Let’s Be Professional – Tips for Medical Biller Resume

I wanted to bring up a “delicate” subject. In our personal lives our FB monikers, e-mail addresses, and personal voicemail greetings usually reflect our personality. In our personal lives this is acceptable, but for our professional lives, we do not want to reflect our personality but our professional side. When using your e-mail address on a resume, it is important to create a professional sounding one. Things like “brighteyes@hotmail.com” “johnsgirl” “partygirl” are not going to make you appear professional to an employer or professional networking contacts. A good e-mail address would be something like “Djohnson@hotmail.com” or “dana_jones@hotmail.com” or even “dana.jones@hotmail.com.” When dealing with family or friends your email address doesn’t really matter, and is fine to reflect your personality rather than professionalism. However, when dealing with professional contacts, networking with others through professional associations, etc. it’s best to have a professional sounding e-mail address.

Let’s Be Professional – Tips for Medical Biller Resume

Another thing to consider is your voicemail. If you use your cell phone for resumes, then you should not have the coolest new hip hop beat going on before your voicemail picks up. Also, your voicemail should reflect your “professional” not “personal” side on the phone number contact you give to employers and professional networking contacts. A simple, “Hello. You have reached Donna. Please leave a message at the sound of the beep, and I will return your call shortly” is sufficient. Also, you do not want your social media page to be something an employer can easily find. Many of us “let our hair down” on such pages posting pictures of us enjoying our personal lives, and we may post material that others of like-mind would enjoy- political jokes, political articles, religious quotes, etc. These are fine to do in our personal lives, but you do not want your potential employer to find your Facebook page and see you at the swimming pool sipping on a margarita :). I suggest that if you use your real name on your social media profile that you change it to a moniker. Example: Donna Jones may become “Donna Girl.” I would also avoid using your personal picture as your display picture once you start job hunting, or if you do use it, make sure it looks presentable to an employer. Additionally, I would work to make sure that your social media settings are set to maximum privacy, and then check to see what someone who is not on your “friends” list can actually see of your page.

Also, when joining professional groups on media like Facebook, you want to present yourself as a professional to these networking contacts. Should you have two Facebook pages- one for professional use and contacts and one for personal? I would recommend and suggest that if you use Facebook extensively to post personal details of your life and discuss topics like religion and politics with your friends. These are just helpful hints to make sure you come across as a professional to the people that can assist your career path. And, believe it or not, many employers do search Facebook to get a ‘feel’ for potential employees. Don’t let your personal life adversely affect your professional life. Please understand that I’m not coming against the idea of having personal fun on Facebook, enjoying your voicemail, or having fun sounding e-mail addresses. I have all of these things too. However, when in the “job hunting” process, it’s important to scales these things down a bit and take some precautions in order to come across as a true professional.

By: Dawn Moreno, PhD, CBCS, CMAA, MTC. Lives in the beautiful Southwest United States and has been an instructor for medical coding/billing for the past 7 years. Interested in quality medical billing training?

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