3 Things you need to be successful in medical devices

Cliff Notes/Summary/For those who only give content < 60 seconds: The medical device industry can change your life. It has changed mine and many I know personally across the industry. But there's more to entering, thriving in, and surviving throughout a career in this space than meets the eye. You have to have a "WHY" that fuels you in the valleys, the discipline to maintain your work ethic and focus during the peaks, and the balance to handle all the seasons in between that you are guaranteed to experience.

1. Acknowledged, fully developed and clearly articulated "WHY": In the book I have previously recommended to those looking to land a med device job is author Simon Sinek's, "Start with Why". In his book he says that the most successful people have a sense of purpose or core beliefs that fuel their behaviors on a daily basis. Questions around your why have become standard across companies and roles during the interview process as a way for interviewers to better understand the passions, purpose and intrinsic motivators of the person behind the resume.

2. Discipline to Consistently Thrive: I vividly remember someone from my inbox, that I had never met, saying to me, "I applied to over 100 jobs and have not received a single offer". My response was, "What did you learn from application 1 to 10, 25-50 or 50 to 100 and how will you adjust your approach to the next application or interview process?". The person said, "Well I didn't do anything different really". At which point, I responded, "Then how do you expect to be successful in this industry?". If the person would have waited 30 seconds before hanging up on me, I would have shared the following advice with them. There are many uncontrollable aspects of this industry and sometimes the success we stumble upon is inexplainable. The key is having the discipline to slow down, even stop altogether to both self assess your behaviors and performance wins and losses to fully understand what those results had in common and where they differ. Use what you uncover to increase the likelihood of similar successes and limited setbacks moving forward. I often remind our team, "You should be able to explain why you are 80% or 180% to quota and not being able to clearly explain either results, is equally bad".

3. Work-Life Balance: What do you need to be at your best? To be mentally, emotionally, spiritually and physically on point? The ability to be thriving or as close to your personal definition of such is the ultimate achievement of work life balance. This is where you have to be honest with yourself and do the work to research every role within every company to find the one that aligns with your definition. If dropping your kids off at school everyday or being home to meet your spouse at 5 is critical to your balance, medical device trauma sales may not be the role for you. If you struggle with uncontrolled anxiety or stress, a role where performance is measure annually may be a better fit than quarterly performance reviews. If you are a single parent with a limited support system, target office vs hospital based call points. Hospitals are incredibly unpredictable, operating rooms, procedures and physicians are often delayed, start earlier or go longer than expected. Do not be afraid to ask the recruiter or those in the network to go into great detail about what a typical day looks like. Go further and ask, "What did one of the longest, most frustrating and unpredictable days recently look like for you?"

There are a bunch of smiling, red caps online nowadays that highlight the exciting and rewarding aspects of being in this industry but longevity comes from stepping into your first role with a full understanding of the good, bad and ugly along with tools for managing it all.

#mindofmarcus is intended to help people that are new to the industry or looking to land their first #medicaldevice job. If you found value in this content, please help me help others by #commenting, #liking and #reposting.