Do I need more clinical hours?

[nontrad1876]

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Hello SDN. Sorry if my first post here breaks any rules.

I am a non-trad career changer who hopes to apply to medical school in 2027-2028 cycle. I just moved to a new city/state and I am struggling mightily to secure a clinical job here. It seems that basically every MA position here requires a cert and one or more foreign languages. (I speak a little Spanish but far from fluent esp health care terminology). CNA/PCA jobs here universally require cert as well. This city seems to be very saturated with premeds (and IMGs doing MA type jobs, some of which are advertised as only for them) as well.

I’ve applied to 100+ MA openings, dozens of receptionist openings, and a smattering of endo tech, anesthesia tech, PCA, etc roles for the last couple months and got nothing. I have 800ish hours of specialty clinic MA experience (doc loved me and Will wrote LOR), 100ish hospital volunteering hours, a few months of admin work at a home care agency, and BLS cert. I did a phlebotomy training course in my old state but it was garbage so I leave that off my resume. Prior to the MA job and home health admin job in my old state, I worked for years doing blue collar work (mostly self employed). Before that, thousands of hours of non-clinical volunteering (Americorps) and college before that. Perhaps my resume looks weird to hiring managers? Or it’s just the competition and lack of MA cert? (Also have 300 wet lab hours from post bacc but that is NOT on resume unless the position specifically says it’s looking for premeds).

Assuming that I can write well about the clinical hours I’ve already accrued, do I necessarily need more? Can I safely just find whatever work I can that pays the bills? preferably something with a weekday available for some more current volunteering and some flexibility for future interviews? And focus on my last prereq and MCAT studying? Or do I need to keep trying to get clinical work so I am more competitive, and look dedicated to medicine and not like it’s something I worked in and then abandoned? There are (expensive) EMT courses nearby starting this week that would finish in a couple months, I could swing it until then by liquidating most of my savings/brokerage acct and doing some odd jobs.

 

[polymerization]

You probably don't "need" more hours in the sense that having 1000 hours is somehow more qualifying than 800, but you would probably want to replace the activity with something else that your application might benefit from.

If you want to give the job market another shot, feel free to make heavy edits to your resume that is focused on tightly narrowing to work experience and degrees earned.

They could feel they have to pay you more; you could jump to negotiating specific hours when they would prefer absolute flexibility, etc etc etc. but you get my point. I think there's something very obviously different between someone who went to school for medical assisting and intend to stay there, vs pre-meds on a clear medical trajectory. You're looking to fill an experience gap, but they may misunderstand you to be someone who expects compensation commensurate with your level of achievement.

I'm not saying that shouldn't be the case (it absolutely should), but unfortunately I've had your experience and have found that the more "med school polished" I came across, the more I turned hiring managers off. And later, in a hiring role recruiting more MAs, I had several brilliant people come through that would only stick around for a few months and then move on to medical school, which upset the attending, who wanted more continuity, and I understood the incentive more clearly.

In other words, it's more likely to be a matter of conflicting priorities more so than you personally doing anything wrong.

 

[nontrad1876]

You probably don't "need" more hours in the sense that having 1000 hours is somehow more qualifying than 800, but you would probably want to replace the activity with something else that your application might benefit from.

If you want to give the job market another shot, feel free to make heavy edits to your resume that is focused on tightly narrowing to work experience and degrees earned.

They could feel they have to pay you more; you could jump to negotiating specific hours when they would prefer absolute flexibility, etc etc etc. but you get my point. I think there's something very obviously different between someone who went to school for medical assisting and intend to stay there, vs pre-meds on a clear medical trajectory. You're looking to fill an experience gap, but they may misunderstand you to be someone who expects compensation commensurate with your level of achievement.

I'm not saying that shouldn't be the case (it absolutely should), but unfortunately I've had your experience and have found that the more "med school polished" I came across, the more I turned hiring managers off. And later, in a hiring role recruiting more MAs, I had several brilliant people come through that would only stick around for a few months and then move on to medical school, which upset the attending, who wanted more continuity, and I understood the incentive more clearly.

In other words, it's more likely to be a matter of conflicting priorities more so than you personally doing anything wrong.

Thank you for taking the time to respond. I agree that that is likely what is happening. I'm not sure how much more I can focus my resume though. It is only work experience, degrees earned (these are just my non-science bachelors degrees, premed post bacc is already omitted), BLS cert, hospital volunteer experience, and some of the Americorps volunteering. I can cut those last two out, but other than removing jobs between college graduation date and present thus leaving holes (bigger than the 2-year one left by removing americorps years), there's nothing else to really remove. Unless I misunderstood you and you were saying to remove degrees earned as well and only show MA-relevant work experience?

 

[polymerization]

Thank you for taking the time to respond. I agree that that is likely what is happening. I'm not sure how much more I can focus my resume though. It is only work experience, degrees earned (these are just my non-science bachelors degrees, premed post bacc is already omitted), BLS cert, hospital volunteer experience, and some of the Americorps volunteering. I can cut those last two out, but other than removing jobs between college graduation date and present thus leaving holes (bigger than the 2-year one left by removing americorps years), there's nothing else to really remove. Unless I misunderstood you and you were saying to remove degrees earned as well and only show MA-relevant work experience?

I mean, give it a try. Send out a couple of variations and see what sticks. You could try cover letters. Reaching out to clinic managers directly on LinkedIn if you have a profile and know their clinic is looking for MAs. Working your pre-health office, biology department, etc. Just sending out your application via 1-click on Indeed feels satisfying because you can apply to 30 clinics in a minute, but it is also the least likely to be successful just because there is such a low signal:noise ratio.

For what it's worth, you don't necessarily need medically relevant employment if the alternative is just not being employed and doing nothing productive with that time. It would be preferable to other things you could do, just because of the ways in which you benefit narratively by holding medical employment, but it isn't absolutely crucial, you would not be applying with an insignificant amount of clinical experience.