morgan Leafe: That's a great question, and it's funny to hear you say that about the long CME content. I'll tell you what I was working on before I came on our call today is CME activity that's on Twitter. I was writing CME activity in little 285 character bites, which I love it. It's just a totally different way to think. I think it's a lot of fun. There's so much variability out there. You're absolutely right.

And as far as efficiency and pay, to me, being a physician has a huge advantage in the field no matter what you do because of that. Because it's important to know that medical writing as a whole, I always tell people, if you went to our professional conference, the American Medical Writers Association, and you looked around the room, I don't know for sure, I'm sure the statistic exists somewhere, but I'm going to say 10% of people in there are physicians. Maybe 20, 30% are PhDs and maybe the other half bachelor's or master's in some type of science or bachelor's or master's in journalism or English.

And so, it's a very varied group of folks, which is awesome. I have just amazing colleagues that I work with. And it means that when you are coming from the medical profession where your medical knowledge is really top tier, you're going to save yourself a lot of time. People ask me a lot, "Well, do you only write on pediatric topics?" No. I write on everything.

But I can guarantee you that even as a pediatrician, when I do a project on prostate cancer, which never came across my radar as a practicing clinician, I can still read and absorb and understand the topic and the data and generate something from it a little faster than somebody who doesn't have that medical school background.

John: Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. And in fact, the ones that I edit, I'd say at least half of them are written by non-physicians. They're equally good but I can envision the fact that maybe the physicians are a little bit quicker at writing the CME that they're doing. The other thing that's kind of cool there, I believe, is that the way they work is that when it's time to review it, every two or three years, they're a lot more efficient because they actually get paid well, almost as much for the initial writing of it. But I'm sure it takes them a fraction of the time to review it.

Dr. Morgan Leafe: Yeah. And it's a big advantage in the CME world too, because you're often asked to come up with patient cases to accompany an activity. And I think that can be a real stumbling block if you've never seen a patient before. So, it's nice just to have that, obviously, information that you don't even think of as an advantage necessarily, but that's in your head, you know what it is to see a patient, what they're going to say, what they're going to ask. So, that comes into play probably more than you even think about as a medical writer.

John: I'd never thought of that. It never even crossed my mind. That is a very good point. Okay. Now I know that you do some mentoring, coaching, advising and so forth. I'm going to kind of flip it around and say, okay, let's say that someone has a penitent for writing of some sort. Is there a way that you can help them figure out other than just doing all of it for a while, which is going to be very inefficient, how to pursue this. You already mentioned some of the characteristics, but maybe there's a way we can approach it logically from the beginning.

Dr. Morgan Leafe: Absolutely. If you're interested in medical writing and you are saying, "This seems really interesting to me. I don't know what field, how do I go forward?" I think a couple of things. First step is definitely do your research. Go to the American Medical Writers Association, consider joining. It's only like $250 a year, and it's really an amazing professional organization. I can't say enough good about it. It's very, very supportive people. And there are a lot of racist sources on there about the different areas where you can learn more. You can also join your local chapter and connect with people there to learn more.

And then there's a wonderful book written by Dr. Mandy Armitage about going from clinical medicine to medical writing. That's a great resource. You already know Dr. Emma Hitt Nichols has a course that teaches you backgrounds in journalism, CME, manuscripts and other things you might want to know.

Just by starting out and trying to hone your skills, I think that's a good first step. That might make you say, "Oh, okay. Yeah, I didn't really like writing that whole manuscript. That was too much for me. Or the CME, I had to look up all those references. That wasn't for me." That's a good place to start.

I always want to caution people that you don't need to go overboard with training or investigating things. There absolutely are certificate programs out there for medical writing. University of San Diego has one. University of Chicago has one. If you really want to pursue that, go for it. But don't do it because you feel like it's a requirement under the profession, because it is not. Most of us don't do such multi-year programs to get into the profession. So, it's not a bad thing, but it's not a necessity. And then I think you get out there, you try it out, you see what you like. And the fact of the matter is what happened for me and how I continue down the path of CME writing is that was the work that was coming to me.

A lot of the work that you're going to get in medical writing comes from networking. You meet, you network, you introduce to people and they offer you work. And sometimes that pushes you along your path as well. Really networking and talking to people, especially about what they do is a great way to learn if that's the field for you. "Oh, you do advisor role. How much do you have to travel for that? How much notice do they give you? What's the pay like?"

And most medical writers are super happy to talk with you on any specific topic. They're very sharing groups. So, anything that you can ask questions about, do. And it's a process and you can change. It's not like going into residency where you're stuck. You can change your mind.

John: Excellent. Now let's see, one thing I was going to ask you. Are most of the projects that you're doing now from recurring relationships with a given company or firm or whatever it might be?

Dr. Morgan Leafe: They are, yes, which is really exciting. And that was a big part of the growing process for me over the past four years or so, expanding my business, because of course, when you start out right, you're like, "I'll take any client that will pay me anything." And then you reach the point, "Okay, I have this many clients and maybe I'm even getting more work than I can handle."

And then for me, I came to just a really lovely position of being able to choose who I wanted to work with and work with people who really reflected my values and who I have a lot of fun working with. I have just the nicest clients. I can't say enough about all of my current clients and how wonderful they are. And that is really a breath of fresh air, I think, especially for maybe the burned out physician out there who's just having a tough time in your office environment. It's a real change of pace because I think everybody in medical writing is very cognizant of the fact that lives are not hinging on what we do. And it just is a lot more relaxed and it's really laid back. So, recurring clients and maintaining those relationships is key.

John: Yeah. And you'll probably... Well, I'm not going to say "probably". You'll never be sued as a medical writer.

Dr. Morgan Leafe: I hope not. I have insurance in case I do.

John: Just in case. Okay. But yeah, it's very cheap compared to medical malpractice.

Dr. Morgan Leafe: Yeah. Well, I'll tell you something, John. My errors in omissions insurance actually costs more money per year than my malpractice did my last year in practice.

John: Really? Are you high-risk pediatrics or what?

Dr. Morgan Leafe: I was only practicing part-time, so that affected the malpractice insurance. But you know what happens when you get into these nonclinical roles that aren't well understood by the general public is the insurance company just hears that you're a doctor and that's all they can hear.

John: It's inflated.

Dr. Morgan Leafe: It's one of those things you learn along the way about running a business. You just figure it out.

John: Yeah. There are always some expenses in that, of course. The other thing, just to give us an idea, about how many regular relationships for recurring work do you have at any given time?

Dr. Morgan Leafe: Okay. I'm a little ambitious. I would say I'm working usually for a project at some stage or another, maybe for 10 different clients at a time. That's going to totally vary depending on the type of work that you do though, and how many hours and what types of projects. CME projects tend to span a number of months to put together. It's a little more feasible to be working on multiple of them at once because they're all at different stages. It just totally depends.

Some people will, and I don't recommend this to tell you the truth. Some people will take on a freelance client that's giving them 30 hours a week of work. Then that person is kind of giving you 75% of your work hours. And that's fine. Again, it's a good way to get started, but I feel more comfortable having multiple streams of income in case one of them goes away. To me, that's really the comfort in freelancing as opposed to employed work. I'm not sure everybody's answer would be the same, but I would say for me give or take 10 clients at a time.

John: And I have to assume you have some kind of master calendar where you can figure out, "Well, this is a three month project, this is a six month or two month, and so let's fit it here." Like you said, these things are scheduled in advance, not like I need an article on this next weekend.

Dr. Morgan Leafe: Flexibility is key as a medical writer, especially in the CME realm, because ultimately all the content I am creating is usually going to a key opinion leader in the field to review and to maybe present as a webinar. Those people are very busy. And so, delays happen all the time. And I'm going to show you since we're on video, but the listeners won't be able to see. I'm showing you right now my paper calendar that I fill in with a pencil because things change. And that was a technique my business coach taught me. That has been very useful. You have to be able to roll with the punches. If it's going to throw you for a loop, that somebody says, "Oh, this is delayed a week", then you want to consider that when you are specializing within the medical writing realm.

John: Very good. Now that helps a lot. I'm going to go back to something you talked about at the very beginning of the types of work that you do, because to me, I couldn't figure out how you would find those jobs. And you were talking about working for advisory boards.

Dr. Morgan Leafe: Yes.

John: And that seems like something that wouldn't have an easy way to find, but is there a way?

Dr. Morgan Leafe: It doesn't because it's kind of a popular thing to do. You get in there and you get to know people. It's a networking thing. The way that people are recruited for advisory boards is often through medical communication companies. I have been contacted before because some of these advisory boards are filmed or audio recorded, I have been contacted by the companies that are doing the recording. They've been asked to hire a medical writer. So, it just kind of depends, but yeah, it's not the easiest one to chase after. It's a little more falling into it and making connections over time. Because it becomes one of those relationships with your fellow medical writers kind of thing. "Oh, I got caught about this. I can't do it. It's a date I already have something else. Are you able to go?"

Interestingly, advisory boards all used to be travel. Then, of course, during COVID they went to Zoom. It's not a huge piece of what I do right now, but I know people who do many. And what I'm told is, it's kind of split now. Some are still on Zoom, but some people are back to traveling. Depending on how you feel about travel, that's going to influence whether covering advisory boards are interesting to you or not.

John: Okay. Good to know. Well, let's see. We're going to run out of time here soon. Any other tactics or things we should know about if we're thinking about getting into this field?

Dr. Morgan Leafe: This is similar to a lot of nonclinical fields. I know I've said this already in the podcast, but really networking and putting yourself out there to meet people is really the key. I have a lot of people who come to me and say, "Oh, I found all these medical writing jobs on LinkedIn and I applied and I never get a response." And I'm like, "Yeah, you're not going to. That's just not the way to get a job in medical writing."

And as you know, networking can sound like a very intimidating term. I don't mean it in the sense of schmooze people. Very direct people reach out to me on LinkedIn like, "Do you have any work for me?" No. That's not the way to do it. But the way to do it is to reach out to other physician medical writers, "Hey, do you have 15 minutes? I can pick your brain about your career or sort of an informational interview type of situation." And just getting involved, getting to meet people. You never know where a connection is going to lead.

I'll tell you that a few of my first clients, how I got them was I was on a Facebook group for women physicians. And this was during COVID and I had just embarked on my full-time medical writing career. And a woman posted in the group about being a medical director for a CME company. And their conference was being canceled, and what do people think? And I said, "Oh, you're a medical director for a CME company. I've been writing needs assessments for CME, but I don't really know what a medical director is. Could I talk to you about that?" And we talked on the phone and it turns out we went to the same medical school. She's like 20 years older than me, but we went to the same school and she's lovely. And I now call her my godmother of medical writing and she connected me with now three of my current clients.

So, you just don't know. You can't expect something from every conversation that you have with somebody because it's not going to be the case, but you can expect to make friendly contacts and something is going to lead somewhere. So, it really is just that putting yourself out there is going to be more productive for moving your career forward than clicking that apply button on LinkedIn.

John: Yeah. But LinkedIn is another place to do research, and my recommendation is that they go to, for example, your LinkedIn profile and other medical writers' profiles because they will see the names of a bunch of companies that they could possibly talk to.

Dr. Morgan Leafe: Absolutely. Absolutely. And I'm the first person to say, and I didn't mention this, besides being a medical writer, I'm also a resume writer and LinkedIn profile writer. But I'm always open to say to people, if you're not sure what to put in your LinkedIn profile, go to mine. Check it out. You can borrow it, please don't copy it exactly. But if you need an idea of what to put in a LinkedIn profile to get noticed as a medical writer, yeah, please look me up. Absolutely. And importantly, AMWA, the American Medical Writers Association also has a freelance directory that is a similar, tiny version of LinkedIn. And if you join and get the freelance membership, you can have a listing in there. I get tons of clients from there.

John: Nice.

Dr. Morgan Leafe: That's another good place to get your information out there because yeah, networking is key, but people are also going to find you as long as you put the right information out there.

John: And I'm thinking if the listeners are interested in medical writing and they might want to actually talk to you directly. So, why don't you tell us where we can find you? Of course, we know LinkedIn and actually I think it's just your name so they can look that up and find you pretty easily.

Dr. Morgan Leafe: And my last name is Leafe. My website is morganleafemd.com and you can reach me by email morgan@morganleafemd.com. And if you're interested in what medical writing portfolio looks like for collecting your samples or what types of pieces you might be interested or wanting to write and how to put together a portfolio for yourself, you can check my portfolio out, which is turnoveranewleafe.com.

John: Excellent. Yeah, I looked at both of those and it was pretty nice the way you've got it broken down on the portfolio page. It's a lot more detailed than looking at your LinkedIn profile, but looks very nice.

Dr. Morgan Leafe: Thank you.

John: Let's see. I think that's all that we need today. A lot of information there. I will put links to everything that we talked about in terms of some of those resources at the beginning and AMWA and anything I can capture. And so, that'll make it easy for listeners and viewers if they're looking at the YouTube version of this. Any other last bits of advice for our listeners before I let you go?

Dr. Morgan Leafe: I would just say I am so enthusiastic about medical writing. Changing careers was one of the best things I've ever done in my life. And it's a great fit for folks who want to travel, part-time, full-time, freelance, employed. There's so many different options and I'm just a big advocate of getting as many physicians as we can into the field, especially because so much of the content that is generated is intended for us. I hope that some folks who are listening today are inspired to check out medical writing because it's a lot of fun.

John: Yes. I think you've been very inspirational. I like your story and your enthusiasm. It's been fantastic. Thanks Morgan for being here. With that, I'll say goodbye.

Dr. Morgan Leafe: Thanks John.

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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.

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Revisiting How to Land An Awesome Job Using LinkedIn – 310

John Jurica — Tue, 25 Jul 2023 12:00:06 +0000

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.

Heather is an ICF master-certified coach. She helps physicians find their best career path forward, whether in medicine, a nonclinical career, or something else. In 2010 Heather founded the Doctor’s Crossing. Since that time, she has helped hundreds of physicians find greater career fulfillment and meaning in their work.

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.

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:

Download This Episode:

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Podcast Editing & Production Services are provided by Oscar Hamilton

Today's PNC Podcast Transcript

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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.

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

Why Your Nonclinical Job Search Is So Frustrating and Unproductive – 290

John Jurica — Tue, 07 Mar 2023 13:30:44 +0000

Address These Potential Errors

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.

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:

Fully committing to the process,
Addressing your self-limiting beliefs,
Devoting insufficient time to the process,
Narrowing our search to one specific job,
Obtaining new skills to demonstrate your commitment,
Finding and engaging a mentor or two,
Growing your network and finding a sponsor at each company,
Optimizing your LinkedIn profile, and,
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:

Download This Episode:

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

If you enjoyed today’s episode, share it on Twitter and Facebook, and leave a review on iTunes.

Podcast Editing & Production Services are provided by Oscar Hamilton

Today's PNC Podcast Transcript

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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.

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

How to Network Effectively on the Road to a New Career – 271

John Jurica — Tue, 25 Oct 2022 12:15:05 +0000

How to Network Effectively on the Road to a New Career

Today's episode describes how to network during Phase 2 of The 12 Month Roadmap to a New Career.

A few years ago, I devised a 12-month plan of action that would lead to your first CMO job. The first month of this roadmap was introduced in Episode 269.

In today's episode, we focus on an essential task that begins in the Second Phase of the Roadmap.

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.

How to Network

What is “networking?”

It is the process of interacting with others to exchange information and develop professional or social contacts. It involves leveraging the relationships you already have to expand the number of such relationships.

When considering a career transition, networking is crucial, especially if you're considering a change to an entirely new industry. Networking can be used to find a mentor, discover new jobs openings, and obtain an introduction to a hiring manager or human resources department director.

The usual ways to network are through:

face-to-face at a meeting or conference;
online on sites designed for networking, such as Doximity and LinkedIn; and,
online using professional organizations such as the American Association for Physician Leadership, the Medical Science Liaison Society, or the American Medical Writers Association, all of which facilitate networking between members.

Networking Etiquette

Networking is a two-way street. Always try to be helpful to members of your network by finding useful connections for them, and facilitating their goals.

Start slowly, and nurture your connections over time.

Never place unreasonable demands on your network members.

Dr. John Jurica's Advice

…you need to approach people respectfully and considerately and not make it feel like you're going to be a burden… Don't make it feel like a mentor has to be accountable for your career… a good rule of thumb is to remember to ask for advice, not for a job…

Summary

It is best to engage in networking on a daily or weekly basis. Spend 30 to 60 minutes concentrating on growing your network, possibly 30 minutes each on LinkedIn and Doximity. Discover additional contacts, establish connections with them, and then start communicating with them through social media or email, and eventually consider a live call if it makes sense. But keep it short, and find a way to reciprocate with your “connections.”

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

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Today's PNC Podcast Transcript

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Transcription PNC Podcast Episode 271

How to Network Effectively on the Road to a New Career

John: All right. Well, let's get into this conversation about networking. Let me tell you a little story. I always thought that networking was kind of a dirty word. I'm an introvert, I'm not good at small talk. And I remember going to various conferences and meetings and they would say, "Okay, at four o'clock, at the end of the formal presentations, we would have networking time." And there would be a bunch of tables and you could have snacks, maybe something to drink, and you're supposed to introduce yourself and just chat with others who are going to the meeting. And I typically would go for a few minutes, maybe have a snack. That could be my short dinner, and then I'd leave. I'm not good at networking in that fashion. I'm not good at commiserating with people and making small talk, although I should have been networking for whatever I was there for the meeting so I could get more out of the meeting.

But that's just me. But I think it's very common. Physicians often say "We don't need to network." But obviously if you're doing something different from your typical clinical career, you might need to network to find a job or to connect with people to start a business, something like that, which I'll go into in a minute.

Let's step back. Let's look at networking and what it really is. To jump ahead a little bit, I would say now I'm very good at networking but the way I network is by podcasting. Since I started my podcast, and even while I was doing the blog, somewhat, that generates interest because people look at it and I post things on Facebook and I post things on LinkedIn and people respond to me. They start to listen. And then on top of that, I bring on guests to my podcast. Now I've developed a network of about 200 former guests, and that's led to participating with them at conferences. And so, actually that is how I got into really the most effective form of networking for me, which is the podcast.

Now, we're not talking about that primarily today, but I just want to let you know that I've kind of done a turnaround. And it turns out networking is very important when you're thinking about career transition, particularly if you're looking at career transition to a completely different field.

Now, as we talk about, of course, we're looking at using our healthcare background, our medical background, but we're going to move from, let's say, patient care to a non-patient care nonclinical activity. Again, let's go back to the basics and then we'll walk through this process and I'll touch on why it's important and really some tips on how to do it at this phase if you're working through this 12-month roadmap.

So, what is networking? It's a process of interacting with others to exchange information and develop professional or social contacts. That's kind of the base of what it is. And there usually has to be a goal that is accompanying that. But the main crux of networking is it involves growing the network as you're accessing the network. In other words, you use your current smaller network to develop a larger network. And so, it's often depicted as nodes with multiple connections. So, you might have three connections, but each of those three develop three more for you and it goes out and it's sort of exponential. If you do it properly, you can create a very large network.

I would say the most that people that focus heavily on this are recruiters and people who are in business trying to sell things, because the bigger the network, the more potential sales they can make to clients or customers. Networking really for us is usually used for several purposes. Just starting and growing a business, a club, a social group or whatever, you're trying to get more people, but people network sometimes as they're trying to get into a school. And because it helps to have connections at that school, medical school, college, whatever it might be.

So, there's a lot of networking that goes into that, and it's used to find an expert to help learn a new skill. A big piece of networking and how you network and what you do while you're networking is not to just jump to the sales, let's say if you're a salesman or not to just jump to asking for a job if you're interested in a career, but to learn about the whole aspect of the career, the job, the school you might be applying to.

There's a step in between that we're going to talk about in a minute. But to a large extent, networking is great to learn a new skill because you can connect with different people that have that skill and they all have different perspectives and you can learn from that. And then that will lead you into the next step in your networking, which is to actually use it to find a job in our case.

And like I said, for me, podcasting, and networking was great for finding guests. I network on LinkedIn. I find people that are physicians who are doing different jobs. I recruit them, they come on the podcast. I also do that by asking others in my existing network to give me referrals of others who might be a good guest. And sometimes people just call me or email me and just give me ideas without me even soliciting them. The power of a good network is, it's very active and it's very productive.

And so, in the old days, of course, how do we network? How did we network? In the old days it was, "Okay, you're going to network face-to-face." As I said, you'll go to a meeting and then afterward there'll be networking time. There are certain meetings where half the time for the meeting is networking time because it might be a professional organization that is putting on a meeting. Something like the AAPL, the American Association for Physician Leadership, the MSL Society, the American Medical Writers Association. They have meetings and a lot of times big parts of their meetings are spent in networking or just getting together with other people, discussing what they're doing with respect to that job or that profession. And they learn from one another in an informal way rather than sitting in a 30, 60, or 90-minute lecture. That's face-to-face.

You can do the same thing online. There are professional organizations that I just mentioned where you can actually network online through the organization. If you go to their websites and many other professional organizations, you're able to connect with them through messaging within the website for that particular organization. This brings me to the third, which is online social media. LinkedIn is probably the best. the best example. LinkedIn is an online profile, but it includes networking, it includes education, it includes a lot of other things besides just putting your profile up for people to look at.

And the other one that most of us should know about, that probably we should use more than I have in the past. And that's Doximity. You can go into Doximity. You can connect with a lot of people that already are in your life or were in your life. People you went to college with, people who you went to medical school with, people that you were in residency with, and then also the alumni from those organizations. So, that expands it very quickly.

And you can network obviously through Doximity directly because you can message people in Doximity and you can definitely do that on LinkedIn. And there are lots of strategies for improving and enlarging your network on LinkedIn by messaging people, you can pay extra to be able to message more people, and so forth. We're going to talk a little bit about that. But that's used oftentimes in a business to find leads. But we're going to be using it again to do two things basically, which again, I'll get into a little detail, but mostly it's to learn and then to contact people that can help you.

Those are the big ones. And then there might be some other ways that you can think of, but those are the ones that come to mind when we think about networking today. A lot more is remote. You can do it through blogs, you can do it through social media, and a lot of professional organizations, again, in an online fashion. And then you can call people. You can get on the phone and do networking.

Let me give you some examples of where networking really helps, some of the physicians I've talked to. We'll just call this one a cardiologist Dr. F. She had worked 25 years in her own practice and was an employed cardiologist. And she just reached the point where she wanted to do something different. And so basically, she started by contacting two medical school colleagues that she knew of. Each of them was working already as a medical director or an associate medical director in a life insurance company, which you don't find those people that come of, for some reason they were doing this.

And again, I don't know if she used Doximity or LinkedIn, but she knew that they were doing this. And then it occurred to her to contact them. And she started by asking them, not "Is there a job you can tell me about?" but she asked them about the job. She asked them to describe the job, did they like the job? What did they like, and what did they not like? She found that they were very happy in their jobs.

At that point, she moved to the next step to learn more about what a medical director for a life insurance company does. And then she started looking for jobs. She went online, she looked at different insurance companies based on what she was told by her colleagues. And really it only took her about six months and she landed her first job. Now that was a very accelerated process. Most of us will not find that job. Most of us, number one, will try to sift through different careers before we end up on one when we choose one. We might say it's something in pharma, maybe something in the hospital, maybe we want to do UM. Figure out which of those best suits our personality.

But she just kind of talked to her colleagues. They focused her right away on that particular job. She decided to specifically pursue that based on what they had told her. Then she went back and did the other things on LinkedIn and through other contacts found some companies that had openings, applied to those, and landed her first job in a little over six months, which is remarkable.

Now, another one of the colleagues that I've talked to on my podcast, Dr. H, she did the same thing. She decided she was going to leave medicine and she had no idea what to do, but she did start to zone in on pharma jobs. Now, in pharma jobs, most pharma companies have at least six to nine major divisions of which three or four of those employ physicians. Everything from basic clinical and research and applied research and so forth to sales. Most physicians don't go onto the sales side, but they go oftentimes into the MSL side.

She started looking, she thought she would do something in pharma. She didn't feel she was qualified for anything on the research side because of her background. And she started looking at profiles on LinkedIn of people that were doing pharma. And that gave her the ability to see what the different jobs were because they were describing the jobs that they did and then she could look those up. And then she would contact the people on LinkedIn and she would have short conversations, again, mostly about learning. "What does that entail? What do you do? What are the requirements?"

And by the way, I'm going to get into how you do this interaction in a minute. But she did that and she decided that the medical science liaison was the one she wanted to pursue. So, she started posting her resume. Well, she did several things. First of all, learned she needed to convert her CV to a resume, and she did that. And then she started sending her resumes into online sites that hired MSLs and there were hundreds and hundreds of jobs. And she told me there were some days when she was sending her resume to 200 different sites. And for months would have no return on that at all.

It wasn't really until she was able to network sufficiently to find somebody in one of the companies that she was applying to. That person, that recruiter, that HR person was able to then look for the resume when it was sent in. I think she probably sent it also directly to that person because there's a lot of screening that goes on through that online process. But anyway, after doing that, she got one job after applying to thousands of positions. And that was all it took because then that later allowed her to move to other jobs and other jobs. In fact, I think she even eventually moved out of the MSL role completely.

But those are two examples, and they were both based on networking. In one case it started with networking with people that you really were close to. And in the other case it was randomly reaching out, facilitating, and creating relationships with people and then using those to focus in on a particular job and to connect with someone that could then help facilitate that process.

When you're thinking about networking like this, and you probably can tell from what I've said so far, you need to focus on at some point what it is you're going to use it for. Again, I always say there are different phases. Early in your networking, you should tell yourself, "Look, I'm mostly networking so I can find people that might be doing the type of job I would want to do. I'm trying to confirm that. And then I'm trying to learn from them what the job entails now."

And sometimes, they can point you in directions to things like professional organizations and societies that often, as I said, have some formal networking built in the organization. But you wouldn't know to go to that organization until you were told by someone in your network that that's what you should do. And then you should do that for a while. You should use those people as mentors, but later then you need to start using them as connectors either to a recruiter or a company or hiring manager, or even sometimes they connect you directly to the head of the department or the division that's hiring. Those are all the people in an organization that ultimately you want to get to. So, you can send them your resume and cover letter rather than sending it blindly to some online portal.

Let's talk a minute about creating this network. And it may not be so much creating the network as defining your network. So, your network already exists. Whether you use a network or not, it already exists. Your network is people that you know, people that you're acquainted with, and people that you've interacted in the past with, and that includes the following.

And actually, what I want you to do as part of the process of doing this networking is I want you to write down and define your current network. And so, you're going to make a list, and I want you to not filter it at all because it's easy to drop people off later that may perhaps for some reason aren't really useful for your networking. But when you're creating the initial list, you should put all these people down. You can type them out, you can write them out by hand, you can put on stickies, you can do whatever you like.

But let's just try to think through this process during the rest of this episode, and also sit down and do it later. So, make a list, of all your family, and all your friends. You might even put down is there some way that they could be helpful to my career search? Because certain family and friends will be, and certain ones won't. You might have family and friends who are physicians. Okay, that's an automatic in. Do they have friends? Do they have colleagues? Do they have knowledge? You've maybe never spoken to them about that. So, you're going to go to your cousin who's a physician in another town and say, "Hey, are you still practicing? Do you have friends who are doing nonclinical? Do you know anything about that? What can you tell me?"

So, you got family, friends, college classmates, and alumni. You have a connection to the alumni even though you may not have worked directly with them. But let's face it, if you were in university, you were probably pre-med if you're a physician or pre-nursing if you're a nurse. And so most people that you went to school with were in the same program. Now they're doing that job as well. You may not have been with them in medical school, you may not have been with them in residency, but now they still may be practicing and maybe they've moved on to a nonclinical position.

And you do have that connection with the alumni if you've ever called somebody or met somebody and said "You and I went to the same medical school." But anyway, you had things in common with that person. Maybe you're both living in the same area because you went to the same school. Maybe you both went to a similar residency after medical school. But again, those are connections. The alumni is not as strong a connection as a classmate, but it is a connection. So, write all those things down.

Now, as we get into medical school classmates and alumni, you can expand on those lists. Instead of just going by memory or maybe you've got a roster from your class. Maybe you were in a huge medical school class and you've got a roster from that class from 10 or 15 years ago. Maybe you have a roster of all the alumni from that medical school. Some schools publish that. If you don't, you can go to other places. You can go to Doximity at doximity.com and LinkedIn, linkedin.com, and you can start looking and you can start searching.

So, you can search, for example, in LinkedIn by college and medical school. You can search in Doximity the same way. And then you can start to build that and refresh your memory. Maybe you'll see that in Doximity this physician is there and you go, "Oh yeah, I remember that person." But you never would've remembered that person. And actually, Doximity is built to connect you with your former classmates and alumni because it actually prompts you to add those people. LinkedIn doesn't do that. You have to search for them, but LinkedIn has other things that help you to network.

And then you've got your residency and fellowship, your classmates if you want to call them that, co-residents, and the alumni from those. And then you can move up to coworkers in your current and previous jobs, whether you're employed in a practice. What about all the physicians that run the medical staff when you were on that 500-bed hospital's medical staff? And you're not going to know all those people, but this is a source and you can start to look them up, see what they're doing.

And then, in this whole mix is a very, very, very tiny group of networking colleagues who are going to be the references for your job search. Maybe I should put it right at the very beginning. But keep them in mind because you're going to use them. You're going to ask them to be a reference. That's first of all. They're close to you, they know you, and they support you already. But you want to treat them like you will the rest of the members of this network that you're creating. And you want to ask them or let them know what you're doing, see if they have colleagues that are doing something that you might want to do because that's going to be really the strongest connection you'll have. If you're using a family member, a close friend, or a reference who's a professional reference for the next job you might be applying for, they're going to be very supportive and it's going to help you a lot.

One thing you should do in this process is cross reference the different sources if you can. So, what I mean by that is, like what I've mentioned, if there's someone in your network that you know through somebody else already and they're on your list, you should look them up on LinkedIn because you want to make sure you understand where they are now. Now not everyone will be on LinkedIn, but between Doximity and LinkedIn, you should be able to tell what they're doing.

And so, this is part of the research you're going to do at the beginning of the process. Let's say that you had a roster of 30 people that you went to medical school with. Well, you might just go to LinkedIn and Doximity and look them up and see what they're doing now. Now those sites aren't always kept up to date, but they're usually pretty accurate. I find LinkedIn to be a little more current than Doximity but Doximity has more people that are clinical than let's say LinkedIn would have.

All right, enough about that. You want to create this thing and you want to write it down. There are probably software programs you can use if you were in sales or something, but it's really not necessary because you're only going to be using this for the most part temporarily while you're in this, what I call a 12-month roadmap to a new career. So, we're getting started on this part early in this roadmap.

As you begin to contact these individuals, well, let's talk about how you're going to contact them. You can email them. You can message them through a professional organization as I've mentioned. You can message or contact them through social media. Of course, LinkedIn is set up to do that. Doximity is set up to do that. But maybe you're connected through Twitter or some other thing. Maybe you're both posting on clinical topics or you're both posting about how much burnout you have or what have you. You can reach out that way.

But then of course is a lot of networking that goes on in person. So, you meet people, specifically, let's say I have a medical society that I participate with where I am. And so, even though I don't work with these people anymore, because I don't work in this county, I'm always running into these other physicians and I can keep up with them and say, "Hey, what's going on? Are you still practicing?" And someone will say, "Well I started some sidelines, some side businesses, side hustles, whatever you want to call them. I'm doing something different. I'm looking about changing to this or that." That's in person at a meeting, which the meeting would be for another purpose, but there you go. You're going to meet them face to face. And then just getting on a phone call. Say, "Can we have a quick call?" With my podcast and what I've been doing and courses and so forth, I usually get on a Zoom call. I like to be able to see the person as though I am talking to them face to face. But obviously, it's remote.

Some bits of advice about how to be when you're networking. Even though we all pretty much know what a network is, we know what it's for, it's unseemly and it's off-putting if you come on aggressively. Get on the phone or send somebody an email saying "I just decided I'm going to look for a nonclinical job. I'm really reaching out to everybody I know and I'd like it if you could spend 30 minutes on a call with me to tell me what you're doing." No, you have to be, it's like when I've talked about using a mentor. You cannot put so much pressure on the mentor and someone in your network in a way is a mentor or could be a mentor.

And so there shouldn't be a lot of pressure. In fact, it should be very light at the beginning. You should be authentic, you should be yourself, and you should be considerate. And you want to spend however you're connecting with that person, whether it's via email, asynchronously or synchronously on a call of some sort, or through a messaging function. Just connect. That's it. Just connect. Connect and remind them who you are and ask them some questions about themselves. The people who are the most popular at parties or even in any kind of get-together are those who ask the most questions and listen to the answers.

So, you don't go at somebody and ask them to tell you what you should do and how you should learn this new skill and who should you apply to? Can you give me the name of somebody? That should all be later. In the beginning, you want to be slow, you want to be considerate. And if you can at all, figure out some way you can help them first.

Now it may sound hokey, but if you can give a compliment, that always helps. That also tells you that you know them. Let's say that you heard them speak or that someone referred you to them that told you, "Hey, this is a nice person. They're very knowledgeable." Bring that up and then ask them some questions. "How have you been? What are you doing? I'm really curious to find out whether you're still practicing or not." And really you have to take this slow. It's a nurturing process.

Now, you don't want to do this over a period of 10 different meetings, but you need to approach people respectfully and considerately and not make it feel like you're suddenly going to be a burden. And again, mention this with mentors. Don't make it feel like a mentor has to be accountable for your career. It's not. The point of a mentor is to answer questions and keep you from making mistakes. Same thing with networking to some extent.

And I think a good thing, a good rule of thumb is to really remember to ask for advice and try not to ask for the job or a job. "Do you know anyone who can hire me? Or are you hiring right now for this position? I heard that you work for this and you're a medical director or you're a CMO or a VP." No, ask first for advice. People like giving advice. "Hey, is there something I can do to maybe learn more about this?" And they'll tell you about a book. They'll tell you about an organization. They'll tell you about a blog or something like that. It should be brief to the point and not be onerous to that person. And take your time, develop and nurture those relationships.

So, what not to do? Sometimes it's easier to say what not to do. Do not monopolize your colleagues' time and don't focus only on what you need or want. That should come later and gradually. That's basically what I wanted to say about networking. You'll find as I have that there are ways to network that are very gentle for yourself as well as the other person that is not overwhelming for either of you.

Networking works best if you can do a little bit each day or each week. Spend 30 minutes to an hour focusing on that. Maybe focus 30 minutes on LinkedIn, and 30 minutes on Doximity. Find more people, connect with them, and then start spending time sending them a message or an email or eventually after interacting a couple of times having a live call of some sort with them. I think the process of starting with education and then moving to referrals is a good one. And really once you get this thing rolling, it kind of continues on its own. For example, when I started my LinkedIn profile and tried to build a network, I had to go out and actively try and figure out who I wanted to reach out to.

Now I have people every day asking me to connect 2, 3, 4 a day. I don't have a huge LinkedIn following, but I've got a couple thousand. And just the other day I was looking for a new podcast guest. And so, I just went through the recent people that connected with me, I looked at what their backgrounds were, picked out some that were physicians that were doing nonclinical work. I reached out to them and two of them agreed to come on to my podcast.

Well, the parallel is, okay, you're going to reach out, you're going to interact with people, you're going to connect with them. Maybe you'll have a phone call. You'll find out that they're doing a nonclinical job that you would like to do. You're going to learn more about that from them in little tiny snippets. And then eventually you're going to ask them to keep their eyes open, if any jobs open up where they're working if it's something geographically that fits with you.

I think that's all I want to say today about networking. If you have any questions, feel free to contact me at john.jurica.md@gmail.com or go to the website at nonclinicalphysicians.com and look around. You can join my email list. And then when you're on my list and you get my emails, if you respond, it actually comes to that same email address. It comes directly to me. It doesn't get filtered out. So, you can do that.

The show notes for today's episode can be found at nonclinicalphysicians.com/how-to-network.

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The post How to Network Effectively on the Road to a New Career – 271 appeared first on NonClinical Physicians.

Podcast Blast From the Past: 8 Mistakes That Derail a Job Search – 270

John Jurica — Tue, 18 Oct 2022 12:30:22 +0000

And How to Avoid Them

This week, we revisit the 8 mistakes that will derail a job search from Episode 180.

You can find the show notes for the original episode HERE.

8 Mistakes

#1 – Tunnel vision and not keeping an open mind.

You probably aren't aware of many nonclinical positions.

Medicine is the ultimate stack of skills: physiology, anatomy, biochemistry, other scientific disciplines, communication, how to use technology, and how to think logically. Not to mention all the attitudes and characteristics you've accumulated over time: dependability, responsibility, focus, intensity, resilience, and leadership.

You shouldn't be in a rush to start and complete this process. Take your time, contemplate, and consider the kind of circumstance you want to be in one to five years from now. Start your research and explore a variety of nonclinical jobs before narrowing your 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.

#2 – Being intimidated by a job description.

Looking at job postings in a variety of industries is a good way to begin. But the second of 8 mistakes is becoming intimidated by them. That long list of experiences and credentials includes many “nice to have” items. It is a rare candidate who meets all of them.

Early in the process, the primary reason to review job postings is to understand the expectations of the job, and the jargon that is used by those in that industry. That will help you to decide whether to pursue it and identify actions to take now to enhance your chances of landing it later.

#3 – Preparing a CV rather than a resumé.

A CV (curriculum vitae) is a long list of publications, presentations, educational experiences, and degrees obtained. When searching for a nonclinical position, most employers expect to receive a resumé that highlights your accomplishments and skills.

Those accomplishments typically describe quantifiable results. That enables an employer to imagine how you will deliver results and solve a problem for them.

You should limit the length of your resume to two pages. And a one-page resumé may be sufficient for younger candidates just getting started.

#4 – Using the same cover letter and resume for different jobs or different industries.

Each job has unique requirements. Your resumé and cover letter should demonstrate why you meet the requirements for each specific posting being sought.

A generic cover letter and resumé imply that you don't know in which job you are most interested and for which you are best suited.

#5 – Depending too much on online applications and not leveraging networks.

Sending your resumé to a specific recipient is preferable to submitting it blindly to an anonymous online destination. It is best to identify someone to send it to such as a recruiter or someone in the human resources (HR) department.

Sometimes you will need to network to find such a contact. Reconnecting with old medical school classmates, former co-residents, and people you've practiced with can be helpful.

And, you can use Doximity, LinkedIn, or other social media sites to nurture relationships with those employed at one of your prospective employers.

#6 – Not learning the jargon of the field we’re pursuing

Every field has, in a sense, its own language. The 6th of the 8 mistakes is not learning to speak that language when applying for and interviewing for a job. Learn the jargon by reviewing job descriptions, reading industry publications, and attending meetings for industry insiders.

#7 – Not taking the interview seriously

There are several common mistakes that demonstrate a lack of experience and preparation for live interviews, including

not bringing extra copies of your resumé,
dressing inappropriately,
arriving early, and,
talking too much, and listening too little.

#8 – Not preparing sufficiently

Read and reread the job description so that you can respond intelligently to questions about your suitability for the job. Thoroughly research the company, and its mission, vision, and values. Understand its financial situation.

If the company is a nonprofit organization, look up its 990 Form on Guidestar.org. Review stock reports if the company is publicly traded. And read its past 3 years of annual reports if available.

BONUS Mistakes to AVOID:

#1 – Failure to prepare a COMPLETE LinkedIn Profile. Many employers look at your LinkedIn profile. You will improve your chances of being invited for an interview by filling in the gaps in your profile.

#2 – After the interview, but before accepting the offer, not investigating the employer with other employees, customers, and physicians to determine if it will be a good fit for you.

Summary

There is no perfect applicant for any job. Your mission is to demonstrate to your potential employer that you have sufficient skills, knowledge, and attitudes to meet its needs and help advance the mission of the organization.

Applying for a job and performing well during interviews is a set of skills that improve with practice. Don't be discouraged because it takes time and repetition to improve. By avoiding the above errors, you will improve your chances of landing that new job more quickly.

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

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Today's PNC Podcast Transcript

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Transcription - PNC Episode 270

Podcast Blast From the Past: 8 Mistakes That Derail a Job Search

I recently joined Michelle Mudge-Riley and her free webinars to talk about mistakes that will derail a job search. We listed the major ones that we have witnessed and took questions from the audience. So, I thought I would spend some time talking about those today and summarize what we discussed.

I had to narrow it down to just eight today because there are just numerous mistakes that can be made. Now having said that, I do want to say again that I was on a call with Michelle Mudge-Riley. We were answering questions and going through many of these. So, I stole one or two from her. But she gave me her permission to further acknowledge what Michelle is doing by the way. Her next conference is starting in two months. I think it's on March 5th, 5th through 9th. She's going to be talking about a lot of these topics at her conference.

Her company is Physicians Helping Physicians and you can just look it up and you'll find out about her conference. But again, I want to thank her for inviting me on her webinar. And I know she's going to have a great conference in March and then there'll be a second one later in the year. I think it's in November. So, she had three last year and they were fantastic. So, with that, let's move into today's content.

Now I'm going to try and go through and even bring up examples as I go, because I've seen all of these and I've made a few of these mistakes myself. I think these are kind of the bigger mistakes that I've seen.

If you make a mistake in the process, it's not going to be the end of the world. You're still going to get that nonclinical job, but the fewer mistakes you make and the more prepared you are going in, the quicker this job transition will occur.

So, here are the mistakes that will derail a job search.

Number one: tunnel vision and not keeping an open mind. Most of us really don't even know what kind of jobs are out there. I mean, sure. We can look for another clinical job, similar to what we're doing. We can look for a better company to work for, or join a partnership that's run by doctors, that's more fun to work with.

But if we've made the decision to explore nonclinical jobs, the thing is, there are so many out there that you probably know nothing about. Now, if you've already done a little research, okay, great. But the thing is, if you narrow your focus too early, you're really shutting a lot of doors that might have otherwise eventually led to a much better outcome. I think you need to keep an open mind. You need to remain curious and you need to give yourself a chance to look around.

Now, as every coach has told me that I've interviewed and talked to, you shouldn't be in a big hurry to start and accomplish this whole process. You need to take your time, reflect, think about the kind of situation you'd like to find yourself in, in one to five years from now. And then start doing some research and expose yourself to different nonclinical jobs if that's the route you're going.

Usually, you come to a decision where it's like, "I just don't want to deal with patients because I can't avoid the liability if I'm still dealing with patients. I can't avoid the call. I can't avoid the constant pressure of feeling like I'm dealing with someone's life".

So, once you've made that decision, just step back and start looking. There are lots of resources out there, but you should really dig into what are the possible jobs. You should keep an open mind about how you will find a job. So, you think of, "Well, there's only one way to do it. The way I've done it in the past." No, keep open about the possible jobs, the possible industries and the jobs within those industries. The process for getting the job may not be as obvious as you think.

And also keep an open mind about your capabilities. I have people that say all the time, "Well, all I know is medicine" and I've addressed this before, but medicine is not one thing. Medicine is like the ultimate stack of skills - Physiology, anatomy, biochemistry, all the other sciences, communication, presentations, how to use technology and how to think. Not to mention all these attitudes and characteristics you've accumulated over time - The dependability, the responsibility and the ability to lead teams and all that. So, keep an open mind. Don't tunnel, don't get tunnel vision. That's number one.

Number two: being intimidated by a job description. So, let's say you're just exploring because you don't have to wait until you've narrowed the job to just one field in one industry. In fact, looking at job descriptions can be a way to do your research. So, look at job descriptions in a hospital work, look at job descriptions in pharma, look at job descriptions in insurance, health insurance, UM jobs, disability insurance, medical director, and health insurance.

Look at other things. Part-time gigs perhaps about expert witness work or blogs and podcasts about jobs in other industries, such as medical writing or consulting. But anyway, if you're going to actually apply for a job, ultimately you feel like you're going to work for a large corporation, which would be pharma or insurance or hospital systems.

Then even early in the process, look at the job descriptions, but don't get intimidated by them. I mean, think about it. Let's say you were running a big corporation or just your practice for that matter and you're going to hire somebody. What are you going to put in the job description" You're going to put everything in there you could possibly want and hope that somebody that has at least 80% - 90% of those skills applies. So, nobody that's applies is going to be perfect for any job.

And similarly, when a big pharma company or a hospital is putting out a job description, it's going to put everything in there that it wants. But the recruiting manager, the HR people, they know they're not going to get everything that they want. So, you can start by looking and seeing the words "preferred" versus "mandatory". So, if they say a medical degree is mandatory, well, probably a medical degree is mandatory, but if they say five years, experience is preferred. Well, that means if they get 10 candidates with five or more years experience, and you only have one, they're probably going to pick somebody from that list.

On the other hand, if nobody with five years of experience is applying and you've got three years of experience and everything else on your resume looks awesome, then you're going to get to job. So, we hear this a lot. MSLs a lot of times you're looking for someone with experience as an MSL - Medical Science Liaison, but guess what" They sometimes just have to take someone who has all the other attributes and has no experience in. I've definitely heard that from my guests who have told me it said that they wanted this, they wanted some background board certification, whatever, and yet they still were hired despite of not having every last bullet point on that job description.

Number three: preparing a CV rather than a resume. So, most of you know the difference I hope, but if not, basically it boils down to the fact that the CV is what someone who is teaching or an academics uses. And it's a list of all the education, publications, presentations. I mean, sometimes these CVs can be like 5, 6, 10 pages long, especially for an academic position.

But once you get away from applying for an academic position, it's a little different. They're looking more for a resume, which again, the definition there would be something that starts with a personal profile or a projected plan - What is it you're looking for in a few sentences and then a list of accomplishments. And those accomplishments generally indicate some measurable outcomes attached to them.

And then down the rest later on is going to be your education, your previous positions. But what's important is what you've done in those positions not so much what the position was. Because saying that you were the medical director or saying that you were the chair of a committee or whatever, it doesn't tell you really what you did. But at the same time in a resume, you want to keep it to two pages. For younger people that are just getting started, one page resume might be fine. There's no sense filling it with nonsense. But for someone who's a little more experienced, try to keep it to two pages because number one, they're not usually going to read it, but what they're going to be looking for is on the first page is, what are you looking for" And a job in X doing Y and what are the accomplishments that demonstrate that you've done the things that they're looking for as maybe outlined in the job description that's posted, or maybe someone has actually talked to you about what they're looking for.

So, if you can say, let's say rather than like "I managed this department for four years", it would be better to say "As a manager for the quality department, my team under my direction was able to reduce the complication rate following surgery, let's say total hip surgery by 20%, or reduce the costs in this service line by X percent". You get the idea.

That is what's in a resume. So, don't just throw the CV that you may have used in the past when you were looking for your residency. So, you had a CV for your history in medical school and undergrad and things you did in between, different jobs and different academic things you've done. But no, you want to put on the resume, that what you've accomplished with measurable outcomes, that they can translate into things that would be applicable to the job you're applying for now.

This one is actually one of the more important of these eight, because it's very common to have someone who has been sending out a cover letter and a resume for months and months. And after simply hiring a coach or spending a little time, doing a little more research and customizing the resume to the job they're applying for that they get that job. And it's all because of what's in that resume.

Now, I've heard recently that some companies are using a form of AI to screen their resumes, meaning they're basically looking for keywords. These are companies that are getting a lot of applications for the same position. So, this would be probably more common in a position as more of an entry level, like a UM physician advisor role, or in a big company, or maybe an MSL role. So, these jobs are very popular, starting jobs for nonclinical careers, for physicians. And it's possible that they're doing some kind of a machine screening, I guess, is what I would call it where no one's actually looking at the resume. They're just looking for the keywords that you mentioned.

So, again, I would say that when you're doing a resume, do a little research, how to structure it, there's a lot more to it than what I've mentioned. You definitely want to include keywords in your resume that tie back to the written job description and then the accomplishments and measurable outcomes. That that'll get you started. Again, there are resume coaches out there, those that are physicians and non-physicians who specialize in helping people prepare a professional resume. Because resumes are so important, let's talk about another resume mistake.

Number four: using the same cover letter and resume for different jobs or different industries. I definitely have seen resumes that seem rather generic. Even so far as in the position statement or the summary at the top saying something like "Looking for a position in leadership role in health insurance or pharma industry." That would be such a big red flag right there, because someone in pharma is going to look at that and go, "Well, I guess they don't really want to be in pharma." I mean, if they're okay with being in health insurance, that's not the same as pharma and vice versa. That's a big one right there.

The other thing is that each employer has its own needs. In my case, for example, I was put over the medical group as it was growing, as a VPMA and then Chief Medical Officer. I never did have responsibility for the medical group for like the first 10 years I worked at the hospital. I was focused on quality and utilization and clinical documentation improvement of pharmacy, the lab, so on and so forth.

There came a point when I was over the medical group, but I couldn't do it myself so I needed to have a VP for the medical group. I'm not even sure what we called that position. It may be a little different than that, but anyway and I wanted the VP to help us manage the 30 physicians that were in the group and help us grow the group as we began, not only to hire new physicians, but actually recruit local physicians who were in practice and mostly small practices.

But you can imagine if you were applying for that job, as opposed to applying for a job in a mature multi-specialty group with over a hundred physicians run by the hospital across town, that's focusing less on recruitment and less on buying practices and more on adding service lines and different products - that would be a completely different resume and cover letter. You want to customize those specifically to each and every employer.

Now, you can have a kind of a template that has 90% of the same information. If you're applying to, let's say, multiple hospitals for a director, medical director, or even a CMO role, yeah, 90% can be the same. But if you know specifics about the particular organization, which should be clear in the job description or based on your research, then you should customize the resume and the cover letter to that information and that organization. By the way, you should be sending this to a person, which I'll talk about a little bit in the next, but that goes into also customizing that cover letter.

Number five: depending too much on electronic applications and not leveraging networking. So, it kind of ties back to the resume and the cover letter. It's always better to send those to some person specifically that you've been able to identify if possible. And this also ties back to how you find the person in the first place or get the job or find the job in the first place.

I remember one time I was interviewing one of my guests who just suddenly felt anxious to leave her job. I don't actually remember why at this moment, but she was a very good clinician and she had enjoyed it for years and then she had to leave. I think maybe because she was moving or something happened to the organization she was working for. So, rather than just start looking through wide ends, so to speak and job boards, she started talking to some of her former medical school classmates. And I think maybe her residents had programs that she had attended when she did a residency, the people that were with her there.

Lo and behold, she found that some of them had nonclinical jobs. And one of them said that the company he or she was working for, needed a medical director for the company, which was a life insurance company, which are not easy jobs to come by. But she just happened to be in the right place at the right time. She applied, she landed the job and she loves the job. She's been there. I think more than 10 years at this point.

Now how likely is at the happen" Not that likely that the first person gives you some advice, you're going to take the job and you're going to love it, but you just never know. But I tell you in a way, getting a job referral, because that person knows you, they know what you're like. They know perhaps your strengths and weaknesses. They're going to tell you about jobs that they think you're going fit in with.

Definitely, I've had many guests on my podcast tell me that sending resumes into a link on a website or on a job board, or let's say through indeed or something, they think it's a waste of time. Literally for the MSL position, I've had people tell me that, that did not work. And then when they had someone they could actually reach out to or refer to from a friend or something, they did much better.

Networking is a foreign concept to many of us because we're introverts. We were competitive in medical school and we worked out on our own and we accomplished what we accomplished. But we have a twisted concept of networking. It's standing around at a reception at the end of an all-day conference, handing out business cards. And really that kind of networking probably doesn't help either.

I would say the networking that you do, if it's reconnecting with old medical school classmates, former co-residents, people you've practiced with. And you could do it directly if you have their email, their phone number, or you can go on Doximity or LinkedIn, reconnect with these people, ask them what they're up to. And then you can get a little bit into the less direct knowledge group of people.

In other words, you can just start looking for keywords in LinkedIn, for example, and say, "Okay, well, who's on LinkedIn that is a medical science liaison" And maybe I can find out how they were able to transition." Or I'm looking for someone who is working in a disability company as a medical director. Or maybe I can network through a group like the American Association for Physician Leadership if I want to be a Hospital Executive or I can network through the American Medical Writers Association if I learn about becoming a medical writer, where to apply. Or maybe I can go to The American Academy of Insurance Medicine and find out how those people are getting jobs.

Networking in that sense is probably much more effective. And if you can get the name of someone and send them your cover letter and resume and possibly even call them before you send it, they're going to be looking for it and they're going to take a much closer look at it.

Number six: not learning the jargon of the field you're pursuing. Every field has as its own vernacular, so to speak. So, the terms we use in hospital management are different if we're focused just on quality improvement, although there's a lot of overlap there. But you get into clinical documentation improvement. It has its own utilization management. It has its own jargon expert witnesses, use different jargon, a lot of legalese. Pharma jobs have specific terms.

If you're an MSL and someone told me about this, that they went to apply for a job as a medical science liaison. Someone asked them about a KOL and they really didn't know what it was. They kind of answered the question, but even though I think they use the term Key Opinion Leader, but really that's what an MSL does is deal with key opinion leaders and influencers. And they use that term all the time. And if you don't know what that term is, and haven't done enough research to figure that out going in, then you really haven't done your homework. You shouldn't go into these jobs, not really knowing what you're getting into.

If you want to be sincere about becoming a medical director for a particular company, then you need to know what a medical director for that company does and the jargon that they use. And you can learn that just by joining one of these societies or just going online and Googling around and find out what MSLs talk about and find out what medical monitors talk about. If you're in pharma, you're going to want to know phase one, two, three, what is pharmacovigilance, and so on and so forth.

And then to go back to something we talked about earlier, you want to use those terms in the cover letter and the resume and during your interviews to show that you at least understand the language. You may not have experience applying those terms, or actually interacting, let's say with a key opinion leader, but you know what the term means.

Number seven: not taking the interview seriously. Now that's a vague mistake, but it's because I wanted to put multiple issues in here. So basically, it's a bunch of things that you can do wrong during the interview, because you haven't really thought through how you're going to approach the interview, but includes things like not bringing a copy of your resume. Oddly enough, people that are interviewing you might not actually have a copy. They may have had a copy. They may have looked at a copy two or three weeks ago. Now when they're doing the interview it would be nice for you to bring one, just in case they don't have it.

Maybe you are really concerned about how you dress, but you should dress professionally. It wouldn't matter if you were overdressed compared to everybody. Let's say you're working in some small clinic and everyone is semi-casual when they're working. It doesn't mean you shouldn't go in a suit. Of course, you should. You should dress up. You can always dress down when you're working, but you can't go in there sloppy and then everyone's in a suit and tie. You're not going to feel like you fit in at all and they're not going to think you are either.

If you fail to arrive early so that you can anticipate any problems, you got to give yourself time to walk around and look around. Get a feel for the organization. Go to the reception desk where you're checking in at least 10 minutes early.

Other things like you should listen more than you talk. You're not there to give them a lecture on how wonderful you are. First you have to listen from them because each person that's doing an interview has their own particular pet peeves and interests for this person moving into this job. The CEO will have a different perspective than someone that you're working alongside, or in the hospital setting, for example, the CEO, the COO, the CFO, they're all going to have different perspectives on why you should be hired or not.

And so, you need to listen to what they are interested in. If they say, "Well, here's a problem we've had..." and now you can tell them how you can address that problem. But if you just go into some long litany about why you're the greatest thing since sliced bread, it's not even going to align with the things they're looking for because you're going to be off on some tangent.

So, listen more than you talk and ask questions. Some people have said you should really only do 20% of the talking. Mostly you should be listening. So, prepare for the interview and go into it professionally. That's one mistake that I see made not infrequently. And again, it ties into mistake number eight.

Number eight: not preparing sufficiently. So, when I talked about some of the things in the previous parts, a lot of it has to do with not preparing. Not looking through the job description in detail.

Now, granted I've had this happen many times where my HR department put out a job description and I looked at it and I said, "Well, that's not really what I'm looking for" and this person is reporting to me. So, there can be a disconnect, which is why you have to ask once you're there. But you should look at it, look at the keywords they're using, look at the "must haves" and the "would like to haves" and see how you can convince them that you have similar experience. It might not be the exact experience they put in the job description or the posting. So, think about that.

And actually, do research on the position beyond that and on the organization. Now in the hospital setting, it can be quite easy because hospitals are ranked and they're measured and they're rated. And if they're a nonprofit, you can go to guidestar.org and look them up. You can look at their financials. If they're a publicly traded company, you can look at stock reports. Again, if it's a hospital, either there's rating agencies and you can get a pretty good feel about the nature of the organization, but you have to spend an hour or so, just getting their background and not walk in as though you have no idea who these people are.

Now, it can be hard. If you're applying in the large UM company, they're going to be interviewing a ton of people who are going to be doing only probably telephone or video interviews who are going to be shorter. They're not going to care if you know how well the company is doing from a basic financial standpoint, but when you get it into a smaller medical communications company or a hospital, it's going to help to know really what's going on. And that includes looking at their annual reports if they have one and looking at news in that county or that town in terms of what's going on at the company, if they're big enough to make it into the news.

So those are the main things that I wanted to mention today. So, to summarize here are the mistakes that will derail a job search.

Number 1 - Going in with tunnel vision and not keeping an open mind.

Number 2 - Being intimidated by the job description.

Number 3 - Preparing a CV rather than a resume.

Number 4 - Using the same cover letter and resume for different jobs or even different industries.

Number 5 - Depending too much on the online applications and not leveraging networks and networking as much as you should.

Number 6 - Not learning the jargon of the field that you're pursuing.

Number 7 - Not taking the interview seriously.

Number 8 - Not preparing sufficiently.

So those are the big eight. I know I'm a little over, but I do have two bonus mistakes to avoid.

One is the failure to prepare a complete LinkedIn profile. That's going to come in handy. You can get jobs by people finding your LinkedIn profile. We didn't talk about that, but let me just say quickly that you should have a recent photo in there. You might have a background picture and the whole thing should be complete. You should have a description with keywords in it. Everything you've done job wise, everything you've done education wise, anything you've published. It's very, very complete. It would be much longer than your written resume. And so, you can put a lot more in there, including all the things you volunteered for that are pertinent.

The other bonus mistake to avoid really comes afterwards and it's really not about landing the job, but it's about whether you should take the job. Let me just say this: Would you marry someone or accept or even ask for someone to marry you if you hadn't gone to more than one or two dates" Most of us wouldn't.

So, you should do some digging and learn more about the employer after the interview is done in terms of what it's like to work there. You can do that beforehand to some extent, but don't just jump into a job that you might be at for 10 or 15 years if it works out. You don't want to be stuck in that thing and be back where you're starting now. So, talk to other employees, talk to customers, talk to other physicians.

Check and see if there is physician leadership in the organization. The more physician leadership, the less likely you're going to work where there's a lot of burnout. Because physicians managing physicians generally do a better job and there's usually more engagement, less burnout.

Like I say, most of us don't make or accept a marriage proposal after one or two dates. And those that do are often disappointed. So, the same thing applies to most jobs. You'll be married to this new employer potentially for decades. So, do more research work, walk the halls. If there are nurses involved in what you're doing, ask them because they know all the doctors, they know all these things that are going on, especially in a clinical situation. But talk to someone similar to a nurse position if you're looking at a MSL job or UM job too.

Okay, that's it. I am going too long now. I want you to go get that new job, avoid all these mistakes that I mentioned today. Thanks for listening. I do appreciate you. The links for today's show can be found at nonclinicalphysicians.com/mistakes-that-will-derail-a-job-search.

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Federal Career Coach Shows Us How to Find a Government Job – 241

John Jurica — Tue, 29 Mar 2022 10:00:23 +0000

Interview with Kathryn Troutman

Today's guest describes how to find a government job.

Kathryn Troutman, also known as the Federal Resumé Guru, is the founder and president of Resume Place, Inc., a service business located in Baltimore, MD. It specializes in writing and designing professional federal and private-sector resumes, as well as coaching and education in the federal hiring process.

Troutman has managed her business for the past 30 years. With her team of 20 Certified Federal Resume Writers, Resume Place advises and writes more than 300 federal resumes per month for military, private industry, and federal clients worldwide.

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.

Federal Resumé Guidebook

With the establishment of the Internet, in 1996 the government created an online application website called, USA Jobs. This was implemented to change the resumé format. Vice President Al Gore created the program called Reinventing Government that accepts a resume like the rest of the world.

Following that, Troutman wrote the first edition of her book, the Federal Resumé Guidebook, about how to write a federal-style resume. It is still in print, in its 7th edition. The book is available on her website and on Amazon.

The federal resumé is longer and includes more details than your private sector resumé would. A physician's resumé will be five or six pages. It's going to be longer because it has to include more skills that are relevant to the job that you're applying for. It details your top skills, your areas of expertise, your education, and your research presentations. You might also add training, mentoring, and development of staff that you worked with.

Benefits of Working for the Federal Government

Kathryn pointed out that the Centers for Disease Control, Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services, Food and Drug Administration, Veterans Administration, National Institutes of Health, and Health and Human Services hired many clinicians to be public health specialists and experts due to the recent pandemic.

Physicians' skills and experience can translate from clinical care to health policy, quality assurance, and patient safety. An active license may be required.

Find a Government Job

During the interview, Kathryn mentioned that usajobs.gov, cdc.gov, hhs.gov, and every one of the departments that “.gov” as the suffix employ clinicians to do nonclinical work.

She recommends that you do an agency search and then type in the word “careers.” Then read the list and see if you can find the positions that would be physician-related, such as professional public health and scientific jobs. Those are the ones that you're going to be interested in.

Closing Advice

Pick an agency and pick a mission that would be of interest to you. Then go to its website, type in the word “careers” and see what jobs there are. That's your first fishing expedition. Just keep at it, do your research.
And then you've got to work on the resumé. You got to deal with it. Expand the resumé. Get help if you need it.
And consult the Federal Resumé Guidebook. It shows you the format. Play the game, and see what happens.

Summary

Kathryn provided what we need to apply for a federal job. You can find more help at resume-place.com. There you can arrange a one-hour consult if you like. You can also write to them.

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

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Today's PNC Podcast Transcript

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Transcription PNC Podcast Episode 241

Federal Career Coach Shows Us How to Find a Government Job

- Interview with Kathryn Troutman

John: I know very little about getting jobs with the federal government, but I have the sense that they can be an excellent career choice. Today's guest explains why that might be and shall also provide us with some pointers and how to find and prepare for such jobs. Hello, Kathryn Troutman.

Kathryn Troutman: Hi. I'm glad to be. I'm in Maryland, gray skies in the United States.

John: Yes. Luckily here in the Midwest, we've had a warm spell. I don't know if it's going to come your way as well, but it has been nice here. I was so happy when I tracked you down or somehow, we met through some connection. But what I've found out, you were this expert, you've been also called the federal resume guru. You've been dealing with federal jobs. And of course, Kathryn's not a physician and she deals with a lot of people that aren't physicians, but there are a lot of physician jobs in the federal government in various parts of it. I definitely want to hear about this. This is something I have no knowledge of at all. I'm grateful to have you here, Kathryn.

Kathryn Troutman: Thank you. I'm really glad to be here too. It's a good topic and it's one that I've never talked about before. I've never written a blog about it before, so this is all new and I'm really glad to talk to physicians about jobs that they might be interested in and that are not MD clinical positions. So, it's a great topic.

John: All right. Just so my audience understands, why don't you tell us a little bit about your background and how you got into being an expert on this particular niche of career and resume council, coaching, things like that.

Kathryn Troutman: Yeah, I'll be glad to. I run a company called The Resume Place Inc. I founded the company 50 years ago.

John: How long?

Kathryn Troutman: Yeah. 50, it's true. I was 23. So, it doesn't matter. My age is fine. I started it in DC on K Street. And I started out doing 171. The government used to collect a form called a 171 and it was long and horrible. We helped people with 171s forever. And then in 1996, the government changed to a resume format because the internet came along and the government created this online application website called USA jobs. And the forum could no longer be accepted as an upload or anything else because it was a monster. Vice president Gore created this program called reinvention government and he said, "We're going to accept a resume like the rest of the world."

And so, I thought somebody needs to write a book about how to write a federal style resume. And I nominated myself. So, I did. I wrote the book. The first book ever called "Federal Resume Guidebook" in 1996. It's still in print at the seventh edition now. And it's really good. It's very important because the federal resume is not like a private sector resume.

The federal resume is longer and includes more details than your private sector resume would. So, your position in the private sector resume will be two or three pages. Your federal physician resume will be five or six pages. It's going to be longer because it has to include more skills that are relevant to the job that you're applying for. That's the biggest difference right there. It's length.

And I know physician resumes, they're really short. They are two pages long. They don't include any duties of your practice or your clinical work or your studies. It's just a list. Federal resume is not a list. It details your top skills, your areas of expertise, your studies, your research presentations. It is the works and it's five pages long. I wrote a book on how to write it.

Now my Federal Resume Guidebook doesn't have a physician sample resume in it, but that's okay. You can still see the style. You can see the format of the resume. MDs would put education first and where you can practice first, have all that first and then your work history and you would relate it to the announcement and we'll be talking more about the announcement.

That's how I started the business way back. And then I flipped it in 1996 to straight federal and I teach in agencies. That's how I learn. As I walk in the door at FDA or FEMA or any agency, HR sitting in the room, they're watching me teach how to write resumes for them. And I say to them sometimes, "Well, what do you think of this format and this lesson?" And they'll say, "I like it. I wish all resumes did that. Thank you. Yeah. Good." And then they stop talking.

John: Interesting. Because I saw from the website that you've grown, you've got different staff there now. You've got consultants and experts on this and that, and you do a lot of coaching and helping with resumes and preparing people for interviewing for jobs. I thought this would be fantastic. We can kind of pick your brain.

The first question I have though, before we get into too much the "how" is sort of "why". Why is working for the federal government, do you think for a physician, a good job and why would it be?

Kathryn Troutman: Well, the mission of some of the agencies is very, very good. Look at CDC, Center for Disease Control. Their mission is so important right now because of the pandemic and they're hiring so many public health specialists and experts in epidemiology that the mission is critical. Same with the Center for Medicare and Medicaid services. The mission is critical. They work with physicians, they interview physicians, they ensure quality control of hospitals and doctors and clinics and assisted living.

They need the work of physicians. Same with food and drug administration. They do the mandatory manufacturer reviews, quality assurance for devices. Physicians could do their work there. If you're an expert at orthopedics and you don't want to do orthopedics anymore, you could work at FDA and work in devices as a manufacturer for new products for medical devices. You could advise manufacturing and make sure that it would work.

Physician's work can translate from clinical direct care to policy and quality assurance and safety and public advisor. So, it can be done. You may not be paid as much as you would as a physician, but the quality of the work is really good. And they do have special pay for physicians. I did look that up and you can Google it, but it still may not be the same. But the quality of the work is really good.

John: Well, the thing I remind people too, is if you're working for almost any other organization and not doing clinical and it includes, I'm assuming the FDA or the CDC, you're not going to work 70 hours a week, be on call every third day, be at risk for a lawsuit from some unhappy patient. It's like comparing apples and oranges. The quality of life is like 10 times better.

Kathryn Troutman: That is so true. 40 hours a week. Very possible. It's virtual. Benefits are good. Flexibility is great. No more on call emergency all night stuff. Yeah. That's very true. Good point.

John: Now you mentioned the FDA, the CDC and the CMS. Oh, we love CMS. Every time there's a new government agency, then you got to find some physician to be a liaison with the colleagues and that agency. But are there any other big ones that come to mind besides those three?

Kathryn Troutman: Well, yeah, FDA. The VA, if you want to work with the veterans, could also be really good. And then there are other science organizations, the National Science Foundation. NIST would be really good. National Institute of Standards and Technology - NIST. They work with entrepreneurs on products and product development. A physician could work there. I think the ones that have to do with health and public health and science would probably be the best match. Health and Human Services, NIH, my goodness. There would be a lot of physician related jobs there that you would use your MD to qualify as well. HHS.

John: This is probably hard to know unless you've actually looked at the job descriptions, but do most of those would you think require an active license? There might be a requirement for having a license and in practice, because you're not seeing patients. So, I don't know that. That might be an open-ended question, but what do you think?

Kathryn Troutman: Well, I'm not sure. I don't think you would have to have an active license, but you just have to read the qualifications in the announcement one at a time. And it would say what the education is required, licensing required and specialized experience required. It is critically important. And it's right on the announcement. All you got to do is read requirements. Boom. There it is.

John: Okay. Well, that leads me to the next question then. How do we find these jobs? Where do we look? And is there any special way we should kind of sort through things?

Kathryn Troutman: Well, when I knew I was coming on the podcast, I did this search myself. I went to usajobs.gov and my first word search was "physician", just for fun to see what would come up. It was a terrible search. It didn't work. It was zero. And then I thought, "Oh, the title of the job was not going to have the word physician in it". Then I did a search for the word FDA. I went by agency, and then all the jobs with the FDA came up. I looked for the high level, FDA 1415. That was pretty good. But I had to look at a lot of jobs that were not relevant. They were IT and program analysts and stuff I didn't want to read. So, then I did it again with CDC and I typed CDC 1450 Atlanta.

And that was pretty good, but it was just too much. It was not related to health policy, public health or medical. It was just everything. So, I said, no, I'm going to go to the agency itself. I did cdc.gov and then in their search category I typed careers. Oh wow. I could see the careers for CDC. I could see the career. So, I could see public health careers, and there were the jobs.

Now for medical, for a position, I'm looking for 1415. I did that and the jobs came up and there they were. I created a file with it. For instance, here is my search for the Center for Medicare Medicaid services. I didn't do USA jobs and I searched for the word "careers". And what came up was careers at CMS, positions at CMS physicians in demand at CMS.

I recommend that you do an agency search and then type in the word "careers" and read the list and see if you can find the positions that would be physician related, professional public health and science jobs. Those are the ones that you're going to be interested in. CMS worked very well. I did health and human services. It was hhs.gov. And then I did careers and there it is. Careers in DHS, right there. Careers with the office of Medicare, careers with performance management, careers with DAB, whatever that is. They go through each specific agency or research center at NIH and list the jobs.

John: Excellent.

Kathryn Troutman: That's how you do it. That's how you do it. Landing a job at NIDCD, whatever that is, information NIA research is right here. And then of course they may not be active open jobs today, but at least you will know what kind of jobs are there at this agency that I would be interested in. And it would give you the job title and they might even link you to the jobs on USA jobs.

But first you have to learn what jobs are out there and what are the agency offices and research studies and how could I fit? And then when you get that background, I did another one for CDC. This one was really good STEM at CDC careers. We value a highly qualified workforce that mirrors the diverse population we serve right there, but it is not on USA jobs. From the agency website.

John: Interesting.

Kathryn Troutman: From agency website.

John: And that's at cdc.gov?

Kathryn Troutman: Yeah, at cdc.gov. Right.

John: And pretty much every one of those divisions or those entities have that gov as the suffix at the end, generally.

Kathryn Troutman: They do. Right.

John: Now you mentioned a code of 1415. That's a code referring to what?

Kathryn Troutman: That refers to the grade level of the salary level. You can see the GS salaries, you could just Google "GS government salaries" and it'll come up. GS14 to GS15 is $150,000 to $175,000. But there's a special GS level for physicians that you might get considered for as well. But 14, 15 would be $150,000 to $175,000. You want to look at the salaries, so you know what they're talking about.

John: Yeah. Okay. All right, that gives us a start.

Kathryn Troutman: Yeah.

John: What I gather from what you said earlier is this whole idea of the form has to be completed or the so-called resume. It's a very explicit document that everything has to be completed. What would I have to kind of get ready if I'm going to do that? What should I have ready, do you think? Every license I've had, every experience, every piece of education? Just like my CV or resume, be prepared for putting in a lot of information.

Kathryn Troutman: Well, the big, big difference is you go ahead and put your education in and your certifications and licenses, all that goes in. But then you have your professional experience. So, physicians are notorious for not describing their job as a doctor.

John: Yeah.

Kathryn Troutman: I'm a physician here. That's it. Well with the government, they want to see paragraphs that describe what you do. You would need to put in a paragraph on direct care, a paragraph on professional presentations and research that you may have done, studies you might have done. Presentations at conferences will be important and what the titles are and the research that you did. Any specialized areas of medical expertise that you might have you'd want to describe it. And not just a laundry list either, a description.

If you're doing orthopedics and you're doing sports, you need to have a description of the age of the patients that you mostly work with. Sports team specialized. If you've got specialized training in certain areas of expertise or certain surgeries, you would want to put that in there. You need to write 5,000 characters. That's five paragraphs. And then maybe an accomplishment or two. But as a physician, your goal is to heal people and make them walk, and help them with what they do. I know that's challenging for a physician to write 5,000 characters about their job, but the HR people in government want to see what you've done. And if you don't put it on paper, the HR people do not infer. That's their favorite word "infer".

John: Right. And it has to be in black and white, I suppose.

Kathryn Troutman: It has to be in black and white.

John: This makes me think because a lot of physicians have in, I think you mentioned earlier, quality improvement. Well, we have a lot of experience in quality improvement at the hospitals we work at. We do have experience in epidemiology and statistics and other things that are pertinent to our job as a physician and most of the time a physician won't naturally list those. But those are some more examples that get to what you're saying.

Kathryn Troutman: That's right. Or conference presentations that you might make on areas or specialization that you're in. You might even have done a deployment. You might have traveled somewhere, volunteered as an emergency management physician somewhere. You just have to really detail it so that it shows you have the experience that they're asking for in the job announcement. You can't assume that they know this. That's really the biggest difference in the resume. It is not just a short chronological two-pager. It needs to have a description. The one challenge for a physician is that they have to write paragraphs that describe what they do in their job that matches the sample job announcement.

John: Okay. That's critical, particularly if they're using certain keywords or certain phrases. If you send in a resume that just kind of passes all that by, and doesn't even mention it, you're pretty much going to be ignored I'm assuming.

Kathryn Troutman: Oh, yeah. You will not get the best qualified, which is sad because medical doctors have a lot of expertise and experience, but if you don't have it on paper, then you don't get anywhere. I talked to an HR person one time who said, "I receive resumes from people that I know are very well qualified for the job, but if it's not on paper, I can't infer it. And I can't refer them to a manager and it kills me." It's so sad because their background is great. It's just not on the paper.

John: We shouldn't assume that if I had a particular job as a pediatrician such and such and a certain hospital that someone who's reviewing this actually understands what that may have entailed, particularly if I was the chair of the department. I was maybe involved with quality improvement or patient safety, then I need to write down what that means and connect the dots for the person reviewing that.

Kathryn Troutman: That's right. You could also add training, mentoring, and development of staff that you worked with. That's always good for the government, because you might be supervising in your job or you might work with a team or a study group. So, you could always add that angle and you do a lot of training and mentoring PAs and nurses and everyone, technicians.

Equipment. You could talk about equipment purchases. You might have recommended or been a consultant on equipment to upgrade your facility or change your equipment, working with pharmaceutical reps to determine what medicines that you want to recommend for your cases. Everything you could think of, just write it down.

John: All right. We're going to run out of time pretty soon, but I want you to spend a few minutes and tell us what kind of services your company does and which of those might be of benefit to a physician that finds themselves thinking "Yeah, I think I want to try for one of those federal jobs"?

Kathryn Troutman: Yeah. The starter service for you would be about our $210 consultation. That's a senior-level consult. Within that one-hour consultation, you would send your resume, whatever it is, bad or good, I don't care, and a sample job announcement. And you would say, "I would like to apply for this job. What do I need to do to qualify for this job or to get referred or get hired?" And then we would consult with you. We'd look at the resume and we'd tell you everything to change or add or restructure. And we analyze the announcement. We'd tell you what's critical from the announcement that you must match to get. And here are the hurdles. You want to be eligible. You want to get the best qualified. You want to get referred to a manager. You want to get an interview and you want to get hired. That was five levels. Eligible, best qualified, referred, interviewed, hired. You want to make it through.

The resume is what does it. If the resume doesn't have the content, you're not going to make it. You're not going to get referred. You might get best qualified because you have an MD, but you want to get referred. So, you want to get the interview. That's the goal, it's to get the interview. We tell you what's missing from the resume. And then you add it. We also write resumes. We can quote you the number of hours needed to write and coach and hold your hand through writing it. The average amount of hours is 5 to 10, depending on what you want to do. How many years you've worked, how many hospitals or places you've worked. Just the whole thing. If you had a 20-year career, it's going to take more time, obviously.

And then we're translating also. We're translating from direct care to policy studies, research, consulting, whatever you're going to do in your new job advisory work. We're going to play down the clinical, play up everything else, but we can't leave out direct care because that's what you really did. It's going to be there, but it's not going to be the feature of the work because you're changing your career obviously and you're changing your whole industry. The one-on-one consultation is just gold. That's where you start. And then from there, we work with you on developing that five-page resume that would be for the federal style.

John: All right. Now, let's see. Where would they find you? Give us your website before I forget.

Kathryn Troutman: The website is resumeplace.com. You can find the $210 consult service on the website. You can also write to us or contact us and say, "I'm a physician wanting a federal resume." And then we'll point you to the website, to the right page. And then we'll set you up with the four senior people that consult, me, and three others.

John: Okay, excellent. Well, I'll definitely put all that information in the show notes for the interview today. That's all awesome. That's plenty to get someone started on this process. And so, I would advise you listeners to at least consider a federal job depending on what your inclinations are. There are a lot of advantages to that. You might have to learn a new language to figure out how to do it. But if there's a will, there's a way. Any last bits of advice, Kathryn, for the listeners, for the physicians who are feeling burned out and they feel a little bit intimidated by applying for a federal job.

Kathryn Troutman: Well, I guess my best advice is to pick an agency, pick a mission that would be of interest to you and go to their website, type in the word "careers" and see what jobs there are. That's your first fishing exhibition. And don't just deal with one agency. I went with five because the first one wasn't enough. Just keep at it, do your research. And then you got to work on the resume. You got to deal with it. It's not two pages. Don't even try it. Don't even do it. It's a waste of time. Expand the resume, do the consultation. The book is also good, Federal Resume Guidebook. It shows you the format. The resume is very specific and then you should play the game. Why not? Just do it, see what happens.

John: All right. And the book of course is available on your website as well.

Kathryn Troutman: Yeah. And it's on Amazon also.

John: And I'll tell the listeners don't get overwhelmed. She's got a lot on there because she helps a lot of people and there are certifications and education that don't really apply to physicians. You can ignore that, but focus on what we've talked about today and let me know if you successfully get that job with the federal government, with one of those agencies. Well, I think that's it then Kathryn. I thank you very much for being with us today. And with that, I'll just have to say goodbye and we'll talk again hopefully in the future.

Kathryn Troutman: Well, thank you very much. It was really fun. I did original research for you. I'm going to turn this into a blog.

John: Yeah.

Kathryn Troutman: Go to the website in two weeks or so, and look for this and I'll send it to you, John, and you can post it.

John: Excellent. I'll definitely link to it as well. I'll just put a link and I'll send it in my email with the link. That is fantastic. All right. Well, you take care and I thank you very much again. Bye now.

Kathryn Troutman: Bye.

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How to Land An Awesome Job Using LinkedIn – 232

John Jurica — Tue, 25 Jan 2022 17:47:30 +0000

Interview with Dr. Heather Fork

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

Heather is an ICF master certified coach. She helps physicians find their best career path forward, whether in medicine, a nonclinical career, or something else.

In 2010 she founded the Doctor’s Crossing. Since that time, she has helped hundreds of physicians find greater career fulfillment and meaning in their work.

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.

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

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

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.

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Today's PNC Podcast Transcript

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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.

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Discover Your First Nonclinical Job Even If You Don’t Know Where to Start – 200

John Jurica — Tue, 15 Jun 2021 10:00:43 +0000

Here Is the “Readers Digest” Version

In honor of my 200th episode, I want to tell you how to discover your first nonclinical job. But first, I will play a recent audio review from one of my listeners.

Then the rest of oday's episode is an abbreviated version of the webinar I presented last week.

I want to remind you that the Nonclinical Career Academy Membership Program has just re-opened. It had been closed to new members for six months. There are more than 20 courses for physicians looking to shift to a nonclinical career. To learn more go to nonclinicalphysicians.com/joinnca.

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.

Discover Your First Nonclinical Job

In this discussion, I describe the three steps that must be followed when pursuing a nonclinical career.

Step One

This step requires that mindset issues be addressed. These are fears and faulty beliefs that keep us from moving toward our goal of a new career. I spend a few minutes explaining why they can lead to an “upper limit problem,” and how to overcome them.

One of the biggest myths is that we don't have transferable skills. In reality, we have most of the skills needed to land almost any nonclinical position. In some cases, we need a little training in management and leadership that we can learn very quickly.

Step Two

In this step, we must discover which jobs are suited to physicians. We typically have very little exposure to the industries that employ doctors or the hundreds of specific jobs that require a medical background. During this episode, I briefly describe 15 of the most popular nonclinical careers for physicians.

Step Three

In this final step, we must put together a plan in which we…

select our preferred position,
engage a mentor or two,
learn as much about it as we can,
join pertinent professional organizations,
prepare a complete LinkedIn profile,
prepare a cover letter and resumé,
find appropriate job listings,
apply to a job that matches our goals, and
ace our interview.

More About the Nonclinical Career Academy Membership Program

The NCA Membership Program will enable you to complete each of the above steps and discover your first nonclinical job. It is open for enrollment for only 3 days following the release of this episode. To learn more about the Membership Program go to nonclinicalphysicians.com/joinnca.

As the host of the Academy Membership Program, it is my promise to do all that I can to help you land a satisfying nonclinical or nontraditional job. That job will enable you to leave assembly-line, soul-crushing medical practice and apply your background to helping patients in a new way.

I have already dedicated hundreds of hours developing 22 courses that bring you the knowledge I’ve garnered over the past 20 years. And I will continue to add new lessons to assist you in your career journey. The Program also includes Masterclasses with Drs. Mike Woo-Ming, Andrew Wilner, and Maiysha Clairborne, and resumé expert Charlotte Weeks.

So, check it out at nonclinicalphysicians.com/joinnca.

Summary

There is a straightforward strategy for pursuing a new career. In today's podcast episode, we walk through the three major steps of that strategy.

NOTE: Look below for a transcript of today's episode that you can download or read.

Links for Today's Episode:

Download This Episode:

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If you enjoyed today’s episode, share it on Twitter and Facebook, and leave a review on iTunes.

Podcast Editing & Production Services are provided by Oscar Hamilton

Today's PNC Podcast Transcript

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Transcription - Discover Your First Nonclinical Job

Even If You Don't Know Where to Start

John: All right, I think we're ready to start our presentation. This is "Discover Your First Nonclinical Job Even If You Don't Know Where to Start". My name is John Jurica. Let me tell you a little bit about my story. Most of you know who I am. I'm a podcaster obviously. And I also put together a nonclinical career academy membership site for people to learn about nonclinical careers.

But I'm a family physician. And early in my career, after joining my two partners as fresh out of residency, I started doing nonclinical jobs. I was looking to moonlight and rather than do more clinical things, which I did a little bit of, I started to work in different nonclinical roles. So, I was a physician advisor for utilization management. And then I was working in a family planning clinic clinically, and then I became medical director for that.

Then I received an MPH. Well, I took the courses to get my MPH and I became the medical director for an occupational medicine clinic. And from there eventually, I moved into leadership roles at a hospital as a VPMA, and then chief medical officer.

So, I've done a lot of nonclinical activities. And when I got tired of doing that after about 15 years as a senior executive at the hospital, I decided to open an urgent care center with some other investors. And now I'm the medical director and part-owner of the clinics. There are now two clinics, but I'm only working clinically one day a week, although I'm still working as a medical director. So, in the meantime, I started this podcast and I started interviewing physicians and coaches so that I could learn how to move into nonclinical careers other than the ones that I have already done. So, I have a lot of firsthand experience and then a lot of secondhand experience through interviews and so forth.

So that's my story. And I'm here to tell you what I've determined is really a process for moving from really a non-satisfying clinical career with burnout and the risk of liability and lawsuits and all the paperwork and the owner of CMRs and so forth, and really take everything that you've learned clinically in your experience, your training, and then move into a nonclinical role, but still applying that and usually helping out lots of patients in the process. By the way, that picture was from about 15, 20 years ago. So that does not meet today. I've got a lot of gray hair these days, but I guess that only means I'm seasoned at what I'm doing.

All right. So first I wanted to tell you the secret that I learned about career transition over the period of time that I've been studying it. And really the main secret is that we have a lot of transferable skills. And the reason this is important to talk about is that it's very common for physicians to feel and to even express that all we know, all they know is medicine.

And so how can we move into some other career? It feels like we've really niched down, right? We started undergrad. We do a very broad generalized education usually. A lot of us are in liberal arts and sciences, but even if we're in some other college within a university, yeah, there's a lot of different courses. It's not very specific. And we usually have to go to graduate school or medical school or something to get more specified.

And we kind of then niche down into medicine, of course. And so that kind of separates us from other people. And I'm not saying in a necessarily supercilious way or we're any better, just narrows it down. And then as you go into your specialties, you might do a general specialty like internal medicine or family medicine, but you might go into neurology or surgery and then a subspecialty of surgery.

So, it seems like we're so "niched down" that all we know is we've spent 13, 14, 15 years learning how on earth could we just shift to something completely different, particularly something that involves management or finances or leadership or something like that.

But I think we look at it the wrong way when we do that. So, I like to use this thought experiment that you're, let's say, the last of a small group of human beings who are going to be shipwrecked or who are on the earth in some apocalyptic story. And there's a number of people in that group. There are teachers and politicians, attorneys, a judge, there might be a nurse, that could be someone who works hard labor type of job, a plumber and then there might be an engineer and a physician.

And as I thought about this kind of thinking process, like who would I want to be stranded with if I only could pick one or two partners? Well, it would be the engineer and the doctor basically. The engineer knows a lot about physical things and building things and what's safe and what's not safe, but the physician knows a lot of other things, which I'm going to talk about in a minute. And believe me, you'd want to have a physician on that team, not just because of your own chances of being injured or becoming sick, but for a lot of reasons.

So, let's go through this. Here are some of the things that physicians pretty much across the board understand and know. They have a background in physiology, anatomy, biochemistry, pharmacology, statistics, epidemiology, and a lot more. You've got these so-called soft skills. They're not really scientific, but this commitment to lifelong learning, the teaching, the presenting, the communicating, working in teams, and a whole lot more.

And then there's a personality trait. Physicians are very reliable and accountable. They have a lot of perseverance and grit, dedication. Things that employers are really looking for. And then you've got in my estimate, 70% to 80% of pretty much any nonclinical job requirements that you might need. And really the proof is almost in the pudding. If you're looking for a nonclinical job, a large percent of them fall into one of these categories and the bottom here on this slide, and it's not like this description defines exactly what the role is. But within every industry, there are physician advisors, medical directors, and chief medical officers, chief medical information officers.

But you'll notice the reason that term "physician" is in there or "medical" is in there is because the only person that can fill that role is a physician, an MD, a DO, and MBBS, whatever the equivalent is, somebody with at least that four-to-six-year background in medical school. And then oftentimes they also need to have some clinical experience in residency training and possibly board certification, but not always.

So, to think that we're not suitable for a number of these roles, I think we need to put that aside. Now, this is one of those self-limiting beliefs. And I'm going to talk more about that in a minute when I get into what are the three major areas that we need to focus on when thinking about making a pivot from clinical to a nonclinical career.

So, here are the three components that I tend to teach my mentees, my coaches, my students, and my colleagues really. One is we've got to overcome some limiting beliefs. I call them self-limiting beliefs, usually.

Next, you have to find out about the specific jobs in the most popular industries to choose from. So, I would ask you right now, can you name three popular fairly lucrative nonclinical jobs that physicians would be able to move into? I think probably most of you can, but if you can't, well, I'm going to go through about 20 of them in about two minutes. Because this is going to be maybe something to think about later, as a result just of this episode, this presentation. Have you internalized some of the things I'm telling you, by the end of this, you should be able to name at least three, if not more, nonclinical careers that are very common, very popular.

But the final part of this, maybe three-legged stool besides knowing what you're suited for and what's available, getting over your self-limiting beliefs, we've also got to understand the tactics that most job transitions require when you're moving from a clinical to a nonclinical. And some of them are very specific to that sort of thing. The others, there are general principles and changing careers, whoever you are, whatever you're doing, but there are some that are unique to physicians.

And these are the three big areas that I talk about. And we'll go into these in some detail. So, I'm basically trying to give you in one fell swoop, sort of the overarching look at how one makes the change from clinical to nonclinical.

And the thing is, this method or this approach really applies to whether you are board-certified or not. it applies to pretty much any specialty background. Now, there are certain specialties that either would tend to include you or exclude you from certain careers, but in general, any specialty can do almost any nonclinical career with a little bit of preparation.

And then whether you've pursued additional certification or an advanced degree, you can get most of these jobs without that. But at times it's beneficial to get the additional certification or degrees. But that's more or less to be more competitive. It's not necessarily something that is always required or even often required.

So, when you're done and when you do this right, when you go through the process I'm talking about today, you can understand why you're already qualified. You're going to realize that these nonclinical careers are the next logical step in your professional growth. So that's another myth or another belief that we have to get over. And the belief that we're stepping back or that the pinnacle of our career is being a physician. Well, we're always going to be a physician, but we actually can step up and forward, not down or back. We're moving to the next phase of our career like a lot of people do. If an attorney is working as a defense attorney for 20 years and then becomes a judge or a justice, they don't look at that as a step back. Well, I'm abandoning my career as an attorney. No, that's the next step forward. Well, there are lots of nonclinical careers that in that situation are exactly the same. So, as we move forward, this is actually a step up. And I've been doing nonclinical careers for a long time. I'm still called a doctor and I'm still entitled to that because most of the things that I've done, if not all of them, have helped patients, but in a different way.

So, let's move forward here. Let's go through some of these steps in more detail and dig a little bit deeper and we'll go from there. The whole step one is the whole mindset thing. And there are many people who are half-ready to start a new career. There is something called the upper limit problem that I think Gay Hendricks wrote about in a book in which you seem to be making progress, but then something holds you back. You hit a limit and you can't go beyond that. And what it turns out, is often what are these self-limiting beliefs that are related back to something that happened in your childhood and you may or may not actually remember what happened. You may not even be aware that you have this belief, but at an unconscious level, it keeps you from earning more money. It keeps you from moving to a new job. So, this is very common.

Now, some of the fears that I see that come out are fears of letting your family down. There are some cultures in particular, or in some families, where being a physician or being an attorney, being a professional at that level, those are the only options. And if you don't do that, and if you deviate from that or move beyond that, they do see it as stepping back. There's a fear of looking bad. This is just a common human self-limiting belief that if you do something else., you're going to look bad. You might fail.

Obviously, we can fail, but we need to look at failure in a different way. As physicians, we're not used to failing, we are used to making that next step, that next step, that next step, passing each test, doing well. When I applied to medical school, I was rejected the first time. So, I understood what that failure was, but I just overcame that, kept working, studying, took some additional classes, retook the MCATs, moved on, and was accepted.

But that doesn't happen to most people. They have a string of successes from grammar school, high school, get into college, get into medical school, get into residency, and so forth. And then there's that fear of "I'm not good enough" and the fear of financial ruin. Now, many of you are making good money if you're full-time working in your intended career after residency and passing your boards and so forth, and you may have loans out there and a lot of expenses and you need to make a lot of money. But remember, it's at the expense if you're listening to this of near burnout, no fulfillment, the feeling like you're just churning patients. And so, we need to rethink how we look at that.

But the bottom line is that a lot of these things relate back to this statement that you don't have the necessary skills or expertise to do anything else that we started with. If you feel that way, then you're going to feel as though you're looking bad. You're not really doing the right thing. You're going to feel that you're going to fail because you don't have the necessary skills. You're going to feel that you're not good enough, or that you're not going to make enough money because you're not going to get that next job.

So, two things on this. The first one, the fear of letting people down, I would say, have a conversation with your loved ones and say I'm miserable. I really don't like what I'm doing for a variety of reasons. I've been burned out. I've been depressed. Whatever it is, unfulfilled, 99.9% of the time, your loved ones are going to say, "Sweetheart, do what is best for you. And if you can do it using what you've learned, fine". But do something that helps you, or allows you to work within your zone of genius and help people and not be stuck in some job that you hate. Nobody should do that. So, I think you'll find that your family will support you.

And then as far as the other things, the financial. You might have a temporary reduction. So, you've got to plan ahead. You shouldn't just stop working and then start looking for a job. A lot of these things, you can overlap very easily. Don't do anything foolish, but at the same time, you are a physician. They're not going to be able to pay a physician the salary of someone else that does not have that medical degree and doesn't have that background and experience. It might be a little less, but you're going to be working less hours. You are going to have no call. You're not going to be liable for a lawsuit. You're going to have so many other upsides that even if there's a small downside financially, it's really a good trade-off.

And then ultimately, usually you're going to get increases in pay whether it's normally through your employment and raises every year, or if you're a hospital administrator, something like that, you're going to have deferred comp and all kinds of things coming in. And really there's a lot of jobs that pay more than you are paid as a physician unless you're just really super hard-working, extremely busy, specialty surgeon, or interventional cardiologist or something like that.

All right. So that's step one. And obviously, I'm not going to get you through that step in just five minutes, but I think you have to try to think about what we've talked about and do some introspection and see if these things make sense to you.

Now, step two is a lot of people who move towards a job change. They're like, "Well, what do I do?" It's one of the most common comments I get in the Facebook group where I'm a moderator, the Physician Nonclinical Career Hunters Facebook group. And it's like, I don't know what to do. And the other members of the group when the new member says that they find it a little bit ironic because they've been exposed through the group to dozens and dozens of different jobs, different industries. And it's really a typical, and it's expected question, and that's why step two is to find out what's out there, what's available.

Do you have to find out every single job that any physician has ever done in any industry? No, but you should be exposed to at least 20 or 30 different jobs in 5 or 10 different industries so you can see what meshes with your personality and so forth.

So, I'm going to go through and list some of the jobs that I've talked about in the past that I hear about that I study and that I present, for example, in my Nonclinical Career Academy membership site. So, these are very common. Utilization management, probably the number one job in the Facebook group. That can be done at an insurance company, but it also can be done in the hospital setting. In fact, that's where it grew out of. You can be a hospital medical director for quality improvement, for CDI, which also has medical advisors, for utilization management, for informatics, not to mention all of the service lines where you can be a medical director.

And then you can move up to a chief medical officer, chief quality officer, chief medical information officer. And those are very high-paying jobs, a lot of responsibility, and a lot of impact on patients at the hospital where you're working. There are at least six types of medical writers, and you can do those jobs either as a freelancer or as an employee. So, there are 12 different iterations right there.

And then there's another medical writing job called medical communications, which I kind of carve-out usually because it's working for an ad agency to help pharmaceutical companies get the word out, get the word out on their new medications and existing medications and expansion of the applications of their medicines. And so, if you think about that, this is one of the overlaps between medical writing and the pharma industry, which I'll talk about in a minute.

Another one that's come up recently. I just put it in here. It's not the most common but accrediting organizations need physicians. Oftentimes they need physicians to be surveyors where they can get paid to do that. That's usually part-time, or they can be management in those companies. The ACCME, the accreditation council for CME. The leader of that has always been a physician. The ACGME, I believe, has always been led by a physician and they have surveyors. There are all kinds. The Joint Commission has a surveyor. There are jobs for physicians there because they know medicine.

And so when they're dealing with physicians in these institutions that they're serving, they have physicians that can speak their language and they get a little more respect when they're teaching them or trying to show them how they should be doing something when they've had an issue.

Insurance medicine is a big one. There are not as many jobs there, but there are definitely medical directors and there is a society of physicians for insurance medicine. So, it's definitely a bona fide and very popular job and physicians don't leave that job because it's very intellectually stimulating. And yet, it's very reasonable in terms of the lifestyle.

You got medical consulting. Now, when I usually talk about this, I'm talking about working for a big healthcare or management company like McKinsey or Accenture or BCG or Huron, or there are probably at least 15 of them. And there's lots and lots of jobs, but you could also be a freelance consultant yourself as a consultant I guess I should say, and you can teach other physicians about how to run their practice or how to do the finances or how to do branding for their practice. I've interviewed physicians doing all of those things.

Then in pharma, you've got medical directors, basically, in the medical affairs division, you've got medical science liaisons, or an MSL, which is a very popular position. That's open to physicians who have not gone through residency. Medical monitor. Oh, by the way, these jobs are also open to physicians who do have residency like the medical science liaison, the medical monitor, but they will take both depending on your background, for sure. Medical safety or pharmacovigilance, they need physicians and pharma for that.

Then we'll shift gears totally to expert witnesses, which is usually a part-time job. And you can cut your practice in half, see patients 20 hours a week and do medical expert witness job type work, chart reviews, and depositions 10 hours a week, and make a much higher total salary than you would just by practicing alone in most specialties.

There's a lot of home-based careers. There are some of these overlaps like the UM and even the CDI consulting, they can be done from home because of EMRs and so forth. But there are others, there are independent review organizations that you can do reviews offline or online with different disability companies and workers comp. And you can even go to state medical societies and do quality reviews on charts. So, it's a lot of home-based careers and we call them remote control careers sometimes.

And then physician coaching is a huge one. There are probably 10 or 12 different types of coaching from life coaching to career coaching and business coaching. But with that, you get to be like a physician in terms of what you're doing and how you're helping people, but there's almost no liability. There's no call. It's a much better lifestyle.

So, you need to review and get exposed to what's out there. The pros and cons of each. Does it involve travel? Does it involve other things that would not fit with your lifestyle? I have an example here of someone that followed my process. He was not residency trained. He came to this country as a foreign medical graduate. He tried to get into residency and he couldn't.

If you look at the bottom and work your way up, this is just a LinkedIn profile. And you can see that he was working as a medical assistant, but he did have the medical background for medical school. And then he became a scribe. And then he began working as a medical case manager, almost like a nurse and utilization review specialist, but he was in the hospital setting. He was exposed. He was networking. He was getting mentored by physicians who would help advise him and how he might move into something more lucrative and have more responsibility. And he was able after taking a short course on ICD-10 to get a job as a clinical documentation specialist, as a physician. So, he was there on sort of a level playing field with other physician CDI specialists and he carried forth on that. He was working for a larger company remotely, and he really enjoyed it.

You have to overcome that knowledge gap about available opportunities. So, what are the most popular industries? What positions exist in those? And then what are their characteristics? As I said a minute ago, are they remote? Are they face to face? Are they in an employed situation? Are they freelance? Are they 09:00 to 05:00 or are they flexible? So, which job fits you best? As you become aware of more jobs, you have a bigger choice of those that will fit with you.

And then the next step, of course, is where do you find those jobs and how do you find those jobs? So, if you do this right, you're going to start with this big overview. You're going to understand the differences. You're going to see if they align with your preferences as noted on this slide. And you can begin to identify how prepared you are and what additional education certification or degree you might need if any.

And another physician that was an OB, who really was unhappy and she looked around and she found through her studies that she liked to write. She knew that, and she took a course to help her set up her LLC for her freelance writing. And she did that for several years, developed relationships. She was doing that while she was working as pretty much a full-time laborist.

And then at one point after really making some good money on the side as a medical writer, she was contacted through LinkedIn about a job for a contract research organization CRO, which usually is providing support to pharmaceutical companies and they needed a technical writer.

And although she hadn't been a technical writer, she was definitely a good writer and she applied for the job and she got it very quickly and that worked out great and she stopped seeing patients clinically. So that's just another example. And it's an example of the kind of thing that you can do if you apply yourself and follow the principles that I'm talking about today.

Now, step three is, I could say to come up with a plan, but really the plan has so many little steps in it that I'll mention here in a second. But basically, some of the steps here, and I'll go back. This just shows you what a plan could look like. This would be a one-year plan that would probably work out pretty well.

The beginning is addressing the self-limiting beliefs, starting to look at job descriptions, really not so much because you want to apply, but because you just want to understand what they list in there, what's critically important for each type of job you might be choosing or thinking about choosing.

Early on, you should get a mentor. You should get a full LinkedIn profile set up and so forth. I'll go through this in the next slide. But each month or two, you can do additional steps in this process. Some of these are ongoing. Some of these you only do as you get towards the end of the process. So, at some point, you're going to have to put together a resume and a cover letter. You're going to have to make that very personal. You are going to have to switch it from a CV to a resume. And there's a big difference between the two. And then you're going to have to really narrow it down to where you're going to look, how you're going to send those materials in, and how to prepare for, let's say, a telephone or a video call, how to prepare for your interview.

So, I've listed these here. In the meantime, you will join professional organizations if there are any because they can help you. They can add more evidence and different courses and information about getting a job. Some of them have job boards. As I mentioned, you're going to complete your LinkedIn profile. You're going to network constantly. And you're going to network in a way that is not like staying after a meeting and having a drink in a conference room and just small talk and hand out your cards. No, you're going to network with people you already know, try and find contacts that they'd have other contacts in the industry you're looking for.

And then you need to learn the jargon. And then if you have to, you can say, well, maybe I need some additional courses or certifications or degrees. But again, I advise people that it's okay to take some additional courses, but if I were you and you're going to look for a degree, I'd probably start work on a degree while you're looking at that job. And with any luck, you can land the job while you're still in the process of getting the degree, and then maybe you can get your employer to help pay for it. So, there's a whole strategy there.

And like I said, the cover letter, the resume, and how to prepare for your interviews, and how to do research on the organization that you're interviewing with is a big deal as well. So, this is a big step. Step three has a lot of moving parts in it, but there's a science between each of them and there are experts that can be accessed. So, you put it all together and you look at the steps. You may already have a perfect LinkedIn profile, but maybe your resume needs some improvement. There are some things we can do together to do that. Or maybe you hire someone to look at your resume. It's not that expensive. And if you use someone who knows how to design a resume for this kind of job, it's probably worth it. And you probably want to write down some kind of a visual map of your plan. You might call it a Gantt chart or some process where you say, "Here's what I'm going to get done in week one, week two, month one, month two, month three, and so forth. So, there is a science to it.

Anyway, when you do it right you can make your career shift, get away from burnout, less stress, wake up in the morning, looking forward to work instead of dreading it, and you'll have the skills necessary if you listen to what I'm saying today, or learn more at the membership site that I'm going to talk about so that you can do this over and over again, that slide that I showed here actually can be reiterated each time. You can do it for the first job, the second job, the third job, it gets a little easier each time. Your advancement usually goes a little quicker when you're willing to make the change to a new job, but there are still great opportunities within organizations to move up as well.

So, I have a mentee, someone that I mentored and coached, and it was actually a friend of mine as well. We worked at the same organization. And he had reached the end of his career. I mean, he could have continued to work as a cardiothoracic surgeon, but he saw the writing on the wall. The number of open-heart surgeries was declining as the cardiologist became more and more aggressive in what they could do. A transcutaneous I guess is how I would put it. And he was a good leader and he ran some good programs and during the last two years of his work at the hospital as a surgeon, he did most of his online MBA, a very well-respected one.

And he was able to get a position as a physician advisor. I think it was a lot more than a physician advisor in the sense that he was doing not only helping with UM but quality improvement. And he was involved in root cause analysis. He had learned a lot about quality improvement in his role as the medical director for the cardiac program. So again, he just applied the same principles. He didn't have to do a lot of interviews. He just approached one of the hospitals they had privileges at, and he was able to move right into that position once he decided to stop working clinically, and he's still helping people provide in his hospital to provide really good patient care. So, it can be done. He has the know-how and confidence to apply to his next position if he decides to move on.

And it should be pretty obvious now that there's a series of logical steps that are best done in a deliberate way if you want to move forward from your clinical till your nonclinical. You should never just quit a job without a plan. Some people have done that successfully, but most of those have had big nest eggs that can tie them over. You really want to do small pivots. You want to do pilots. You want to do things part-time, do things on the side if you can. In the hospital setting, you can volunteer for things. And you do learn management by being the chair of a committee or two, and then working on the board, if you have an opportunity for that. So, there are ways to do it that I teach my students.

So, to reiterate, we're going to overcome the self-limiting beliefs and develop confidence in your transferable skills, which you have many of. You are going to identify some potential careers that will build on your education and training. Then you're going to become an expert at the tactics. You need to make that shift from using a mentor and networking to preparing your resume and acing your interview.

So, the other thing that's important here. And so, we're getting to the end of this part of it. And it's just to say that not wasting your time chasing useless information. This is one of the things that's a benefit of having a mentor or a coach sometimes, or a teacher or whatever you want to call that person. It's just to avoid the landmines, avoid the big mistakes that slow your progress.

And so, that is what I wanted to share with you. And especially in honor of my 200 episodes, I've kind of boiled down a lot of what I've learned in the last 30 minutes, just to give you a broad overview. And this is the path to a new fulfilling career that I want you to understand. And if you need help with that, then you should consider joining the Nonclinical Career Academy membership program. It just reopened recently. And so, if you'll indulge me for just a minute or two longer, let me tell you more about it.

So, think about what it would be like if you could find the career that you love, overcome burnout and experience joy and balance in your life and avoid another frivolous lawsuit. And feel like you're still in a career based on your medical knowledge and training. And that's why I developed the Nonclinical Career Academy so that I can help you to move in that direction quickly and conveniently.

The NCA membership program started as 12 courses back almost two years ago. Now with 22 in 7 major categories. Introductory, getting started, the important tactics. And then there are some really specific things about hospital management medical science liaison. There's a six-lesson course there that could pretty much get you fully into a position to interview and land your first job, locum tenens, and consulting.

And I set it up as a membership because then there's unlimited access to all the courses at whatever time you are available to do it. I could sell the courses individually, but I continue to add courses every couple of months or so. And a lot of that's based on the feedback I get. So, if this sounds like something that is interesting to you, then definitely to nonclinicalphysicians.com/joinnca and just look around. That's just a homepage where you can look and see there are a lot more details about it. And with the program, you can do these things. You can avoid burnout, you can move on, eliminate your lawsuits and be happy, basically, using your medical knowledge and experience.

The program does have a seven-day money-back guarantee. So, you can go in there and look around and see if it's really what you think will help you on your journey. And I've had many members who have been in it for over a year. But you can get in there and get three, four or five months under your belt, find that next career and move on. And that'll be a lot less expensive than buying a $3,000 or $4,000 or $5,000 course with this much content in it. And you only have to use the parts that you want to use and you'll have access for as long as you're a member.

The membership site closes on the 18th, Friday, the 18th of June. To learn more, just go to nonclinicalphysicians.com/joinnca. Check it out. And if it's something that you think is going to be helpful, sign up, look it over. If you don't like it, you can withdraw. Otherwise, start going through it. And let's get you on course to get your first nonclinical or non-traditional job and have you moved up to that next phase of your nonclinical professional life.

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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 post Discover Your First Nonclinical Job Even If You Don’t Know Where to Start – 200 appeared first on NonClinical Physicians.

8 Common Mistakes That Will Derail a Job Search – 180

John Jurica — Tue, 26 Jan 2021 11:00:00 +0000

And How to Avoid Them

I recently joined Michelle Mudge Riley on her free webinar to talk about mistakes that will derail a job search. We listed the major ones that we have witnessed. And we took questions from the audience.

I have narrowed down my list to EIGHT big mistakes that will derail a job search. I’ll go through each one, and provide examples where I can. I’ve seen all of these and made a few of these mistakes myself.

The Mistakes That Will Derail a Job Search.

#1 – Tunnel vision and not keeping an open mind

Regarding possible jobs
About how you will find a job
About your capabilities and transferable skills

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 really love. To find out more, contact Dr. Kate Atchley’s office at (865) 974-6526 or go to nonclinicalphysicians.com/physicianmba.

#2 – Being intimidated by a job description

Many of us have landed jobs even though we don’t meet the written “requirements”
Many qualifications are “nice to have” not “must-haves”

#3 – Preparing a CV rather than a resume

Might be OK for an academic position
Understand the difference
Focus on the summary with keywords
Emphasize accomplishments with measurable outcomes

#4 – Using the same cover letter and resume for different jobs or different industries

Example: “leadership role in the health insurance or pharma industry” is not appropriate
Each employer has its own needs, even for the “same” position
Customize resume and cover letter with unique experiences and skills for each potential employer

#5 – Depending too much on online applications and not leveraging networks

One of my guests found herself suddenly anxious to leave her clinical job; she reached out to former classmates and one of them informed her of a job as a life insurance medical director, she applied and landed the job, and loves it 10 years later
Networking is a foreign concept to physicians and many of us are competitive introverts
Networking is reconnecting with old medical school classmates and former co-residents directly, or with Doximity or LinkedIn

#6 – Not learning the jargon of the field we’re pursuing

hospital management, pharma positions, and every nonclinical job uses its own jargon
use in the cover letter, resume, and interviews

#7 – Not taking the interview seriously

Failure to bring copies of your resume, dress properly, arrive early, listen more than you talk, or ask enough questions

#8 – Not preparing sufficiently

Not understanding the job posting
Not doing enough research on the position or on the organization
Failing to check out financial reports, stock reports, Guidestar, Google, rating agencies

There are important issues at each step. But don’t get overwhelmed.

BONUS Mistakes to AVOID:

#1 – Failure to prepare a COMPLETE LinkedIn Profile is another mistake that will derail a job search.

#2 – After the interview but before accepting the offer; do your own personal investigation into the employer to see if it will be a good fit, with

Other employees
Customers
Physicians
Check for physician leadership if appropriate
Most of us don’t make or accept a marriage proposal after one or two dates – those that do are often disappointed – the same thing applies to most jobs – you’ll be married to this new employer potentially for decades – before accepting the offer do even MORE research – walk the halls if you can – speak to nurses if it is a hospital position – talk to future coworkers, etc.

Summary

Now go get that new job! And remember that we all make mistakes, so violating one or two of the above suggestions is not the end of the world. But by learning as you go and correcting the above errors, you will optimize your chances of landing that new job.

Before I go, I have a couple of books to recommend. These are books written by previous guests.

First – Andrew Wilner just released the audiobook version of his book The Locum Life. And he narrates it himself. Let’s show our support by going to andrewwilner.com and clicking the link that says Audible Book Now Available. I think it’s a cranberry-colored link. It is the definitive book on how to take on locums work and AVOID all of the potential landmines along the way.

Next – Mandy Armitage just released her new book. We will be discussing the book and her publishing journey next week. But, I believe you can get the book now if you are thinking about a career in medical writing. It is called From Clinical Practice to Medical Writing: A Career Transition Guide. And you can get a copy by going to ArmitageMedicalWriting.com and click the BOOK tab at the top of her home page. [Neither of these is affiliate links.]

Links for Today's Episode:

Download This Episode:

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

If you enjoyed today’s episode, share it on Twitter and Facebook, and leave a review on iTunes.

Podcast Editing & Production Services are provided by Oscar Hamilton

Disclaimers:

Many of the links that I refer you to, and that you’ll find in the show notes, 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, that I have personally used or am very familiar with.

The post 8 Common Mistakes That Will Derail a Job Search – 180 appeared first on NonClinical Physicians.

Your Resume is the Passport to That Desirable Job – 157

John Jurica — Mon, 24 Aug 2020 09:55:50 +0000

Interview with Dr. Heather Fork

In this week's PNC Podcast episode, Dr. Heather Fork describes why your resume is so important and how to optimize it.

Heather completed her medical degree at the University of Texas and her residency in dermatology at the University of Miami – Jackson Memorial Program. And she is a Master Certified Coach through the Coaches Training Institute.

But after running her practice for 9 years, she found that it just wasn't a good fit.

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, with over 650 graduates. And, unlike other programs, which typically run 1 – 1/2 to 2 years, this program only takes a year to complete. Recently, Economist Magazine ranked the business school #1 in the world for the Most Relevant Executive MBA.

While in the program, you'll participate in a company project, thereby contributing to your organization. As a result, the University of Tennessee PEMBA students bring exceptional value to their organizations.

Graduates have taken leadership positions at major healthcare organizations. And they've become entrepreneurs and business owners.

By joining the University of Tennessee physician executive MBA, you will develop the business and management skills needed to find a career that you really love. To find out more, contact Dr. Kate Atchley’s office by calling (865) 974-6526 or go to nonclinicalphysicians.com/physicianmba.

Heather's Journey

Heather took some time off to regroup once she decided to leave clinical practice. After considering several vocations, she sought training as a life and career coach long before it was a popular thing to do. Her clients were mostly physicians. She founded The Doctor's Crossing in 2010. And she has been helping physicians find careers that bring them more joy and fulfillment ever since. Along the way, she became an expert at converting your CV into a resume.

Pay attention to what you're doing that nobody's paying you for, because that could be a clue to a career direction.

One-on-one coaching was very fulfilling, but it only allowed her to reach a small number of physicians. So she created The Carpe Diem Resume Kit to reach a larger audience with her CV to resume conversion advice. With that now completed, her next step is to create a LinkedIn Kit.

The Black Holes of Your Resume

During this episode, we discuss a number of issues that can reduce the effectiveness of your resume. And that will prevent you from getting that all-important interview.

The recruiter doesn't see your resume. It didn't pass the applicant tracking system (ATS).
The recruiter sees it. But she doesn't see what she's looking for. She clicks to the next one.
Your resume looks good. But the other applicant did a better job of translating their skills in a compelling way.

In addition to crafting a well-written resume, it's beneficial to find someone inside the company to send it to. It could be the recruiter themself, or a physician already working there. Then the physician can put in a good word, and make it more likely for your resume to be read and acted on.

Finally, if you're early in your career, you may need other experiences to fill in gaps in your skills. Some ways to do that could be serving on a committee, taking a course through a professional society, or doing some nonclinical work on the side such as chart review. This will demonstrate your commitment and bolster skills that can be applied in that new job.

Summary

In this episode, Heather Fork describes how to make your resume stand out. And that may be the most important step on your journey to land your first nonclinical job. Get your FREE CV to Resume Checklist from Heather Fork at doctorscrossing.com/resume.

Links for Today's Episode:

Doctors Crossing Web Site
CV and Resume Preflight Checklist
Carpe Diem Resume Kit [ Note: I am NOT an affiliate seller and receive no compensation for recommending this awesome tool for you. – JJ ]

Last reminder of a great physician career conference coming up very soon:

2020 NEXT Intensive Series: Over 30 potential nonclinical careers presented in this new virtual conference: September 4 – 9, 2020.

Download This Episode:

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

The Nonclinical Career Academy Membership Program recently added a new MasterClass!

I've created 16 courses and placed them all in an exclusive, low-cost membership program. The program provides an introduction to dozens of nontraditional careers, with in-depth lessons on several of them. It even includes my full MSL Course. There is a money-back guarantee, so there is no risk to signing up. And I'll add more courses each and every month.

Check out the home page for the Academy at nonclinicalphysicians.com/joinnca.

Thanks to our sponsor…

Thanks to the UT Physician Executive MBA program for sponsoring the show. It’s an outstanding, highly rated, MBA program designed for working physicians. It is just what you need to prepare for that fulfilling, well-paying career. You can find out more at nonclinicalphysicians.com/physicianmba.

If you enjoyed today’s episode, share it on Twitter and Facebook, and leave a review on iTunes.

Podcast Editing & Production Services are provided by Oscar Hamilton

Disclaimers:

The information presented on this blog and related podcast is for entertainment and/or informational purposes only. It should not be construed as 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 Your Resume is the Passport to That Desirable Job – 157 appeared first on NonClinical Physicians.