The Public Health SPOTlight Podcast: stories, inspiration, and guidance to build your dream public health career

Sujani Sivanantharajah from PHSPOT.org sits down with public health heroes of our time to share career stories, inspiration, and guidance for building public health careers. From time to time, she also has conversations with friends of public health - individuals who are not public health professionals, but their advice and guidance are equally important. The emotions, energy, and passion that comes from these stories act as a reminder that this space we’ve created for the public health community is a space that you can lean on as you navigate your career. We believe that to build a successful career in public health does not mean that it has to live up to a certain level of standard set out by somebody else...or that we need to burn ourselves out in the process. We believe that you can craft a career perfect for you, and your unique life. The message we hope to get across through these conversations is that building a career is not only about climbing up the ranks, but about crafting a life that you want, around your unique needs, and one that gives importance to your mental health, wellbeing, and building relationships and friendships: you can only do good in the world if you take care of yourself. Through PH SPOTlight, you will connect with peers you have never met before, and build relationships in a deep and meaningful way. What you will hear the most, from every single person is also passion. Passion to do good. Passion to advance human health and the human race. And a passion to share back with the public health community.

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The Public Health SPOTlight Podcast: stories, inspiration, and guidance to build your dream public health career

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April 10, 2024 • PH SPOT • Episode 158

Welcome to the Public Health Career Club. From sitting down with accomplished public health professionals who will spill the beans on making the most of your degree, to personalized career advice during our office hours – it's all happening here. And that's just the tip of the iceberg. We've packed our calendar with monthly resume clinics, mentorship sessions, and social mixers to spark lifelong connections. Stay tuned for our weekly workshops and special talks that promise to keep your professional growth on a constant upswing. If you're listening from April 10th to 12th, 2024, don't miss this golden opportunity to become a part of the Public Health Career Club. Let's roll up our sleeves and make a difference together!

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Join The Public Health Career Club: the #1 hangout spot and community dedicated to building and growing your dream public health career.

Speaker 1: 0:01

Welcome to PH Spotlight, a community for you to build your public health career with. Join us weekly right here, and I'll be here too. Your host, sujani Siva from PH Spot. Hello and welcome to another episode of the PH Spot podcast. This is Sujani here and it's a solo episode today.

Speaker 1: 0:25

I know we've been airing a number of guest interviews and I hope you've been enjoying them, but today's episode is a special one because the virtual doors to the Public Health Career Club are currently open. So if you are listening to this episode the day it goes out April 10th, 2024, that means that you can join the Public Health Career Club and the virtual doors are open. Or you know the enrollment is open until Friday, april 12th. So you have a couple of days even if you're listening to this a little bit later to join us inside this community, and it's a community dedicated to helping you build your dream public health career. It's a global membership. It's a community we put together because you, our PHSpot community, asked us for it and PHSpot, our mission and our goal is to show you that you can have an impact in the world, right, and that's the reason that we do the work we do in public health, but also feel fulfilled in our careers and achieve our wildest dreams. And I know that we are all unique individuals. We have all these wild dreams and goals that we want to achieve and often, you know, sometimes we battle it out with our nine-to-five jobs and wanting to make an impact in the world and wanting to pursue all these other ideas and initiatives. And I believe that if we can create the space and community in that kind of like supportive environment, we actually can achieve all of that. And so this community, we built it and brought in peers, people like you and me who are working in public health, who are really driven to grow, to connect, to inspire each other and to really achieve more grow, to connect, to inspire each other and to really achieve more.

Speaker 1: 2:30

And we launched it in October of 2022. And you know that was the first time ever that we welcomed about 100 of you to join the Public Health Career Club and since have modified the programming. We've evolved, we've, you know, added all these great features, but at the core of it, it's stayed true to what it was meant to be, which was create community, and community looks like a different thing for different people inside our membership. Ultimately, it's a place where people that are on a mission to essentially change the world through the work that they're doing to connect, inspire and be together and then kind of like tangibly, what do we actually achieve inside the Public Health Career Club? We've been able to break it down into these three big buckets, right.

Speaker 1: 3:25

So people often come into the Public Health Career Club because they need help getting a job, whether it's their first job out of school or their next job, or they're just needing to figure things out with their job, and so we have things like resume clinics and office hours to help you fix up your CV and brush up on interview skills and really get you ready right. And again, these are things that you don't have to do alone. So if you're thinking like I really need this supportive community around me to help me move on to this next job, this is where we can help you do that, and we even have a job board where people post opportunities from their own organization not just random jobs that they see online and you can ask them questions about it. Right, you can also talk to your peers about their experiences working at different organization and then even ask them if they know anybody in their network who's hiring? Because nobody likes to do those cold reach outs on LinkedIn or random emails, right? So this is a community that's there to support you to build your career and specifically help you get a job. So that's kind of that first bucket.

Speaker 1: 4:37

The second bucket is a huge one and it's something that I've heard over the past seven years since building PH Spot, and it's to help you figure out your path. And so often people will write to me and say like, hey, I really need some guidance in figuring out the next steps in my career. And so the Public Health Career Club helps you do that. Right. So we bring in experts. They run different sessions and workshops. We have live training talks, coaching sessions. We even have a series called Career Stories so you get to learn about different people's paths and kind of the steps that they took to get to where they are today. And we also have office hours with incredible mentors and you can leverage these office hours for more personalized support, right? So the workshops and the talks they're there for you to kind of listen, assess, ask questions, get inspired, and then the mentor office hours gives you space to kind of work through some of your personal challenges and the mentors I've chosen. These are handpicked by me, individuals who I know are completely dedicated to really helping out individuals like you and me in public health who just need a little bit of guidance figuring out the next few steps, and so, completely vetted by me personally, individuals who I know you know their hearts are in the right place to really support. So that's the second bucket.

Speaker 1: 6:09

So the first bucket is to help get a job. The second bucket is figuring out your path. The third bucket is to grow your network. If you've ever heard me speak at a workshop webinar, heard me on LinkedIn writing, the number one thing I talk about is growing your network, and it's something that you need to do now, immediately, if anything yesterday. It's the number one tip I offer when it comes to growing your career and kind of you as a person, right and so, inside the Public Health Career Club, you get to meet like-minded peers, mentors, speakers, coaches, and you get to connect and build meaningful relationships with them. So you don't need to cold message anybody on LinkedIn. You don't need to, you know, feel nervous that nobody's going to get back to you.

Speaker 1: 7:01

This is a space that's helping you do that, and we help you do that. We don't just tell you here's a list of people, go find them. We organize social hours, we organize events, there's questions of the week that you can engage with in our portal, and so we've created a space where it makes it easier for you to grow your network. Essentially and I'll probably do you know next week's episode on networking and kind of the importance of that but all I can say in short is that if you have not prioritized growing your network, you need to, and the Public Health Career Club helps you do that. So, getting a job, figuring out your path, growing your network those are the three things that we focus on inside the Public Health Career Club.

Speaker 1: 7:47

It's a global membership people from all around the world coming together to essentially build their dream public health career and help each other do it. So if this sounds like something that you want to learn more about, go visit phspotorg slash club. You'll have all the information you need there, and if you have any other questions beyond, you know all the information that's on the website. Don't hesitate to message me directly on LinkedIn or email us at hello at phspotorg, or find some way to reach out to us. We're on all the social media platform. So the Public Health Career Club is currently open.

Speaker 1: 8:32

Today is April 10th, so you have another two more days to join the Public Health Career Club. And if you aren't sure whether this is for you and whether you want to invest, you know, into a program like this, there is a trial offer that we will be providing. So try it out for 14 days. Join the portal, join some of the live talks and training and mentor hours whatever is available on the calendar for this month. Test it out for yourself, see if it's something that you know fits what you're looking for and, if it is, stay on. If it's not, cancel your membership, but at least you gave it a try, right? So I can't wait to see you inside the Public Health Career Club. If you do join, please send me a note on LinkedIn. Let me know that you're part of the Career Club and we can connect there as well personally, and I hope to see you at a live event in the future.

Speaker 1: 9:31

There's an exciting panel that we're hosting this month inside the Public Health Career Club for anybody interested in the DRPH program.

Speaker 1: 9:40

So we'll have a panel of three speakers who are going to talk about their experiences, and these are individuals who have graduated from a DRPH at least five years ago, so they've kind of figured out how to use the degree.

Speaker 1: 9:53

And then those same individuals will be then hosting office hours over the next few months to answer any personal questions that you may have. So you know, there's a cool session like that happening. There are a couple of career stories happening, different public health professionals journeys in kind of everything they had done. We definitely have resume clinics every month, we have mentor hours every month, we have social hours every month. So those are programming that you can expect, and then we'll sprinkle in workshops and special talks and panels and things like that every week. So check it out, join the trial at the very least for 14 days, see if it's something that you will enjoy and then stick around and see what we have for the rest of the year. Cool, so until next time. This is Sujani, and I hope to see you on the next episode and inside the Public Health Career Club. Can't wait to meet you there.