11- How to improve your job search w/ Grace and Allie

Hey everyone, welcome back to the BME Grad Podcast. I'm Ali. And I'm Grace. And this week we're going to talk about how to improve your job search to give you better quality results and just be generally less overwhelming. This is our first solo episode in the series where Grace and I will share our personal experiences, mistakes and learnings. So please enjoy. [Music] Before we dive into this grace, I would just love to ask you in your opinion, what did you do wrong when you were senior in your BME program looking for jobs? Oh my goodness, so many things. I would have to say the biggest thing is that I didn't really know what I wanted to do. And so I did a lot of random applications that I put a lot of time and effort into. And I didn't actually like the position. And I was more focused about a focus on getting applications out than I was on getting out applications that I really cared about. So let me follow that up. Were these applications to like the same role title in lots of different types of companies or were they like. Different companies, different role titles, like just applying to what's open kind of things. The latter, I think I didn't realize that I didn't realize like how valuable the BME degree was and that people wanted. And I was more focused on I need to get offers back. And so I was not a very refined search and it wasn't a very refined application process. Random companies, random positions. And that is something that I would change for other people. Let me follow, let me follow that up with another question. How did you hear of those companies that you applied to? Did you go and find companies online or did you just apply to things you already knew of? Like a little bit of both. I would say definitely something I would recommend and something that I did do was I looked on LinkedIn a lot. Right. There's searches that you can set up that show you applications in open positions. Like every day or every other day. So I set up some filters on my LinkedIn search of, you know, this is the kind of engineering that I'm into. And then it would filter and give me a result of like 10 job openings at these different companies on LinkedIn. And when I was a senior, my, our program was nice enough to send out an email, like once a week of different job openings that they thought we might be interested in. I would say kind of probably heavier on looking online. So you used to make sure of company names, your university was throwing out at you that were hiring near you. And also just like LinkedIn job alerts, like who's hiring in the area. And that's how you started to get name familiarity with companies. Yeah, definitely because I didn't really know what I wanted to do. Right. Coming out of undergrad. But what about you? What is something that you felt you did wrong? Like, well, everything you did I did. One thing I didn't do. And it probably was because I was so overwhelmed. I was not rapid fire submitting my resume everywhere. I don't know why that just really overwhelmed me to apply to jobs in that way. And I did was like I found there were like, you know, I started out with like five opportunities I was interested in and I ended up with like two that I had interviews to. But it's not like these were like it's not like I thoughtfully found role titles that I wanted and thoughtfully found like industries like I don't know like heart medical devices. And then paired that together as said, let me look for design engineering roles in heart medical devices like no, like I had two opportunities that had nothing to do with each other. I just I liked them both. And I applied so. I think what we're about to talk about as our recommendation might be helpful to people who. I feel they don't have that kind of direction on what to apply to and where to look. And also be maybe like our overwhelmed by. And I can apply to also something I did. And this is because again, I didn't know what job titles to apply to. You know, I go on glass door. I go on LinkedIn and I and I Google or I mean, I search. Biomatic engineering jobs. Yeah, yeah, I did that too. And you get nothing like you don't really get a lot of results. And I think you do a few search mechanic engineering jobs. So then you start panicking. You're like, oh my god, like what did I study this for is there any jobs out there for me. But I think it's a new major. To end just like I think the industry hasn't accepted this major as a role title yet. And you have to be a little bit more intentional and creative when you are thinking about the different types of things you can do with this degree. Yeah, let's let's give our. Our sage wisdom here that we've acquired from one plus years in the industry. What should people be doing to get better results when they're looking for jobs as a BME grad. Totally. Great question and something I wish I had asked myself and just took a minute to reflect on when I was applying. I think so like you said, when you type in biomedical engineering, there's not many results that pop up. And part of that is because there are so many different concentrations and facets within biomedical engineering that you know someone who. Really specialized in undergrad or like did research on you know prosthetics versus tissue engineering you're not going to be going for the same roles. So as a student think about, okay, I really love the mechanical engineering aspect of of BME, you know, I like doing solid works. I like designing things exactly I like doing I like designing PCBs and getting and doing Eagle CAD stuff like that or like microcontrollers are. So so like the first would have been like I enjoy activities that are like mechanical engineering and the second would have been I enjoy activities that are like electrical engineering. Exactly. Yeah, so so think about that and then have that help refine your search for positions, but just kind of figuring out like don't type in BME but don't type in biomedical engineer right. Kind of within those facets figure out what you want to do. I think Ali mentioned before, you know like different fields of interests, you know diagnostics, pharma medical device design. Those kind of things can help refine it and and make it a little less overwhelming when you Google stuff. Okay, you brought up something I didn't think about so let's let's put this all together figure out field of interest. Do you want to do like get pick a short list of five, what are five things you're interested in. I'm interested in medical devices for reproductive health. I'm interested in diagnostics for blah blah blah. I'm interested in gene therapy. These are my three interests or whatever you can have five. So, then pick out what activities do I like to do every day like you said, do I like to design PCBs do I like doing CAD do I like doing research. And then drill those activities down, which you might need to do a little bit of research, but what role titles do those types of activities every day. Like you know you have three lists things I like to do jobs that do those things industries of interest to me, you know the diagnostics, pharma thing. And then you can start to look up, okay, what companies do gene therapy that are near me. And then you go you find those companies and then you look at their jobs like well what companies with gene therapy have open I don't know whatever role if you're interested in manufacturing open manufacturing roles. Now, what is how do you make the connection between activities you like and the job title you need to search for. What are some of your recommendations grace for understanding what job titles mean and what activities those are associated with. And then I think the best way is if there is a job title that you think you might like. And you don't necessarily know what it really means to be that is find someone on LinkedIn preferably someone that you is like a friend of a friend or maybe an alumna of your program or something with that job title and ask them, hey, what does this actually mean because I think it means blah blah blah. And they may be like yeah that's totally what it means or maybe they'll come back and be like yeah I had that misconception before I started to and it actually is so different and it actually this is what you do. And using kind of your LinkedIn network to see like am I misreading am I misunderstanding what this job description means or is this actually what I think it is and what I'm actually interested in. What are you right what's your thoughts. No, yeah, like I totally agree like you start to you know you start to understand your activities of interest you start to understand you start to learn about some role titles that might be doing those things and then you go on LinkedIn and you say who do I know or who do I have some kind of tie to that I can reach out to and ask them to tell me about what they do. Preferably somebody that's closer and age to you just so they can like kind of help you bridge the gap between what they know and what you know. Definitely I would say like you know what between. Preferably like five years or less out from their undergrad exactly. And say tell me what you do. And then if they end to that conversation if that's not what like what you wanted to hear essentially like you thought it was one thing and you're excited about that thing and then they tell you something that it's not. Tell them what you're interested in and ask them what role titles would do those things in their organization. I think that's totally honestly the number one way the number two way I think you could find out what role titles mean is by listening to this podcast. That is the problem we are trying to solve for everyone just like you would do on your own through a LinkedIn search and having a conversation with them we're just kind of making those types of conversations public we bring them on and we say what's your role title what does that mean what skills do you enjoy exercising. So that when you as a listener here. And there's roles titles you can start to align yourself with departments and company types that sound more like your interests. What do you think grace. I totally agree I think I mean that's that's the reason that we started this right this is what we're trying to bring to y'all. In a little bit more of an easier way than having to message everybody on your LinkedIn. And another way that you can do it. Ali and I were both fortunate enough that our undergrad BME program had to like networking business liaisons that were there to help us find connections and opportunities in the industry in the industry. And they were way underutilized right and so if your department has something like that reach out to them go have coffee with them for 30 minutes let them you know explain what you're kind of interested in and they can help guide you. The job process can be very overwhelming so. So you can rely on those resources to help break it down a little bit yeah like do what you can to remove the haze for yourself of what job titles mean and what. And make sure what you're going to be doing you're interested in uses podcasts use your university resources go on LinkedIn and reach out to people that are near an age to you working in roles you think you're interested in and start mapping out what role titles mean. It's a lot simpler if you're applying to one job title or you know two job titles in a heart medical devices your search results are going to get a lot narrower you're going to have five target companies with open positions to apply to your resume and cover letter for those positions is going to look relatively the same because they're doing the same type of work. You would be doing the same type of job it gets a lot simpler you get a lot better of a search and it's more lined with your interests when you put in this work to understand your interest industry of interest activities of interest and job titles of interest so. It's a little bit more work upfront but it makes the risk like the fruitfulness of your results astronomically bigger it's like just be brave and talk to people yeah and ask like don't be a friend. Ask like don't be afraid to ask people what things mean and I don't know look stupid you know like that's stupid naive it's okay you're still like looking at you student you're still student people are like yeah we don't expect you to know a bunch of what most of this means so like i'm happy to explain it to you kind of a thing yeah like be naive call up somebody that's three years into work and super intimidating to you and be like hey I like doing art and cad and presentations. What roles would be good for me you're going to be the person that finds your your calling and and meets your natural ability faster so definitely so this is our take on how to find job searches and when some things that we've learned along the years and through our experience hope you found helpful and we'll see you next week back on the BME grad podcast. 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