Four guides, written for surgical techs rather than for everyone. They cover what OR directors actually read on a resume, the questions that come up in nearly every surgical tech interview, and how to run a search that produces callbacks instead of silence. Work them in order.
Most techs start by applying and fix the resume after the rejections. That is backwards, and it burns the facilities you most wanted, because a hiring manager who passed on you in March remembers the name in June.
Specialties, case volume, implant systems, sites. OR managers skim for evidence you have scrubbed what they run. Start with the resume guide.
Know which settings you want, what you will and will not take on call and shift, and who makes the hiring decision at each target. The job search guide covers the mechanics.
Most surgical tech applications do not need one. The ones that do are the roles you actually want, and there it is the difference between an applicant and a candidate. See the cover letter guide.
Candidates lose OR roles on the behavioral answers, not the technical ones. The interview questions guide shows what each question is actually testing.
Surgical tech hiring does not work like most healthcare hiring, and generic job search advice fails here for specific reasons.
Departments hire people they know: former students, per diem techs, referrals from staff. Applying cold to a posted opening means you are already behind someone the manager has watched work.
It is made by the OR manager or the service line lead. Your resume has to survive HR, but it has to persuade a person who has scrubbed cases and knows what your case log implies.
Two techs with identical years of experience are not interchangeable if one runs hearts and the other runs eyes. Naming your service lines and case volume does more than any summary paragraph.
Managers talk across facilities in a metro. How you interviewed, whether you ghosted an offer, how you left your last department: all of it travels. Run the search like people are comparing notes, because they are.
The four guides above assume you have a credential and a case log. If you do not yet, or if you are moving rather than starting, these are the pages that fit your situation.
New grads should read the new grad hiring guide before touching a resume, because the advantage you have is your clinical sites, not your application. Techs changing service lines should start with how to switch specialties. Anyone weighing an offer should know the number first; run yours through the salary estimator.
Less time than most healthcare searches if you are certified and flexible on shift, and considerably longer if you are targeting one facility or a single specialty. The constraint is rarely demand. It is whether a specific department has an opening and whether you are the name they already know.
Both, for different roles. Agencies move fastest on travel, per diem, and hard-to-staff specialties. Permanent positions at a system you want to stay at are usually better pursued directly, because the manager sees you as their hire rather than a placement. See the staffing agency guide.
No. Write one for the roles you genuinely want and skip it elsewhere. A generic letter attached to fifteen applications is worse than none, because it tells the manager you did not read the posting.
Usually yes, with one exception. Missing a certification a system requires up front is a hard filter and no amount of experience clears it. Missing specialty exposure is not; managers hire on trajectory when the credential is there.
Once, to the OR manager rather than HR, roughly a week out, in two sentences. Directness reads as confidence in this field. Repeated follow-up reads as something else, and OR managers are not subtle about which.