How to Automate Your Job Search

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Yes, students of Allen School Online are smarter than the average students of medical billing and coding.  But did you know that there is a way to work “smarter not harder” when it comes to the process of finding a new job once you’ve earned your certificate?  Yes, no longer is it necessary to burn time and shoe-leather, tooling all over God’s creation to find your next gig in medical offices.  There is now a way to automate the process of searching for jobs so that all you’ll have to do is set it up online (did I mention Allen School Online students are savvy web-users) and then sit back and wait for the hot leads to come pouring in.  Let the web robots do the heavy lifting for you.  Click here to read an excellent “how-to” piece published by the geniuses over at Wired magazine.

We’re Number One! (In Hiring for 2012)

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The folks over at Yahoo! Education published a list of the hottest career fields for hiring in 2012.  Not surprisingly, the very top of the list, the number one hottest hiring position for 2012 was medical assistant.  The article reports that employers intend to hire medical assistants at a rate 10% higher than they did in 2011 which was also a banner year for people seeking employment as medical assistants.  If you’re a student of medical billing and coding or medical assistant training at Allen School Online, you’re in exactly the right place at the right time.  If you’re still considering this program, what are you waiting for?  Now is the time, and this is the place!

Shyness and the Dreaded Job Interview

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Are you painfully shy?  Do you detest having to make small talk with people, or just feel uncomfortable meeting new people in general?  Not interested in sharing personal information about yourself with a near perfect stranger?  Then you probably hate going out on job interviews.  Yet, this is something that none of us can reasonably expect to avoid.  With competition for positions remaining high, it can be a significant disadvantage to be uncomfortable talking effortlessly with strangers and tooting your own horn.  While there is likely no advice we at Allen School Online could give to help you overcome your shyness, there is a good deal that can be done in preparation for a job interview to minimize your discomfort.  The good folks over at Monster.com have an article up today laying out the game plan for interviewing if you’re bashful.  Have a read and prepare yourself well to land a job in medical billing and coding or medical office assistant whether or not you’re shy.

Embrace “Productive Failure”

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Time magazine has an interesting article this month explaining that students learn better when left to figure out solutions to problems on their own (as opposed to being told the answers by instructors).   This is interesting news for any students, not just students of medical billing and coding at the Allen School Online.  If you’re struggling with the complexities of the subject matter, take heart.  According to National Institute of Education research, it is this express frustration, struggling to solve the challenges posed by any lesson, that helps the human mind to better understand the solution to said challenge.  In fact, in studies they performed, the students who were showed the solutions during the lesson were outperformed by the students who were simply left to ponder the answer before being guided by instruction.  So the lesson here is simple: embrace productive failure.  It is okay to try and solve a problem and fail in the process.  It is that failure which promotes the ability to achieve and maintain success.  Read the whole article from Time magazine for all the interesting details.

OK, Just One More

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Like one more potato chip, or one more chicken nugget, i simply cannot resist yet another “junk food” post.  After this, I promise to lay off the stories about horrific fast foods (and the role these foods play in undermining in public health) for at least a little while.  Although it is a topic we cover periodically on the Allen School Online Blog, and while there’s been a unusually high number of these stories in the news lately, I will not be turning this blog into something other than a place focused on medical billing and coding, and medical office assistant training.  That said, I was appalled to see another customer suffered an actual heart attack at Las Vegas’s infamous Heart Attack Grill.  We posted the last time a patron of this aptly named restaurant died eating their apparently deadly Quadruple Bypass burger. Today, another Heart Attack Grill patron suffered a heart attack, this time while consuming the comparatively puny Double Bypass burger (wimp!)  One really can’t feel too bad for either victim.  After all they only got exactly what they paid for in their choice of restaurant.  But, if you are feeling badly about it, console yourself with a little treat. I hear Burger King is testing out a new bacon sundae!

The Mother of All Fast Food Nightmares

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Next in our continuing series on some of the worst fast-food dining options, the post linked here outdoes the KFC Double Down sandwich and the Heart Attack Grills Triple Bypass Burger.  This one earns top honors as the deadliest sandwich.  Evidently, at Burger King in Japan, customers can add fifteen pieces of bacon to their burger for an additional $1.25.  Tokyo reporter Mr. Sato ordered this one with nearly 5 pounds of bacon atop.  Evidently, they don’t decline absurd orders at Burger King in Tokyo!  LOL!  Excuse me, I have to go.  I have the uncontrollable desire to go eat a bowl of spinach!

You Can Do This!

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If you’re just starting out in your studies of medical billing and coding or medical office assistant with the Allen School Online, you may be feeling like it is a challenge you cannot overcome.  Perhaps you decided to make a career change in mid-life and this new career path seems daunting.  Well, the following story ought to serve to inspire you and make you feel that with enough determination, anything is possible.  Take it from a 6-year-old who raised more than $10,000 to help his cancer-stricken father.  You can do this!

The Science of “House”

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I imagine that as students of medical office assisting and medical billing and coding, Allen School Online students have an interest in all things medical.  Many of you are likely fans of the TV program “House”.  Just as this blogger-geek was a fan of Star Trek largely because of the seemingly accurate scientific underpinnings of that program, I know that many of my friends in the medical field love watching Dr. House’s episodes precisely because the science seems to be so close to real on that program.   Well, geek-tastic website, boingboing.net put up this post wherein a real doctor reviews the accuracy of some of the things portrayed on the “House” TV program.  What do you think?   Is it accurate based on your knowledge of medical procedures?

We’ve Come A Long Way

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Every so often, I come across these posts revealing the state of modern medical science at points throughout history.  I like to share them with readers of the Allen School Online blog to remind us all how quickly medical technology is changing.  Heck, just the fact that you can be studying how to become a medical office assistant online is, in itself, a remarkable achievement.  To remind us where the medical industry was a short 100 years ago, enjoy a peek at this piece with great photos of trephination tools.  Trephination was the medical proceedure involving the drilling of holes into the human skull, which was believed to have therapeutic effects curing a wide range of common ailments.  Looking at these tools, the technology seems downright horrific and medieval.  But this was only during the late 1800s and early 1900s.  Its amazing to see how far medicine has come.  With your involvement as a medical office billing/coding pro or medical office assistant, it will be amazing to see what advancements occur in the span of your career in this exciting and rapidly evolving industry.

Medical Office Attire Around the World

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Not entirely relevant to the topic of medical billing and coding or medical assistant training, however, I thought it was pretty interesting to see the different sartorial practices of medical office professionals in different countries around the world.  This article in one of my very most favorite geeky blogsites, www.boingboing.net published this image of a comparison between nursing/medical office attire from different lands.  What do you think?  Makes Spongebob themed scrubs seem strange in retrospect.