Taylor Zunich

I am from the Grand Junction, Colorado area. I graduated Colorado Mesa University with a degree in Kinesiology. I have experience in fitness and health promotion as well as nutrition. I ultimately wanted to end up with a medical field career but stay more on the business side. That is when I did research on medical device sales and pursued that goal.

After experiencing a couple years in the nursing program at CMU, I realized that profession really wasn?t where I wanted to end up in the long run. I loved the hospital setting but the realm of work was not interesting me. I ran into an endoscopy device sales rep one afternoon and picked his brain about the industry. It really fascinated me so I did some research and found great interest in the field. As I was digging around online, I found the site of Medical Sales College. I knew that in order to make it easier to break in to such a lucrative field, experience would be necessary. That?s when I decided to attend MSC.

I learned about MSC as I was really digging deep on line about medical device sales. I stumbled upon their website and explored it and really liked the possible opportunity it could provide me with.

I knew how hard breaking in to the medical device field was. I had sent my resume to a couple companies and never heard back from them prior to attending the school. When I found the MSC website online, I knew I had to capitalize on the opportunity and get some experience!

My experience with MSC was so helpful. During the online academy program, each week we had a different focus of study. Either twice or once a week, the class would get together via webex and one of the professors would lecture for about three hours. Throughout the week I crammed in a lot if studying along with completing the assignments. 10 weeks is not a long time for all the information, so I was sure to really buckle down and absorb as much information as possible before the last week of on campus. During my time on campus, we went over so much and really tied it all together. It really locked in how to interact with surgeons and their entire team. It taught me the ins and outs of the sales world and what made a great rep. The mock sales calls and mock surgeon meeting made me so much more comfortable going in to the real world of medical devices. It was definitely one of the most stressful yet rewarding things I have done.

Training through MSC provided me with knowledge in the sales world and set me up with an array of tools to be successful in finding managers and wowing them with what I know. To land the interview, I reached out not only through email but also in person with hiring managers and was persistent until I got a meeting. I had a refined resume thanks to MSC that my hiring manager noticed; especially the 244 hours of orthopedic device sales. During my interview, I showed them the work I put in to MDRepTrack and how hard working I would be for him in the same way. Although I landed a position in spine and neuro which were not specific specialties I focused on at school, I still knew the anatomy and what goes in to selling devices to surgeons.

Attending the Medical Sales College really prepares you for what to expect in the medical device world. Yes, companies do offer training for their employees but nothing that compares to the training you get from MSC. You really get the bread and butter at MSC. By that I mean everything from anatomy education, interviewing, selling to surgeons, mock surgeries, mock sales calls and so much more that imitates what you will be doing in the real world. I really do feel like my attendance at MSC gave me an advantage over the other candidates because I had a taste of what the medical device field was like.

After graduating MSC, I was unsure if I wanted to stay in the Colorado area or go along with my original plans to move to Nevada and break in to the Reno area. I graduated the 29th of October and was back and forth from Colorado and Nevada still unsure where I wanted to work. I had talked with a few managers out in both locations. I spent the holidays at home in Colorado and decided I was going to pursue the Reno, NV area. I started really hounding hiring managers toward the first of the year. One in particular reached out to me first toward the end of December. He had found my contact info through recruiting services at MSC. The Reno area was tough to break in to and a lot of the managers would say ?I do not know of any openings on my team, but I will keep you in mind? or ?I?ll pass on your resume.? I never quit following up with these managers and even went and had coffees and lunches with most of them. Forming relationship and being persistent is key! I had three interviews before I knew it and two of them gave me job offers. Both were great but not the one job I really wanted. Not long after, I met up with the manager who had reached out to me in December at Starbucks and we went over my goals and background and his goals. This was kind of a shot gun interview and he told me I was one of the three final candidates he was looking to hire in the area. I felt really confident when we left and not a week later he called me and wanted to meet in San Francisco as that is where his distributing company is out of. I knew that being one out of three candidates, I had to do whatever it took to land my dream job. I went to SF for two nights and he hired me on the spot!

One fear I had about the online academy program in particular was that I wasn?t going to get the on campus hands on experience. Although I didn?t get as much hands on, I put a lot of work into learning as much as possible with all of the online resources MSC provided me with. The professors were great and the weekly conference calls were very helpful. Another fear I had going in to it was if I was going to spend money on something I didn?t need to get hired. One lesson I learned is that you should take any chance to invest in your education because in the end it is worth it! Especially if it gets you closer to your career goals.

My first contact with my manager was via email. He had found my information through the MSC recruiting services. I wrote him back showing my interest and we set up a phone call. Our call lasted about 20 minutes and it was mostly him asking about my background and why I wanted to pursue medical device sales. My manager is based out of the San Francisco area, so he doesn?t make it to Reno all that often. He had a last minute conference call in Reno and asked if I would be able to do a shot gun interview in person. We discussed further what we talked about over the phone and he asked what value I could bring to his team. The interview lasted about an hour and I felt really confident, especially wowing him with the knowledge I gained from MSC. What was even such a better feeling than that was his recognition in my attendance at MSC. He told me it showed my drive and hard work witch really made me appreciate MSC even more.

I work for a distributing company out of San Francisco. My manager has recently broken in to the Reno area with the products he distributes and needed a device rep for the Reno, Tahoe, Truckee, Carson area. So far I have done in-house training for 3 days in San Francisco. As of now I am going through Level 1 and 2 Spine and Neuro training through K2M while profiling spine surgeons in my area. My goal as of now is to break in to the hospitals and offices and get meetings with these surgeons and sell them on my devices. I also am maintaining an account my manager has recently opened. I will be going to more spine training in Washington DC May 5th.

The most valuable thing I learned at MSC was how to profile surgeons and how to interact with their offices and team members. They are our ultimate customer so they hold the key to our success. Product knowledge is also a major key before trying to sell any product to a surgeon! MSC really engraved both of these things in to me and it has helped already in preparing for my job.