Simply Hired Blog

Hot Job of the Week: Patient Representative

By Annie Favreau

Looking for a job with a future? This series profiles in-demand careers and expanding professional fields. Here's our latest pick:

Patient Representative

What's involved:
Patient representatives can be found in almost any medical setting—hospitals, health centers, private clinics, or nursing homes. Your work is as varied as the locations, but the main goal is the same: helping to address the special needs and concerns of patients and their families.

Patients call your office when they have a problem with the treatment they received, are confused about a policy, or want to report a staff member for unethical behavior. Whether explaining hospital regulations or helping patients file formal complaints, your task is to resolve the issue as quickly (and painlessly!) as possible.

You also work to prevent future issues. You may conduct patient satisfaction surveys, gather feedback from family members, or educate staff about particular problems.

Why the job outlook is good:
As aging baby boomers start needing more medical attention, the entire healthcare industry is set to expand. That means health-related jobs, like this one, are expected to rapidly grow as demand rises in the coming decade.

What training you need:
Most patient representatives have at least a Bachelor's degree—usually in psychology, human resources, or a similar area. Previous experience in customer service, conflict resolution, or a medical setting is a big plus. Also, fluency in another language will give you an edge, since you can work with the growing population of patients who speak English as a second language.

Show me the money!
The US Bureau of Labor Statistics puts the average salary of a patient representative between $24,000 and $38,000.

 

Annie Favreau works for Inside Jobs, a career exploration site that helps people discover and pursue a career that excites them. Check out the website for more information on personal fitness trainers, or join in the conversation on Twitter.

How to ace the world's toughest job interview question

By Martin Yate CPC

I've been writing about job interviews, from both sides of the desk, for twenty-five years and without a doubt, the toughest interview question going the rounds in 2012 is, "Your job exists to help your employer achieve and maintain profitability. How do your efforts support these goals?" It's a question that can only be answered when you really understand the guts of the job you are pursuing.

The question actually has two parts. The first part, your job exists to help your employer achieve and maintain profitability, shouldn't be too difficult because it is a statement of fact: all jobs exist to support profitability.

You need to think through whether your job is chiefly concerned with generating revenue, protecting assets, improving productivity in some way, or is perhaps a combination of these imperatives. Once you have determined this you have also outlined the correct framework for your answer.

The second part, how do your efforts support these goals, is much tougher to deal with. To answer effectively you need to grasp that the true guts of every job is essentially the same: to identify, prevent and solve problems that occur within your area of expertise, and in the process help your employer achieve and maintain profitability.

You answer by identifying for the interviewer, the ways that you make your small but important contributions towards achieving and maintaining profitability. You do this with these specific strategies:

a) You anticipate the ways that problems can arise in your areas of responsibility and explain how you execute your work with conscious concern for preventing many of the problems typical to your job from arising in the first place. You have an example or two ready.

b) You tackle and solve problems that do occur, because they cannot be prevented, in a timely, effective and professional manner. You'll have an example ready to illustrate how you do this.

c) Do so in a way that is courteous to customers, vendors, and considerate to those co-workers who in their jobs must deal with the results of your work. Again, you'll have recalled an example or two.

If you catch a break next time out and you aren't asked such a tough question, you can make major points with any hiring manager or recruiter by using this understanding to color the way you answer other questions.

Martin Yate takes readers through over two hundred perceptive answers to tough interview questions in Knock em Dead 2012, The Ultimate Job Search Guide, in ways, like this one, that not only help you answer the question, but also help you grow professionally in the process.

Use Your Email Subject Line As Resume and Door Opener

By Martin Yate CPC

You want to get into conversation with recruiters and hiring managers as quickly and as often as you can, because initiating conversation is the fastest route to job interviews, job offers and out of this damn job search.

Whenever you find the name of a headhunter or hiring manager, email is likely going to be your first line of approach. But In an age when email has become the world’s pre-eminent communication tool, we all flounder in oceans of unwanted communications. To a recruiter or hiring manager you are an unknown correspondent, so your subject line can make the difference between a careful reading of your message and instant deletion.

With e-mail, the Subject Line is your attention grabber; it's your headline and your advertising pitch. In the same way that headlines on blogs, articles, books, and movies are used to grab readers' attention and draw them into the story, your subject line is what draws the reader into your e-mail. It needs to be intriguing, concise, and should allow the recipient to immediately recognize who you are and what you want, and you have to achieve this goal with limited space.

The subject line in an email inbox typically reveal about 60 characters, you need to take advantage of this advertising space and can do better than settle for subject lines that state, "Resume" or "Jim Smith’s Resume." If you are responding to a job posting, the job title and job posting number are useful as a start, you can add the credentials that you know are important from your reading of the job posting. For example:

• Financial Analyst posting #MB450—CPA/MBA/8 yrs exp
• Posting # 2314—MIT Grad is interested
• Job #6745—Top performing sales professional wants to talk

If there is no job posting to refer to:

• IT Manager—7 yrs IT Consulting
• Benefits Consultant—Nonprofit Exp in NY
• Referral from Tony Banks—Product Management Job

The Subject Line Resume

You actually have enough space to turn your subject line into a condensed two-part resume.

Part One. The subject line of an unopened email in the average inbox will typically reveal a maximum of 60 characters. You want to get the most compelling information into less than 60 characters. This example uses 48 characters, with spaces:

Your next Reg HR Manager—EEOC, FLSA, & ADA exp

Part Two. An opened message will show usually show up to 150 characters, so an expanded subject line that captures more critical skills can act as a condensed resume. This example has an expanded subject line that comes in at 148 characters, including spaces.

Your next Reg HR Manager—EEOC, FLSA, ADA, OSHA. 10 years exp includes arbitration, campus, executive recruitment, selection, compensation, T&D

When you take full advantage of the available space in email subject lines, you can deliver a relevant and compelling headline that draws the reader into the message of your email with a condensed version of your resume. Try it, you have nothing to lose and everything to gain.

 

Martin Yate CPC, is the NY Times bestselling author of Knock em Dead The Ultimate Job Search Guide, and Secrets & Strategies For Success. As Dun & Bradstreet says, "He's really just about the best in the business." www.knockemdead.com

Hot Job of the Week: Personal Fitness Trainer

By Annie Favreau

Looking for a job with a future? This series profiles in-demand careers and expanding professional fields. Here's our latest pick:

Personal Fitness Trainer

What's involved:
Part motivators, part Energizer Bunny, personal trainers help gym-goers shed their stubborn flab and reach their full fitness potential. 

In this job, you work one-on-one with clients to determine their goals and create routines to get the job done. From explaining how to perform a perfect sit-up, to demonstrating the proper use for a kettleball, it's your task to keep clients safe, engaged, and in shape.

Each person comes with a special set of circumstances—like previous injuries or personal preferences about different types of exercise (no stair machines!)—so you need to be both a great listener and an effective motivator. Also, while you're not required to have Jillian Michaels' rippling abs to be a good role model, you should lead a healthy lifestyle.

Why the job outlook is good:
As more people and businesses begin to recognize the mental and fiscal benefits of a healthier population, the demand for fitness workers is on the rise. In fact, the US Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) expects this field to grow by a whooping 29% in the coming years.

What training you need:
Before hitting the gym as a trainer, you’ll need to get certified—just make sure to choose a program that's nationally accredited. (It's a great idea to call a gym where you'd be interested in working to find out their exact requirements.) In addition, most positions require first-aid or CPR training.

Show me the money!
The BLS puts the average salary of a personal fitness trainer between $16,000 and $62,000.

 

Annie Favreau works for Inside Jobs, a career exploration site that helps people discover and pursue a career that excites them. Check out the website for more information on personal fitness trainers, or join in the conversation on Twitter.

Real-time, Leading Indicator Employment Data Now Available

Yesterday, we announced an interactive, online U.S Employment Trends tool (found at http://www.simplyhired.com/a/trends/national) which allows job seekers instant access to both local and national employment data. This tool is especially useful for job seekers and the media because it offers forward-looking data that can predict hiring based on job openings each month.

Job seekers can discover job posting trends nationally by metro area, industry and occupation, in addition to the degree of job competition in each metro area. Dating back to October 2010, this range of data provides a clear picture of the number of jobs available and the competition for those jobs.

While the BLS and ADP reports provide data on positions filled, SimplyHired.com's U.S Employment Trends tool provides the only forward-looking data from any job source, making it the leading indicator of the health of the job market.

Check out our new national job trends tool!