She Got MBA and Quit--Now What?

After graduating from Pepperdine University’s business program in August, Deborah Lew-Bakody looked forward to a challenging health-care career. She sent out resumes and lined up interviews with prospective employers. But months later, she’s still waiting to hear the words “You’re hired.”

The 40-year-old Valley Village resident has enviable credentials: an MBA, 20 years of clinical health-care experience and Internet marketing training. She even ran a medical imaging service company for six years. But though Lew-Bakody has diligently applied for positions in pharmaceutical sales, hospital management and medical product sales, she hasn’t yet snared the job she desires.

“So far, I’ve tried the classifieds, Web searches, I’ve gone through the Pepperdine career center and have made calls to recruiters,” said Lew-Bakody, who several weeks ago left her job as a mammography and ultrasound imaging specialist at a Los Angeles hospital after completing her MBA studies. “But I’ve been unsuccessful at changing my career path.”

For help, Lew-Bakody consulted Donna Cardillo, a health-care career coach based in New Jersey. She told Cardillo that interviewers keep delivering the same frustrating news: That she needs to amass more experience to land the positions they’re advertising.

Cardillo told Lew-Bakody not to focus on these rejections. “You have excellent work credentials,” Cardillo said. “You’ve worked in traditional radiological positions and you’ve demonstrated entrepreneurship. Health-care employers are very interested in this combination.”

But after further investigation, Cardillo found other issues that might be impeding Lew-Bakody’s job hunt. First, Lew-Bakody lacked a strong professional network that could lead her to unadvertised job opportunities.

“This is important,” Cardillo said, “because the best jobs are almost always filled through networking.” Cardillo urged Lew-Bakody to contact present and former colleagues and ask them for leads and referrals. She also should attend health-care association meetings, where she could meet well-connected peers.

Lew-Bakody’s resume needed revision, too, Cardillo said, because its “skills-list” format could confound potential hirers who want to learn about her sequential work history. Cardillo suggested that Lew-Bakody submit to employers a simple chronology-based resume that lists her previous positions in order of increasing responsibility.

She also should place a summary statement at the top-center of her resume that itemizes her most marketable skills and best personal attributes.

Last, Lew-Bakody should send out briefer, easier-to-read cover letters. These steps alone could improve Lew-Bakody’s chances of impressing potential employers.

But there’s more she can do. Following are additional tips that Cardillo and other experts offered to Lew-Bakody.

* Develop a “sales” personality. Lew-Bakody is interested in a pharmaceutical representative position. But such jobs are difficult to snag. Top pharmaceutical companies often receive as many as 150 applications for every sales position they advertise. They look for upbeat and enthusiastic applicants who have demonstrated entrepreneurial prowess at former jobs.

Lew-Bakody, who comes across as soft-spoken, will need to develop a dynamic “interview presence” as well as stronger self-marketing skills, if she wants to impress potential hirers in this field, Cardillo said. She’ll need to make a powerful first impression because many interviewers will make preliminary hiring decisions within the first two minutes of an interview.

Cardillo suggested that Lew-Bakody prepare for interviews by mentally “pumping up.” Lew-Bakody can review index cards that summarize her best skills, personality traits and accomplishments. This will boost her confidence and help her develop a “can-do” attitude, Cardillo said. She can listen to motivational tapes as she drives to her interviews.

* Investigate a variety of health-care sales fields. Lew-Bakody’s familiarity with diagnostic imaging tools may make her a valuable asset to medical equipment vendors who covet knowledgeable sales reps, Cardillo said.

“Stress that you know the equipment, the lingo, and you have contacts that could help these companies expand their business,” Cardillo added.

Because Lew-Bakody’s background combines clinical, sales and business experience, she may be able to find work as a marketer of such hospital specialty services as transplantation, intensive care and neurosurgery, said Richard Jacobs, senior vice president for system development at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles. Specialty services marketers contact physicians and physician organizations and secure patient referrals for the hospitals they represent.

Though Lew-Bakody doesn’t have biotech experience, she also should consider applying for sales jobs in this field, said Ted Schwab, president of Sokolov, Schwab, Bennett, a Los Angeles health-care management and consulting firm.

“It’s a maturing industry in need of generalists--people with marketing, management and technology backgrounds,” Schwab said.

Colin Higbie, president of Aptagen Inc., concurred. Higbie heads a Reston, Va., biotech firm that builds genes for pharmaceutical companies, the National Institutes of Health and academic clients. Aptagen and other, similar firms are recruiting sales representatives with little or no biotechnology training to market their products because they’ve found that talented reps can apply their selling skills to just about any product, even a highly technical one.

“There’s really a deficit of good salespeople in biotech right now,” Higbie said. “And because the industry is dealing with an absence of skilled management and salespeople, these abilities are more valuable to us at this time than an understanding of the science, which can be gained on the job.”

* Capitalize on your clinical experience. Newly minted MBAs such as Lew-Bakody can sometimes gain entry into the competitive health-care management track as assistants to hospital administrators. After proving themselves, they may eventually oversee entire hospital departments such as nursing, surgery and personnel.

However, such opportunities in hospital administration are limited today because of health-care cutbacks and emphasis on outpatient care, said Robert Field, director of health policy at the University of Sciences in Philadelphia. That’s why Lew-Bakody should explore career possibilities in non-hospital settings, Field said.

HMOs and insurance companies may find Lew-Bakody’s ultrasound and mammography experience valuable because she could help them determine whether insured patients were receiving appropriate care, said K. Jody Smith, associate professor of health information management at St. Louis University School of Allied Health Professions.

Lew-Bakody also can apply for managerial positions at outpatient facilities, physicians’ offices, diagnostic sites and surgery centers, said Ramon Castellblanch, director of health-care administrative programs at Quinnipiac College in Hamden, Conn. She could contact consulting firms such as Arthur Andersen, Ernst & Young and Deloitte & Touche that hire people with MBAs, health-care backgrounds and trouble-shooting talents, Smith said. And she could pursue administrative opportunities at long-term-care facilities, nursing homes and home-care agencies, whose numbers are increasing as the population ages.

* Investigate opportunities at Internet-based health-care companies. Like the biotech firms, these companies are hiring sales reps and managers for their growing businesses, said Sameer Shariff, co-founder of Medsite in New York City.

Lew-Bakody’s “clinical and business backgrounds are a dynamic combination,” Smith said. “She has lots of possibilities available to her.”

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Time for a Change

* Name: Deborah Lew-Bakody

* Occupation: Medical imaging specialist

* Desired occupation: Health-care manager or sales representative

* Quote: My 20 years of professional work experience in the medical imaging industry have been rewarding. But now I am seeking new challenges.

Counselor’s Recommendations

Build confidence and positive attitude. Edit resume. Widen job search to include non-hospital-based health-care positions.

Meet the Coach

Donna Cardillo is the health-care career advisor at Monster.com, a leading job-search Web site. She is also president of Cardillo & Associates, Professional Development Seminars, in Wall, N.J.