Now get a better job!

Okay, so you’ve got a college degree after you earned your GED. Well, that’s great, right? Your college degree allows you to get far better job options.

You are intelligent and well educated, and you have a great capacity for hard work. You are disciplined, persistent, and altruistic. You are empathetic as well as kind and are trained to talk about uncomfortable or scary matters.

Resist any initial reaction to dismiss them as nothing special/take for granted qualities that nobody would write a paycheck for. I believe these innate attributes become so highly honed through our education and years in practice that they are highly applicable in other milieus.

Your role in considering particular career opportunities is to frame how these skills add value to the new professional engagement you are considering.

Networking

Networking is systematically seeking out and becoming acquainted with other individuals in the mutual service of professional goals.

Thus, a) it requires action, b) it involves novelty, c) it is purposeful, and d) it is often mutual.

Networking requires you to move outside of your comfort zone, and ask for help. Novelty means seeking new sources of guidance, rather than your residency director department head, whose universe you may already have moved beyond.

The mutual aspect implies interacting with peers whose professional lives are in different worlds than our own and where the potential exists for reciprocal benefits from the relationship. Stay connected and as interested in your contacts, their lives, and their careers as you hope they will be interested in you.

Your resume

If considering roles outside of the “normal” arena, it is more important to have a well-polished resume.

Your CV might consist of detailed lists of your education, professional experiences, lectures, publications, etc. A reader must infer what you accomplished in your professional roles, or what your particular talents and abilities are.

For example, your CV might state you were a Department Chairman, but your resume indicates how large a faculty you managed, programs you developed, growth in grant support, employee productivity, etc.

The resume, not the CV, gives a dynamic picture of my activities as a department head.

Your CV’s length is in part because it catalogs everything. You send the same CV to each and every job you are applying for.

Your resume hits the highlights, concentrates on your most recent work experiences, and should be tailored to the particular job you are interested in. You can find lots of “how to write a resume” pieces on the internet.

Elevator Pitches

You’ve probably heard this term in the context of a venture capitalist or CEO giving someone the length of an average elevator ride to pitch their business idea.

It’s an excellent way of making a company or individual focus on who they are, what their key mission or product is, and why they are better than the competition.

We should all have an elevator pitch. Your research during this phase of looking at alternative careers should be geared to developing your story.

You say:
I’m John Brown. I practiced general internal medicine at a multi-specialty clinic with a group practice model in the Southwestern United States for 20 years.

I developed workshops to educate peers and support staff in improved billing and coding practices resulting in steady year-over-year improvement in our reimbursement rates with other factors held constant.

I’m interested in a career change allowing me to work as a physician executive in the medical insurance industry.

They hear (and would also see in your resume):

• He’s seasoned
• He has initiative
• He produced and delivered
• He’s ready for an evolution in his career

You did not tell them, nor did they want to hear (what they’d find in your CV): Where you went to medical school or did your residency. How many papers you wrote, grants you held, or lectures you gave.