Interviewing For A Biomed Technician Position

I start of 2023 with some thoughts I have had brewing in regards to interviewing over the past year. If your looking for a position as a Biomed whether its an in-house, ISO field service, or OEM technician position you need to be aware what is being looked for today. I hope this proves to be of assistance to someone out there and if you have any questions please feel free to reach out at beardedbiomed@gmail.com

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Transcript

Chace Torres: 0:13

ladies and gentlemen, welcome to an all new episode of the bearded biomed. I am your host, as always, welcome for being here. I'm excited for this to be the first episode of 2023. A couple quick announcements before we get started in today's episode, as everybody knows, now I'm going to be a dad, looking forward to that we're looking around into spring beginning of summer for the baby to come. So around that time, if I happen to drop off, it's not because I quit, it's just, I'm sure I'm going to be really tired. And we'll play that by ear with a frequency of episodes and such, I will try to have some episodes recorded to give a little bandwidth make you feel like you're not missing me too much. Secondly, I am registered and set up to be at the MD Expo this April and Houston, I really hope you guys come out and come say hi, sit down at the booth, link up on the mic with me. I'm gonna be presenting something that has never been done for the field to help build awareness. And that's as much of a teaser as I'm going to give you all I'm really excited to present this, it's kind of been a dream of mine in you know, during the holidays, and then reflecting over losing my father and everything, it was just something that I just kind of like bit the bullet and was like I'm going to do it. So by that time, the finished product should be complete. And I look forward to you know, letting the world know, oh, that's the beard environment start off 2023? Well, I have a couple of topics that have been spinning in my head that I was planning on doing, you know, before I had to take my hiatus, and the one that I want to start this off with since there's been so much movement in our field over the past year is you as a biomed, or people looking to get into the field to obtain a position as a biomed. What is important when it comes to interviewing, because people have gotten through the schooling, they have prior work experience. And to put it bluntly, a lot of the new people coming out of college or coming out of the armed services or you know, finishing up their apprenticeship, whatever the interview skills are not where they need to be. So first off, before we even get into things that can make you more sought after, when you're interviewing for a position as a biomed, you need to take a look into what you exactly want to do. There are multitudes of avenues that you can transfer in the biomed world. And I've experienced it multiple times last year where I had somebody interviewing for our position, which my company I worked with were field servers, we have probably 80 to 90%, windshield time. And somebody that's expecting to just sit in a shop and work on equipment and have day to day interaction with your fellow technicians. That's not what this job is a field technician, you are the master of your own realm, you are very autonomous, you have to, you know, really build up your ability to work by yourself. Now, that doesn't mean you're going to be not interacting with people, you're interacting with customers building relationships, taking care of all different manners of facilities across the healthcare system. So it's not like you're not interacting with people, you just won't be working alongside your field technicians that many that much the expectations need to match up. So that was just my particular thing that I've noticed is a lot of people coming into the field, if you're wanting to be an in house position, or if you're not really sure, but you're interviewing for, for instance, a field service company, and you're just wanting to sit in a shop all day. That's not the position you need to have. You need to be looking at an in house program to where you're working in one location every day. I'm in dozens of facilities every month, and that's what I'm comfortable with. I knew what I was signing up for. But you as a technician need to understand what kind of position you want to have before you even go into the interview process. Secondly, what kind of pay look because at the end of the day pay is important right? What kind of pay expectations do you have, if you are a new grad, coming into a company, this is your first job. And you have things on your resume such as server, I saw one had an ice cream salesman on the resume. I've seen, you know, department store clerk, I mean, there's been multitudes of job positions that are absolutely critical in determining if somebody has customer service experience. But you have absolutely no biomed experience. So you are a tech one brand new into the field. And some of you guys are expecting you to just get paid lickety split like that. It doesn't work out like that. I mean, I had years of experience, and I was managing a shop when I left the army, but I had to basically, not necessarily start over. But I had to take a step back, and you know, re acclimate to, what my expectations versus what the world's expectations are of Me. And then I worked my way up, and here I am, now I'm managing a team again, all I'm saying is, it's going to be inherent on the region you're working in, what kind of position you're working in, what kind of company you're working for. All that ties into your pay. So all I'm saying is just have realistic expectations, I would encourage you to check out the HTM salary survey through 24/7. Magazine, because they do that every year. And it gives, it's probably not 100% accurate scope lens of what the field pay is. But it's more accurate out there than what I'd say some other resources are have that conversation during the interview, that conversation honestly is probably going to be done before you even get to the interview during the vetting process with human resources. Because they're going to let you know, this is the position this is how much the salary range you're looking for. And that can be negotiated before you even get to the interview. But what I've noticed is some people are going through that vetting process, and then acting like they've never had that discussion or, you know, changing their expectations midway through and then wondering why a secondary interview or a position offer hasn't been given. Thirdly, many of you guys coming out of the biomed programs, or apprenticeship programs, or coming out of armed services. There are a couple things that I look for personally, when I'm interviewing. And I don't know if it's a generational thing, I don't know if it's maybe just particular personalities. For the most part, most vitamins are introvert, you get into this field, because you don't want to be working on patients directly. You just want to have an impactful career that, you know, helps save lives and treat patients communication skills. A lot of people expect that. No, I'm just going to be tinkering in a basement somewhere working on equipment and not have to really engage with people. And a lot of the most successful bio meds that I know have people skills, they have communication, running through their veins. Are you friendly? Are you amicable? Are you can you carry a conversation? Are you looking me in the eyes? When you're having that conversation? You don't really care if you get the job, or you're just doing it just because and, you know, we see that as the interviewers, we pick up on that we're not just looking for looking down your resume. Most people there, you know, interviewing, yes, they're going to review your resume before because that's one of the things we're looking at before we even decide to interview you is do you have the qualifications? Or do you have the means to become a great technician through your prior experiences and your skill at cetera, the resume just gets you in the door. So if you're just trying to coast through just based off your resume, it's not going to make much of a difference making a resume. You guys doing the three, four or five pages of resumes, that's those days are gone. Especially when you get into larger companies and larger manufacturer going through Geez website or going through Siemens or Sodexo or any any of those big corporations. They are when you're inputting your resume, there's not really actual people looking through the stuff anymore. They're going through key phrases, they're looking at key words that basically they have an algorithm that pinpoints certain words that go through these resumes and then you basically get put in a bucket. I would highly encourage you as well. If you are putting together a resume after you're getting out of the biomed program, or any program to have have somebody that's experienced in resume wordage there's, there's special companies out there or professionals that will vet through your resume and make sure it's, it's knit tight. Because if you're putting just loads and loads of information on a resume, and it's not hitting those key phrases, key words, then you're not doing yourself a service. And, you know, an employer could potentially be missing out on a great technician. One example of that is, when I got out of the military, part of the transition out, you know, they had you go through resume classes, job interview skills, that kind of stuff. And a lot of the verbiage that they use and military resume building, you know, is it comes directly off of your canceling sheets, you know, they start throwing percentages and dollar amounts, and, you know, top this that a lot of that stuff doesn't translate through to the resume. Unless the interviewer that you're sitting down with, or is looking over the resumes knows exactly how to translate army verbiage or military verbiage in general, it's just going to be an ain't gonna matter. So that's why I highly encourage you to actually seek out a professional to review your resumes. Also, if you have biomed experience already in your interviewing, I don't need to know that you're an ice cream salesman beforehand. I mean, that's great. That means you probably had to talk to people. But if you already have Biomin experience, then you know, the older stuff. My first job was Dollar Tree, I'm not going to put my first job my second job, before I even joined the military and got six, eight Alpha training on my resume, it's it's irrelevant at that point. The only time that I would recommend that you put that kind of stuff on your resume is if you've never had biomed experience or any kind of position beforehand, because that will give us a little bit of insight as the interviewers to know, okay, is this person worth pursuing based off, you know, what kind of jobs they've held beforehand. This is more of not an issue I have with people interviewing with me, but more so an issue with maybe some of the training that some of the biomed programs are providing? Now, what I'm talking about is database management. every company, every facility that has an in house biomed program, and multitudes of different manufacturers, for their field service techs, are going to utilize a different work order asset management system, my company uses Novillo, some might use a current, some might use middot. I think it's called Minuteman. Some have built in programs that they develop themselves. I would hope that every biomed program out there really drives home the fact that how important database management is, this goes more so past the interview process, like if you get hired on how well do you acclimate to, you know, learning new databases, because one of the largest reasons that you have to let somebody go, at least in my experience in our field, is documentation. Being able to manage assets, correctly identify problems within work orders is, you know, the manager's job, obviously. But there comes a point to where the person just doesn't get it. They just they're not savvy in that sense. And for you looking to get into the field as a biomed, you need to understand that as technology grows, as processes grow as regulations stiffen, we have to be to par or above that of manufacture, asset management. Let's say if a patient happens to die, and you know, the first person they're going to come after, it's probably the biomed because of the device that the patient was hooked up to. And you're just putting equipment checked ready for use. That's not acceptable, not knowing how to properly track your time, on work orders, especially in field service, we have to account for, I usually say between 80 90% of our time, you know, in house, definitely 90% Field Service probably about 80 Because a lot of it's windshield time there's you know, to and fro there's some intervals in between that are kind of hard to perfectly track, but a well oiled technician, I'd say at least 80% in field service. If you do not know how to work a database system, like I said, we use nofollow or whatever you're using, then You're not going to have a job very long, because you're most of the time people have to get let go, because they just refuse to, you know, put the time effort to learn the system, or it's just above their heads, and they just don't really care. So that's just something that a little nugget that I want you all to keep in the back of your heads that if you're in a biomed program right now, and they're not even discussing with you, or going over the, the importance and the different aspects of asset management, I don't care if you learn accrual, or you know, some of the other OEM asset management's. But if you're coming into our position, you know, it says a lot that you have experience in a database management system, at least, or at least understand the importance of it. As to something I've seen from some of the new grads data, that hasn't really been driven home that much. But again, that's not so much as a reflection of your interviewing skills or anything. That's just something that I've noticed when interviewing people, that will take you a long way, in regards to getting the job holding down the job. This is a point of contention for me. Again, I don't know if this is a generational thing. I don't know if this is a curriculum thing. A lot of us folks that have been in the field 1015 20s You know, more years than that. We went through processes and schooling where we had to learn how to take apart build computers, soldering skills, toolcraft, the stuff that makes you able to just jump in and start discerning things, there is a break in knowledge between what some of the technicians or the the people wanting to get a job with our company. They don't even understand toolcraft. What do I mean by toolcraft? If I was to hold up a tool, and ask them to tell me what it is, they do not know what it is, if I say can you get me a socket wrench, they wouldn't know what to grab, I had a couple that didn't know the difference between Phillips, screw, and Flathead. Being able to you know, use test equipment that comes with on the job training, I'm not going to expect, you know, every new grad coming out of a biomed program to know how to use every single different test equipment, because there's so many different manufacturers of them. They all do different things. But what I would kind of expect by the point when you're coming to interview for a position with me is to, you know, at least know what kind of test equipment you should be using to test a piece of equipment. So what I would suggest if you are not very toolcraft savvy, if you don't have too much experiences, taking apart things, putting them back together, maybe take a little bit of your own time to understand that which I would hope, you know, going through biomed programs, you become more familiar more comfortable with that. But I've I've came across people have completed programs, and they don't know how to use tools in respect to that. Another thing I've noticed is how good are you at troubleshooting. Troubleshooting is a very broad spectrum of a word in the biomed field. But when I think of troubleshooting, and a piece of equipment, a medical device has an issue. And it is down for whatever reason, most of the time when you go into a facility, if you're lucky, they will have some kind of tag on there saying out of service. And then there'll be some kind of, you know, quickly written phrase of what they think is wrong with it. If you're lucky, most of the time, they say this is broken. They don't there's no tag nothing, you just have to figure out what's wrong with it. So through experience as a new technician, you will go through all different manners of different modalities and understand the functionality what this equipment does. All I'm saying is when it comes to troubleshooting, and you have people asking you during the interview process, okay, I have this piece of equipment, it's doing this or not doing this. What would you check or what would you go into to discern what the problem is? Because as a new technician, or just technicians as general even me in the field, I'm constantly it's always a learning proposition. There's always going to be a new modality. There's always going to be a new interface or you know, different kinds of mechanism. It's this job requires you to continually experience gain wisdom. and acclimate to that fact. So why did I get into all this when troubleshooting, I sit down with somebody sitting right in front of me, and I asked him, okay, there is a hospital bed. And it doesn't have any of the functions working. Obviously, the some of the newer beds out today, there's little micro switches, there's sensors, there's all kinds of things that go wrong with it. I don't care that you give me the right answer, I care more of the fact of how would you start out assessing what the problem could be? Can you backwards troubleshoot? Or you know, the surgeon what the problem may be? Okay, so is there power to the bed, that's always gonna be the first question I would probably ask is, is there power? Okay, then you start tracing the power, then you start checking individual functions where they plug into each other. And I don't know if it's maybe a, you know, an ability thing. But I've seen a drastic, sharp drop between a technician being able to troubleshoot and discern any kind of equipment, I mean, even at home, you know, if I have my refrigerator go bad, or if my washer and dryer goes bad, or my AC goes bad, it's inherently in me that I'm going to try to discern what the problem is, and see if I can fix it before I even consider calling out a technician specialist in the area just because that it's built into me. And I don't know if it's an issue of it's not built into the younger generation, or if it's just, we're not teaching that well enough in the biomed programs, I would hope that we can really discover that this really goes into the next step thing I would suggest for you guys looking to get into a biomed program, is seek out a mentor. Like I said, our job is inherently based on gaining wisdom and experience, which makes you a far more adaptable and efficient technician. Because the more you work on stuff, the more you see a problem and you remember it, then you can discern and decipher problems quicker, you become more efficient, you become more effective. The patients that facilities they benefit from this because that leads to lower downtime, and leads to more effective repairs to where you're not having to spend more money on more parts. Like I said, the more you do it, the better you get. And that's why I will always say that you have to go into this job as humbly as possible, because nobody knows everything. And anyone that acts like they do is full of shit, complete period. If you're especially gone through like the apprenticeship program, I'm pretty sure you're going to have a mentor built out through the company that your apprenticeship being for. But for those that are, you know, new to the game, they just graduated a biomed program, get really familiar with networking, through Facebook groups, Discord, LinkedIn, especially, and seek out people that are maybe in your area, or that are defined themselves as leaders in the biomed field. And you know, ask them for guidance, I'm pretty sure that you could reach out to any people within an organization, Amy, the seabed school, there's lots of different avenues that you could, you know, potentially find yourself a mentor, I would say it's probably easier than most for those in the armed forces, just because we have such a tight knit community and so much of the biomed field is fueled through the Army, Navy, Air Force, etc. So being in that, you know, community because it is it's a really tight knit community that we've built over the decades, and you'd be far better served, going that route if you have military training. But yes, seek out a mentor, they've already experienced what you're going through, or at the very least, that they have not experienced your particular problem. They can point you to the person that could help you. And this goes really well with interviewing a lot of the interview. Interview stuff is inherently can apply to anybody. But you need to seek out help with your resume. If you can find a mentor I would suggest getting one. Have good sound communication, personable skills to where like a big thing for me is are you responding under your breath? Are you confident in your words are you Chiclet? Do you have you know the means to express yourself as effectively as possible? Most of the time when a biomed is addressing a clinician, a doctor and Materials Manager or facilities direct anybody. They're not calling us because they want to chat. They're calling us because they have a problem and they need the biomed to fix it. So you being able to effectively communicate, Hey, okay, what's the problem? All right, what do you need for me to do? I got this, let me take care of it. And then after you take care of the problem, read lane, what happened? What occurred? What did you do? That is very important in our field, it's already abundantly clear. Those of us that are in the field, and those of us that recently discovered the field, a lot of people don't know we exist. So if it's already hard for people to understand what we do, and even in hospitals, you explain what a biomed does to some of these nurses, and, you know, people that work around us, but aren't necessarily, you know, plugged into the fact communication, you know, relaying information of what we're doing day in and day out with the person that needs you to fix their problem is so important. So number one thing for me is really been communication. But that said, understand your toolcraft Understand the troubleshooting process, look into how to navigate a database, work order P's and Q's, no, nobody interviewing is going to be so stringent on that you know how to exactly do every single thing within their database. They want to know that, you know, you understand what goes into it, that you have to put coherent verbiage and all your work orders have exactly what you did. percentages, data variables, I don't think we've lost the communication gene. In the younger generations, I just think that we just need to do a better job as seniors, you know, relaying to them how important it is. So, I hope that this video has been helpful to you. I would highly encourage if you have any questions or just any kind of, you know, maybe you just have a particular idea or you want to tip or anything. Comment down below. Anybody that's ever commented on my videos, I've answered every single one or have pointed them in the right direction of where to get that answer. That's what I'm here for. That's what this channel is for. For those of you that are listening audio wise, you know, you can always reach out to me beer to bomb at@gmail.com I have folks reach out to me all the time with just random questions across the world. And that's, I love that I love helping people interested in our field, get the right answer, get pointed in the right direction to get them where they need to be. That's the mission of beard abominate build awareness and help strengthen those that are already acclimated into the field. I look forward to continuing building the field helping beard on you guys and girls and as always made the beard be with you. Take care