[Histonet] are you desperate to hire a BS.c graduate

[deGuzman, Jose R]

Please correct me if I'm wrong but this has been my experience so far.

I came from a research Histology background where I learned many skills that I was able to developed in the clinical side. I spent 3 years preparing for the exam because my manager in research and a co-workers failed on their first attempt- they scared me. Now, I supervise the same clinical lab that took a chance at me and perform the hiring process. I have hired both certified and not-yet-certified-but-qualified-to-take-the-BOR-exam-for-certification-within-1-year.

Histology is a field where you will find a wide range of experience and skill sets. You will find individuals with years of experience with a narrow skill set and an individual with little months/years of experience but have a wide range of skill set and troubleshooting experience to boot. These variations are the direct result of what the laboratory exposed us to- large, high volume versus small volume, specialized labs. If you find someone with years of experience and wide range of skills, they probably work with you already because we don't let them go.

As a supervisor, I look at the following: qualifications (must meet the minimum requirements to sit for the exam), experience, skill sets, ability to learn and adapt and fit. The first, will eliminate anybody who I cannot hire due to our hiring policy. Once you meet that first criteria, everything else is a sliding scale. Fit will out-weigh experience because you can build experience but if you can't get along with my team, there is no team. I will work with anybody to develop their skills as long as they are able to learn and adapt. I'm in an area where there's strong competition for qualified individuals and I know of only 1 school with a Histology program that's over 50 miles away. It's not easy to fill positions. So for the research Histologists out there, yes it's very different. It's very routine, not much if any variation from day to day, month to month. We have to crank the cases out and some of us get pigeonholed to just embedding or just cutting for 8-12 hours. Can we make the transition? Yes, I know because I did it. 

Different organizations have different hiring policies. Full package candidates (certified, experienced, skilled) are rare but it makes the on-boarding and the first 90 days so much easier. Especially in a very busy lab, bringing someone in who can contribute at the same output as the established team is a dream come true. Incomplete packages need time to develop. And what I've experienced is research histologists may know a lot more than I do and are exposed to other aspects of the lab but when it comes to getting the work done, there is a lag that requires me to step-in because the work is taking longer to complete. The learning curve is steep, it doesn't take long. It's just easier to bring in a complete package.
 
Jose



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