Here’s an update from Melissa Collins, ASCLS-IL Membership Chair
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Are you a graduating student or experienced professional in search of a new laboratory position? Over the next three months I’ll be sharing some practical tips to help you reduce stress while you’re job-hunting. Feel free to post a reply with any advice you want to share.
Tip #1: Take inventory of all your options
Searching for a job can be daunting, especially if you don’t know where to look because you’re moving to a new city or you’ve never worked in a lab before. One thing you can do up front to make things easier is to take inventory of every single laboratory employer in the area. Look for blood centers, hospitals, reference labs, public health labs, staffing agencies, certifying agencies, and laboratory vendors. Use search engines, online maps, magazines like Advance, and job posting websites, and be on the lookout for job fairs. Save links to the hiring section of every website you find in a Word document or your Internet browser. If the list seems too small, you may want to consider looking a little further from home, just in case. Your finished list will be an indispensable tool to easily search for contact info and new job listings in a matter of minutes, not hours or days which it may have taken to find everything to begin with. The list can also be utilized for a future job search when you’re ready to take the next step in your career.
