2 Steps to Getting a Job in Hand Therapy Without Experience
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[00:00:00] If you're an occupational therapist and you want to move specifically into hand therapy, into an outpatient hand therapy clinic, I'm going to share with you my secrets, so you can increase your chances of getting that job. My name is Huang. I'm an occupational therapist and certified hand therapist, and through my platform Hand Therapy Secrets, I'll help you to develop your clinical skills, feel really good about yourself, and maybe even consider becoming a certified hand therapist, right?
So recently I just had um, my last manual therapy course and one of the students in that program was like, I was in a skilled nursing, I was, you know, in different settings and I just got really burnt out and I really want to move into hand therapy. Huang helped me. First of all, I want to share with you a few things that are going to really help you.
Number one is your resume, but number two has to do with the courses that you take. This is something that I look at for myself in terms of hiring, and this year I've had to hire. In past years, I've had to hire. I'm doing the same thing [00:01:00] that other people are looking at. Now I might be in a private clinic, but people in hospital systems and bigger clinics, they're looking for the same thing.
And the one thing that they're looking for is when they hire you as the occupational therapist in a hand therapy setting, all they want to know is, can you treat their patient? Ask yourself that. If I got the job, would I be able to come right in and take over and be able to see those patients? It is the number one thing.
I get people coming in, they want full time positions, they want flexibility, they want tons of money. My number one concern is if I'm going to pay you all this money, can you treat my patients that I have coming in? I'm not alone in this. I talk to a lot of private business owners, um, and they want the same thing, right?
Uh, big companies, when they're looking for someone, they want someone who can treat their patients. [00:02:00] Yes, culture matters and all that good stuff, attitude matters, but one of the things that they really want to know is, do you have the skills? Now, um, if you do have the skills. What are they? Where are they?
How come you haven't written them on your resume? So number one, you have to have your resume reflect your particular skills, right? So number one, your resume,
right? Nobody's going to give you a chance if they don't first see on your resume that you have Something that tells them that you can do the job that they're hiring you for. So number one, your resume has to reflect. Do not,
do not sleep on this on your resume. You need to highlight your skills. What are you able to [00:03:00] do? Um, can you do manual therapy? Can you do kinesio taping? Can you do wound care? Can you do splinting? These are all skills that you have. Skills is not, I can communicate. That's not a fucking skill. That's not one, like it's a given, right?
Like you're supposed to already know how to communicate with people. You're already supposed to be nice. You're already supposed to be a team player. That's not a freaking skill, right? Don't care. Don't get me started. Don't get me started. So, um, evaluations, discharges, those are a given. If you're an occupational therapist, you came out of school, you know how to do an evaluation.
Technically, you know how to do an evaluation. They want to know, can you do an evaluation for a wrist patient? Can you do an evaluation for a shoulder patient? Can you do an evaluation for a finger fracture? That's a skill. Right. So number one, [00:04:00] your resume needs to be done in a certain way that highlights to someone that you have the, the skill or you have the potential skill, right?
Let me get there. Number two, right, are your courses, right? Now, if you have experience already, you have that on your resume. So I was recently interviewing for OT positions. in my clinic and the people who already have the skills. So they're in a particular outpatient setting and they want to move into different outpatient settings.
They already have those jobs. Um, and it reflects in on their resume. Now, if you're in a different setting, right, here's a key thing. If you're in a different setting and you want to move in to hand therapy, Courses are going [00:05:00] to back up your resume, right? Listen to me here. Listen to me. I'm not, this is not a fire drill.
Like this is no joke. If you are in a PEDS position, a skilled nursing position, an acute care position, um, your resume somehow needs to demonstrate that you're, you have the capacity and the smarts in order to, um, not the, It's the initiative that you need. It's not even the smarts. I don't know why I said that.
You need the initiative to show someone that, that if they gave me the position, you would be able to do the job, right? And so how you back up your resume is in courses. Have you taken courses? that then support your desire to move into hand therapy. One of the number one things that I am looking for and I'm looking at when I am hiring somebody who does not have [00:06:00] exactly the skills that I'm looking for, but can, how do you call it?
Show me from their past is I'm looking at the courses that they're taking and It's not the cheap courses. It's not just the online courses. You can do online courses. Um, you can do live courses as well, but I'm looking at where they are, where they're in. Recently, I had someone who, um, you know, told me that they want to become a certified hand therapist.
So very specifically, they're like, they, um, they're not in You know, they're not in an outpatient setting. They work in a skilled nursing facility, but they have, you know, a lot of, you know, whatchamacallit, potential skills, right? Um, they have worked with people with hand and arm injuries. They're just in an older patient population.
That's okay. I mean, look at the courses now that support what you said. You [00:07:00] said you wanted to work in outpatient hands. You said you wanted to become a certified hand therapist. You said you wanted and become an expert hand therapist, right? Let me see what courses you're taking that then support that, right?
This is in the resume. Oops, sorry.
This can be asked in the interview process. Right? People want to know. They're asking you these questions. In the interview process, what classes have you taken? Oh, I became certified in this, this, and this. Okay. All the certifications that have nothing to do with hand therapy, right? So you have to be selective.
You know, when you're first looking to move from a different setting into an outpatient therapy setting, you want to be very specific in your courses that you're taking. They should be [00:08:00] hand therapy related. Did you take a course on manual therapy? Did you take a course on a hand case? Did you take a course on risk?
Did you take a shoulder course? Did you take a splinting course? Like all the courses should be very targeted and very specific. If you're trying to move into hand therapy from a different setting, which tells me you don't have the particular skills that I'm looking for. Right? You don't have wound care.
You don't necessarily have a ton of splinting. You don't know how to work with post surgical cases. You don't know how to work with a rotator cuff repair. I'm okay with that. Most companies, they're okay with some of that, right? They're looking for someone who they can, um, bring in, who has the initiative to learn.
And it's through courses that you can show someone that you have the [00:09:00] initiative. That's hands down. If you're going to a lot of conferences, right, conferences are very general. You can go into a conference and you can get a ton of, um, generalized information and there's a lot of raw, raw behind it. Like if you're going to the AOTA or the ASHA conference, those are, you know, those are great conferences that you can think about going to.
But when you're thinking about, As an occupational therapist in pedes and skilled nursing in home health in acute care, and you're trying very specifically to move into a hand therapy setting. You want to take courses that are very specific, very targeted to becoming a hand therapist, not saying that you need to take courses to become a certified hand therapist.
I'm talking about courses that can showcase as someone who's looking to hire you that you have, um, the initiative to learn and that you have [00:10:00] some skills, right? The people that I tend to hire in my clinic have taken my courses in the past. They've taken my manual course in the past. They've been inside my mentorship program in the past.
I look at those because those are initiatives for me. Right? I also look at other courses that they're taking. They don't have to be mine for me to see if they've taken something that's very specific. I took a specific splinting course, I took a specific shoulder course, I took a specific hand course, because what that tells me is that they have, that they're, that they're doing what they say they want, right?
the thing that they say that they want. If you say you want to be a hand therapist, and you take an ergonomics class, you take a pediatric class, you take a stroke class, those don't relate too much [00:11:00] to developing your skills to work in a hand therapy setting. That's my point. If you want to move from a different setting into an outpatient therapy setting.
Fix your resume so it demonstrates certain skills that you have. The order in which you do it make a difference. Don't put your skills at the bottom. Get rid of your fucking, like, university GPA. I don't give a shit about that. Nobody cares about your GPA in, in grad school, right? What they care about when you came out is did you pass the boards?
Do you have a license to practice? Yes. Great. Now, what skills do you have? That's all they want to know, right? Get rid of that fucking GPA. Nobody fucking cares if you have a 4. 0. That does not translate into skills for me. Pump it up, pump it up the [00:12:00] skills. If you don't have the skills or the experience to back it up, make sure that in your resume, you have some courses that you've taken that specifically, um, relate back to how you have some of those skills so that you can then say, Oh, um, if they do call you, then when you go into the interview process, you can talk more about it.
It is so important that you, if you don't have, The experience behind it that you showcase more the initiative and even some of your book learning because from your book learning you can apply it to the patients that you see. Um, I have been hiring therapists for the over 10 years that I've been in my business.
I helped, you know, in recruitment when I worked at other places, [00:13:00] when I was in the hospital and I would interview therapists, you know, because you know, we would have a position open or somebody was leaving, things like that. And it's one of the biggest things that we're looking for. We want to bring someone in who has a certain amount of skills so that they can continue to see the patients that we have.
If you come in and you Uh, don't know how to do anything and you want someone just constantly hold your hand. It becomes a burden to the rest of the team and the rest of the staff. And then, you know, it doesn't matter how nice you are. Therapists inherently are very nice for the most part. Um, very kind people, um, very considerate people.
So it's not about being a team player. It's not about, um, being really nice. It's not about, um, You know, knowing how to communicate to a certain extent, all of those things are given organized. I'm organized. That's just a freaking given. You know, what people want to know is can you do the [00:14:00] job? Can you do the job?
Think about that a lot. Think about how you can reflect it in your resume. So someone wants to call you and then that way you can come into the interview and talk about it. So important if you want to know more i've got some links below Um so that you can see how can you get that job? There's a link there on my website I'm gonna include it for you If this has helped you click the like button and subscribe for more videos just like this I put out videos every week so it can help enhance your clinical skills.
All right. Thanks for watching
