Searching for a Health IT Job at the HIMSS Annual Conference

The HIMSS 2016 Annual Conference is only 4 days away.  For those not familiar with the conference, it’s the largest coming together of healthcare IT professionals in the world.  Based on last years numbers there are likely to be ~50,000 health IT professionals descending upon Las Vegas for this conference.  Plus, I believe there will be ~1300 exhibitors at the conference as well.

With that many people, you can imagine the opportunity it offers to find a job or advance your career.  Our key suggestion to those looking at HIMSS for career advancement is to go into it having a plan, but allow room for some serendipity as well.

With so many attendees, it’s easy to get lost in the conference.  So, be sure to plan ahead and target the companies and people that interest you most.  However, don’t over schedule yourself so much that you don’t have a chance to meet some random interesting people as well.

Also, if you’re looking for a job, do what you can to find a “wing person” at HIMSS. Having people who respect you nearby is a great asset to have when meeting with potential future employers. It’s easier for people you don’t know to trust you when a third party is with you and shows that spending time with you is valuable. Plus, it’s much easier to meet people if there are two of you together.

If you’re planning to be at HIMSS, we’ll be there as well and would love to meet you in person.  Along with speaking at this session, I’m also a HIMSS social media ambassador and everyone is welcome to attend the HIMSS Social Media Ambassador Meetup.  We also host the New Media Meetup at HIMSS which hosts some of the most amazing people in healthcare social media, but everyone is welcome.

If you can’t make it to the conference, you can still be involved thanks to the power of social media.   Last year I gave some HIMSS Twitter Tips and Tricks which are just as applicable this year.  Also, there’s more to social media at HIMSS than tweets, so be sure to watch other platforms like LinkedIn, Blogs, Facebook, Periscope, and the HIMSS Mobile App for updates as well.

We hope to meet many of you in Las Vegas at #HIMSS16.

About the author

John Lynn

John Lynn is the Founder of HealthcareScene.com, a network of leading Healthcare IT resources. The flagship blog, Healthcare IT Today, contains over 13,000 articles with over half of the articles written by John. These EMR and Healthcare IT related articles have been viewed over 20 million times.

John manages Healthcare IT Central, the leading career Health IT job board. He also organizes the first of its kind conference and community focused on healthcare marketing, Healthcare and IT Marketing Conference, and a healthcare IT conference, EXPO.health, focused on practical healthcare IT innovation. John is an advisor to multiple healthcare IT companies. John is highly involved in social media, and in addition to his blogs can be found on Twitter: @techguy.

   

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