|
|
|
|
|
The
Job Hunt |
Years of hard work are behind you. The exams are over and assignment deadlines are finished. But the payments on your student loans start in 6 months and you haven't found a job in your field yet. What's next?The search for jobs has become more difficult in recent years regardless of your field of study. Luckily for epidemiologists, biostatisticians and other public health professionals demand remains strong. However you still need to locate the perfect job in the perfect location and get yourself noticed by the recruiter remembering that hundreds of others are probably applying for the same position. The Right Location Years ago people would take jobs across the country for the opportunity to see someplace different while planning to move to their long term home after a couple of jobs. Today that's not necessarily the case. While people will change jobs multiple times, the difficulty of buying a home means they'll probably stay in the same location for most of their career. Starter homes are often lifetime homes in today's market. To pick the correct location you will need to answer a series of questions for yourself. ♦ Where are there enough employers in your subspecialty that you will have opportunities throughout your career? ♦ Do you want to live near family? ♦ Do you plan to raise a family and, if so, what is the quality of the local schools? ♦ Are there local leisure opportunities that mirror the activities that you enjoy? ♦ Does the local political climate align with your views or at least not actively oppose them? ♦ Is the area growing or stagnating?
What is Your Ideal
Job? The salary is fantastic but what do the benefits look like? Remember to compare things like disability insurance (both long & short term), retirement matching funds, annual vacation days and whether or not they roll over, tuition reimbursement, PSLF qualification, sabbatical opportunities, reimbursement for commuting expenses, etc. If you're looking at working for a governmental entity and staying for long enough to qualify for some retirement benefits, how stable is their retirement fund? Staying for 10 years to get a partial pension may end up being worth nothing if the pension fund is going to go bankrupt. The PRBC covers some of the loss in the event of a pension fund bankruptcy but not all of it. What are the employment opportunities for your partner and does the employer offer assistance in their job search? What are the opportunities for advancement? Does the employer typically promote from within or do they hire from outside?
Choosing the Wrong
Job is More Expensive than You Think
♦ If you've bought a home then on top of the standard sales expenses, you may incur a loss if you are selling at the wrong time. ♦ Employers are savvy. They want to know why you're changing jobs and your answer can impact their offer to you. ♦ The reputation of your prior employer(s) will attach to you at some level. Cleanup on Aisle 9 Before you start sending out a lot of job applications you need to take a look at what the potential employer will see when they look at you as a potential employee. Take a moment to Google yourself. See what comes up first . Make a list of everything you wouldn't want a potential employer to see. Make a list of everything you'd want them to see that doesn't come up in the search. As valuable as social media is for keeping up with far flung friends & family, it can be a nightmare when you're job hunting. Every post you've made in the past that now makes you cringe when you look at today needs to be deleted before a potential employer finds it. Take a look at the "good" posts in your feed too. What do they tell a potential employer about you? Do you look like someone who would fit into their corporate culture or do you look like you'd be a square peg in a round hole? Do you look like someone who would appreciate a job or like someone who is just checking a box because, in reality, you're living off trust fund distributions? Do you look like someone who's never spent a moment outside of New England but now you're applying for a job in deep red Texas? It's expensive to execute an employee search and recruiters aren't going to go out on a limb for you - they're going to pick the candidate who is going to make them look best to their own boss. That's the employee that fits in, works well with others, and doesn't make excessive demands. There is one social media site where you must have a presence if you are looking for a good job - LinkedIn. While I might disagree with calling it a social media site, the reality is that it can tell an employer a lot about you and it is important to get that correct. There are many companies who coach people on building a solid LinkedIn profile - this is important enough to research the criteria and follow them. Stuff the Pipeline The internet is full of information about you and it is available to everyone who takes the time to look. You've updated your social media presence so the bad content that you put out is gone. You've created or updated your LinkedIn profile so it looks polished and accurate. This video will give you tips for making your LinkedIn page more visible in 2026. Now it is time to to stuff the internet pipeline with more good information about you. You're going to quickly build a one page website about yourself. First you need to go to one of the companies that sells domain names (URLs) and web hosting. GoDaddy is a good option for most beginners. You want to buy www.yournamehere.com That will ensure that anytime someone searches on your name this page will come up (after a few days because the internet needs to find it and include it in their index). If the company you buy your domain name and web hosting from also offers branded email then add that too. Sending email as jsmith@jsmith.com looks a lot more professional than jsmith@gmail.com and you want to look as professional as possible in this web search. At a bare minimum this page needs to include your resume and a good headshot. But this is the opportunity for you to expand what people know about you. If you were part of an article on campus about a project you were involved in - include a brief description and a link to the article. If you are writing a blog or articles about topics that mirror your specialty - include links to those. Find a way to include anything that validates you as a great potential employee and link it here. Understand the Impact of AI I know it is hard to believe but 15 years ago EpiMonitor readers were complaining because they weren't getting personalized confirmations that their job applications had been received. Just 5-10 years prior to that it was the norm that a recruiter would personally acknowledge your submission. Around the time of the great recession that disappeared and suddenly employers were scanning all resume submissions for matching keywords to narrow the funnel of which candidates would even get a brief look from a human recruiter. Today, with the rapid integration of AI, this situation has gotten dramatically worse. Suddenly your resume and all other digital mentions of you are filtered by an AI tool. That means you need to understand how these tools are looking at you and modify all your materials to appeal to the tool. This site will give you tips for building a resume that will work in the AI era and the rules for your resume can easily be applied to other content too. Now the Search Can Begin in Earnest You've defined the job & location you want. You've built your online persona to fit that job so you have the best chance of being considered. Now you need to locate the jobs that are appropriate for you to apply to. There are a myriad of job boards with endless options. Many of them however require that you apply through them. To give you more control you can do a web search for individual states or even companies - if they're listing their jobs on a public job board then they've also got an internal job board on their own website too. Organization is the key at this point. Take some time and build a spreadsheet that includes all the criteria that is important to you in a job. List them and list each job that you apply to. Track the date of the application and then check which of your criteria this job meets. Don't just apply to any open job that you qualify for. You're going to spend about 2,000 hours per year in this job and you deserve to find a job that is a good fit. Those that fail to do this end up job hopping and repeating this entire process over and over again. If at first you don't succeed You survived the educational process and you're standing on the edge of success and fulfillment. If you don't find the perfect full time position in the beginning consider taking an internship or a flexible / part time position. You'll note that this month we have doubled the number of listings for that type of job in our public health job openings. There are ways to get relevant experience if you look hard enough - you don't need to work outside your field. You should never discount the power of a personal referral - even if the referrer isn't in your specialty. People hire people because they've been recommended by others that they know and trust. The same is true for networking. You cannot discount the value of making a face-to-face connection. Put yourself out there. Take the risk. Make sure everyone in your circle of influence knows what you do and what you are looking for in a job. At the same time, make sure you reciprocate. The person you help find a job is going to bend over backwards to help you as are their friends and family. ■ |
|
|
