What Do You Do After You Graduate?

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Graduation is a milestone — but nobody tells you what the job search actually looks like on the other side of it. In this episode, Dr. Des breaks down the full post-graduation playbook for public health grads at every level: when to start applying (hint: six months before you walk across the stage), what the hiring timeline really looks like at large organizations, how to build a resume that gets callbacks instead of silence, why you need a digital portfolio and what goes in it, and the job titles in health economics and biopharma that your professors never mentioned — but that you can absolutely get with your degree. She also shares the story of her own first public health interview, why she knew she didn't get the job the moment she left the room, and what she changed to start getting offers.

In This Episode, You'll Learn

1. Why Dr. Des recommends starting your job search six months before graduation — and how to handle it if you get hired while you're still in school
2. The full hiring timeline at large organizations (it's longer than you think — and now you'll know what to expect)
3. What an outcomes-based resume actually looks like, with a concrete public health example
4. Why you need a different resume for every track you're applying to — data, policy, program management, evaluation
5. What a digital portfolio is, how it differs from a resume, and what to put in it as a new grad
6. How to use AI to build your resume — and why you need to know what a good resume looks like before you let AI touch it
7. The six-figure job titles in health economics, outcomes research, and real world evidence that public health grads are overlooked for — and how to get them
8. Dr. Des's first public health interview story: what went wrong and what she did differently after

Resources Mentioned

1. The Public Health Club — publichealthclub.com (7-day free trial, then $29.99/month; career coaching, mentorship sessions, workshops on demand, job postings, consulting opportunities, 12+ Impact Lead chapters)
2. Resume Development Workshop (two versions on demand) — inside The Public Health Club
3. Building Your Resume with AI Workshop — inside The Public Health Club; includes Dr. Des's custom GPT and Claude skills for resume building
4. Digital Portfolio Workshop — inside The Public Health Club (AI-updated version coming soon)
5. Interview 101 Workshop — inside The Public Health Club (revamp in progress)
6. Public Health Pivot Course — inside The Public Health Club; teaches how to translate PH skills into healthcare, biopharma, and adjacent industries using their language and keywords
7. Career Coaches inside PHC — office hours available for career and consulting coaching; Khaliah Fleming, Allie Piatkowski, Kristi Brown, Vanessa Da Costa

About The Dr. Des Show

The Dr. Des Show is the go-to podcast for public health career development, consulting, and entrepreneurship. Hosted by Dr. Desiree "Dr. Des" Strickland — DrPH, public health CEO, and founder of The Public Health Club.

Connect with Dr. Des:

1. Join The Public Health Club: publichealthclub.com
2. Instagram @the_publichealthclub

https://www.drdesshow.com/

https://www.publichealthclub.com/

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:05

Welcome back to the Dr. Dez show. Today we are talking all about what do you do after you graduate with a public health degree? Whether it's a master's, a bachelor's, a doctorate, whatever. What do you do after you graduate? I know for some, like graduation season may have just happened, like everybody is on a high, and now we're like, but I ain't no job. What is going on? Well, if you are about to graduate, you are thinking about graduation, you just graduated, this video is going to be helpful no matter what position that you're in. Now, number one, subscribe to this podcast, okay? So make sure that you like this podcast, make sure that you share it, make sure that you comment on it. Let me know what you think, okay? Let me know what more topics you want me to cover. All right. So let's dive on in. Now, if you want a job before you graduate, I always recommend start applying to jobs six months before graduation. It takes a while to get hired, especially where we are now in this economy, right? It can take a long time to land that first job. So I recommend you start applying. And then I always get the question, but that it is, I'm still in school. So what happens if, you know, I get hired and I'm still in school? They'll work with your school schedule, okay? They'll do that. I promise. They did it for me. So a lot of jobs, this is common. This is not an uncommon thing. Just be transparent. I'm finishing up my degree, such and such date. Um, and you know, I want to start. So be transparent, but start applying six months before. Now, if you start applying six months before, the goal is for you to have a job and get started with that job before you graduate. Because listen, if nobody tells you it can take a long time from them putting out a job posting to interviewing to actually getting hired and actually work working there, it can take a long time depending on where you're going with government, with some organizations, it can take forever. With some organizations like tech companies or whatever, it can take like it could be very quickly. It could be they posted a job, they interviewed people the next week, and then they hired you, you're working that next week out there. It could literally be that fast for small companies and tech companies. But a lot of us are applying to really big organizations. And what that means is that you are going to see the job posting. That means it took like some weeks for this job posting to even go through approvals, maybe a couple months for it to go through approvals and everything. So now it's out there on the World Wide Web, and you have to, and then they have to have a period where it's open. So maybe it's open for two weeks. Then after that two weeks, they take a week to review, maybe two weeks to review the applications. And then they call back their first like three, four candidates they want to actually interview. Or they may do a phone screening. They might do a phone screening where it's somebody from HR talking to you for 30 minutes, and they are talking to you for 30 minutes and seeing if you're a good candidate to even go forward with a interview with the hiring manager, right? Once that happens, you got to interview with maybe the hiring manager, maybe. Um, you got to interview, maybe it's a panel interview. Maybe it's interviews with just one person who is the hiring manager. Every company is different, okay? So don't go in thinking the interview process is the same for every company because it's not. So you have an interview process set up with them, right? And then you go through that interview and then they say, Wow, we really liked you. Okay, we want to pass you along to the second round interview. Or technically at this point, we're on the third round, right? We want to pass you around to the third round interview. This may be with the actual who you would be your direct supervisor, or maybe it is with the um director of the organization or the founder, CEO, whatever organization, whoever it may be, um, whoever is at that level that makes the final say so, right? And you are interviewing with them against one other person, right? So then after that, they may say, okay, you got the job, great. But now it's done been about two months. It's done been about maybe a month and a half, two months. So we still in this process, all right? So, and then after that, they may go ahead and say, Hey, let's get you an offer letter out. They're gonna get you an offer letter, you accept, or you you negotiate first, you negotiate. That's that salary first, and then you know, you accept, and then after that, all right, background check. Let's get this background check going. That's gonna take about a week to come back. Background check, you gotta get fingerprinted, all the things. Um, they gotta find you a desk, they gotta do all the things, right? If you're in person, whatever, right? They got to get your equipment out to you. So it's gonna take another couple weeks uh for all of that to process you to get into the system and everything like that. Total, this process can take like three, four months for you to even like walk in the door saying, I have a job, like I'm officially hired, right? That is the reason you want to start early. Listen, they're not telling us that when we start applying to these jobs, it can take that long. But yes, it can take that long depending on where you're applying to. So that's something I want you always to think about as you are in school or if you just graduated, it can take, it can be a little bit of a process. That's why you want to start early. Now, with starting, I want to make sure that you have a great resume. All right. And what is a great resume, you ask? Okay, I hope you ask that. What is a great resume? And a great resume is one that shows outcomes, is one that shows your experience. It shows what you can do, not just like, oh, I went to school and I learned this in school. Mm-mm, mm-mm. It doesn't just show tasks, like, oh, I did this task, I did that task. We want to actually show outcomes. So if you are designing your resume, I want to see like, what are those internship projects that you did in school, right? What are those actual projects you did in school that we can count towards that to show outcomes, right? Maybe you did an internship or externship or whatever. Maybe you have a part-time job, maybe you did a teaching assistantship, whatever it may be, that is an experience, okay? We got to pull in all our experience for you as a recent grad, okay? And we have to put it out there and show outcomes and show what you're actually capable of doing, right? What was the outcome? And when I say that, I want you to show tangible um evidence. So, for example, let's say you have a job or a part-time job, whatever you're a program coordinator. You coordinate the programs, yada yada, yada, right? In order to show outcomes, we could say something along the lines of um assisted with managing um heart disease prevention focused program with 1,000 plus participants throughout the state of Florida, um with uh average reduction in high blood pressure by 30% of our participants, whatever. You know, like showing numbers, being able to quantify your expertise is gold, okay? You want to always quantify on your resume whenever you can. Some things you may not be able to, but most things you can, okay? You want to make sure you got numbers because why? In a sea of words, as somebody is scanning your resume, numbers stand out. So you want your resume to stand out, okay? But you want it to be outcomes based. And if you need help, which I guarantee you, a lot of y'all recent grads, y'all do, okay? Even with doctorates, we need some help, right? Uh, we did a resume development workshop that is on demand in the club. There's actually two of them there that I did. So the first one was actually the first workshop that I ever did, and that one is there, and honestly, everything's still relevant today in how to build a resume. There's templates there and everything for you. But then we not too long ago did one, um, probably about a month or so ago at this point, um, building your resume with AI. So I gave you my custom GPT so you can plug in your stuff and get um some really good output out with it. I gave you my Clyde skill so you can design your resume, and I showed you the difference in using the tools and what you get out of it. So honestly, like y'all, y'all watch that, you're gonna be like, all right, I'm going to Clyde. And I show you how to do it, okay? So those are things on your resume. I want you to make sure that you have intact, okay, as you are going out there into the world, all right, and applying for jobs, okay, after graduation. Next, I want you to build a digital portfolio of your work. This could be projects you did in school, this could be projects you did in your in your job, in your internship, whatever it may be. But I need you to have a digital portfolio. And that it is, what's a digital portfolio? How does that differ from your resume? A digital portfolio is actually going to show me what you've done instead of just tell me. Your resume tells me what you've done. Your portfolio shows me samples of your work, right? Maybe you did some presentations, presentations that you did in school. Let's put that in there, right? Let's put it in there. Maybe we don't put the whole presentation in there, but maybe we put part of it in there, right? Um, unless you have a digital portfolio, a digital portfolio that is like online on a website, then maybe you want to put the whole thing in there, right? Maybe you got a video of you presenting, right? Get some content while you in school. Get content of you presenting, get content of you working, of you doing the things, of you out in the community. That is all things that can showcase your work and showcase your expertise and be able to market yourself on LinkedIn, right? Um, so those are things I want you to do. Have a digital portfolio. There is a digital portfolio workshop in the public health club that you can take right now that I showed you how to do. We are gonna at some point, um, probably like within the next couple months, do an updated one where I show you how to build your digital portfolio with AI because AI is everywhere, it ain't going nowhere. So we're probably gonna do an updated one, but honestly, the one that is there, it is still relevant because you need the basics of how to build a digital portfolio. Okay. You need to know what a good one looks like before you go into AI and try to get it to do things. Same with your resume. All right. If you do not know what a good resume looks like that gets callbacks and you are using AI to build your resume, AI will give you trash and you will think it's treasure. Okay. You need to know what a good one looks like and actually have mentors and people and coaches who are there to help you to look at it for you, right? That is why we have mentorship. We have coaches in the public health club to help you with this, okay? Listen, I got my PhD jacket here, my PhD varsity jacket, you know, coaching out here, okay? But I'm just saying, you have to know what a good one looks like before you can use AI to build it out, all right? So let's see, what else? We've talked about a lot of things, all right? We talked about applying, we talked about the resume, the digital portfolio. Those are all things that I want you all to have in place while you are out there, right? Graduation is here, it has happened for a lot of you all. Some of you all may be graduating in the summer, some of y'all graduating in the fall. Start, especially if you are graduating in the summer, time. Start applying. Let's get it out there, let's build your resume. Let's go in the club, watch those resume sessions, come to our career coaching session, and let's get your resume done so you can start getting out there and applying to jobs. Um, also, the other thing that I wanted to mention is that a lot of times in public health, we get out there and we are like, I want to do anything. I just want to do whoever's gonna give me a job, I want to do it, right? That is not a job search strategy. Okay, we need to get specific about what type of jobs you want because guess what? If you want a data analysis job, why are you applying to program management jobs? That's a completely different resume. The unique thing about public health is that it is so broad. So, a data analysis job, a program management job, an evaluation job, a policy analyst job, you can get all of that with a public health degree. However, your resume has to be focused into these different areas. So, what does that mean? That means you need a different resume if you're applying to data roles, if you're applying to policy roles, if you're applying to program management roles, you need a different resume, right? Because it needs to speak to that particular area, okay? So those are things that I want to make sure that you are aware of, that you know about, and you have a plan for what kind of jobs you're applying for, okay? If you love epidemiology, great. Go inside the public health club, build your resume out, focus in on epidemiology-focused jobs, but also know that in the club, we have the public health pivot course that I want to make sure that you take. Okay. Take the public health pivot course. And then also look at some of our other workshops. If you are really good with Epi, you love the data, you may consider doing health economics outcomes research. Sounds scary, but literally, epidemiologists do it and you can make a lot of money doing it, okay? Those are the job titles they're not telling us about in school, but we're telling you about in the public health club, okay? Real world evidence is another amazing job. They have junior real world evidence um researchers, okay, that work for biopharma companies that you can start out making six figures, okay? These are jobs that you can do with your skills, but you can't do with your public health resume. You have to change it over to their language. You got to speak the language of the organization that you're trying to work for, right? Or of the industry you're trying to work for. And that is what we teach you in the public health pivot course, which is included in your public health club membership, okay? So I've said a lot. I have said a lot of things in a little bit of time. And I hope that all of this resonated with you because I feel like, you know, when I first started applying to jobs, it was rough out here in these streets. All right. I did not know what a good resume looked like. I still remember, and I tell this story all the time. I still remember my first like real public health interview that I got. I did not get the job, but I remember that interview because I was I was working as a medical assistant before I got my first real like public health job. And I was just like, man, I need to uh get a public health job. I'm in school, I want to do it, and this this money ain't cutting it, okay? So I applied for a job. I think it was with um big band AHC. I was in Tallahassee, right? It was an area health education center. And um I applied for a job as like a program coordinator or program manager or something. I walked into the interview, I did my interview, and I knew immediately after that interview that I did not get a job. Why? Because I know I they just asked me questions. I was talking, because your girl is a talker. I was talking, but um I was talking in circles, right? And I knew it and I knew they picked up on it. Like, you know how like you BSing and they pick up on the BS. That's what it was. But um, I did my best, but I wasn't prepared. And now I know, like, if you are a recent graduate, you gotta come prepared. So one of the things that I did, like, I started doing interview prep, right? We have an interview one-on-one workshop in the club, which I'll probably even revamp that one too. Like, we're gonna do that one too. How do you do interviews, practice interviews with AI? We're gonna do it all over and it's gonna be up to date and amazing for you. But the ones that are there, use them, do them, do all the things. Um, take those, take those workshops on demand in the workshops on demand space inside the public health club. But I say that to say, like, even when I first started applying to jobs, I was wondering why was I getting rejected? Why was I not getting called backs? And I realized it was because of my resume. And I realized I didn't know what a good resume looked like. So that is when I actually said, okay, I remember telling myself, like, Des, you're good at research. You're good at looking things up. How about you actually research a good resume? Research what it looks like. And that's what I did. So I researched what a good resume looks like, and bam, then I started getting callbacks. I actually remembered like it got to the point where I had to turn down job interviews because I had already selected a job at that point. And I love that for me, right? And I want that for all of y'all too, because you can still get a job in this public health market. They are out there, but you have to figure out your strategy, your approach, maybe pivot a little bit, and you'll make it there, okay? But all right, y'all. I hope to see you inside the public health club. Join, it is free for seven days. After that, it is only$29.99,$30 a month to get access to mentorship, coaching, workshop, strategies, RFPs. If you are trying to be a consultant, like job postings, all the things are in there. And access to community and local meetups in your area. We have about we have um groups in 12 different areas. So Florida, Georgia, the DMV, Texas. We even have a group in Canada, y'all. Like Canada. It's crazy, but it's amazing. And Allie leads that public health club group, and she is amazing. But all of our impact leads are amazing and they are passionate about the work and they've been PhC members for so long. And they agreed to be impact leads, and they wanted to do this because they loved it and they wanted to pour back into their communities. Um, and they they design local meetups in the area, right? So join the club. We're of course looking at and expanding them. So if you don't see a local PhC chapter in your area, don't worry. We're looking at how many people join, where people are, we are planning it out, and probably by the end of this year, you'll see new impact lead um areas that new states and everything. So, all right, y'all. I have done a lot of talking, and I hope that this was helpful. Let me know in the comments if it was helpful. Let me know on the public health club. I hope you decide to join, and I'll see you in there. All right, y'all. Have a great rest of your day.

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Bye.