Sitting in front of a computer all day, applying for online jobs on company websites and job boards isn’t going to cut it—mostly because you won’t hear back from most of the places where you submitted online job application. In fact, I think that the online approach to job hunting almost guarantees that you will become dejected, depressed and hopeless.

Finding a job is a full time job in itself. If you’ve decided not to take your skills into the medical freelance industry, then you’ll need to prove to another company that you have the skills and knowledge they are looking for. Developing and implementing an ordered and strategic job search provides jobseekers with organization and a structure that will likely help to ward off feelings of confusion, dejection and hopelessness experienced by most people who have lost jobs.

Below are four tips to help you stay focused, organized and energized in finding a new job in the medical, biotech, science, or pharmaceutical industry.

Job Hunting Checklist:
Prepare – Set aside time to update your résumé, create template intros, thank you emails, and organize success folders with skills, accomplishments, and honors.

Set mini-deadlines – Be realistic about what you can get done each day and set goals ahead of time. How many jobs will you apply for each day? How much research will you do?

Keep records – Start a spreadsheet or a notebook of all the places you have applied. Make notes about your day-to-day activity so you won’t get overwhelmed with the task of applying.

Divide the day’s activities – Each job requires three main steps: research, meetings, and follow-up. To avoid getting lost in the process, divide your day into specific focuses. A few hours in the morning for research, mid-day for meetings, and afterwards devote to follow-ups.

Energy comes from productivity. If you feel like you are actually accomplishing something each day you’ll be energized to keep up the pace. Don’t let the lack of organization keep you from being happily employed.

We’re giving you guys a peek behind the curtain at some of the tools available to our users. Visit CMI Interactive’s sign up page to take advantage of these medical freelancing tools.

When you log in you are presented with a grid of options on our control panel. Features include our rate calculator, links to our book store, and links to our information sections for business coaching, financial advising, and internet marketing.

Jobs and Contract Opportunities

Our users want to know about the latest contracts and job opportunities and we offer a constantly updating list of openings all over the United States. Each posting lists the job title, location, date posted, and type of opening.

Book Store

Our CMI Interactive Book Store are recommendations specifically chosen for CMI Interactive by our Legal author. Interested in a purchase? Simply click through to buy from Amazon.

Rate Calculator

The rate calculator is a valuable tool that takes your hourly rate and a projected number of hours of work, subtracts common expenses like federal taxes, insurance, and typical business expenses, and presents you with a annual or monthly bring home amount.

Business Experts

As part of our exclusive partnership with experts in business coaching, executive recruitment, financial advising, legal, tax planning, and web marketing we offer articles that answer frequently asked questions. We even give contact information so you can reach out to our experts directly.

Sound useful? Visit CMI Interactive to sign up.

You can also follow us on Twitter, Facebook, or Friendfeed for more tips and info about medical freelancing.

Back in October we posted a blog post that discussed some of the basics about medical writing and for those who haven’t heard about this rewarding industry. Allow us to wet your appetite. A competent medical writer can make $100,000 to $200,000 dollars a year!

Working as a freelance medical or science writer is a great career! The work is interesting and often lucrative, and the demand for medical writers is high, but if you are apprehensive about starting your own freelancing career we recommend checking out the guys over at CMI Interactive. They can help make your venture successful by offering you the right tools for your medical writing business.

There are many different types of work for scientific writers especially due to the internet there has been a proliferation of work. These would include:

• Advertising copy for pharmaceuticals and other products
• Editing
• Internet content
• Journal abstracts and articles
• Medical education materials
• Multimedia projects
• Pharmaceutical marketing and advertising
• Physician speeches and presentations
• Posters
• Sales training manuals
• Slide kits
• White papers
  (list via AMWA)

Science Writer Newbie?

Make sure you have strong confidence in your writing skills. Specifically your technical writing skills. Medical writing is a branch of technical writing, which is a subset of nonfiction writing. It’s a different kind of writing that requires a lot of clear, easily understood communication. A logical approach to each topic is a must.

Also, consider joining networks focused on writers. For example the National Association of Science Writers or American Medical Writers Association. These organizations provide a forum where medical writers meet and share knowledge and experience. They promote professional development and standards of documentation excellence, and help writers find career opportunities. These organizations offer fundamental medical writing training.

A successful medical writer will have knowledge of medicine or an aptitude for understanding it, an ability to write, an education: College degree in science, pharmacy, medicine, journalism, or English, and they are deadline orientated.

Check out this video of Emma Hitt (an accomplished medical writer) after the jump.

For example, take a look at the difference between the national unemployment rate (the dark blue line) and the unemployment rate of all men and women ages 25 to 44 with a college degree (the light red line).

That unemployment rate is only 4.5%, while the high school graduate unemployment rate is 9.1%, which is higher than the national unemployment average of 8.6%. And of course it’s no surprise that those without a high school level education is extremely high at 17.5% (pictured below).

No high school education

However, the three-month average job-loss trend is actually improving. Take a look at the chart below that shows the slowly improving job loss rate. Each month the loss of jobs is getting less and less.

We show you trends like this to let you know that there are lots of jobs out there and each month more and more people are becoming employed. Don’t let negative press about the unemployment percentage frustrate your job search or freelancing efforts. The job and contract market is still very strong and it is continuing to improve!

CMI Interactive professional business tools for medical professionals.

Free Suit Cleaning
Six months ago Mike Erstad, the owner of National Drycleaners in Seattle, Washington, started offering unemployed people free cleaning services for those that have an upcoming job interview. Although only a dozen or so people have taken Erstad up on the offer, he says the promotion is one that “builds on itself.”

Erstad sees it as one of the myriad ways a business can support a neighborhood, along with sponsoring Little League teams and other community events. “I could never afford television time, but we got our name out there at no cost,” Erstad says. “When you do good, good things happen.”

Free Night’s Stay
Rabbit Hill Inn in Lower Waterford, Vermont offers what they call a “Pink Slip Giveaway Getaway.” Owners Leslie and Brian Mulcahy offer those that have been unemployed for six months or more a chance to win a drawing for a free two night stay at their inn.

“In our 16 years of innkeeping, this has been the most satisfying effort we have ever done,” Leslie Mulcahy says. “We know first hand about the stress and anxiety that unemployment brings.”

Free Shoes
Heels.com set up tables at job centers and gave away hundreds of professional shoes to job-seeking women. Local television affiliates in Atlanta, Greensboro and Charlotte covered the giveaway.

“Coverage aside, the most rewarding part was seeing the looks on these women’s faces,” Acosta says. “It was also a breath of fresh air to be a part of positive news at a time when so many negative stories were leading the news.”

You can read the rest of the story at CNN Money. You can also find out more about CMI Interactive’s professional business tools for self-employed workers.

Elance.com – Elance is one of the biggest freelance service websites. A search for the word medical brings up tons of jobs like medical content writer, ghost writer for medical non fiction book, medical articles, and part time research assistant.

Guru.com – Much like elance, guru is a place for freelancers to find work in their speciality industry. You post your profile, search for projects, submit proposals, win projects, and get paid through guru’s own SafePay (which is how they make money, by deducting a percentage of your fees).

oDesk.com – After looking through many of these sites they all start to look the same, but oDesk as one really interesting feature for its users. The ability to see project trends! You can see the popularity of the different types of projects.

LimeExchange.com – The difference of LimeExchange is that they offer free project posting and free membership for providers. They also have some cool incentives like milestone based payments and buyer reward program.

GetAFreelancer.com – This site has a lot of programing jobs, which is not very helpful for our science professionals, but they also have medical industry jobs as well, like medical writing jobs. There’s even an RSS feed that you can subscribe to all the new medical job postings on the site. That makes it a lot easier than doing a new search each day.

Visit CMI Interactive for more helpful information for medical freelancing professionals.

Medical writing

A medical writer, working with doctors, scientists, and other subject matter experts, creates documents that effectively and clearly describe research results, product use, and other medical information. The medical writer also makes sure the documents comply with regulatory, journal, or other guidelines in terms of content, format and structure.

In order to be a good medical writer you must be able to work very efficiently with data, science, and of course be a good writer. Medical writing skills is mainly the ability to convert large amounts of data into a form that can be easily understood. An especially enticing aspect of the medical writing position is the freedom to be able to work at home and of course the fact that a competent medical writer can make $100,000 to $200,000 dollars a year!

The controversy surrounding medical writing is the lack of transparency. When a team of professionals work together to write a medical paper there have been instances in the past where random authors have been given authorship of the medical paper even though they have nothing to do with its creation. That is at the heart of the dishonesty surrounding medical writing.

We’ll be discussing the controversy surrounding medical writing more in the future, but the best rule of thumb is that if you, as a medical writer, are ever approached to do some writing that is unethical you should just walk away. Advertising agencies in the medical field would benefit from more medical writers. Adding professionals that are focused on data review and communication rather than marketing will lead to more honesty in medical ads.

If you are a medical writer or considering a career in the field of medical writing, consider using the professional tools available from CMI Interactive. There science professionals can find a toolbox full of resources to help sharpen their skills in the industry.

Understating Your Upside
We all like to think that we are humble and that’s a good thing on a day-to-day basis, but when you’re applying for a job YOU become the product and you must sell it. You want your employers to be impressed when they walk away, not say to themselves, “well that’s a very nice guy.”

Being a Friend
Friends talk about funny stories or the latest episode of their favorite TV show. Friends ask personal questions and comment about shoes and new haircuts. But your friend won’t pay you $50,000 a year. Your employer is evaluating your skills and they won’t be impressed with your small talk ability. Save the laughs for the new employee orientation.

Talking Too Much
If you are unemployed you may have a lot of time on your hands, but your interviewer is trying to squeeze this 30 minute interview into a 15 minute time slot. Respect their time and only offer meaningful and on-point conversation. It will leave more time for your employer to ask pointed questions about things that they are actually interested in.

Lack of Planning
If you are going to impress them, you’ll need a strategy. The only reason they will have questions prepared for you is because they want you to talk. Be prepared to highlight specific points of your skills and experience. Bring a notepad with a short list of very specific things you want them to know about you. Don’t take it for granted that they will know the details that were involved in your last job. Talk them through it step-by-step.

Being Too Flexible
Have you ever gone out to dinner with a group of friends that can’t decided where to eat? It’s really frustrating. Avoid creating that same awkward dance during an interview. Be decisive and firm in your answers. It’s easy to say that you can be flexible “anywhere you want to put me.” Show yourself to be a leader and give definitive answers.

Medical professionals that are looking for serious business tools to help them stay competitive in today’s medical market should consider CMI Interactive’s small business tools for science professionals. Learn more.

A certification can expire, but you will never have to go back to college to earn another degree. Obtaining a degree is as much about demonstrating general learning skills and developing study habits. No matter what industry you enter, your professional knowledge base must be refreshed every 5 to 10 years.

A college degree will provide you will a broad knowledge base, but a certification is much more focused on job skills. Certifications are great evidence of one’s technical skill level, but clients and employers often look at college degrees and related honors as evidence that an individual can learn new material as needed no matter what subject matter they have studied.

Certification is especially valuable at the entry-level or junior-level positions. Hiring personnel are more impressed with one’s relevant experience, but when you are first trying to enter a particular field a certification can substitute for job experience and give you the edge over other candidates.

For those seeking senior level positions, or developing your services as a consultant, experience is much more important than is a certification. One’s critical thinking and problem solving skills are a strong asset.

If you have any questions about the difference between degrees and certifications leave us a comment or contact us at CMI Interactive.

Hello and welcome to the new CMI Interactive blog! We’ve established this blog as a way to communicate our knowledge about how to be successful in the science and medical industry. This is not a sales pitch, rather it’s a platform for us to help guide independent science professionals with helpful information to launch their small business.

Our blog is designed for the purpose of guiding independent medical contractors with helpful information about the healthcare industry. Our interest in developing this blog stemmed from the concerns and questions frequently voiced by our independent contractors. We have identified several key areas of interest, such as entity formation, income tax payments, and retirement planning.

We’ll also be discussing topics like the difference between degrees and certifications, tips on how to find job and how to secure contracts, and frequently asked questions about freelancing such as telecommuting and home office ideas.

To make this discussion as valuable as possible we want your feedback. Feel free to leave us a comment right here on our blog, follow us on Facebook, Friendfeed, Twitter, or subscribe to our blog using RSS or email. You can also contact us using the form on our blog contact page.

Visit CMI Interactive for more information about support for independent professionals in the medical industry.