Career Advice by Randy

This is a tough question to answer for most. The day-to-day of your job or your business consumes you and often doesn’t provide the time for you to pause and reflect on where you have been, and most important, where you are going in your career. In today’s employment market, it is critical that you put yourself first and not just work - but actively manage your career. Think of yourself as the CEO of your own company - You, Inc. This is the reality of today.

We hear all too often about a friend, co-worker or client who has just had the rug pulled out from under them - they lost their job, and it was unexpected. Still others appears to have jobs and careers that, to the outsider, seem like they got it made, but we find out that they are bored, not feeling valued and not learning.

This is why having a career management plan is so very important. The experienced manager of their career is usually fully engaged in their job and continually managing their career - not simply going to work everyday - but managing their future. Managing one’s career is like managing your finances - you establish a plan, routinely monitor your results and make adjustments as the market changes to get the best return on your money. The same goes for your career - you establish a plan, timetables and measures and adjust your plan as the market or opportunities change.
To better understand what career management is, the following description accurately describes what career management is and is not. The last line is so important:

“The ability to actively manage one’s work life, make choices and career decisions in a rapidly changing environment. It is accepting responsibility for the strategic and proactive management of your career and being career-resilient and in control your own career actions and satisfaction. Career management is not job hunting - jo Read the rest of this entry »

Physicians are subject to a number of unique provisions relating to their eligibility for visa issuance. Also because of the nature of U.S. licensing for medical doctors, physicians often obtain either J-1 visas or H-1B visas for substantial periods of time before they can actually practice medicine in the U.S. This in itself may impose special burdens on the physicians’ desire to be in the U.S. beyond training the physicians’ needs. In a Memo made available 12/20/06 the USCIS reversed prior position that H-4 counts toward the H-1 six year limit. It no longer does!

Fortunately, there are a number of strategies that may be implemented to deal with the problem by either putting a “freeze” on the accumulation of additional H-1B status while obtaining an alternative basis of employment, or by providing the legal foundation to extend H-1s for seven years and beyond.

A “freeze” can be placed on the additional accumulation of H-1B status toward the six year by the filing of an adjustment of status application with applications for work authorization and travel permission filed simultaneously. Once the work authorization and travel permission application are approved the physician can use the travel permission to be admitted to the United States as a “parolee” using from that point on their work authorization as a basis of employment and no longer accumulating additional H-1B status. The basis of the adjustment of status may be a labor certification or a petition filed under the “extraordinary ability” or “national interest” categories.

A strategy to extend H-1B status beyond the sixth year involves the timely filing of either a labor certification or I-140. If such an application is pending for one year, an application to extend status beyond the sixth year may be approved an unlimited number of times in one year increments. A ph Read the rest of this entry »