Tips on Breaking into Medical Devise Sales

Hi and thank you ahead of time for the input. I'm a Doctor/ resident who's looking to improve his quality of life. I'm not happy with the future out look of the profession, and would like to start something new. I graduated medical school in 1999, passed my USMLE's, and have been in Pediatrics close to a year. My background is mostly associated with surgery, having a father that was well respected in his profession and by his peers. I worked with him both in hospital and privet practice as his 1st and 2nd assistant in general and Plastic Surgery from 1999 untill 2006.In that span of time I also volunteered as a resident in all the major hospitals in Miami in the diciplins of General Surgery, HepatoBiliary Transpalnt,PMR, and Clinical Immunology where I served as a resident for the one month time I gave them.

I think I could be a viable worker in this industry, as I beleve I posses qualities both inharent to my background and personality that make me easy to converse with, trustworthy, and knowlegeable over the field.
How can someone with my background better present himself as a viable worker in this field and what are the best ways to find these elusive jobs.

Thank you again for all the input and my best of luck to us all.

It is a huge red flag for any employer looking at your history of having graduated medical school in 1999 and spent the last 11 years without successfully completing any residency program. Unless there was some believable and compelling reasons like documented physical illness/disability during this period of time, this unfortunately indicates that residency program directors find you unemployable or untrainable. "Volunteer Residents" do not exist for many reasons, like medicolegal issues of malpractice insurance coverage. So if I have to guess, you probably shadowed your dad's friends around the hospital and are now trying to overinflate that into actual experience taking care of patients. I don't know who you can fool with that story, but the potential employers in the medical device world will immediately see your dishonesty. Aside from the above ethical issues, your poor spelling and profuse grammatical erros suggest that you are a foreigner without a good control of the English language...and in seeking a sales job, effective intelligible communication skills are essential.

If you have in fact passed all three steps of your USMLEs and can obtain and medical license in the state of FL, you are probably better off continuing to be your dad's surgical assist and bill for it. You can make a very decent living being a surgical first assist. If for some reason, you really want to get into medical device sales, since you apparentely have been to all the hospitals in Miami, talking to the sales rep there and asking for contact information of their regional managers would be the best bet. If you do get a meeting with one of those managers, I suggest being honest as to what happened after medical school and what you spent the last decade doing. They know the medical world as well if not better than you...and they probably have friends and contacts they can make one phone call to check your story. And if they find that you are dishonest, you will be blackball

Hi Liz and thank you for your responce. It's a great service for me to see how my story is interpreted. It really is ashame so much can be assumed without verifing the facts, but that's the world we live in. My story and coarce are far from the norm, maybe I got into Frost alittle bit more than the rest in english lit, but my ambition wasn't ever to just be a doctor. I fulfilled my dream of being able to work with my father ( who wasn't just a terrific surgeon, but a heck of an attending in his time) as an equal, and upon his passing the practice of medicine lost some of it's luster. Being a doctor is a rather unique thing, I liken it more to a vocation than a job. Once you see and treat a person, they and their families will remember and rely on you a life time, at least thats been my expearience.
My decision to transition away from the practice of medicine has not been an easy one, and maybe it's just me, but I dont rush into changes of this magnatude overnight. I was fortunate enough to have a friend, from my college days at Univ of Miami, in the medical device sales field who needed help getting an in at the hospital I was doing my residency, and after I helped him get his sales ( 4 surgical microscopes) it hit me. I had alot of fun. It was fulfilling. Best of all he gave me a good ribbing, because I was a "Natural". Needless to say I value his opinion, and charted my new coarce.
To date I've been fortunate to of been interviewed by most of the companies I'ld like to work with. The state of the economy has definitly not helped, but god willing within 3 weeks I will of compleated my transition and begin my new life as a medical device representative.
Liz I apologize for being a poor speller, and your a sport for hanging in there. As per the volunteer residency, you should do more research. ALL teaching hospitals have them. They can be called clerkships, mini residency, or observerships, but you work along side the team as a PGY1. Sorry I ran out of room. GB

Hello again Liz. I just want to finish responding to you, and I'll keep it short and sweet this time around. As per the wait time to get into a residency. US medical residency is the most sought after medical training in the world. We compete against other applicants globally, as well as per specialty. It is not the same appling to Gen. Surg
in 1995 vs 2000 vs 2010. Internal Med use to be the easy in from the late 90's to early 2000, and now it's elite. I may be head strong, or maybe principled, but I only ever applied for what my heart wanted, and I have no regrets.
Do you know the one great thing about my story Liz? You can go varify all my credentials with ERAS. I would hope the goverment agency incharge for verifing medical education should suffice.
Its scary to see how far off tangent people can get when they try and rationalize something they might not know anything about, and if your line of thinking would of been used on me, that company would not of just made a mistake, but they would of lost out on an opportunity to improve the company by hiring a great, hard working, positive, educated, person.