This two-part podcast episode discusses career readiness and preparation for a career in public health. The guests, Jeanie Kimbel and Sophie Switzer from the University of Iowa College of Public Health’s Career Services Office, provide practical advice on getting started with the job search, including tips for crafting resumes and cover letters, avoiding common mistakes, and highlighting relevant experience even from classroom projects.

The views and opinions expressed in this podcast are solely those of the student hosts, guests, and contributors, and do not necessarily reflect the views or opinions of the University of Iowa or the College of Public Health.

Lauren Lavin:

Hello everybody and welcome back to Plugged in to Public Health. Today’s episode kicks off a two-part series all about career readiness, what it takes to prepare for a career in public health, how to avoid the most common mistakes students make, and what you can do right now to set yourself up for success. We’re joined by two incredible guests from the University of Iowa College of Public Health’s Career Services Office, Jeanie Kimbel and Sophie Switzer. Jeanie is a long-time instructor for the MPH practicum and one-half of the career services team. Sophie is the assistant director for the career preparation and engaged learning where she leads undergraduate experiential learning and oversees global public health programs.

In this first episode, we dive into how to get started with your job search, resume and cover letter mistakes to avoid, and while waiting until graduation can set you back. You’ll walk away with practical, actionable advice like when to seek help, how to tailor your documents to specific roles, and why even classroom projects can count as real experience. I’m Lauren Lavin and I’m joined today by Maxwell Hansen. And if it’s your first time with us, welcome. We’re a student-run podcast that talks about major issues in public health and how they’re relevant to anyone, both in and outside the fields of public health. Now let’s get Plugged in to Public Health.

Plugged in to Public Health is produced and edited by the students of the University of Iowa College of Public Health. The views and opinions expressed in this podcast are solely those of the student hosts, guests and contributors, and do not necessarily reflect the views or opinions of the University of Iowa or the College of Public Health. Well, hello everybody. Today we have two lovely guests with us. I’m going to have you guys introduce yourselves first, just who you are and what you do at the College of Public Health for our listeners.

Jeanie Kimbel:

Hello everyone, my name is Jeanie Kimbel and I wear a couple hats here at the College of Public Health. The reason I’m here today is because I am half of the staff that works in the Career Services Office here in the college, inside the college. Many students also know me as part of the MPH program. For many years, I have been the instructor for the MPH practicum course, which is a degree requirement for all students in the MPH program, so that’s what I do.

Sophie Switzer:

And I’m Sophie Switzer. Like Jeannie said, I make up the other half of the Public Health Career Services Office here in our college. Also, my formal title is Assistant Director for Career Preparation and Engaged Learning. So the other hats that I wear, I oversee the Undergraduate Experiential learning degree requirement, which involves things like internship placements and related to that, I teach a course in that for undergraduate students. And then I also oversee the global programs here in the College of Public Health.

Lauren Lavin:

Well, thank you both so much for taking time out of your day to chat with us. I was thinking we could start off with what prompted the college, you guys, for however much you had your hand in it to rework the approach to the career services in the College of Public Health?

Jeanie Kimbel:

Sure. The Career Services Office is a new spot inside the College of Public Health. Just a few years back, what are we, maybe three years old now, Sophie, is that right? Yeah. And prior to that, there was no specific Career Services Office or services that were being provided inside the College of Public Health. As most students probably know, there are campus-wide services and offices for this purpose. Pomerantz Career Center serves our undergrads and the Graduate Success Center is the office that serves graduate students on campus.

And a few years back, we had heard enough feedback from our own students that they were accessing those services and feeling as if there was not enough specific health focus or public health focus, that the advice and the input that they were receiving from those offices was more academically focused or was focused on professions or career tracks that were distinctly different from a student in the College of Public Health.

So we heard that feedback and we decided that it was important for us to fill that niche, if you will. What Sophie and I try to do, work hard to do is to collaborate with those bigger campus-situated offices and add to what they provide. We still refer our students across campus to the grad success center and to the Pomerantz Career Center for all of the wonderful things that they do provide, but then we try to fill that gap where we provide public health-specific content, public health-specific advice and information around that specific content that is mostly relevant to public health students.

Max Hansen:

That’s really interesting. I feel like I was just about to say, it sounds like you guys really just identified that gap that was missing and really just tried to fill it in the most comprehensive way that you could. One thing that I’m curious about is that through filling that gap, I’m sure that a lot of new challenges came up and I mean, there’s a lot of students that are coming into this college at different levels of their educational experience. I guess my question would be, do you feel like there’s misconceptions that students have about career preparation within this industry? And do you feel that there’s differences in those misconceptions, depending on where they are in their academic journey?

Sophie Switzer:

Yeah, I’m not sure that there’s anything that is super industry-specific because a lot of the misconceptions and the barriers that students experience with entering the workforce tend to be pretty universal across disciplines. One of the largest, I would say, public health-specific misconceptions or barriers is really what everyone experiences in public health, is that most public health careers are fairly hidden, it’s the nature of what public health is. And so giving students the means to explore and discover what possible career paths there might be is one of the trickiest components.

I would say for biggest misconceptions is that career searching is not hard, it’s not tricky. There are no trick questions. Employers need good employees just as much as you all need jobs, but it is a lot of work, and that’s what I guess we mean when we say things like it’s hard work. It’s a lot of fine detail, it’s a lot of searching and scouring and continuing to search because jobs are consistently being posted, and editing and re-editing your resume and making sure that it’s tailored and new and free of errors every single time. It’s a lot of continuous work, and that is something that can be really hard to maintain on top of everything else that you’re trying to do.

Lauren Lavin:

Yeah, it is a significant amount of work. And especially if you’re getting something like a master’s degree and you’ve got two years, that’s a process that probably takes a lot of time. So then why do students, me included, tend to wait until graduation or closer to that to seek these career services, and what would you recommend for students like me who are procrastinators so that we could avoid those stressful situations at the end when looking for a job?

Sophie Switzer:

Well, Jeanie and I have talked about this a lot and we’re constantly trying to find ways to engage with students, but the reason is because you guys are busy, you’re constantly doing, I mean, you all have full-time classes, plus most of you are doing one or two or five extracurriculars and many of you have full-time jobs.

And as much as it is important and we need to stress the importance of starting this process early and making sure that you’re attending things like workshops and coming to see us in office hours, it’s really hard to prioritize that when the organic chemistry midterm is next week. And that is also a priority and it’s more pressing. I mean, it’s very understandable that it’s hard to prioritize something that maybe you don’t have a spot to put it in right now when it’s such a kind of, it feels like a far off thing that you don’t necessarily have to really worry about in this particular moment.

Jeanie Kimbel:

Yeah, it’s easy to procrastinate, Lauren, when you don’t feel like it’s pressing on you right now when it feels like, “Okay, it’s a year down the road that I’m going to need that job. I have plenty of time, I have plenty of time.” And I think that that’s where I would want students to understand that it takes more time than you believe to get yourself polished, to get yourself prepared to present in an interview or in a job search process. There’s a misconception that you were asking about, Lauren, I think sometimes students believe that, “Okay, I’ve just got to get this degree, so I’m studying, I’m going to class, I’m doing those things that Sophie said, and when I have that degree, it will equal the job. Then I will go out there and people will see, I earned the thing. Now I have my training and they’ll hire me.”

I think that that’s where the misconception lies, that those things are important, the degree will support you for sure. However, getting your professional documents ready, getting yourself practiced and polished and prepared to go out into the job search process and certainly to sit in an interview, it takes time, it does. It takes an investment of your time to practice to meet with people and to get yourself prepared. That is I think, where the misconception lies, that yes, getting the job is far out there, but getting prepared for the search process, that is something that I would want students to understand, it takes more time than any of us realize.

Lauren Lavin:

When do you suggest that students start that process with you guys if they’re looking to hone those skills?

Sophie Switzer:

Honestly, as soon as possible. We offer services throughout the year. We offer quite a few different workshops on everything from communication and informational interviewing, things that are part of the initial exploration phase, to accepting and negotiating job offers. I think a lot of the issues that a lot of students don’t realize is that you don’t know what you don’t know. And so at the beginning, you may feel like you don’t have a lot of questions, but you’re not going to realize maybe what those questions might be until you get into this and start thinking about the process and coming to some of these events, meeting with us, you ask one question and that leads to 10 more questions.

And if you start that process early, maybe you don’t have a lot of questions, in which case, great, you don’t have to come see us for a while. But if you don’t start that until maybe two months before you’re going to graduate and then you realize you have a lot of questions and maybe Jeanie and I don’t have a lot of time in our schedule, we only have so many hours in the day that we can meet with students, then it’s going to feel like you’re playing catch up.

Lauren Lavin:

Short answer, as soon as possible, and you can kind of assess from there.

Max Hansen:

It sounds like there’s just clearly a lot of different students that are coming in at different times as well. Let’s say there is a student that has gotten prepared, they’ve got their documents ready. I’m sure that oftentimes they may think, “Okay, now what? Is there more that I can do and are there any ways that I could get potential questions answered about the career I’m looking into?” So I guess I’m curious if you guys have heard common concerns about potential career paths that people have brought to you?

Jeanie Kimbel:

Probably the most common need that a student identifies when they register for individual coaching sessions, Sophie and I each have office hours every week where we are available to meet with students one-on-one. Probably the most common thing we do is review professional documents, review professional documents, and that stems from the goal that the student has to get a job. I would say that is most commonly what the student will say, is, “I’m going to need a job. I have student loans and I’m going to need a job,” and so that is their goal. And typically they understand that, “This resume and this cover letter thing is something that I’m going to need,” and so they have a draft. They have a draft and we spend a lot of quality time with students, refining those drafts, providing them feedback based on current best practices, knowledge around how interviews, interview processes are going at this point in time.

The fact that AI is now a huge part of all of our lives, it has impacted the job search industry in the sense that many times the employer is using some kind of an automated scanning program or platform to screen initial applicants such that if you are in that pile and you don’t craft your application or your document appropriately with the key words that the scanner is looking for, your material may not even be seen by a real person these days, you may not make it that far. So it’s bits of practical advice and information like that, that Sophie and I give repeatedly to students in conjunction with actually reviewing the resume and the document that the student has.

And providing them quality advice and tips about how to structure it, how to word it, how to make it concise, how to make it such that the content that’s in that first section of the resume aligns with the application that they are responding to or the ad that they are responding to so that those words that the human has put into the scanner that is most important or that are the required credentials or qualifications for this job are right up there at the top of the document so that the scanner finds it very quickly. Those are the things that I would say, those are the most common requests that I hear in my office.

Sophie Switzer:

I would agree with that, and certainly almost all of the questions we get are stemming from the concern of, “Am I going to be employable and will I find something when I graduate?” I feel like there are differences also based on where you are in your degree program and maybe which degree program you’re in. Jeanie and I meet with any student who needs to meet with us, but the nature of the other hats we wear, I think Jeanie sees more graduate students and I probably see more undergraduate students.

So the questions that I hear from undergraduates are more things like, “Well, what can I do with my interests and what careers can I find and how do I even take all these different things that I like to do and mold them into a career that is enjoyable and also pays the bills?” So I also see a lot of students who are asking questions about, “Well, I want to do epidemiology and community health and health policy, and how do I find experiences in those things that will allow me to kind of hone my interests?” I do a lot of counseling around things like internships and career exploration and aspects of finding a job in that area.

Lauren Lavin:

Do you see both master’s students and PhD students using these types of services?

Jeanie Kimbel:

Yes, absolutely.

Lauren Lavin:

Okay, because I just know that it can be kind of nuanced. Especially as a PhD student, I know that our CVs can be, I don’t know, just very detailed and lengthy, and knowing that you guys are a resource for that, honestly, that’s very comforting to me. Because I have reworked my own CV a bunch of times and I feel like it would be really helpful to have another set of eyes, especially someone who’s an expert in that, so I [inaudible 00:16:18]

Sophie Switzer:

Can I actually just say that I really wish more PhD students would come to see us? It’s not nearly as common as master’s students, but the PhDs who come to see us typically come to us later in the process. Maybe they’ve already been applying for jobs and have struggled a bit. And I will tell you the first few times I met with PhD students, I was a little nervous. I don’t have a PhD, I don’t know what it’s like to look for jobs with a PhD, and so I also had a concern. I was like, “I don’t know if I’m going to have enough to tell these students.” This was when we first started the Career Services Office. And honestly what I’ve learned is most of the time the questions are the same. When they tell us that they’re struggling to get job interviews or they’re struggling to find the correct position, we ask questions like, “Well, what job sites are you looking at and how are you searching for positions?”

And most of the time it’s the same issues that master’s and undergraduate students are experiencing. It’s those little details that feel small but make a huge difference. And so I really wish PhDs would come to see us more often. We can certainly edit academic CVs, we can absolutely do that. But if you are a PhD who wants to go out into the industry, the resume concepts are also the same, so we can do that as well. If you are looking for something that is really, really specific to maybe your research area or you have questions about that sort of thing, a faculty mentor might be better, but the job search sector is the job search sector. It’s the same whether you have a GED or three PhDs. A lot of the struggles are going to be the same.

Lauren Lavin:

Yeah, that’s so great to hear. I hope this information gets out to more PhD students, knowing that you guys are a resource for them as well and have a lot of expertise to share. Staying in that same vein with resumes and cover letters, what are some of the biggest mistakes that you see, that you could just warn students of now without even having to come and see you?

Sophie Switzer:

Well, we’re very glad that you asked this question because we talk about this a lot. The first mistake is not having someone look at it. I can’t tell you how many students get to the end of a graduate degree and come to us and it’s the first time anybody has looked at this document. And there are some horrendous templates out there on Google. Please let somebody look at your resume document before you start sending it out to jobs. I guess my advice is probably in that same vein, is a lot of students ask, “How can I stand out as an applicant? If I am one of 100 people submitting a job application, how can I stand out?” And the tendency is to want to find a really cool template with flashy colors and cool graphics, and that is not what you want in a resume, that is not the way to stand out.

It messes with the application tracking systems, those AI scanners that a lot of employers utilize. It makes it really difficult as a human being who has to look at 100 different resumes to find the information you need. The way to stand out as an applicant is to work and rework the information that is on your resume, really making sure that those bullet points are tailored and concise and say exactly what you need them to say for that job. That is a skill that is difficult, it’s something you have to practice. It’s a style of writing we don’t utilize in any other capacity in our lives, and Jeanie and I are more than happy to work through with students and also to give you resources for how you can do that on your own. Try to think of standing out as it being the information you’re giving the employer and not attention grabbing in a way that is not substantive through templates.

Lauren Lavin:

I was laughing at Jeanie shaking your head when you were like, “Do not do something bright, colorful and flashy.”

Jeanie Kimbel:

Yep, that is the most common mistake. I mean, I would just second everything that Sophie just said, and I can’t tell you how many times she and I have talked about it amongst ourselves. It’s like if we could go out on the web and delete all of those stupid templates, it would be so great for everybody because that’s what we do. We all go out on the internet and say, “Let me see if I can find something to help me with this.” And it’s like, “Oh my gosh, here’s a template. I just have to plug my stuff in.” Not realizing that the format is actually going to sabotage your process because exactly what Sophie said, those really pretty, flashy, fancy looking templates are the ones that the AI scanner we mentioned before, chokes on and it can’t find what it’s looking for. And a human being does that as well.

I have been on hiring committees and those fancy resumes where you have to find, “Where is their professional experience or where is their education section? I can’t even find it. I can’t even find it on this template or on this.” It’s frustrating and it can get you pitched. It can get you removed from advancing to the interview process. So really, that is probably the best advice we would give about a resume is keep it simple, keep it basic and focus on the content, the content. Choose the words that describe you in the terminology that is being used in the ad that you are applying for so that you are calling yourself and you’re referencing your skills in the same manner that the ad said they would like you to have. If they want you to have experience analyzing quantitative data, then that’s how you say you have received training. “I am proficient in analyzing quantitative data,” should be right there on the very top of your materials.

Lauren Lavin:

Do you suggest changing every resume to match the application?

Sophie Switzer:

Yes, every resume you send out needs to be tailored to the job description, absolutely. I will say that one thing I tell my students in my undergraduate class is that this goes against all of the instincts that we have been telling you about plagiarism since you started school. I mean, AI scanners only are as good as what the information that’s been plugged into them. And a lot of time what happens with these applicant tracking systems is the person who understands the position sends a job description to an HR person who has no idea what happens if you are a data analyst or what kind of skills that are needed for that. And so they will take the job description and they will plug those terms into that applicant tracking system. And a robot is a robot, it’s not going to be able to infer things.

You have to use the language that’s in the job description to get past those systems. The other thing that I was going to add to what Jeanie said is we actually had a situation just a couple days ago, a student had asked me to review their resume and it was a template. This is a very common situation that comes up. Went and showed Jeanie the template because this might be one of the worst that I have seen. The templates are typically created by people who have backgrounds in graphic design, not people who are experts in actual job searches and hiring.

And not only did they have the largest section on the resume was for references, it was at the top of the resume, which shouldn’t be on a resume to begin with, but the education section had failed to include a space for them to put the name of their institution. So she had her degree and the year that she was graduating and no mention of the University of Iowa at all. And because it wasn’t on the template, she didn’t think to put it in, which is understandable, but those are the types of things that can happen when you use these templates and basic errors that come up that will absolutely be a deterrent for hiring.

Max Hansen:

It sounds like you’re saying that students need to think critically about their experiences and how they relate to the experiences that they want to have one day. But I’m curious, I remember coming into the college a couple years ago having no experience at all, and the experiences that I did have, I felt didn’t really relate to what I wanted to be doing at the college. So I guess what I’m curious about is what advice do you have for students that have no experiences that are directly related to the work that they’re moving into? How do they stand out on those applications?

Jeanie Kimbel:

That’s an excellent question. Probably the most important that I would say to those of you who are students and you’re going out into the work world as new grads, is that every one of us has been in that place. Everyone is a new grad at some point in time, right? And your classroom experience is experience. Sylvia and I have actually received some excellent feedback from our State Department of Health and Human Services, which, many of our alumni work there. They do at this point in time, and have come back around and have met with us and stated that as they now are on the hiring committees and they have their own knowledge of what they learned in their programs here at the College of Public Health, they said the students need to be told that what they do in their lab techniques classes, what they do in those courses that have classroom projects have practical, experiential parts to them, that that is experience.

That if you have analyzed, to use the example I stated before, if you have analyzed quantitative data in one of your courses, one of your classes, although it was inside a classroom and inside a laboratory experience, that is still experience, it is still experience. And that it needs to be mentioned, it needs to be mentioned as you’re heading out into the job sector, that there is a way to structure your resume so that it highlights classroom experience, academic training that aligns with what’s posted as required qualifications or required skillsets for this job.

That is probably the most important tip I would give to students, is to recognize that you do have practical experience inside classrooms and that that counts. That is valuable learning and you did indeed receive training in the skills that will transfer, it will transfer. So to remember to highlight that and to not shortchange yourself as you’re headed out. That you have more experience than you realize, it was just in a different context.

Sophie Switzer:

I completely agree with what Jeanie said, but I will also say that you do have relevant skills. Everybody has soft skills or transferable skills regardless of where they come from. And honestly, those are a lot of the skills that employers like to see specifically from new graduates or students who are just entering the workforce. It is easier to train a new employee to do things like use lab equipment or specific software. It’s a lot harder to teach somebody how to communicate appropriately and organize their email and be resourceful and ask questions. Those are the skills that employers usually want to see new graduates coming in with, and they will serve you really well.

Lauren Lavin:

I think it’s great to hear about highlighting the transferability of skills that we have now and that we’ve developed. It’s reassuring to know that classroom time can be applied in a traditional work setting. Do you guys find that some employers are more likely to hire new grads than others, or do you point students in certain directions? Or do you think everyone’s open to it, just depending on how you frame it?

Sophie Switzer:

I think everyone’s open to it for the most part. I mean, the right individual is the right individual regardless of where they come from. And it’s hard to say if an organization is, sometimes they want somebody who has a slightly different perspective and maybe new ideas, and so they might actually prioritize hiring new graduates. I will also say that post-COVID, the public health workforce went through a massive overhaul. A lot of people retired during COVID, who had previously been working in the public health sector, and so we’ve seen a lot of students in recent years walk into jobs that maybe they would not have been able to attain right out of school in the pre-COVID world that we lived in.

That is changing again now because these things come in stages, but there’s no employer that I can think of off the top of my head. I don’t know, Jeanie, if you can think of any who would be more or less likely to hire a new graduate? There are things that you can bring to the table that maybe somebody who’s been in the workforce for a long time can’t bring to the table, and those are the things that they may be looking for at that time. It’s just hard to say.

Lauren Lavin:

That wraps up the first part of this series. Be sure to join us next week for part two where we dive deeper into networking, building professional connections and discovering your ideal career path in public health. This episode was hosted and written by Lauren Lavin and Maxwell Hansen, and edited and produced by Lauren Lavin. You can learn more about the University of Iowa College of Public Health by following us on Facebook. Our podcast is available on Spotify, Apple Podcasts and SoundCloud. If you found today’s conversation helpful, please share it with your classmates, friends, or anyone interested in making public health career a reality. Got ideas for us? You can reach us at CPH-Gradinvestor@uiowa.edu. This episode is brought to you by the University of Iowa College of Public Health. Until next week, stay healthy, stay curious and take care.