Leveraging Your Subspecialty in the Job Search Here’s the good news: You’ve gone to a lot of trouble (and succeeded) in building your proficiency not only in neurology, but perhaps in a subspecialty such as movement disorders or sleep issues. Here’s the bad news: The offers you’re receiving or the ads you’re seeing all seem to focus on general neurology, with limited opportunity to
build on your specialized skills. Now what? The answer to that question will depend partly on your own goals, partly on your persuasiveness, and partly on what you’re willing (or able) to give up to reach your goals. Of course, there’s also a small part to be played by luck or the intervention of others, but if this were a pie chart, that slice wouldn’t be very large. For better or worse, most of this particular pie has your name on it. The starting point is you and your goals. Something drew you to the subspecialty you chose—is that pull still strong enough to influence your next steps? Now is a good time to ask yourself what your ultimate desire would be, related to the advanced training you’ve taken. For example, are you feeling pulled to patient care, or is your actual goal to lead research? Perhaps you envision heading a program in
your subspecialty and taking on business development tasks. The point of this self-inquiry is to flush out the depth and shape of your commitment at this point in your career. It’s probably obvious that there’s a difference between simply using what you learned in your subspecialty fellowship as part of your next job, or basing the job entirely and solely on your fellowship training. If you want the latter scenario more than the former, you’ll need to structure your job search activities for that outcome. You’ll probably also need to consider some compromises, such as the location or level of the job. This comes back to the question of what you’re willing to give up to reach your goals. Multiple scenarios could be developed to describe any number of strategies that parlay your subspecialty training into a productive part of your next job. For the
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