Health Careers Blog

Readers and candidates often ask: "Why is education important?" So, as students around the country crack open the books and get back to school, let us count the ways education matters! Not only does your education impact your career, it impacts your overall quality of life. From your job options, networking contacts, to your general knowledge of basic and advanced subjects, education is a key ingredient which significantly impacts the long-term success of your career in any industry. Education is particularly important in the dynamic, fast-paced, and high-tech field of healthcare.

Additionally, have you ever noticed that the word LEARN contains the word EARN? Perhaps that is because the more you learn, the more you earn! Consider these health careers, and their respective educational requirements and salaries, for example:

• Medical Jobs with No College Degree: Pay $25,000-40,000 on average
• Allied Careers (most require 2-year Associates' Degree): Pay $40,000-65,000+
• Advanced Nursing Careers (Master's Degree): $60,000-90,000 annual pay
• Pharmacist Careers (PharmD): $80,000-115,000 annual salary
• Physician Careers (Doctorate Degree): $150,000-500,000+ annual earnings

True story: a very qualified, well-trained physician recently submitted a CV to me for a practice opportunity, and the hiring hospital executive cringes and balks. What happened? Believe it or not, the candidate's choice of email address was the cause for pause! I can't share the address, due to confidentiality, but let's just say it didn't conjure up a positive image for any future employee, much less a physician!

Keep in mind, your email address is often situated on your CV directly underneath, or very near your name. Do you really want someone to see "Susan Smith, RN" and then underneath your name, it says "hot-mama[at]aol.com"? That's not an ideal image for a job seeker! Hiring managers do notice, and they do get turned off by silly, unprofessional, or inappropriate email addresses.

Try to avoid any of the following potential issues when creating your email address: anything sensual or sexual in nature, anything that could be construed as politically incorrect, or insensitive to any religion, race, gender, or age. As a healthcare professional, it’s also a good idea to avoid anything about bodily harm, death, or anything that can make you sound particularly mean or evil. (I've seen all of these mistakes in various email addresses, and employers notice.) The wrong email address may not make or break your candidacy, but it could definitely create a negative first impression or image in those first few crucial seconds when the recruiter or hiring manager initially scans over your résumé.

It's so easy to get a new email address, if your current address is not as professional as you'd like, or if it doesn't send the right message to a potential employer. There are numerous free email accounts available online through Gmail, Hotmail, Yahoo, and more. Therefore, you can easily set up a new, basic email account with a more “normal” email address. It's a great idea to have a separate email address for your job search anyway, so not only will you be professional, you'll be organized too!

The VP of HR at Johns Hopkins Hospital, Pamela Paulk, gave me a few great tips on getting the job you want at the hospital where you want to work. And, if some of her pointers sound familiar, it’s because they are! Ms. Paulk shared these tips with me, regarding applying for hospital jobs:

• Know what you want: Know which type of environment, or hospital, you will work best in, and focus on that. Do you prefer larger hospitals or small? Or maybe a hospital environment isn’t even for you at all, but medical office jobs are the way to go? Either way, think about it before you begin your medical job search.
• Be on time: Yes it sounds so simple, but being late is a surefire way to make a bad impression, or, worse yet, miss your job interview slot altogether! Paulk states that she personally doesn’t scrap a candidate for tardiness alone, but some hiring managers do, and either way it certainly counts against you. Furthermore, due to her busy schedule, she may not ever have another opportunity to interview the candidate if they miss their allotted interview time.
• Make your CV (or résumé) stand out, but not with typos! Johns Hopkins hospital, for example, hires about 1,500 to 1,800 people annually, but they receive about 10,000 applications monthly! Therefore, “getting your résumé to the top of the stack” is key, says Paulk. Actually, just keeping it in the stack is important too. Proofread, and accentuate your strengths on your CV. Don’t give the screeners any reason to rule you out.
• Apply for multiple jobs: If you are very focused on a particular employer, apply for multiple positions, in a variety of departments, to increase your chances of getting your foot in the door. Even if the job you get is not your top choice, you can transfer later when something else opens up. Once you’re employed, other positions may become available to better fit your career goals for the long-term.
• Work your connections. In other words, network! Paulk, for example, worked as a hospital consultant for years before she took the job at Hopkins. Her connections at a variety of hospitals helped her to decide where she wanted to work, and introduced her to executives nationwide, so she had many options when she decided to look for permanent employment.

According to ExecuNet, a business, career, and executive recruiting network, career opportunities at executive levels are expected to grow by about 10%, based on a recent survey of over 140 executive recruiters. Of the industries expected to see the most growth in executive-level hiring, healthcare topped the list. Healthcare was followed by the Energy/Utilities sector, with Life Sciences in third place. For more information on the survey, or about available positions, visit ExecuNet online. For career planning tips and possible career paths for healthcare executive jobs, visit the new Healthcare Executive Career Profile!

I recently had the pleasure of speaking with Pamela Paulk, the Vice President of Human Resources for Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore, Maryland. Johns Hopkins is one of the top medical facilities in the country, according to US News and World Report, among others. If you weren't already familiar with Johns Hopkins, you may have been made aware of this prestigious institution via a recent TV series, simply titled Hopkins. Ms. Paulk shared some valuable insight into the various career opportunities available to medical professionals interested in working at Johns Hopkins Hospital. Additionally, she shared some thoughts on hospital jobs in general, including the positive and negative aspects of working for such a large medical facility. Most of the information from my interview with her is included in the Johns Hopkins Employer Profile, and some of our conversation I'll feature in a future article about medical job search.

Over 1.5 million healthcare professionals are registered on LinkedIn, a professional networking website. In addition to networking to help with your medical job search, LinkedIn may also be used to research healthcare companies, such as potential employers, vendors or service providers or business partners. If you are interviewing for a medical job, you could also research your interviewer's background, experience, and education, to find common ground or areas of interest, which may help to break the ice or make a stronger personal connection when you interview. Additionally, LinkedIn may be utilized to ask questions and obtain information about the healthcare industry, or to just connect with former coworkers and catch up on old times!

Once you have completed your online profile, however, you can’t just sit back and wait for something to happen, or just wait for others to connect with you. To get the most out of LinkedIn, you should log on often and “work” your network, and actively take advantage of the many features LinkedIn offers. For a few tips, see LinkedIn for Healthcare Professionals.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) released its monthly report today for the month of July. The healthcare industry showed a repeat performance of the previous month, adding another 33,000 jobs for July, on top of June's increase of 34,000, while all other industries (except mining), continued to lose jobs.

The health care industry has added 368,000 jobs over the past 12 months, while other industries have lost thousands, and some industries, such as construction and manufacturing, have declined by hundreds of thousands of jobs over the past year.

According to the BLS report, of the medical industry jobs added in July, about 10,000 of those were hospital jobs, and 21,000 were in ambulatory healthcare, or out-patient, medical office-based jobs.

Not only is the health care industry not hampered by the tough economy, the trying times may actually add to the demand for healthcare. Stress has been shown to increase incidence of illness in many patients, according to the American Psychological Association.

I have recently received several questions from readers about interviewing and how to prepare for a job interview. Interviewing is often one of the most stressful parts of the job search process, as it may make or break your career advancement. Hospitals are particularly notorious for long, grueling interview processes, due to the often bureaucratic structure of hospitals, and the many levels of management which must all agree on hiring decisions.

As long as you take a few minutes to prepare, prior to your meeting with your potential employer, you will have a great interview!

After your interview, please share your experiences with the Health Careers community – we’d love to hear your interview stories in the health careers forum. What’s the strangest thing that’s ever happened to you on an interview? What is the toughest question or strangest question you’ve ever been asked in an interview? I look forward to hearing from you, regarding your real-life interviewing scenarios!

Interviewing Tips from Your Guide to Health Careers:

• Preparing for the Interview (Medical Job Interview Tips)
• 7 Deadly Sins of Interviewing (How NOT to Get the Job!)

Over the years, in my role as a medical recruiter, I have been contacted many times by nurses or doctors who are interested in leaving their clinical roles for a career in healthcare recruiting. Most often these inquiries are more specifically related to recruiting nurses or doctors, but there are many other types of healthcare recruiters needed, from medical office staff to hospital executives and everything in between.

If you love to talk to people, and think you would enjoy pounding the phones for hours each day, "smiling and dialing" as we call it, then a career in healthcare recruiting may be for you. If you are a clinician looking to make the transition into a non-clinical role, your clinical background may help you gain credibility with clients and job seekers, but that will only take you so far.

In addition to the clinical knowledge, you must learn to quickly assess candidates' qualifications, goals, and credentials, and motivations to determine if they could be a fit for the respective job opening you're representing. You must be comfortable in a sales-type of presentation, communicating the advantages, perks and benefits of a job and an employer, be able to overcome objections, and to move on after being turned down repeatedly.

Prior clinical experience is not a requirement for medical recruiting. Actually, many former clinicians find they don't enjoy recruiting, as they may not be used to a desk job. However, others may flourish in a recruiting role as a former clinician. If you have an interest in the medical field, especially if you already have some recruiting or sales experience, you may want to explore a career in healthcare recruiting.

The Medical Group Management Association (MGMA) released its latest data regarding physician earnings. The 2008 report is based on 2007 annual compensation, and the results show that compensation for specialists was generally flat, and some specialists even showed a decline in average income when compared to data from the previous year.

The following specialties experienced a decline or remained flat, failing to keep pace with inflation, according to the MGMA:

• Invasive Cardiologists (down 0.18 percent)
• Emergency Medicine Physicians
• Oncologists

The following specialists managed a slight increase in annual pay:

• Non-invasive cardiologists (up 11.72 percent)
• Urologists (up 5.5 percent)
• Anesthesiologists (up 6.43 percent)

Additionally, primary care physicians (internal medicine, pediatrics, and family practice) reported an increase of about 3.35 percent, according to the MGMA report. These figures include adjustments for inflation.

According to William F. Jessee, MD, FACMPE, President and CEO of the MGMA, this increase for primary care physicians is not much of a consolation to the physician community, due to practice costs and overhead continuing to rise at “staggering rates.” To learn more, visit the MGMA online.

More on Physician Careers from your Guide:

• Physician Career Profile
• Physician Compensation and Town Size