Category Archives: Intern Applicant

5 Ways to Improve your Application for Internships as a Non-American

At one of my old institutions, I routinely evaluated the international batch of candidates for our internship. This was usually a pretty sizeable group- between 40 and 50 of 200 applications. Unfortunately for the applicants, it was one of the easiest groups to evaluate. A short skim of most applications would reveal them to be unacceptable candidates, so a thorough analysis was not needed to determine where they might rank as a candidate. It’s harsh but true. If you are not from the United States, and you are applying for a veterinary position here, it is a steep uphill battle.* Here are five ways to improve your success.

1) Get some time working for an academic clinical specialist. Ideally one in the United States, but a well-regarded institution in the English-speaking world or Utrecht is better than nothing. This is the most important point because it is ESSENTIAL. No one who hasn’t been trained in the U.S. system knows the U. S. system, so any letters of recommendation you get have no bearing on how well you would do in a U. S. internship. If you have an application with only letters of recommendation from your home country, unless it is the UK, Ireland, Australia, New Zealand, or The Netherlands, you won’t get very far. You need AT LEAST 2 weeks, but 4 weeks is better with a single specialist. Ideally, all of your letters of recommendation will be from specialists in the U. S.

2) Figure out the visa situation. This has become more problematic in the current political climate. Most private practices and many universities simply cannot accept international applicants. This may be true even if you are from Canada or Mexico. Check with the institution unless they specify it in their program description. If you can’t get a visa, you can’t get an internship.

3) Have a native speaker proofread your work. I realize you may be fluent in English, but English is an incredibly ridiculous language. I have almost never read a letter of intent from a non-native-speaker which was 100% correct. Even professional editorial services can’t always be trusted unless they are small and personalized and feature native English speakers.

4) Apply shortly after you graduate. I see a lot of applications from people who graduated 4-5 years ago and since then have a very strange work history. It may be a normal work history for that country but, from a U. S. perspective, doing a 7-month internship at the school you graduated from and then doing 2 months as a food inspector and then being a small animal clinician and then working for the state is weird. Most U. S. applicants apply straight out of vet school. You should aim to do the same. If you are reading this too late to make that decision, make your professional progression CLEAR. You did this, THEN this, THEN this. Don’t muddle up your professional responsibilities and jobs. If you did part-time work, specify this.

5) Get some time working for a veterinary practice in a country with a strong clinical training emphasis in their veterinary education. We took interns from some European countries which do not have a strong clinical focus and it showed, and we largely stopped taking those applicants. You need your vet school training to be on par with vet students in the U. S. in order to be competitive. You could also spend time working as a vet in a country where clinical training is emphasized.

Essentially, you need to make your application as close to a senior veterinary student from the United States as possible. If your application can’t indicate that you are at least as competent as an average new veterinary graduate, it won’t go anywhere. There are plenty of more qualified applicants.

*This generally does not apply to those in Canada, the UK, Ireland, Australia, and New Zealand, although you still need to look at the visa situation.

Podcast Episode 8 – Dr. Jason Eberhardt

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Dr. Eberhardt and I were ‘middle management’ at a new institution so shared many struggles and successes. Although we lead sometimes apparently different lives, we feel very similarly about success and how to achieve in veterinary medicine. I hope you enjoy!

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Learn to Write an Email Asking for a Recommendation

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You may feel this small when you ask for a letter. It’s OK. Photo by Malcolm Lightbody on Unsplash

As we’ve discussed before, people seem to have some anxiety around asking a potential mentor for a letter of recommendation. I used to teach an undergraduate seminar course in clinical research, and one of the assignments was for the students to write an email asking for a letter of recommendation. I was surprised at the range in quality of these emails, so I think the topic deserves some attention to make sure you all write excellent emails.

Here is the basic structure:

Email title
Salutation
Introduction (if necessary)
A description of the position to which you are applying
Your ask for help
A closer

Email title

This one is pretty simple. You can’t go wrong with “Letter of Recommendation”. It is straightforward and tells the reader exactly what the email is about. “Inquiry” is more vague but could be used if you don’t want to prime the reader about what your ask is.

Salutation

“Dear Dr./Mr./Ms. X,” That’s it. Keep it simple.

Introduction

If there is a chance the reader does not know you, this is recommended. If you are a senior veterinary student and you just got off a clinic rotation with the person, this is not necessary. I would suggest two lines. The first is giving your current professional role and the context of how you know each other. “My name is John Smith and I am a senior majoring in Biology; I was a student in your research seminar course.”

The second line provides something memorable about you or your interaction. “I did the research project comparing pricing of men and women’s beauty products.”

A description of the position

Provide enough information that they can write a specific letter. If this is “vet school”, that’s fine. If it’s an aquarium externship in Florida, give them more details. If there is a link to the position description, provide that. “I am applying for small animal rotating internships in academic and private practice institutions.”

Your ask for help

Just keep it simple and gracious. Always attach your letter of intent and curriculum vitae. “I was wondering if you would be able and willing to write a good letter of recommendation for me? My letter of intent and CV are attached for your reference. Thank you for your consideration and I look forward to hearing from you.”

Closer

These commonly include “Sincerely,” “Best Regards”, and “With Appreciation.” I personally like “Respectfully,” but you can choose what you like. “Cheers,” “Take Care,” and similar too-personal closers should not be used.

So that’s it! If you want to put some examples together and share them in the comments, I will comment on them!

How to do Proper Interview Preparation

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Preparation is always the key to a successful endeavour. Photo by Melissa Gogo.

Regardless of the position to which you apply, if there is an interview, you need to prepare. Well, you don’t NEED to prepare. But others who are interviewing WILL prepare. Do you want to be competitive with those who are preparing? Then you need to prepare, as well. Failing to prep is prepping to fail. So let’s assume you actually want the position for which you are interviewing and let’s discuss what you need to do to prepare.

First, you have to know about the position to which you are applying. If it is a job, get the job description down cold. If it is for vet school, talk to every veterinarian you can about what it is like. If it is for an internship or residency, read the position description and talk to your mentors about the position in detail. I advised an anesthesia residency applicant this year by giving them a 2-3 sentence assessment of each program in which they were interested. If possible, talk to people currently in the program to get an insider’s look.

The website for the institution to which you are applying may be incredibly detailed and helpful or not so much. You should at least know their mission statement, what the program is like based on the official materials, and any other data you can find (e.g. applicant numbers or expectations). This should take at least 30 minutes and up to 2 hours, depending on how much data they have online. Mine that data. You won’t actually know what the position entails until you have done it, but you should know as much as possible so you can interact intelligently with the interviewers.

Second, you need to practice. You wouldn’t walk into an ice skating competition and expect to do well without practice, would you? Unless you have been going on interviews every week for the past few months, there is no life experience that has prepared you for an interview. So, practice. Get friends to ask you questions in a simulated setting. Studies have shown visualization activates similar pathways to actual practice, so run through questions and scenarios in your mind. The more you practice the specific skill of interviewing, the better.

Third, you need to study. Watch TED videos about effective interviews and discussion skills (the body language talk is revolutionary). Read forum posts about interviews. Read this blog from beginning to end, taking notes all along. Research potential interview questions and write down possible responses. You would study for months for the NAVLE, wouldn’t you? How is an interview dictating the next step of your professional life any less important?

I cannot impress this upon you enough: just waltzing into an interview isn’t going to impress anyone, and it will significantly harm your chances of a positive outcome. You’re a veterinary professional, for god’s sake; you’ve spent countless hours studying for classes and applying to programs and everything else involved in this demanding field! Don’t tell me for one second you can’t do interview prep. If every applicant did good interview prep, I would be over-the-moon happy. Please help make that happen.

Internship/Residency Rankings Done Right

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After you’ve chosen the programs in which you are interested, sent in your application materials, and done an interview (if applicable), you are now ready to rank the programs. The rank order list is due in early January. What does it mean and how do you do it?

The mechanics of the match are described in detail elsewhere. Put simply, you rank the institutions and the institutions rank the applicants. Then an algorithm runs and matches the applicants with the institutions.

Some people try to over-complicate the match process. They think, “Well, I doubt I will get into place X, so I won’t ‘waste’ a high level spot for it.” Don’t assign value to the actual rank spot. Instead, you should rank purely on one criteria: Where do you want to go? Rank in order from YOUR highest picks to your lowest, without regard for your likelihood of them wanting you. The system is designed to be treated this way; you’ll mess up your chances if you try to second-guess the algorithm.

How many institutions should you rank? It depends primarily on how happy you can be in a given circumstance. For example, have you decided that literally the only way you can have professional fulfillment is to be a surgeon? First, I’m sorry for you. But if so, then you have to rank every single program. On the other hand, if you’ve decided that you would very much like to do surgery, but not at the expense of your physical or mental health, then you should only rank the programs where you would be happy. That’s difficult to know a priori, but it is possible if you do your research and talk to current or former interns/residents

The second consideration for number of institutions to rank is financial cost. There is a substantial step up from 10 to 11 institutions ranked ($90 to $250 in 2019). However, this is your future, the next step in the rest of your life. Even the highest step ($350 in 2019) is not particularly expensive, matched against your entire education to date and your professional future. My advice therefore is to rank more.

The next consideration is how good of an applicant you are. If you know you will be a top choice at a few schools, you only need to rank a few. If you are a good candidate but not sure where you stack up, you will want to hedge your bets and rank many more institutions.

The final and most important consideration is how to decide how to order your rankings. Being an analytical sort, I made a table. It looked something like this:

Program

# Interns

Salary

Elective Time

Specialists

% ER Time

Research Notes

Your table may have other variables, such as: geographic location, # cases, equipment, license requirements, rounds, or % primary care time. Some of this information you can get from the position description, some will come from your research on the position. At the end, organize the programs according to the most important variables for you.

My general advice is to rank every institution where you think you could be happy. The cost is not very significant, it minimizes the risk of not matching and having to do The Scramble, and is fairly efficient. Rank them in order of where you want to go. That’s it! Tell me what you think and how it goes!

Avoid the Biggest Mistakes Made during The Match

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Making your professional life successful is as much about what NOT TO do as it is about what TO do. The Match is probably the highest-stakes professional selection in academic veterinary medicine- even more so than getting into vet school in the first place. As a result of this pressure, people make a lot of mistakes which adversely affect their professional future. This is not an exhaustive list, just the most prominent ones I have encountered.

1) Trying to game the matching algorithm. Please don’t do this. I know it’s tempting. I did it because I was foolish, didn’t talk to anyone wiser, and the internet was barely a thing. Rank the place you most want to go #1 and then move on to the next.

2) Not reviewing your application materials. How is it possible there is a misspelled word in your letter of intent? You have spell-check on your writing program, don’t you? Run basic diagnostics and read and re-read your materials. Simple errors like this suggest to me that the applicant isn’t really all that interested in the position. If they were, they would have spent more time on their application.

3) Not sending out your application materials. You must get others to read your letter of intent and CV. Preferably veterinary academics who have looked at many such applications. However, even your friends and family can be helpful. Tell everyone to be brutally honest. Your goal is to get the best application possible, not to assuage your ego. You don’t have to take everyone’s suggestions. In fact, if you send it out enough, you will start to get conflicting suggestions. But you must have others review them. You would not believe the poorly written letters I have helped people improve.

4) Not getting your ducks in a row in time. Hopefully, you strategized your time to maximize your match success. And you did give those writing letters of recommendation plenty of notice, didn’t you? And you have gotten all your materials in well before the deadline, right?

5) Not preparing for interviews. If you apply to institutions which hold interviews, you must do your research and study up on how to do a successful interview. Failing to plan is planning to fail.

6) Delaying the decision. I know some students and interns who waffle on whether to apply to the match and then make a decision at the last second. That is unacceptable. If you THINK you may want to apply, set up everything as if you will. You don’t have to submit your rank list until January. If you put in applications but don’t rank any institutions, you won’t match anywhere.

It’s not a long list, but you would be surprised at the number of people who continue to make these mistakes- hence this post. Try to avoid being one of them and let me know if you need help!

Podcast Episode 7 – Dr. Jarred Williams

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Dr. Williams and I worked together at an institution and spent many a night doing colic cases together. He has insight into the world of veterinary equine medicine and equine surgery. I hope his insight is helpful to those of you interested in that path!

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The 8 Steps of Writing an Application Letter

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I’ve written a lot about the ideas you should express in letters of application, and even some specific suggestions on what to include. We’ve talked about what not to do and what goals you should have, but one of my editors suggested I write an actual nuts-and-bolts-how-to-style post about writing an application letter, so here you go. How to write an application letter in eight steps.

1) Sit down at your computer and open your word processing program

2) Write: To Members of the Selection Committee

3) Write: I am applying for <insert position>. I am currently <your professional role>

4) Write down everything you can think of about yourself which makes you an excellent candidate. Write down everything you can think of about your interest in the position. It should be many pages long

5) Trim. And trim. And trim. Take the best parts of what you have written in step 4. It needs to be one page, no more

6) Proofread. Edit, clean up sentences, make sure the grammar is correct. Make sure the ideas flow from one to the next

7) Give it to friends, family, mentors- anyone whose opinion you respect. Ask them to use Track Changes or similar to make changes and comments. Read all the comments and changes and take the ones you like

8) Read it again. Does every sentence serve a purpose? Is there any rambling? Do you use decisive wording or do you sound wishy-washy? Sharpen it

Now you are done. You have to do this for each step of your professional progression. Don’t refer back to what you wrote for vet school when you’re applying for internships. Start fresh. And remember Kaizen– continuous improvement. Each iteration should be better than the last. Have fun and good luck!

How to Do Effective Research as an Intern

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All internship years are clinical training programs. That is what they are designed for and that is what they offer. It’s an intensive experience designed to improve your clinical knowledge, decision-making skills, and procedural experience. Most internships are not designed for you to do research. But you may want to try, as there are a couple of valuable benefits to doing research as an intern.

Being only one year in length makes it extremely challenging to start and finish a research project as an intern. Combined with the long clinic hours you work, it’s no mystery why most programs don’t emphasize intern research. It is rarely successful. I can count on one hand the number of interns I have worked with who got a published paper from their intern year, and all of those were either case reports or helping with an existing project.

In spite of these obstacles, trying to complete a research project during your internship year may allow you to develop a relationship with a faculty mentor and get a publication added to your CV. Here are some steps to help you be successful:

1) Be realistic. Do you _really_ want to give up the slight amount of free time you already have to do a research project? Will you actually follow through and finish it? Will having a publication in submission really help your residency application that much? If you start a project which you don’t finish, will that sour your relationship with the faculty mentor? Remember, most efforts at doing research as an intern will not be successful. Make sure you can commit

2) Start early. You have to start in your first month of the program if you expect to have anything useful on your CV by the time match applications are due in the beginning of December. The only possible exception to this is a case report, but those you can’t really predict- you have to rely on them to come across your plate.

3) Find a mentor. Hopefully you know what discipline you want to pursue after your internship. Find a friendly faculty member and ask them about the prospect of doing research. The best case scenario is if they have an existing project which just needs to be written up. Other possibilities are helping with data collection for an ongoing project or starting your own. Only start your own if you know it is easy to do, does not require extensive approvals (IACUC, IRB), and has a high likelihood for success.

4) Submit the publication before residency applications are due so you can write on your CV, “Submitted for publication”. As noted, many interns start research, but few actually finish it. For me, a line on a CV which reads, “Comparison of This Thing with Another Thing. Research in progress” is basically valueless. Starting a project is easy. Untold thousands of research projects are started every year. But do you finish it? Ah, now that is something worth noting on a CV

You don’t necessarily need research on your CV to be a competitive residency applicant. Don’t force yourself to do a research project as an intern to fill out what you think is a deficiency on your CV. Only pursue it if you are serious, dedicated, and passionate. It can be a valuable experience, but it also has the potential to create poor feelings due to a project not being finished. Be honest with yourself and your potential mentor, and you may be successful.

Making Research in Vet School Work For You

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The Vetducator: Stand back I'm going to try science. — Credit xkcd.

Now that you’re a vet student, you have it made. You’ve achieved your life-long goal and just have to graduate. But what if there’s something more? What if you want to do post-grad education, or work in public health, or contribute to society other than taking care of dogs, cats, and horses? Maybe there is the opportunity to do research.

Conducting research during vet school opens a lot of doors. You get to engage in scientific inquiry which hopefully has some ultimate effect on a patient’s outcome or quality of life. You get to work directly with a faculty member who is (hopefully) interested in mentoring you. You get to build your CV and demonstrate to future programs that you are dedicated, responsible and focused.

Getting involved in research during vet school can be surprisingly challenging. Undergraduate students often have whole offices dedicated to their success. For vet students, you have two easily accessible options: do a fellowship or volunteer your time.

A summer fellowship is often supported by various industry groups and provide a stipend. A summer fellowship is a good first step, but it is unlikely you will finish a project in that amount of time. You may be a cog in the wheel of benchtop research, or you may start your own research project. If you want to continue to be a part of the project, you will likely have to volunteer once the summer is over.

Volunteering your time is also an option. You may seek out a mentor who is doing something interesting or a mentor may announce that they are looking for students to help with research.

No matter how you get involved, before you start, you should talk openly with your potential mentor to make sure you are a good fit. The experience needs to be positive for you and for your mentor, otherwise ill feelings can creep in. First, you need to determine what you want out of doing research:

Experience. You just want to try research to see if it is something that may engage you. This is great- tell your prospective mentor(s) this. You don’t need to commit to what you want to do for the rest of your life at this point.

Relationships. Doing research often puts you in closer contact with a faculty member than in the normal course of vet school. You often work closely with them and meet with them regularly. You now have a mentor- you can ask them for advice, for help with letters of application and CVs, and for letters of reference. Mentors are incredibly important in your career, and identifying and working with one through research can be a strong bond.

CV Building. If you intend to go on to further education after graduation, research may bump your application slightly. Be aware that almost every serious applicant I have reviewed for internships has some research experience. Just engaging in research doesn’t do much to set your CV apart. Having a paper which is submitted for publication or, even better, accepted for publication is more remarkable. If you are buried in an author list, that is not particularly memorable. If you are the first author on a peer-reviewed publication, evaluators may take notice. In general, having research experience and publications in your internship application won’t make or break it, but it may give you a slight edge. If you intend to pursue a graduate degree, demonstrating some interest and experience with research during vet school is key.

An example of an improved CV from vet school research.

Second, you need to kick ass doing research. If you want to secure a positive recommendation, just doing what you are asked/told is not enough. You need to identify opportunities to do more. Answer emails promptly. Complete tasks eagerly and rapidly. Many vet students do research. If you want to excel, you have to stand out. Follow a project through to the end or, if you absolutely hate what you’re doing, be clear and upfront with your faculty mentor.

Finally, make use of the resources you developed with this experience. Don’t hesitate to ask your faculty research supervisor for help with applications. If possible, make progress on a publication which has your name on it. The world helps those who help themselves. Don’t just expect everything on a silver platter because you helped with a research project. Make use of the skills and connections you made.

Research during vet school can be rewarding and illuminating. If you have the slightest inkling that you may want to do something other than primary care medical practice, dip your toe into research. You may find out something about yourself.