Career Strategies: Marketing Pro Aims to Meld Two Worlds

The Wall Street Journal—July 10, 2010

Health care is one of the hottest sectors when it comes to job-growth potential. The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics is projecting 26% growth for jobs in the industry this decade. But there are often dozens of applicants for each opening and employers have become more picky, making it harder for someone break into the field.

In this installment of The Résumé Doctor, Joanne Parnofiello of Hospital for Special Surgery is one of the experts asked to critique the résumé of a candidate trying to make the jump from consumer marketing to health-care marketing.

• The Job Seeker: Denise Garbinski, 42, was laid off in January 2009 from her job as a director of product-management with a nutritional-supplement company in the San Francisco Bay area. Nine months later, she returned to the company as a freelance marketing consultant. She also runs her own part-time private dietitian practice. A career in health-care marketing would offer a "marriage" of her two worlds: marketing and clinical work, she says.

• The Objective: Ms. Garbinski is looking for a marketing position in a health-care company or organization in which she can use her extensive consumer-marketing experience and clinical expertise in nutrition to "make a difference in people's lives."

• The Experts: Offering feedback on Ms. Garbinski's résumé is Joanne Parnofiello, director of employment for New York's Hospital for Special Surgery, who meets with 10 to 15 job candidates per week.

• The Résumé: Ms. Garbinski's fairly traditional résumé is two single-spaced pages. It leads with her contact information followed by a summary of her qualifications. She then lists her marketing experience followed by her clinical health-care experience. She finishes with a section detailing her education.

• The Positives: The experts especially like that Ms. Garbinski has an M.B.A. and is a registered dietitian, and they were impressed with her years of marketing experience. For Ms. Parnofiello, Ms. Garbinski comes across as a serious candidate who would bring creativity and high energy to any position she eventually lands.

• The Advice: The biggest complaint among them was how text heavy her résumé was; for each of the seven companies Ms. Garbinski includes, she lists four to five detailed bullet points. "All of the text made it a little challenging to get through," says Ms. Parnofiello.

Read the full article at wsj.com.