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Alternatives to Medical School 2000 Panel Notes
Remarks by Panelists Questions and Answers
Panelists
Charlene D’Ambrosio, Sales and Marketing, CIGNA Group Insurance
Jared Greenberg, Associate, the Advisory Board Company
Lori Hollander, Manager, Reproductive Hormone Study, HUP
Amanda Reyes, Research and Evaluation, Philadelphia Health Management Corporation
Charlene D’Ambrosio, Sales and Marketing, CIGNA Group Insurance
Charlene graduated from Penn in 1999 with a Biology major. She had a marketing internship in CIGNA’s healthcare division while she was in college and took a full-time position with CIGNA after graduation. After a year, she began training for a position in sales. Since sales requires a fair amount of number crunching and data analysis, Charlene finds her background in Statistics and Math especially useful.
Charlene found her job on her own, after using Jobtrak and other Penn resources. She advised students to try to focus their searches on a couple of fields or industries. Otherwise, it can be too overwhelming. When she was looking, she decided to concentrate on the Pharmaceutical and Health Insurance Industries. She stressed the importance of finding a contact name and address, rather than submitting materials to an anonymous human resources person.
Jared Greenberg, Associate/Med Student, Advisory Board Company/Penn Med
Jared graduated from Penn in 1999 with a BBB major and spent a year working at the Advisory Board Company, a strategic research firm in D.C. whose clients provide healthcare services or products. He then applied to medical school and started at Penn Med this fall. Jared took a year off in order to see the business side of the healthcare world. He found his job through on-campus recruiting and praises Career Services in general, and Peggy Curchack in particular, for helping him a great deal with his resume, cover letters, and interviewing. At the Advisory Board, Jared worked on the custom research side of the firm, consulting with members (i.e. clients), designing and performing whatever research was necessary, and authoring reports. He estimates that he worked on about 100 different short-term projects over the course of his year. He enjoyed the somewhat laid-back corporate culture in which a large number of his colleagues were under 30.
Jared views his year off as a great break from the academic grind and an overall positive experience. He loved being able to focus on the work during the day and then leave it at the office at night. Re-entering school and its 24/7 demands, he said, was a little difficult. He was very encouraging about the marketability of pre-med skills and urged students to go after anything they think they might enjoy.
Lori Hollander, Manager, Reproductive Hormone Study, Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania
Lori was on a pre-med track until her junior year when she switched to a Women’s Studies and Political Science doublemajor. Currently, Lori manages a NIH-funded study on the effects of reproductive hormones on women. She works at HUP and reports to the two physicians who designed and now oversee the study. As manager, Lori writes and conducts interviews of the studies’ subjects and works closely with a data analysis team. Her pre-med background in Science, Statistics, and Math is useful to her everyday. In addition to her work on the study, Lori has time to conduct her own research and plans to publish an article this year. She likes working at the hospital among physicians and researchers and enjoys HUP’s casual atmosphere and the flexible hours her job allows her.
Lori’s advice to job-searchers is to “use everybody you know.” (She heard about her current job through someone she’d met at her gym.) She also advises former pre-meds (or people planning to take some time off) to cite specific coursework on their resumes and to be prepared to talk about concrete skills and knowledge in an interview. Finally, she advocates that students “fight for it”—set your sights on a job and go after it aggressively. Commitment and serious interest will be rewarded.
Amanda Reyes, Research and Evaluation, Philadelphia Health Management Corporation
Amanda graduated from the College in 1999 with a BBB and History and Sociology of Science doublemajor. She had worked at the Philadelphia Health Management Corporation as an intern while she was at Penn and continued with them after she graduated. She found the original internship through Career Services interncenter.com, and encouraged students to use this resource. “You never know what gems you might find there.” PHMC is a non-profit, public health organization that addresses local health needs through education, research, technical assistance, and direct services. Among other things, Amanda’s research includes designing and carrying out focus-group studies and maintaining a community health database.
Amanda urges students to take advantage of the many organizations and groups working in healthcare in the Philadelphia area. She went on to say that pre-med skills are indeed transferable to all kinds of non-lab environments. Pre-meds learn to absorb and assimilate large quantities of information quickly, to analyze data, and to be flexible and creative thinkers. All of these skills will be welcome in the non-profit world.
Questions and Answers
What can I do now if I want to look for a non-clinical job? All four panelists stressed the importance of internship experience. If you think you might not want to go to medical school, or even if you might want to take some time off, consider some kind of research or business experience that would take you out of the lab for awhile. If possible, volunteering is a terrific way to expose yourself to different things. As Lori pointed out, unpaid internships are often the most challenging and exciting.
Also, if you have time, courses such as healthcare management, marketing, or communications can help you become a more attractive candidate. In addition, any course that helps improve your writing or analytical skills will be valuable.
Any advice about resumes or cover letters?
- Make sure everything is proofread and grammatically correct! Based on her experience hiring staff for her study, Lori could not emphasize more strongly the importance of a well-written letter and an error-free resume.
- It’s the skill set that matters. Emphasize and highlight the skills you have learned, and do not worry if your experience is limited to lab research or volunteer work. What matters is your ability to write, research, analyze data, work with numbers, organize groups, think creatively, etc.
How about interviewing?
- Help the interviewer make the conceptual leap between your experience and the job for which you are interviewing. If you are applying to be a consultant, for example, make sure you point out when and how you have developed the ability to size up people, assimilate information quickly, present in front of groups, etc. In other words, make sure you make your experience relevant to the tasks you will have to perform. If the fit isn’t perfect, you want to make even more of an effort to convince them that you have developed the aptitude and skills they are looking for.
- Be prepared to talk about anything you put on your resume. Panelists recall being questioned at length about obscure things they had mentioned very briefly. You never know what is going to catch an interviewer’s eye.
- Capitalize on your science/medical background. Employers want a mix of people, and your specialized knowledge can compliment people with a more business or economics background.
Should I tell a potential employer that I am considering going to medical school in a year or two? Some companies will expect a two-year commitment and you will be required to stay in the job at least that long. If you can be flexible about when you apply to med school, then it is certainly worth checking out these possibilities. If you know that you only want to take one year, you should either be up front with employers or feel comfortable that they are not expecting more than that. According to Amanda, non-profits tend to expect a high turnover and will not be surprised that you are moving on in a year.
How are these kind of jobs compensated? Non-profits do not pay especially well but offer the personal satisfaction of doing service, as well as terrific experience. At many non-profits, you will be able to take on a lot of responsibility and perform more kinds of tasks than in a traditional business job. Lori offered that management pays better than research and Charlene projected starting salaries at CIGNA to be in the high 30’s.
Where can these kinds of jobs lead? All of the panelists are considering returning to school and feel that their respective jobs have made them more focused candidates. Lori wants to pursue a research Ph.D., Charlene has decided to get an MBA in healthcare management, fully financed by CIGNA, and Amanda is applying for Masters in Public Health programs. |
