MEDICAL CODING JOB RECRUITER TIPS - RESUMES, INTERVIEWS, AND QUESTIONS ON GETTING HIRED REMOTE

Would you like to receive job information and career advice from one of the top

recruiter

s in the field of

medical

coding

and your field? Follow me Hello everyone, I'm Victoria, I'm a

medical

coder, auditor, educator, content creator and on my channel I provide

tips

, tricks and tutorials because I want you to be successful in your medical

coding

career. I took the top

questions

you've been asking in my comments section, as well as the ones in the community tab, and put them together to form this interview, so let's get into it to make bertram a recruiting leader in his industry and is the founder of a renowned talent that helps recruit and staff highly qualified candidates in it and in fact also so bertram has helped recruit tons of medical coders, healthcare sales executives, specialists in emr implementation, financial analysis, uh, transcriptionist, medical scribe project. managers tons of people in the healthcare field in general and I brought Bertram here today because I get a lot of

questions

from viewers about job search topics and interview skills and I interviewed and

hired

a handful of medical coders, but you know I can talk. to my personal experiences in doing that, but that doesn't necessarily mean that my personal experiences are generally what happens in the healthcare field, so I don't want to make sure that anyone gets the impression that my personal experiences reflect the totality of what is. happening in the industry, so I brought Bertram here today because I think he will be extremely beneficial in helping answer some of the questions I've been receiving and providing something beyond my personal vision, so thank you very much, Bertram, for accepting.

To come to my YouTube channel today, thanks for having me, yeah, so the first question I want to address is one that I get a lot because I have a lot of, you know, stay-at-home moms who want to go into medicine. coding so you know that when you're a mom you often take a little bit of time off to take care of raising your kids, which is why I get asked a lot, you know? Do I still need to explain those gaps in my employment history to answer your questions? First question, I would say yes, it's always good to be honest and answer, you know, those questions when they ask you, but depending on the application, I wouldn't necessarily put them on the resume, so let's say someone you know had two. -a one year gap or a three year gap, I wouldn't necessarily say oh stay home mom on the resume for about three years, just let the gap be very evident on your resume and then if they ask you for the interview, oh why?

If you have that gap in employment, that's when you can explain the reasons, but it's always a really good opportunity to also talk about what you've been doing to stay involved in the industry. Have you been checking your coding clinics? You've been

getting

additional certifications just because you were away, you want to show your potential employers and future employers that you're still involved in the industry and developing those skills because, especially with Kovid, we've all had to take some kind of break. Everyone had to make some kind of adjustments, like you said, Victoria, stay-at-home moms, maybe they're working, but now because of everything and because the kids are home, they're now having to stay home or work a lot less, so just I will explain. those situations, but still helping employers know why you're still and how you're still involved in the industry, yeah, and I think that's really important and that's something that's come up in the past when I've participated in

interviews

.

I've asked people, you know, how have you kept up, even necessarily, not necessarily, maybe in relation to the gaps, but even, oh, you've worked in professional, you're certified in professional coding, but you've been working in outpatients. coding, how have you kept up with professional coding in that time and then is when you can have that conversation of oh yeah, I've been doing my healthcare business on a monthly basis and these webinars, etc., yeah, that's a great advice, so how important is it? having a quality resume and making some of these more sophisticated resume templates that have come out where you can put your photo and have different colors and bar graphs and stuff like that are important, they stand out more than your traditional kind of resume You know, I think A resume is almost like having a really good meal, it's more about the quality of what's there.

You know, I know, recently I probably saw some even some very famous CEOs or former CEOs of big companies like Google. I remember a couple. Years ago, this resume was floating around and it had a picture. It had all these graphics. I had a personality assessment and that's all great, but if you like, let's look at your Microsoft Word and write a really strong resume. With your experience, I would say that a resume with solid content and a quality resume will be above all the flash because you can have all the flash but not necessarily have the skills or experience necessary for the job, another thing I get asked Commonly. it's about photographs, well bertram, you know, I see there's a trend right now to have photographs on

resumes

because of discrimination laws and that sort of thing in the United States, some companies are inclined to have that sort of thing because they don't want to. let's say, oh, we don't employ this or hire this person because of something like that, so on the eastern side of the world, let's say in Europe or Asia, having photographs on

resumes

, even like India, for example, is extremely popular and is even a requirement they want. to verify that the person who applied for the job is the same person who comes to the interview, etc., right, um, but in the United States it's really been the trend, what I would do, I would keep that profile photo really professional and that type of photos or the image that you're going to use on that resume on your LinkedIn profile that's where your LinkedIn profile comes in handy, but I would say that what it's about is a really solid resume.

I remember we had this job where we had to recruit this very specialized skill. set for and I tell you this person's resume probably had less than 50 words on the resume, but he had the necessary certifications and experience and only two or three employers listed, so it's really about the content and the quality of that . resume, that's an amazing comment and thank you because I think it's something that I personally have even done and maybe not necessarily something for someone who is just starting out, but as someone who is more experienced and has many years of experience, there is only one couple of things that I know they're really looking for, so I don't have to list as many things, maybe as someone who feels like they have to prove themselves more like I can list, oh, these are the two things that I know they're looking for and I can show this experience with these three points, so it's absolutely great, in tracking how far back someone should go on their resume.

My recommendation is 10 to 15 years. I'm not really a big person and I know that there will always be discrimination in the market, but some people use this 10 to 15 years saying that well, you don't get too old and if you put in 20 years, they are going to calculate and I don't necessarily think that that will work. to happen, but I think it all comes down to relevance, like let's say you worked at Starbucks, you know, as a barista 15 or 20 years ago, whatever, it's really relevant and can you still make that macchiato as well? You did it back then when you did it every day and what I'm missing a lot on resumes is that people have a lot of experience listed and that's great, but what is it relevant to?

I would say go for 10 to 15 years of relevant experience and for those who are just starting out, you definitely want your education to fill in these gaps that you may not have much experience in, but my rule of thumb is 10 to 15 years and that's usually for a resume and we have to remember when you look at the definition of a resume, a resume is really a short, concise type of document limited to two pages, so when you have something like you know 5 10 15 pages that talk about publications , speaking engagements, now you're

getting

more on a cvs cb is what we usually use when we're trying to show our expertise on a topic or yes, we've been involved in the industry for 50 years, that's when it's okay, just when we're trying to appear on Forbes. articles and stuff, but when you're applying online you generally want to have a short, sweet resume, and if you have a longer resume, usually save it for your hiring manager or the people interviewing you before the interview.

Great, great, great, so, on reflection. then to experiment, one of the main questions i also get is apprentice status for coders, so are there ways to remove that two year apprentice status by doing an internship, following an approved curriculum through the aapc , so while you don't officially have two years of experience, you do have apprentice style status removed, so do you have any idea how employers view two years of experience versus apprentice status being removed? ? So I see them as two things, I think regardless of what we can do to remove him from trainee status is the most important thing and for those people who may have Leslie as a cca, do what you have to do to be able to qualify and do the test so they can get their cc's right, but when we have that. trainee status or when we lack experience, unfortunately there is no substitute on the market for experience.

My golden rule is that experience is golden. We all need to have the experience and when we can get those first jobs, let's say I'm recruiting whatever. you really want to be able to show that even with a very low level of experience, you're able to pick up and get going very quickly. I remember when I started in recruiting, you know, they just put me on like a 90-day kind of trial period and I know that if I didn't really get it going within those 60 days, they'd probably give me a virtual trial, if you're not acting in four weeks, you know we may have to have a different conversation, we may have to go to a different department and we have to remember that when it comes to coding billing and a lot of that has to do with reimbursement, you know , on a million dollar chart, 95 five percent accuracy is a 50,000 loss for everyone, so this is directly related to reimbursement and how things work within those healthcare facilities, so which I know is the biggest frustration everyone has, how do I eliminate those a's and that kind of thing?

You have to be very creative, you have to find. One way to get into the hm department, you have to find employers who can give you a chance, but there's really no substitute for experience and in my hiring experience, I haven't been able to say, "Hey, someone has taken this." This coursework or internship as a replacement for experience hasn't been accepted by many employers, but as you said before, Victoria, we can't speak for everyone, so if you can find someone who will take it, you'll definitely want to do it. that research you want to pursue, yes, yes, so thank you, I think that gives some additional insight and this is on par with what I was thinking: you know experience versus removing trainee status, obviously you want to go and get your trainee status is removed as quickly as possible, um, but you can't really, in most employers, replace those two years of actual experience because, as always, I always say there's a responsibility with new coders, no.

There is nothing against new coders, but there is a small risk in hiring someone who doesn't have the experience, compared to someone who does have the experience, so moving on, I also get a lot of questions about

remote

coding, so what seems to be this interest and I. Think about it because you know these trends that we're seeing with tiny houses and travel and that kind of stuff, one of the questions that's been coming up a lot is, do you think employers would allow coders to work as traveling coders because we have a lot of

remote

work, but Would you like to work in a mobile home and travel from one place to another working remotely?

From what I've seen and from my experience, it really depends, some employers require their employees to be within a certain state or location. You know, even when it comes to the fact that many of us work remotely these days, so let's even say that the voice over IP phones or the Internet that they provide us need to know our location in case we call 9-1- 1. to know electronically where to send that signal to 911 andWe all think, well, we have cell phones. I'm not going to call emergency services from my work phone, but just in case, you should be very clear with your employer and yourself.

I need to see what your requirements are. I have seen that some are very open to it, as long as you have a very strong Internet connection. They don't necessarily care if it's an RV mobile home, you know, a little house on the back of a It's kind of like a big truck, but you want to make sure that a lot of healthcare systems are very sensitive about that your work is done outside of the 50 continental United States, so I even had a few people say to me: Hi Bertram, I have a vacation home in the Virgin Islands, can I work for your previous company, former company or this employer?

Some don't allow it even though those are US territories, so you should always make sure with your

recruiter

or HR representative if you can have that flexibility and just be Talk to them about what you're looking to do because it's They may or may not allow it even if you are working for a provider, it may not necessarily be the provider, sometimes the healthcare system doesn't allow it, so you need to be very open and honest about it as well. Yeah, and I think there are also considerations even when it comes to codec connectivity if you're sitting in the middle of a rocky place, you know, you're going to have a good secure internet connection that no one is going to be able to access and start taking health information. .

That's another thing I think I need to consider when working remotely. You mentioned that many of us are working remotely right now. Do you feel like in light of this pandemic and suddenly now there has been a surge with our remote workers? Do you feel like there may be a new trend that will allow more remote workers or allow um? Newer employees will start working remotely, where in the past we've had to say, "You know, we have to be here for a year." You have to reach a certain percentage of quality and productivity before you are allowed to work remotely.

Do you foresee that we will do it? I'll have some laxity with remote work over the years, it's definitely been a lot more lax in the past as a recruiter. I actually had to check how many years of remote medical coding experience someone had and document it, and now I've seen it. see and then it was like more, well this person has worked remotely and now it's more of a remote position, so the trend is definitely there, but again, I can't speak for all health systems because some systems Local healthcare providers need to hire locally, you will come on site to train and then after a certain period of time they will allow you to be remote.

I have a vacancy at the moment, they just want to make sure someone understands and knows all their team members and then they will allow them to work remotely, so one depends too, but the trend is definitely to get to a more relaxed requirement around to work remotely. Yes, I think there have definitely been some changes that have happened with the pandemic and I think since In my experience, I'm starting to see more places recognizing that a lot of the things they did in person, like orientation, can now be done offline. remotely, exactly, yeah, exactly, so this question came up and I thought it was interesting and I thought.

As a recruiter, you may have some idea about this because not all of the jobs I was

hired

for, at least initially, were in-person jobs and then maybe I finally transitioned remotely and someone asked me what companies hire a many remote coders require drug testing, they can do that and I recently had a few people assigned through my company and yes, every single one of them, even though they would never be on site, we required it or it was a requirement that they go through a drug test. drugs. screen, so what happened was the employers had the forms and all they said was hey, these are our requirements, even though it's remote work now, they're just moving those requirements for remote employees, they're not changing and saying oh Well, this remote, so now we're not going to require the drug test, so it definitely can be possible and that's another thing you can check with the human resources department with the recruiters that you're talking to, so the last question I have is again.

Regarding remote positions, it came up recently when I was talking to some of my colleagues who interview coders and they told me that they had experienced lately with people who are being interviewed remotely via Skype, Facetime or Zoom that there is no proper etiquette that people may be talking on the phone and walking around their house while talking to the person they are interviewing. Do you have any

tips

for coders who are now interviewing remotely that you can share so that the The first tip is that you should treat it as you would a normal interview to find out if you will be meeting with a hiring manager.

That is to say, first impressions are everything whether the recruiter you are going to talk to or want. To check whether it's a phone interview or a video interview, you don't want to just show up and not be properly prepared, so you always want to check those things as well and treat it like a regular interview, so same professional attire. that you would do, whether it's a tie for men or nice dresses, blouses for women, you want to make sure you have them and the second thing you want to do, you want to try, you know, if so, for example, we're using zoom right now .

What I would do is download zoom on my computer or on my phone and test where I'm going to take it in the background and if you can hear your microphone, the video, whatever you're going to use and then just be ready and have that time dedicated To that, yes, a lot of hiring managers and recruiters were also working remotely and let's see outside of our offices, we may have kids coming in, we may have a dog barking in the background, I think people are being understanding about it, but we still want to make sure that everything that is within our control is within our control as that can be taken into account because what the hiring recruiter is going to think is good, if that's how they took a video interview , imagine how they can work while they're with us or interact with our clients and that kind of stuff, I think it was super helpful and yeah, I know there's definitely some laxity that we're having right now, you know, I think I was doing medical education.

It was a couple days ago and I had forgotten to close my back door here and my daughter burst in in her pajamas in the middle of it and I laughed a little and I told her to come down and get her breakfast and that was it. Well, but yeah, under normal circumstances I don't usually let my kids exactly, it's always the one thing we forget and it's like here they come almost like that video, um or that thing that went viral on CNN a few months or a year ago, TRUE? Yes, yes, the gentleman is trying to have this professional CNN interview and then what happens?

The kids come in and the mom says I don't know, she likes spider arms and kids coming back, so yeah, and now we're all exactly CNN Dad. exactly fine, thank you very much bertrand for your time, so if any of my viewers want to contact you for any reason, what is the best way to contact you? Whether it's Twitter or LinkedIn, I have a little bit more of a presence and I post a little bit more content there. I also have a YouTube channel, as well as childhood compared to Victoria and everything she is doing, but that is also a recognized talent, but yes, it is just Birch Blanco on any social media platform.

I also have a series of astro creative videos. I do my best to help educate people, just best practices, whether it's resumes and whatnot, so you can always reach me, but I hope you know this was helpful and thanks again, Victoria for having me was definitely a pleasure. and I hope all these tips are very useful and remember that we are all going through a very difficult time right now, everyone is being very understanding, but we have to move on, it has always been difficult. get your first job right away, it's always been hard for you to reposition yourself and change careers, but just because it's hard doesn't mean you should stop, it means you should probably try a little harder so there's anything Victoria I can do myself, let us know know and if you really like this episode and like us doing it, do it again in the future, let us know, we are always here to help you.

Thank you so much Bertram, I really appreciate it all. true, thank you all, I hope you found it as insightful as I did. Be sure to check out Bertram's YouTube channel and if you haven't already, don't forget to subscribe and hit the notification bell to get alerts when he posts something new. episodes because I post awesome content like this every week to help you out, I'll see you guys in the next episode and until then I'll keep coding you.