A Day in the Life: International Health Recruiter

Read Kate Theirs’s archived tweet feed here: Day 1 and Day 2

There are many opportunities for those of you interested in international and/or health-related careers.  If you find the right organization, you can apply a broad range of your talents and have a career that serves your passion for international relations and/or healthcare.  Our next alumni on @PennCareerDay will highlight one of these career paths on Tuesday, October 19th and Tuesday, October 26th.   These two days on @PennCareerDay are alongside a line-up of programs and events geared toward international opportunities.  For more information on these events, click here if you’re an undergraduate or here if you are a graduate student.  Read more below on Kate Thiers who will be posting for @PennCareerDay during these weeks, and don’t forget to follow to see what her day is like!

Kate Thiers (W ’00) is the Operations Manager for Africa Health Placements (www.ahp.org.za), a Johannesburg-based non-profit company that places foreign and local health workers in rural public hospitals in southern Africa. Since inception in 2005, AHP has placed over 1,750 doctors in southern Africa, over 900 of whom are foreign nationals. Kate’s team manages all finance, IT, HR, marketing, PR, website and orientation activities for all AHP offices, which include Johannesburg, Durban, Swaziland, Lesotho, the UK and the US.
Prior to moving to South Africa in November 2009, Kate was a Project Manager with Siemens Healthcare Diagnostics in London. There, she was a project administrator for a European-wide corporate merger project for one year and subsequently managed a new partnership initiative with National Health Service (NHS) hospitals for a second year. In the US, Kate worked as a project manager for a Johnson & Johnson pharmaceutical company and managed large-scale application and infrastructure initiatives. She also worked as a business consultant for two years with Andersen Business Consulting.

Kate has an MBA from the Said Business School at Oxford University in the UK and a Bachelor of Science in Economics (BSE) from the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania.

The What, When, Where, Why, and How of Applying to Federal Government Jobs

by Robert Gannone

Now that our Government and Policy Career Fair is over, many students are now starting the process of applying for federal jobs.

Why?

Working for the federal government offers some great rewards such as a competitive salary, great benefits, job security, and comprehensive health coverage.  One of the great benefits that comes with federal employment is the recently created Public Service Loan Forgiveness Program, which encourages people to work full-time in public service jobs. Under the Public Service Loan Forgiveness Program, borrowers may qualify for forgiveness of the remaining balance due on their loans after 120 payments are made.

When?

If you’ve ever thought about obtaining a government job, now is the time! According to the Partnership for Public Service, the federal government will fill more than 50,000 entry-level jobs in the next 12 months, along with about 60,000 paid internships.

What?

The next step is to find what job best suits your interests and skills.  According to the Making the Difference Website, there are jobs and internships available in practically every interest and skill area, in all 50 states and around the world. The website also has a detailed list of the different federal jobs available. In addition, you can view some sample job profiles in different areas by going to our website at: http://www.vpul.upenn.edu/careerservices/makeanimpactexploration.html

Where?

There are nearly 300 federal organizations. If you’re unsure what might be the best fit for you, be sure to check out the Best Places to Work website, which contains rankings of employee satisfaction and commitment in the federal government. It is ranked by categories such as the best Work/Life Balance, Pay, Diversity, and Effective Leadership.

How?

The Federal Government’s official job site is: http://www.usajobs.opm.gov/

However, there are several steps you must follow in order to apply for a federal job. First is to create a federal resume. Unlike in other professions, the procedures for applying to a federal job and creating a federal resume contains specific rules such as being as detailed as possible in regards to previous employment.  A Federal Resume does not have to be limited to one page. You can view tips here and some samples here.

We have many workshops throughout the year to help you on your way to a career in the federal government.  Some of our upcoming workshops include: Business Jobs in the Government, Insider’s Perspective on Working in the Government, and Science & Engineering Jobs in the Government. To view the dates and our full schedule of government workshops, please go to: http://www.vpul.upenn.edu/careerservices/college/GovFair2010.html#Events

Also, be sure to check out our complete resource guide at: http://www.vpul.upenn.edu/careerservices/makeanimpact.html

“The Best Things in Life Are Free” or Staying Connected is Good for Your Health

by Julie Vick

Thirty years ago this fall the Phillies were winning in postseason playoffs and I was pregnant with my first child.  My husband and I owned our little house in Center City and I was working at Penn (although in a different department than my current one), and though we didn’t have much money we both had careers with promising futures.  The Phillies won the World Series, the city went crazy and a few weeks later I had a baby girl.  Fast forward to today, my three children are in their twenties with one still in college and the older two working in their own careers.

When I reflect on my career and look at theirs as well as those of their peers, I know that the times are really different and I don’t just mean that there were only three TV channels plus PBS and a UHF station.  The necessities of housing, food and transportation took up a smaller portion of the paycheck then than they do today.  It takes much longer for most people a few years out of college or out of graduate school to establish financial security.  However, financial security is only one factor of happiness.

As I’ve gotten older I have realized that although you can have more than one career (I’m in my second one) you have only one life.  Now this may seem obvious but for many people in their twenties the future seemed huge — almost infinite — and with the opportunity for several possibilities.  In the current economy fewer people feel that way.  Most people who will receive their degree this year feel some anxiety about what they’re future holds.  So I will offer that in any economy, but especially a bad one, one of the most important things you can do is build and maintain relationships.  There have been so many times when people told me that someone they met by chance gave them an unexpected job lead or career advice that resulted in a job or some other career change.  But I’m not simply talking about networking on behalf of your career or a job search, although that is important, but about life in general.

So I urge you to not miss events in the lives of your circle of people.  In a couple of years don’t RSVP “no” to the wedding or commitment ceremony of your freshman year roommate because you would have to leave work five hours early to get there.  You can make up those hours of work but events that take place only once can’t be repeated.  For the very same reason, don’t pass up the opportunity to drive across country with your cousins.  In spite of all the life and career planning you are encouraged to do, in so many cases it’s the unexpected opportunities that can shape your life; hence don’t pass up those opportunities.

Much of the best work that is done in this country is done by happy people.  Happy people have friends, family, associates, acquaintances, relatives, neighbors and book group [or other groups] members in their lives.  They may be happy for a variety of reasons but one of them – one important one – is surely because they are connected to people.  Their people provide friendship, fun, love, new interests as well as support and advice in difficult times.  As the Girl Scout song said, “Make new friends, but keep the old.”  Nurture those old relationships and cultivate new ones.  You will be enriched and will enrich the lives of those around you.

Go, Phillies!

Like the Wise Old Owl…

by John Tuton

A graduate student recently came to see me for a follow-up visit a few weeks after we’d first met.  At that meeting, she’d said she was interested in careers outside of Academia, so we’d talked about how networking could help her find out more about them.  As we sat down for our follow-up meeting, I began by asking her how her networking was going.  She said, in a sort of apologetic way, “I haven’t really done very much; I’m still a little shy about telling other people what I’m looking for.”  I responded by saying that networking wasn’t the easiest thing to do, especially if she felt like she was “selling” herself, and suggested it might be easier if she just thought of networking as a quick check-in with friends, or a “light, social touch” just to re-establish contact with people she already knew.  She replied, “Oh, I’ve done a lot of that—I must have talked to 20 or 30 of my friends since I saw you.”  I asked her what they’d talked about, and she said, “Oh, you know…what sort of job they had, how they liked the company they worked for…things like that.”  I immediately said, “Well, that’s the best example of networking I’ve heard in a long time—what did you find out?”  After we talked more about some of the meetings she’d had, it was clear that she’d made some real progress in her job search—she’d developed a much better idea about the kinds of jobs she was qualified for and was more focused on the sort of organization she’d like to work in.

The most interesting thing she shared with me though, was that each conversation she’d had—at a family party, a college reunion, a gym etc.,  had begun with someone else asking her, “What do you do?”  Almost always, she’d answered with only one sentence, “I’m a graduate student at Penn working on a PhD in Biochemistry—what do you do?”  That answer had triggered a response, which led to her asking another question, which triggered another response.  And instead of doing most of the talking, she had just kept listening to what the other person had to say, and asked them to tell her more about it.

I think one of the by-products of education is the requirement to communicate your ideas, answers, etc. in a clear, convincing way, or in other words, when you’re asked a question do most of the talking and do it well.  And I think we at Career Services spend a good deal of our time counseling students on how to do just that, especially in a job interview.  But how much more effective it would be if we also reinforced a student’s ability to listen, especially when networking or doing informational interviewing.  I’m reminded of a poster of an owl that still hangs in my son’s bedroom at our house—it has a caption that reads:

A wise old Owl lived in an oak
The more he heard, the less he spoke
The less he spoke, the more he heard
Why can’t we all be like that bird?

Why can’t we, indeed?  Why not try to speak less and listen more?  Like the PhD student in Biochemistry who came to see me, you might find out a lot more than you think.