Many people considering a medical assisting career wonder if they can find a medical assistant job without experience?
The answer is, yes. BUT it will be much harder to find than jobs requiring experience.
We already answered yes to this question, letting people know that they can find MA jobs without experience.
Today we are going to share 10 tips on how to find these medical assisting jobs without experience.
We hope these tips help give you an edge during your hunt for the harder-to-find MA jobs. However, if you feel stuck, it is always a good idea to consider medical assistant programs and gain some clinical experience that way, it will make you more competitive in the job market.
Download: Specific Medical Assistant Resume
Related: Medical Assisting Resume Essentials
1. Get Somewhat Relevant Experience If Possible
This first tip isn’t going to help you actually find an MA job that doesn’t require experience but it will help you land the jobs you do find. If you can gain somewhat relevant work experience, such as working in an assisted living home, or health clinic, or working in an administrative position for any service business – then you will have some of the skills required for any medical assistant jobs you find.
2. Look for Opportunities in Your Network
Ok, so a tip for how to actually find these rare job opportunities for medical assistants without experience. The first and best place to look is your immediate network. Check LinkedIn and Facebook, you can join medical assisting communities and groups to find recent job postings.
3. Check Local Listings
The newspaper will have job listings in your local area, you should check on these weekly to see what opportunities may come up for medical assistants. You can also check your phone book or online to find a list of local hospitals, retirement homes, nursing homes, and any other healthcare clinics where MAs might work. Then call all of these offices and ask if they have any openings for MAs.
4. Search Online for Jobs
We already wrote this post dedicated to finding MA jobs online. It shares a list of the best places to find MA jobs online, including some niche medical job search sites that you may not have tried yet.
5. Get Creative Thinking of Places MAs Can Work
Often times people don’t even realize all of the opportunities for places where medical assistants can work. We put together this list of 20 places medical assistants work to help give you some ideas for job opportunities you might like to search for.
6. Look for On the Job Training
If you can’t find positions specifically offering on-the-job training, then you can always offer it as a suggestion to an employer. It never hurts to ask! Some employers will even pay you for on-the-job training although these jobs are typically hard to come by and more competitive.
7. Find an Externship
You can learn more about MA externships here. It is basically an unpaid internship that is designed to train medical assistants while potentially grooming them for a full-time position with the employer giving the externship. This would be a great opportunity to look for!
8. Career Services for Students About to Graduate
You should have access to a career services resource at your college. The folks here can help you with your job search efforts and potentially connect you directly to employers for internship, externship, and full-time opportunities.
9. Find a Healthcare Recruiter
There is an ever-growing field of healthcare recruiters that are available to help you find MA job opportunities. Find them on LinkedIn and search for them on Google. These folks will ask for your job search criteria and then they will begin looking for opportunities to provide to you.
10. Tailor Your Resume for Medical Assisting
You will want to work hard on your resume to tailor it to the healthcare field and even medical assisting specifically. We wrote a couple posts that can help you learn the important components and how to optimize them on your medical assisting resume.
- 9 Medical Assisting Resume Essentials to Get Hired
- How to Find a Medical Assisting Job (Resume & Interview Advice)
Read those posts and do everything you can to optimize your resume for the medical assisting field.
Let’s Go
Ok, so now you have 10 tips on how to find a medical assistant job without experience required.
These tips will help get you started on your job search for MA positions.
It is going to be a challenge to find these opportunities, so make sure you stay positive and persistent.
Now, what are you waiting for? Questions? Leave them in the comments below…
Otherwise, good luck, it is time to get out there and start your job search!
