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

[Barry Rittman]

Jose brings up some good points.
It seems to me that we often spend too much time  talking about employing
people who have a narrow field of expertise, even though such expertise is
necessary to get the job done. I would suggest that we instead look at the
bigger picture.
Experience  outside your current field of work  can be very useful. In
looking at the histology fields, many of the great advances have not always
been made by people who have several years or decades of experience but
often by individual who had very limited histology experience but had
expertise in other fields such as biochemistry and physics. I do not
believe that any experience no matter how far removed from the current
workplace is wasted.  While a bachelors degree may not prepare individuals
adequately for jumping right into the field of histology, it has at the
very least  given them a different outlook on many things that they would
not have without that degree.  Fresh outlook on our work allows us to
improve the work we are doing and be creative instead of automatons. I
think that the field of histotechnology is always improved by having
individuals of different back grounds bringing  different perspectives.
The most important thing is to let individuals explore  any new ideas they
have.
I would say a lot more but my wife is just serving up a beef pie.
Barry

On Thu, Aug 13, 2015 at 2:47 PM, deGuzman, Jose R via Histonet <
histonet at lists.utsouthwestern.edu> wrote:

> 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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> the largest in Maryland and the Washington, D.C., region. Nationally
> recognized for clinical quality in heart, orthopaedics, cancer and GI.
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