Director of Career Advising - School of Medicine

Director Of Career Advising - School Of Medicine

Provides strategic leadership for career advising and residency preparation for medical students in the BYU School of Medicine. The Director of Career Advising oversees the full career development continuum from early self-assessment and specialty exploration through residency application, Match preparation, SOAP planning, and transition to residency. This position designs and implements longitudinal career development programming, provides individualized advising, interprets national and institutional residency outcome data, and reports directly to the Associate Dean of Student Progress.

A central responsibility of the Director is building and sustaining a network of community specialty career advisors—physician volunteers trained to provide specialty-specific guidance to students on specialty fit, competitiveness, application strategy, and the Match process. The director recruits, trains, and retains these advisors, ensuring consistent, current, and high-quality advising across key disciplines.

This position is critical to the success of the BYU School Of Medicine, a newly established organization within the university. As the school continues to launch and grow, a successful candidate must demonstrate adaptability and a willingness to take on evolving responsibilities and assignments to support its effective implementation and ongoing operations.

What You'll Be Doing In This Position

• Provide individualized, longitudinal career advising to all medical students across all phases of training.
• Guide students in specialty exploration, including alignment of interests, values, academic performance, and competitiveness.
• Identify students who may require enhanced residency advising due to academic risk, professionalism concerns, specialty competitiveness, delayed exam timelines, or late changes in specialty direction and escalate concerns to the Associate Dean of Student Progress as needed.
• Coordinate with the Director of Academic Learning and Progress when academic performance may affect residency competitiveness, while maintaining appropriate confidentiality and role boundaries.
• Utilize national and institutional data (e.g., NRMP match data, specialty competitiveness metrics) to inform advising.
• Educate students on residency application components and systems including but not limited to ERAS, personal statements, letters of recommendation, and interview preparation.
• Support students in developing strategic residency application plans, including alternate planning where appropriate.
• Assist students in understanding specialty-specific expectations (e.g., research, away rotations, board scores).
• Deliver structured advising using Association of American Medical Colleges Careers in Medicine framework.
• Coordinate with the registrar, Associate Dean of Student Progress, and Director of Academic Learning and Progress to ensure students understand MSPE timelines, residency application milestones, and required documentation.

• Design and implement a comprehensive career advising curriculum across the medical school timeline.
• Develop workshops on specialty selection, residency application strategy, CV building, and interview skills.
• Coordinate residency preparation milestones and timelines for students.
• Maintain resources and guides for specialty advising and application processes.
• Maintain advising resources for students considering dual applications, preliminary or transitional years, research years, couples match, military match, changing specialty direction, or SOAP participation.
• Evaluate effectiveness of advising programs and continuously improve based on outcomes and student feedback.

• Provides functional oversight, training, coordination, and quality assurance for a network of specialty-specific physician/faculty advisors.
• Develop and execute a strategy for recruiting physician specialty advisors representing all major specialties, with priority given to areas of high student interest and underrepresented disciplines.
• Design and deliver onboarding and ongoing training for specialty advisors, including instruction on the residency application process, Match data interpretation, specialty competitiveness benchmarks, signaling norms, letters of recommendation, interview expectations and SOAP.
• Establish annual update expectations for specialty advisors, including specialty-specific advising guides, competitiveness benchmarks, application timelines, signaling guidance, away rotation norms, interview expectations, and Match/COAP considerations.
• Maintain a current and active roster of trained specialty advisors, actively managing advisor engagement, participation, and retention over time.
• Establish clear role expectations, advising boundaries, confidentiality requirements, and quality standards for all specialty advisors.
• Facilitate connections between students and specialty advisors based on career…