Horizon Point Consulting

Author: Mary Ila Ward

  • Career Change for Doctors

    Career Change for Doctors

    Ask a kid what they want to be when they grow up (or better yet, ask his or her parents what they want him or her to be), and I’ll put money on the fact that the kid will tell you they want to be A) A doctor B) A lawyer or C) An Indian Chief. Well, maybe not an Indian Chief, but what person or parent of a child has not at one time aspired to be a physician? 

    With the hope of helping people while at the same time making a lot of money, it’s no wonder being a doctor is a draw. But with changes in healthcare recently and the realization that maybe there are other ways to help people and/or make money, some physicians may just want to bait and switch on their career. 

    If you’re one of these restless doctors, it’s important to consider what drew you to the field of medicine in the first place and consider careers that have characteristics you still desire. Here are a couple of career change options: 

    Medical Missionary

    Were you primarily drawn to the field because you had a deep desire to heal?  If so, medical missions may be an option for you. A desire to travel, get out of your comfort zone and interact with people of different cultures and circumstances is a work value you would be looking to fulfill that you may not be finding in your current work as a physician. In addition, without the access technology in many areas where medical missionaries are needed, you would need to be driven by the desire to solve complex problems with limited resources. 

    If you take a career assessment and see that your highest area is social, this may be the direction you want to consider if you want a change.

    Organizations to check out that hire medical missionaries: 

    MedicalMissions

    Samaritans Purse

    OM

    Healthcare Administrator or Consultant

    In contrast, if you take a career assessment and see that your highest area is enterprising, healthcare administration may be the best change of direction for you to consider.   Healthcare Administrators oversee the business operations of hospitals, medical practices and/or nursing homes. Driven by a desire to create efficiencies, lead and manage people and work to make the entity they are working for profitable, people who are successful in healthcare administration and consulting see the big picture of healthcare and are able to weld the clinical side of healthcare with the business imperative to remain profitable in order to continue to treat and heal patients.  Having a clinical background as a physician can be very beneficial for those in administration and consulting.  

    Professional Organizations in Healthcare Management: 

    American Academy of Medical Administrators

    American College of Healthcare Executives

    Healthcare Administrators Association(primarily geared towards Third Party Administrators-TPA)

    Regardless of whether or not you are a doctor or not, if you itching to make a career change, you need to examine:

    What is missing from what I do now that I want to be able to do on a regular basis?  What skills do I need to use on a regular basis to bring satisfaction?

    What is it that I do now that I want to continue to be able to do? What skills that I want to continue to use are transferable to other fields?

    What type of environment do I want to work in? 

    What careers match with the skills and abilities I want to use and foster an environment that are inline with my work values? 

    A career assessment may help you short through these questions. We can help you with an in-depth assessment that examines your personality and desired skills and abilities to use or you can take a free one here. 

  • 6 Places to Go to Tap into Job Shadowing Opportunities

    6 Places to Go to Tap into Job Shadowing Opportunities

    In a conversation with a university professor today, I was struck by his comment that his high achieving students know what general field they want to go into (finance, engineering, nursing) but they actually have no clue what different career options are available in the fields of study they have chosen and they don’t have a clue what working in these fields would involve on a day-to-day basis.  

    If this is the case, most of us, even the high achievers out there are making careers decisions based on hope and prayer, on what just sounds good, not actually on what we know to be good.  

    Practical learning is the best way to remedy this situation, but most people don’t get practical experience until they get a job in the field.  Once you’ve got a mortgage to pay and mouths to feed, it’s hard to change your mind and switch fields, especially when you’ve invested heavily in your education towards the field.

    As a way to encourage learning about career fields before actually embarking on them, we encourage students to job shadow, Co-Op and or intern. It’s like getting your feet wet before you dive in and realize you don’t like the pool you’re in. 

    To get an opportunity for practical experience, tap into: 

    Family and friends

    Your College Career Center or High School Guidance Office

    Teachers and Professors 

    Community and church groups you are involved in

    Your Community’s Chamber of Commerce or Business Organization

    Junior Achievement

    Bottom line, it doesn’t hurt to ask someone if you can learn more about what they do or to see if there is a program already set up in your area or at your school to coordinate a practical experience for you. Most people are willing to share their expertise and experience to help others make wise decisions and there are a lot of good organizations out there trying to foster this interaction. 

    Once you get an opportunity set up to learn more about a job, our job shadowing questionnaire can help you know what questions to ask to make sure you are getting the info you need to make wise choices about your career.

  • Career Spotlight: Mechanical Engineer

    Career Spotlight: Mechanical Engineer

    Have you always been curious about how machines work? Do you take things a part and put them back together? Do you like to design things? Do you enjoy figuring out why things are broken and fixing them?

    If any of these describe you, then Mechanical Engineering may be the career field that would make you tick.

    What do you need to be a Mechanical Engineer?

    Education:  At least a Bachelor’s Degree in Engineering

    If you are a high school student, make sure you are focused on taking higher-level math and science classes. Be sure to take Calculus and Physics if available at your school.  A drafting class would also be a plus.

    Skills: As referenced on Columbia University’s website, “Perhaps the one skill that is the mechanical engineer’s exclusive domain is the ability to analyze and design objects and systems with motion.”

    Mechanical Engineers know how to:

    • Solve complex problems
    • Create and interpret designs of things as small as a bolt to as a large a complex manufacturing process
    • Research and test the performance of objects, equipment and systems
    • Diagnosis and troubleshoot equipment and machinery

    Is the field growing?

    Nationally, the field is growing 3-7% annually.

    What is the pay like?

    The average annual salary in the United States is $82,000.

    What’s the Holland Code* for a Mechanical Engineer?

    Interest code: IRC- Investigative, Realistic and Conventional

    Investigative — Investigative occupations frequently involve working with ideas, and require an extensive amount of thinking. These occupations can involve searching for facts and figuring out problems mentally.

    Realistic — Realistic occupations frequently involve work activities that include practical, hands-on problems and solutions. They often deal with plants, animals, and real-world materials like wood, tools, and machinery. Many of the occupations require working outside, and do not involve a lot of paperwork or working closely with others.

    Conventional — Conventional occupations frequently involve following set procedures and routines. These occupations can include working with data and details more than with ideas. Usually there is a clear line of authority to follow.

    Source: http://www.onetonline.org/link/summary/17-2141.00

    If you are interested in learning more about Mechanical Engineering, check out:

    O*Net

    BLS

    US News

    Would you want to be a Mechanical Engineer? Why or why not?

     

     

     

    *Holland Codes are a way to classify a person based on their skills and interests as well as jobs based on the nature of the work. If you have an interest in knowing what your Holland Code is in order to match yourself to careers to pursue, you can read more about our assessment process.

  • 3 Tips for Getting Over Your Vacation Hangover

    3 Tips for Getting Over Your Vacation Hangover

    You’re back from vacation and hopefully you unplugged while there. And now you have a vacation hangover. You’ve got way too many things to do for work, not enough time to do them in and your wondering, just like you’ve wondered the morning after you had one too many drinks, was it worth it? Should I really have even gone on vacation?

    After returning from a work and play trip, the hangover hit me (and my husband) hard.  The around the world re-routing and delays of flights to get us home didn’t help nor did the thee hours of sleep we got the night we returned due to the around the world trip home. My husband walked in from his first day back at work, looked at me without a hey, hi, how are you, and simple stated, “I don’t think our vacation was worth it.”   After which, he took the time to look at me, still in my pajamas, covered in spit up, no shower in 48 hours, laundry piles all over our closet and again simply said, “Looks like your day went about like mine too.” Whereas he had been at work, I was trying to catch up on work and laundry and spend time with our two kids on our first day back.  Not good. We actually both needed a drink, or so we thought, to nurse our vacation hangover.

    If you took some of our unplugging tips to heart by getting stuff done before you left and scheduling a day or two to play catch-up when you returned (unlike us), you may not be hung over at all.

    But if you are, here are some tips to get over it:

    1. Realize you have to take recovery from your hangover one day at a time.  You can’t get everything done in one day, so don’t stress yourself out when you don’t.  Prioritize what is going to help you get over your hangover the quickest and tackle that first. Ignore your inbox if you have to. Those 987 emails can wait.  For me, tackling playing grocery store and painting with my three year old was more important than the email inbox. It was a beast though when I got to it.
    2. Sleep. If you don’t catch up on it, you are never going to get anything done.  Sleep some of it off to be more productive.
    3. Drink water. Lots of it.  Especially if you’ve been on a plane. Even if you haven’t been on a plane, water can help cure any type and any size hangover.  Well maybe not a vacation hangover as much as a drinking water, but it does beg the point of making sure you take care of yourself physically because if you don’t you’ll never get your productivity back.

    How have you nursed a vacation hangover and gotten through it?

  • 3 Highlights from the 2014 NCDA Conference

    The 2014 National Career Development Association Conference in Long Beach, CA was a tremendous experience.  Here’s what I learned along with some thoughts on leadership actions for us all to consider:

    1.  Career Development in an Employee Engagement Strategy. I heard about how Boeing and GM are setting up systems (mainly through online tools) to facilitate employees to take ownership of their careers and for leaders to take ownership of facilitating career development discussions and planning with their employees as a part of performance management.

    I personally learned how true this lesson is through an experience a friend had before we departed.  The organization he works for has a new CEO. He had a one-on-one meeting with him, and the first question the CEO asked him was, “What are your career goals?”  He then engaged in a discussion with my friend about how he could help him facilitate the growth of his career. This is the first time my friend has experienced this and his engagement with his organization is now renewed.  He called it “refreshing.”

    ACTION ITEM FOR LEADERS:  Ask your employees,  “What are your career goals and how can I help you reach them?”

    2.  Planned Happenstance Happens.  As a career development theory I’ll have to admit I wasn’t immediately drawn to, I saw it in action when a lady attended one of my sessions with a desire to put a plan in place to facilitate business and industry connections with schools.  The session I was speaking about wasn’t on this topic, but the roundtable I presented earlier in the conference was. I was able to provide her with the handouts and resources for this hopefully enabling some food for thought for her on how to do this in her community. She shared with me how her community set up a program where teachers were immersed in business and industry that I was able to learn from.

    ACTION ITEM FOR LEADERS:  Put yourself in a position to interact regularly with others you wouldn’t routinely get the chance to interact with. You can be a resource to them and they can be a resource to you. We all have something to learn from those around us.

    3. “If you want to teach people a new way of thinking, don’t bother trying to teach them. Instead give them a tool, the use of which will lead to new ways of thinking.”  -Richard Buckminster Fuller@BryanLubic did a fanatic job in a roundtable illustrating how you can use tools to create experiences that lead to career decisions and actions instead of telling people what career path they need to take.  Teach people how to fish, don’t give them a fish.

    ACTION ITEM FOR LEADERS:  Show and do, don’t tell. No one likes a dictator or a know-it-all.

    Agree?  You may like this post.

    What take aways did you have from your last conference or professional development experience?  How did you act on them?