I have an oppty in healthcare. The position, job duties, and salary are all good.The position gives me good exposure to healthcare. My question is how this willplace me in the future: Most jobs on the market just look at recent industry experience as opposed to transferrable skills. In the region i am in, the healthcare market is small. This is unfortunate as my 'brand' will be based on HC.How do you see the industry prospects for hc? Any advice in transferring HC skills to other industries such as finance, telco, etc ( where by far the majority of jobs are in my area).

I am assuming that the job you are looking at now, and those you are considering for the future, are all in healthcare consulting.Would moving to a region with a larger healthcare market be a viable option later in your career? That might solve your problem.It'd help to understand whether the healthcare market in your region is principally in the public or private sector. Both allow you lateral moves, but into different groups. Inherently, healthcare is a semi-professionalised service industry like many others; therefore, as long as you're not spending all your time working on public health policy, you are likely to develop transferrable skills.It's interesting that most of the job adverts you've seen have focussed on industry experience. Have they excluded equivalent consulting experience? In most markets, the first few years you spend in consulting do not pigeonhole you by industry. It is only once you start to become a "subject matter expert" later in your career that it becomes harder to sell your consulting experience into different industry teams.

healthcare offers many transferrbale skills. Its a large industry with many players from providers to payers and numerous consulting outfits with HC practices. Its important to understand the overall business model and delivery of HC if you want to tranfer your skills later down the line to say consulting companies that offer HC practices( or even other industries). You are right in that in this market, without relevant industry experience you may stand little chance of making a switch beteen HC to another industry. However, this market cannot go on forever. Take the job, learn as much aou can, and when the market picks up in about 1 yr or more, they will be willing to consider transferrbale skills much more and then try for other industries. Who knows, you might end up liking the HC industry and decide to make a career out of it. The way i see it:Pros:- Large industry with many players ( opportunities abound)- No one really fools around with this industry- has some real impact and commands some respect...isnt exaclty 'trivial' work such as video game consulting ( with all due respect).- probably the most recession proof of all industries ( except govt).- you get to learn how to manage your own healthcare ( this is useful throughout your life- from HC insurance to the way public/private clinics/hospitals work etc)cons:- lots of beauracracy and doesnt move quickly ( lots of politics too).- probably not the highest renumeration ( generally low risk= low reward, but there are exceptions plenty escpecially in private sector)- lack of global brand name companies- most are smaller fragmented companies with lots of intermediaries. Exceptions abound though- e.g. Mckesson has operations almost everywhere as do some leading global pharma companies ( e.g. Johnson and Johnson, unilver etc- these are well respected brands- they dont come and go with economic cycles and are well run and managed- just look at their track record).