Alex Wetzler

Prior to MSC I co-founded and ran a low voltage services company with my business partner for 10 years. We consulted, designed, sold, installed, and supported everything from the network backbone infrastructure to customized low voltage technology packages for high-end residential clients as well as commercial office buildings, medical centers, and educational buildings.

I have always been drawn to the medical industry due to my interest in leading a healthy lifestyle and my wife being a physician assistant. She was a neurosurgical PA for 5 years and discussing cases she was involved in seemed fascinating to me.

After not having much luck applying to jobs, I started researching ways to improve my chances by educating myself. MSC popped up in a Google search and so I reached out to admissions and liked what I heard. I also reached out to several recent graduates on LinkedIn who had good things to say.

Ultimately it was the recent graduates as well as good reviews on forums and sites such as Reddit that convinced me.

I was nervous having to sit in class for 8+ hours a day since I was a decade out of college; however, I found MSC to be a very enjoyable experience and I was able to maintain focus due to the highly engaging teaching style of Rebecca Camp as well as Andrea Molinaro and Loren Deren during biologics week. I really enjoyed the combination of traditional PowerPoint teaching slides, educational videos, hands on experience in the saw bone lab, and the side tangents the teachers would get off on describing real world experiences they have had in hospitals and with surgeons.

You should attend MSC if you are serious about getting into the highly competitive Medical Device Industry. MSC will speed up your job application process including asking the right questions to make sure the job will be a good fit for you. It will also help out once you are in the field by teaching you tips and tricks that other successful sales reps have used to help grow their business. Attending MSC, I gained knowledge that I would not have been able to pick up through self-study programs.

It was roughly 2 months while I was still working full time.

Over the month it took me to find a job I was interviewing with 4 companies and had a total of 17 interviews. I was interviewing with Supreme Orthopedic Systems (Arthrex) where I had a phone interview, hireview, personality and aptitude test, in-person interview with the owner of the distributorship and regional manager, 2 ride-a-longs at surgery centers, and a dinner with the regional manager and 2 reps from the territory. With Stryker I had a phone interview, in-person with the AD and associate manager, and had the Gallup coming up that I cancelled when I accepted Spartan Medical. For Globus I had an in-person interview with the AD and met a rep in the territory. With Spartan I had a phone interview with the Global Head of Spinal Systems after which he invited me to come in for an in-person interview. The in-person interview lasted over 3 hours and was with 4 different managers: operations, head of Eastern US sales, Global Head of Spinal Systems, and Global Sales Manager. After that they invited me to come back the next day for a company training and ?First Friday? where they go over recent company developments and get feedback from reps in the field. I then went to a happy hour at the owner?s house and asked for the job during the happy hour.

Honestly, I felt pretty prepared for attending MSC and I haven?t started at Spartan yet. Knowing about casual Fridays ahead of time would have been nice; I would have brought some different clothes.

Honestly it was my knowledge of spinal pathologies and surgical treatment options that probably helped me most. Spartan Medical quizzed me during the interview process and was impressed with my knowledge and knew I would be able to ramp up quicker than other green candidates.