Jan 31, 2018
Welcome to the Pharmacy Leaders Podcast and the Second Annual Travel Stipend Challenge
There will be at least three Travel stipends of $278 each, one for each category to be paid the day after the winners attend. I am sponsoring them personally like last year, there is no affiliation with APhA aside from I think they’re a great organization. Brandon Dyson from TLDRPharmacy.com will cover recommendations for networking for the introvert and Jackie Boyle at ThePharmacyGirl.com will cover recommendations for the extrovert so please visit their blogs, they have a ton of good content.
Last year we went strictly off of Facebook likes and I think this favored the extrovert and I wanted to be very inclusive, especially for those that might be a little more introverted and going to a meeting represents a big leap of faith.
The three categories for 2018 are, and you can enter 1, 2 or 3 of them. Obviously, you can only win once.
- Write an honest review of your favorite podcast episode on the Pharmacy Leaders Podcast on iTunes which is called Apple Podcasts now. The challenge is to articulate how this guest’s journey affected/influenced/mirrors your own and I’ll put that link in the show notes or you can use the purple podcast app. When I say honest review, the number of stars you give is irrelevant to the chance of winning.
- Write an honest review of the audiobook Memorizing Pharmacology: A Relaxed Approach (it’s free if you’ve never been on Audible.com before) The challenge is to articulate how the techniques in the book regarding medication prefixes, infixes, and suffixes can improve (studying of the Top 200, medication safety, patients, etc.)
https://www.audible.com/pd/Science-Technology/Memorizing-Pharmacology-Audiobook/B01FSR7HLE
- Get the most Facebook likes on a few sentence response to the original post of what you’ve done to demonstrate leadership on your pharmacy school leadership road. The challenge is to get the most Facebook likes demonstrating your social reach.
https://www.facebook.com/tonypharmd1
Winners will be announced on Valentine’s Day February 14th, 2018 and I’ll have to do it by screenname if it’s like Iheartpharmacy and be offered the chance to “appear” on the Pharmacy Leaders Podcast if you wish to talk about your own leadership road and your respective colleges of pharmacy. Watch for your screenname/avatar to be called on that date and contact me via Facebook messenger.
Notes:
Any year pharmacy student (P1,P2,P3,P4) can enter.
You can enter 1, 2, or 3 categories, but only win once.
You can still win if you’ve already paid for registration, I give it to you after you go or I can hand you the check in Nashville.
The number of stars does not affect your chance to win, the quality of your argument for your opinion does.
You can’t be a past APPE student of mine, I’m afraid, sorry about that.
As Part I in the series, Dr. Jackie Boyle takes us through the extrovert's journey at a national meeting, the dos, don'ts and good advice for networking and maybe landing that residency or job.
Full Transcript:
Ep_37_Travel_Stipend_and_Jackie_Boyle_Networking_for_Extroverts_-_12818_1.17_PM
Welcome to the Pharmacy Leaders Podcast with your host Tony Guerra. The Pharmacy Leaders Podcast is a member of the Pharmacy Podcast Network with interviews and advice on building your professional network, brand and a purposeful second income from students, residents and innovative professionals.
Welcome to the Pharmacy Leaders Podcast in the second annual travel stipend challenge. There's going to be at least three travel stipends of $278 each one for each category to be paid the day after the winners attend. I am sponsoring them personally just like last year so there's no affiliation with APHA aside that I think they're a great organization and I think really my leadership road started with my first APHA meeting in Seattle many years ago. For instance Brandon Dyson from TLDR pharmacy will cover recommendations for networking for the introvert on one podcast episode and Jackie Boyle at thepharmacygirl.com will cover recommendations for the extrovert on another podcast episode. So please do visit their blogs as well. They have a ton of good content. Last year we went strictly off Facebook Likes and I think this might have favored the extrovert a little bit more and I wanted to be very inclusive especially for those that might be a little introverted and going to a meeting for them represents a big leap of faith that it's going to be valuable for all the money that they spend. So the three categories that you can enter for 2018 are and you can enter one two or three of them. Obviously you can only win once. Number one, write an honest review of your favorite podcast episode on the Pharmacy Leaders Podcast on iTunes which is now called Apple podcast now. The challenge is to articulate how this guest's journey affected, influenced or mirrors your own and I'll put that link in the show notes so you can use the purple podcast app or you can click right from your iTunes, your iPhone. When I say honest review the number of stars you give is irrelevant to the chance of you winning. It's just how you articulate how important it was to you. Second, you can write an honest review of the audio book Memorizing Pharmacology, a relaxed approach. The book is actually free if you've never been on audible.com before. You would just cancel your subscription if that's something you don't want to continue with. The challenge is to articulate how the techniques in the book regarding medication prefixes and fixes and suffixes can improve your studying of the top 200 medication safety for patients, for Naplex. And many of you say well, that top 200 I don't need that for the Naplex but what it really does is show you how to memorize a lot of things in order very quickly. And that is one skill that you will need for that and the third is last year we had so much fun with this I get the most Facebook likes on a few sentence response to the original Facebook post on my Facebook 20 pharmd 1 and what you've done to demonstrate leadership on your pharmacy school leadership road. Challenge is just to get the most Facebook Likes demonstrating your social reach and you would be surprised there are individual pharmacy students that have significantly more reach than an entire School of Pharmacy. So these winners will be announced on Valentine's Day, February 14 2018 and I'll have to do it by screen name if you put some screen name like, I Heart pharmacy or that happens to be who you are and you'll get a chance to appear on the Pharmacy Leaders Podcast and get interviewed if you wish to talk about your own leadership road and your college. So watch for your screen name avatar to be called on that date and then contact me via Facebook messenger that tends to be the quickest way to get a hold of me. Just a couple notes, I'm sure there'll be something goofy that I didn't think of that I may have to address later but any year pharmacy student can enter whether you're P-1, P-2, P-3 or P-4. You can enter one two or three categories but you only win once. You can still win even if you paid for registration. I'll give it to you after you go or I can hand you the check in Nashville, I'll be there. The number of stars doesn't affect your chance to win, the quality of your argument for your opinion does and unfortunately you can't be a past APPE student or employee of mine. I'm afraid that would just be a little bit unfair. So I'm sorry about that but best of luck to everybody and may the travel stipend contest begin.
Okay, welcome to the Pharmacy Leaders Podcast. Today I have Jackie Boyle again back on with me and she's going to help me a little bit with APHA which is coming up in Nashville and she's going to take the extrovert side. As an extrovert what are the things that you should be doing and with each of the segments whether it's within the, whether it's in the teaching sessions, whether it's the social sessions with the state that you're from or the college that you're from and things like that. So Jackie welcome back to the Pharmacy Leaders Podcast.
Thanks Tony, thanks for having me. This is a very exciting topic and obviously very timely given the time of year that we're in. Residency interview season has begun I know a bunch of our students are patiently waiting for those emails to see if they got their interviews.
Yeah and as a faculty member I imagine that your college's success isn't very much tied to their success. The more and I don't want to say the more residents rather the higher the residency acceptance percentage maybe of those that put themselves out there, they get into residency's the better your college looks as a, you know, clinical site or a place that sends out those kinds of students. So I know both bated breath for student and college but before we get to that I do want to make an announcement, we're going to have a little bit of contest like we did last year. Where we're going to have what I want to call a networking stipend. So it's going to be a stipend to go to APHA for two students and we're going to cover their students type and I think it's $278 or something like that. So check out the show notes for this, for this episode where you're going to see details on that but we're going to give away $278 two times to at least two students this year to help them cover their costs in networking. So what I wanted to do is bring in Jackie to talk about networking as an extrovert. She's an extrovert who really loves to interact with other people and wanted to talk about, you know, let's just start even on the plane to APHA. So Jackie we are both on the plane to APHA. You're coming from Ohio, I'm coming from Iowa, what would you do if you find yourself sitting next to someone that's also going to the meeting?
Yes, so basically if you're on a plane to a big national pharmacy meeting chances are someone right next to you is going to that same exact meeting and it has happened to me many times. More than I can count actually but it is fairly easy to draw up a conversation while you're on a two, three, four-hour flight with someone who's sitting next to you about anything. Where they're traveling to, what book they're reading if they happen to be reading something. Obviously you don't want to disturb them in any way but you can kind of tell by someone's body language whether or not they're open to talking to you and a simple conversation small talk could lead to a great connection. Maybe it's the RPD of the program that you're applying to that you end up sitting next to or a current resident of a program that you're interested in, you never know who you're going to meet while you're on these travels.
So tell me a little bit about what kind of information you exchanged when you were on the plane to the national meetings. Do you give a business card, you know, what, how do you make sure that maybe you can connect afterwards or how do you ask for permission to connect afterwards?
Yeah absolutely, so at the end of your conversation you can usually tell whether or not that person wants to follow up with you. I would always have your business cards though I know I've run into a few situations where I've asked a student for a business card and they didn't have one. So number one, be sure that you have them available and with you and readily accessible but in today's technology honestly LinkedIn is most likely the way that you're going to connect with people. I know that a past few networking interactions that I've had where I've met individuals I've pulled up my phone, they pulled up their phone we found each other on LinkedIn and even though we both have business cards they might be, you know, falling by the wayside at some point because we do have this new platform that's a professional networking site to connect on.
Yeah and just to add one thing to that I tend to ask to just do one message between us because I have, you know, a couple thousand, three thousand, four thousand, somewhere in between their connections on LinkedIn but so that I have it, you know, higher in the queue kind of at the top of the inbox I'll just do one message to them through the LinkedIn messaging system just saying hi, how's it going or something like that just so it's fresh in there and it's coming from, you know, the meeting in that time. Okay well we're now landing in Nashville you get to your hotel and you've got kind of the opening session maybe isn't for a day, what are the first things you do at a national meeting?
Yeah, I wanted to follow up on your last point too, Tony. I think your point about sending a personalized message is an important one because likely you're going to meet tens if not more than tens of people at these meetings and if you follow up with a personalized message, you know, hey, Tony it was great to meet you and talk about your podcast, I look forward to connecting with you as we go forward in our professional lives or if you get someone's business card. I had a great mentor tell me one time to take the card and write something on the back of it obviously maybe when you're not in the vicinity of the person.
Sure.
After a networking interaction, you know, step away and say, and write down what you talked about. So you'd have something to refer back to when you are following up with them either on LinkedIn or through a thank-you card or otherwise. But to your point about landing and getting to the hotel I like to look at my schedule for the week and see what sessions I'm going to or what networking social events and things that are coming up at the meeting and plan it all out and get all of my stuff organized because you are not going to be spending nearly any time in your hotel room. It's almost a waste of money plans. I obviously need somewhere to sleep, so.
So, it's okay to have a lot of roommates.
Yeah, yeah if you're okay with being cozy, you know, your room, you're not going to be there very much. These meetings are morning, tonight full of events and learning and meeting new people. So it's not often that you're going to be spending much time there.
Okay so you've got to the meeting, you've, we've gotten our badges, what's kind of one of the first things that you do in terms of selecting which events to go to? I know a lot of times the ones that I want to go to tend to be at the exact same time but I honestly start with the evening events like the Maryland reception, the Iowa reception and then receptions maybe for some schools that I'm precepting for. What's your plan of action? What do you start with?
I start with the same process actually. I look at the social events that I want go to and oftentimes they are conflicting so you have to determine am I going to have enough time to go to both at the same hour, how am I going to make that happen, how far are they from each other. Sometimes at least my first meeting I underestimated how distance wise, how far things we're from each other and they could be one mile, two miles walking or if you're ubering around, you know, sometimes during these meetings that ubers get very busy. So you really want to map out your travel time as well and I think I underestimated that at my first big national meeting.
So big note wear comfortable shoes.
Oh my god.
But I did in looking at the hotels are actually, in Nashville are actually pretty well centralized and then there's Broadway which is just down the road to make Nashville an even bigger party town for the weekend. We're going to be there, it's, I think it's I'm pretty sure I'm running a half-marathon which is the St. Patrick's Day half marathon. So, you know, we don't even need to go there to tell students, residents, pharmacists just social media is always around. So watch what you're doing in Nashville but tell me a little bit about maybe how you connect with people at the meeting versus how you connect with people in something more social like going down to Broadway together for meals and things like that?
Yeah, at the meeting it's pretty easy because you're in a common space, you know, you're either in a common educational session or a social events where you can ask them how was your day going or what did you like about that last educational session, what's your big take-home points, now how are you going to use this when you get back home. I think those are easy conversations to start because, you know, you're on common ground. One thing to think about especially as a student who's attending this meeting anticipating residency you're always interviewing. So when you're out on Broadway you're interviewing and it's maybe a little bit stressful to think about that but know that those networking interactions are just as important as the ones that you have during the meeting. So number one, don't wear your tag, your dork tag as my one friend would say. I think sometimes we forget to take those off and it just looks kind of nerdy but really you need to be professional while you're out and about. So keep that in mind I guess as you're interacting in the city and make sure that you're in interview mode at all times.
Okay and tell me a little bit about going out on the floor. So there's always the event sponsors, the big the big drug companies and, you know, some staffing companies, career staff rx and places like that. Tell me a little bit about how you network with that group actually going into the section. So now we're not in the learning sections but we're the exhibitors in the exhibition hall. How do you network in an exhibition hall I guess is what I'm asking?
Yeah, at first I would see who you'd like to connect with whether that's a podcast, podcasting group or if it's a industry group and find a question to ask them don't, you know, go up to their booth and take something and then just walk away.
Take a pen, take some candy.
Right.
You know, come for some food or coffee.
Taking up and just leave, you know, that's not very professional. So find something that you're interested in finding out more about maybe it's a new technology and you anticipate working with it in your new role as a pharmacist. Ask them to show you a demonstration of their new technology and how it works or if they're, you're at a career booths I mean that's a great opportunity to say what is an ideal quality of a good candidate for a job or what do you look for as a recruiter and these are invaluable services that you can connect with while you're there during the national meeting.
Yeah and the national recruiters tend to be there so they tend to have an idea of what states are hot and what states might be a little bit more of a challenge. So whether you're going into a challenging job state or you're going into a state that might have a number of more opportunities either way you're at least going to know from their perspective because they're recruiting for certain areas there, they've gone they've, you know, they're companies maybe paid five, ten up to forty thousand dollars for them to have that space. So they want to meet people and they want to tell you hey, you know, if you've been thinking about the Pacific Northwest or if you've been thinking about the Midwest. Whatever it is there's going to be there they're going to know where the jobs are. Something that maybe I just thought of now though so residency it's about a 50/50 shot with as we did some of the calculations, you know, the people that go in. Tell me a little bit about what's a back-up plan because it's a little bit more the job market is a little more difficult than okay, well I'll just go work retail. What recommendations do you have for a back-up plan for somebody that's interested in residency, might apply the next year but what are they going to do in that gap year?
Well your Appy rotations are sometimes I think underestimated source of connection that you can have with future employers. So really remember the old lady's interactions are months, two month long interviews with individuals. So if your preceptor is impressed with your skills now these are connections that you can discuss possible job opportunities towards the end of your rotation, let them know of your career plans thus far but let them know too that hey, if residency doesn't work out for some reason this year I'd be very interested in continuing our conversation about employment opportunities here. I know that sometimes our students and I know myself and my friends while we were on Appys had these conversations and it was very helpful to have a back-up plan should the residency not work out. Now with the phase two as of a couple years ago this has gotten to be a lot much of a better situation for students because you still, as we talked about before Tony, you still have that leverage in round two. The scramble not as much but in round two of, you know, looking at programs who have not matched if you know what you want in a program and you have a good network it's likely that you could get a program in round two. Is it going to be in your geographic area? Maybe, maybe not but you have to consider that that could be your backup plan is finding something in round two.
Okay, great so we've gone to the meeting, there's a bit of exhaustion, you know, kind of at the end of the meeting maybe that's not the best time to connect. When would you start reconnecting with the people that you connected with? About how long after the meeting would you reconnect with them?
Oh yes, so meetings are fun but very tiring and I'd imagined for introverted pharmacists even more tiring. So I would say within that next week that you get home, you know, make sure it's not too much of a delay, two weeks or more might be too late but in that first week when you get back and you recover and recuperate you can see who you connected with, follow up with them say hey, you know, just got back from APHA, finally getting around to being productive again, wanted to just follow up on our conversation about X Y & Z.
Yeah that sounds good. Alright, well Jackie thanks so much for your advice and then we're going to have another episode where we're actually going to talk to you about your PGY-1 road, the successful road to a PGY-1 and then moving on to an academic career. So thanks again for being on the Pharmacy Leaders Podcast.
Thanks.
Support for this episode comes from the audio book Memorizing Pharmacology. A relaxed approach with over 9,000 sales in the United States, United Kingdom and Australia, it's the go-to resource to ease the pharmacology challenge. Available on Audible, iTunes and amazon.com in print eBook and audio book. Thank you for listening to the Pharmacy Leaders Podcast with your host Tony Guerra. Be sure to share the show with the hash tag hash pharmacy leaders.
