switching gears a little bit you talked about study manager to state coordinator
you know - CRA study coordinator know a lot of people are searching for jobs and
their base all over the country with happen you have to give too much detail
here but could you say like what part of the country you're based in you can just
selling north east like whatever I'm based in the Northeast more specifically
in like the Greater New York area so that's where I am and I can say that
it's very if you are in the Northeast it's very difficult to find clinical
research positions but if you are looking to start off and you are
flexible in terms of location I highly recommend looking within the
Pennsylvania New Jersey and Massachusetts area those three areas are
the easiest places so if you live in Rhode Island or Connecticut or any of
those places you really want to try and be flexible in terms of location that's
where you'll find the work for sure alright thanks for mentioning that
because a lot of people know you can do as much resume magic as you want because
a lot of people reached out to me in to us for you know looking at the resume
but really a lot of it is based on location as well even even for myself my
first gig I was I was moving from Missouri to where I am now and a lot of
people just rejected me based on my location at first because I wasn't
putting that I was based in the area so they're saying oh we're gonna have to
apply pay pay them to move or something like that so one trick that I've noticed
that worked for a friend of mine is to not put your address on your resume and
instead put willing to relocate and you can if you are not expecting to UM be
compensated for your relocation um you know she actually put that on her resume
willing to relocate without requiring station and that really helped her
because you know I think the big issue was that she came from a state where
clinical research wasn't really blooming and she was trying to find work and I
mean she noticed such a huge difference within a short period of time even with
indeed she would submit the resumes just that one click apply and that helped and
then on LinkedIn she actually put that in her headline you know seeking
opportunities willing to relocate without being compensated and that
helped her get so many messages through LinkedIn about positions and job
descriptions and that really changed her career what a gem I've even think about
putting that in the resume but that's a genius right there so I appreciate that
that's a super Jim but yeah it makes sense because you know they don't want
to pay for people to relocate for entry-level positions usually because
you're you're not gonna get a huge return for the company for entry-level
positions so right yeah so that's great right there but yeah definitely the
Northeast is great for clinical research typically and I know in the Boston area
you've got a lot of sponsors up there yeah heroes as well yeah and I mean I
think that anywhere I think even California from what I hear is very good
in terms of clinical research opportunity they also have a lot of
startups in that area so you you know don't want to work for a company that's
big or well-established and you want you're looking for something to really
you know start up and then also contribute to the development phases of
a company then Kali for example it's a great idea or New York City has a lot of
startups now too and that's where you can get in I don't know if and that may
require you to be able to to be willing to wear multiple hats and that's
something that you have to decide while you're applying to position those
multiple I mean especially if you want to be a CRA kind of like how you did
they they offered it after you had some experience right that's a really
way to you know kind of get into the roles you know get your foot in the door
or something else and then you can kind of meander your way over there what just
to working hard and networking within the company and stuff like that yep okay
awesome so now transitioning to this this other
I guess it's a side hustle that you have of consulting so if you tell us a little
bit about that sure so um there are a lot of companies now that have started
up to provide services to sites and sponsors who are having trouble
recruiting for their studies and these companies basically run ads or platforms
that help attract qualified potential subjects but then there's that unmet
need of who's going to screen these patients and help the site really bridge
that gap between the referrals that come in through social media or advertising
and actually coming in and showing up for the first visit the screening visit
so my job as a part of the consulting that I do is to actually contact these
patients and kind of see if they're a good potential subject for a particular
study so I do the pre-screening aspect of it and then if they do pass through
my pre-screening I pass them on to the site in addition if the sites have any
suggestions if they have any concerns about recruitment and what how it's slow
or how it's you know we're we have we're sending them too many referrals and they
can't handle that you know it's about if my it's my job to gauge how often we
should run those ads and how often I should be sending those pre screenings
to the site so that you know if I talk to a potential subject and the site
can't get them in in the next two weeks you're them you're going to lose that
subject most likely because they're not going to take the whole process
seriously they you know if you're serious about it they'll be curious
about it so strategies like that timing everything and then doing the screening
that's what I do on the side I put in about 10 to 15 hours of that a week
whether I increase that later on is really up to me but that's the nice
thing about doing consulting that you can kind of make your own hours and
determine how much work you take on and it's a great side hustle that's the
thing like not every industry has that option you know so with these all these
startups that are coming up if you can find a way to help out or contribute and
it's a part-time position a lot of it you can do remotely so you're not even
going into another office after work you're doing it from home right so how
did you think about this how did you get involved with that so while I was a
coordinator a lot of the studies that I worked on suddenly we're taking on the
sponsors of those studies were taking on these companies I mean giving them the
task of helping recruit so I worked with quite a few and I didn't even know that
you know pre-screening was a thing that these companies offered but over time as
I like learned more about the studies and how the companies were helping I
actually realized that there were screeners that we're doing this
pre-screening before we were even getting the referrals and so I looked
for I just typed it into indeed I typed it into LinkedIn um and you actually
will easily find positions here and there like that I know that a lot of
companies have even said if you reach out to us the biggest thing is that I
think not every company posts all of its openings so if you think that there's a
position and it's like somewhere out there online that a bunch of the
physicians are never posted anywhere online they have this need and an
internal referral ends up taking that position or you know they kind of fill
it by searching on LinkedIn so it never hurts to reach out to companies and say
hey I'm interested do you have something and if not they'll hold on to your
resume till something comes up and that's basically what I ended up doing
for this one gate that I have right now just reaching out and saying that you
know I have coordinator experience or a house study experience
and I'm really interested in doing this and helping out and I you know two
months later I was all set up and I've been working on I'm a bunch of studies
and with a bunch of sites since then okay so do you do you reach out to the
sites yourself and offer your services or is it through another company that
you do so it's through another company so I am contracted through another
company but I work as an independent contractor the owner of that patient
recruitment company reaches up to the site so this is how it kind of works the
sponsor will reach out to the patient recruitment company and say hey we need
help recruiting and then they will say this is the entire list of the sites
that we have opened for this particular study feel free to reach out and ask
them if they would like these services and a lot of them and most of them do
say yes and in that case you know I get the list of all of the people who said
yes thank you and I reach out the nice thing is that
because I work on the East Coast I'm assigned a lot of sites that are on the
west coast so there's that three hour gap so even when I get home from work at
six o'clock technically it's only three o'clock and that's perfect I can do a
you know a decent three hours if I want to of work on the weekends it's really
convenient too if you don't have any plans you can make some money well while
sitting at home that's a great side hustle so Dan do you need some
experience to do this or do you think anyone can do this you know in a way to
get experience in the industry um I think that any company would want to see
that you have some type of healthcare knowledge or if you have been a medical
scribe before or research assistant before and helps screen anything where
you can show that you know how to ask the right questions if you if you're
given the inclusion/exclusion criteria so if you worked as a research assistant
with human subjects in college then this would be something that you can look
into if you were medical scribe you can look into it if you're an
tea and you want to get into clinical research I think that that would be very
easy because you have that healthcare knowledge and then anyone that's already
in the industry as long as you have an understanding of how to speak with
potential subjects if I guess if you have good bedside manner you would be a
good potential for the position okay all right all right cool so do you know how
much longer you will continue to be doing this if they could be doing it for
the remainder of your career or you think there would be a time when you're
not doing this um so I would like to do it for as long as possible um you know
at times I really enjoy doing it and I think you know what if I want to do this
full-time I'm like if I can't find people the only thing is you have
happily because this is work from home you have to not want to go into an
office and although I love doing work from home I really do like going into an
office at least a few times a week kind of seeing people and that's where you've
network to you know you meet a lot of people on the sponsor side right now I
need a lot of new people I connect with them I learn a lot from them working
from home you're kind of isolated into your own corner but I don't know maybe
like five years from now once I've you know gotten a lot more experience and I
want to have something that's low-key flexible hours I think that it's a great
thing to be able to do um so hopefully I'm in I'm able to do it for the long
haul because I think it's a great but I mean flexible hours being able to do
weekends that's great