Job Search Tips

During your interview for a healthcare position, your potential employers are likely to ask plenty of questions that address your personal goals, your level of clinical and academic experience, and the way you tend to behave when faced with challenges or difficult decisions. You'll probably be asked about your approach to the diagnostic process and how you typically put together a treatment plan. You'll be asked how you deal with chart and case histories, and you may even be presented with clinical questions or hypothetical scenarios that you'll need to answer correctly in order to demonstrate the strength of your knowledge base. But when all of these questions have been addressed, it's time for you to ask a few questions of your own.

You've been on the job market for a while now, and the gap between your last period of employment and your next is beginning to look less like a sprint and more like a marathon. You'd be hard pressed to say exactly what you expected from the job search process…but it isn't this. At the very least, you imagined you'd be working again within a few weeks or months. And in the best case scenario, you expected a new job that represented a clear step up from your last one.

Nurse practitioners, transition coaches, orderlies, and healthcare technicians of all kinds are in high demand right now across almost every geographic region of the country. But healthcare positions like these tend to come in a wide variety of forms, and sometimes five different positions with the same title may involve five very different sets of responsibilities and very different weekly schedules.

Recruiters can be powerful advocates during your job search, but it's wise for job seekers to understand the role recruiters play in the hiring process, and it's important to recognize that most recruiters aren't working for the candidates they assist — they're working for their own employer clients. In other words, recruiters aren't getting paid to help you, They're getting paid by hiring managers to staff open positions.

Impressing employers and landing a job in any field can be challenging, and in a competitive industry like hospitality, you may need a little extra flair to set yourself apart from a long line of qualified applicants. Especially if you’ll only be available during specific hours of the week and you’ll need to convince potential employers to accommodate your schedule.

The word “internship” is not very well defined in our culture, and while it may suggest a world of opportunity and a doorway into the corporate world for some, for others it means easy access to free labor and an opportunity to legally exploit those who aren’t in a position to protect themselves.

Asking for help doesn't come easily to most people. In a workplace environment, the difficulty compounds further for employees who are young, those who are trying to prove their value, or those who have been called out in the past for being "needy." For one reason or another, we seem to live in a culture that claims to value teamwork, but often values self-reliance more.

Most of the time, it's better for job seekers to be bold rather than overly cautious, and to err on the side of too much risk instead of sitting still and playing it safe. After all, the worst thing that usually results from a job search blunder is a simple rejection.