PRN is pleased to be able to follow the progress of clinical physicians as they search for new non-clinical careers. This second entry from an Internist in Los Angeles is titled Deciding to Look for Another Career:
After doing computerized medical records for 2 years, I was not sure if my job title should be physician or medical secretary. I was convinced that computerized medical records were here to stay, and I had come to the conclusion that I no longer wanted to do clinical medicine.
I did not have a clue about how to discover the correct match for a new career. My idea of a possible next career was ANYTHING EXCEPT WHAT I WAS DOING. I talked to a friend who was in the pharmaceutical industry, and went to a local pharmaceutical physician conference. Administration also seemed like a good fit. My dilemma in my job search was the pharmaceutical industry preferred people who were subspecialists and Administration preferred people that had previous administration experience already.
Over the next 3 years, I went on a total of 3 interviews. Two were opportunities that I heard about from friends, and one I heard about from a headhunter. One was an all day interview for an Administration position, where I met a different set of people each hour for 8 hours. It was rather grueling, and I discovered I was not a very polished interviewee. Another interview was for a pharmaceutical medical liaison position, for a company that sold Insulin. The interview involved me being flown back to New Jersey. I was to prepare a speech on any subject I wanted and present it. It took a lot of time to prepare the speech, but I enjoyed researching, writing and giving the speech. Unfortunately I did not have much time to prepare for the interview in addition, since I was working fulltime. The speech was an overwhelming success, but the interviews were just okay. I lost out to an Endocrinologist.
In three years I had only had 3 interviews, all rejections and it was clear at the rate I was going I was going, I was not going to find a new career. I got a book on interviewing, but somehow I knew this interviewing only for whatever showed up was not a very scientific approach to finding a job. Ultimately I discovered that one of my problems was I was running away from medicine rather than running toward a new chosen career. In order to stop drifting along in a job search I needed a destination.
