Saturday, July 14, 2018

Diary of a Fourth-Year Vet Student: On the Hunt

I am on the hunt for a job. Yes, I haven't even taken my board exams yet. I have barely started my clinical year of vet school. But I am focused on getting a job--because after all, isn't that the whole point of getting a professional degree like a DVM?

I am at a big veterinary conference in Denver. The American Association of Avian Pathology (AAAP), one of the largest professional poultry groups in the US (maybe in the world, it has an international reach despite the name), schedules its annual meeting at the same time and place as the annual meeting of the American Veterinary Medical Association (AVMA), which is the largest vet med group in the US. Even though AVMA caters to vet techs, students, and veterinarians of all types, it is heavily focused on the small animal clinician. So it is with some satisfaction that we poultry folks look around and see that we represent a rather substantial number of bodies at this conference.

I had some grand plans to get a job while at this conference. I have a dozen copies of a carefully groomed resume all ready to hand out. Those plans were probably a bit ambitious. Instead of job offers, what I have gotten so far is excellent advice about what kinds of jobs I might expect to get and how to go about marketing myself to get them.

AAAP is incredibly dedicated to serving its student members. They offer lots of scholarships. I got one last year in support of my research project. We published the first set of results from that project in December, and I've got a poster up at this conference with the next set of results and have another manuscript that will probably be ready to submit to a journal in January, so their investment in my research project was money well spent. This year, AAAP gave me a prestigious scholarship that will help pay some of the expenses of the externships that I have to complete during my fourth year. And they gave me another high-profile scholarship just for grins and giggles (joking aside, my reference letters were stupendous, which helped a lot with this last one). 

AAAP also has a mentor program that is unique in the vet med world. When I told my classmates last year that AAAP had matched me with a mentor who could give me advice on fourth-year externships, career planning, and just about anything else I might want to know, they couldn't believe it. No other professional vet med association has this kind of formalized mentoring program.

But wait, there's more! Tonight, AAAP had a "meet the expert" event. It was like speed-dating for aspiring poultry vet med students. A dozen round tables were each labeled with a specific sub-discipline in the poultry industry (technical services, layer production, government, small flock consulting, etc). There were at least two industry professionals at each table. We students had ten minutes to pick a table, pick their brains, then a bell would ring and we would have to move to a new table. It wasn't as rushed as it sounds as you could easily linger at a particular table for two rounds if you wanted to. And AAAP generously had an open bar with beer and wine to keep our throats from getting parched. That isn't to imply that this was a drunken debauch--it only lasted an hour or so and there was far more talking than drinking. But it is the little things that make a simple, no-frills activity feel more special.

I got such amazing and helpful advice. All of those professionals were so generous with their time and quite willing to share their experience. I am still not quite sure which direction I will head with respect to where I want to end up in the industry but I feel better prepared for what I need to do to market myself appropriately.

One of the best pieces of advice I got was from a layer consultant. He said, treat every day of every externship like a job interview. Even if I don't get an offer from that company, the poultry vet med world is a small one, and in one way or another I will be their future colleague. 

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