From Jodi · The Business of Women's Health | 8 Questions That Prove You Know the Business of Women's Health | Passion gets you in the room. The questions you ask are what earn you the offer. | When people try to break into women's health, most of them lead with passion. In interviews, in cover letters, in coffee chats, they talk about how much they care and why it is personal to them. That's important. I get it, because that passion is what pulls most of us into this work in the first place. But passion is not what sets you apart, and it is not what earns you the offer. What sets you apart is showing that you understand how the business actually works. I've interviewed hundreds of people in women's health, and I can tell almost immediately whether they understand how the business works by the questions they ask during the interview. And this isn't just about what you ask when I say, at the end, "Do you have any questions for me?" (By the way, if you haven't asked any questions by that point, you've already failed.) The best candidates use questions to demonstrate their knowledge, and they start asking almost immediately, as soon as I begin describing the position, the role, and what we are trying to accomplish. Questions are a way to show how much research you've done, how well you understand the business, and a unique opportunity to follow up the hiring manager's answer with the value you'd add or a similar experience you bring. Connect their answer back to your skill set and you're good to go. Eight Questions to Try | | 1. | Where do you sit in the healthcare value chain, and who do you actually consider your customer: the patient, the provider, the payer, or the employer? | | 2. | Women's health runs from fertility to menopause and rarely fits a single care model, so how do you think about where this company plays, and just as importantly, where you have deliberately decided not to? | | 3. | How is care actually delivered here, and how are you solving the hard parts, clinician capacity, multi-state licensing, and scope of practice, as you grow? | | 4. | Women's health is chronically under-capitalized relative to its size, so how are you funded today, and how much runway does that give you to hit your next set of milestones? | | 5. | What are the two or three milestones you most need to hit before your next raise, and when are you targeting it? | | 6. | How do you balance shipping product quickly with the clinical rigor and trust that women's health uniquely demands? | | 7. | Paid acquisition is notoriously hard in women's health, between ad rejections and platform limits, so what is really driving your growth right now, and which channels do you actually own? | | 8. | What single policy, regulatory, or reimbursement shift would most change this business over the next two years, and how are you positioned if it does not go your way? |
| Save these. Bring them into your next conversation. Even on their own, they will make you sound like someone who gets it. | It is one thing to ask these questions. It is another thing entirely to understand the answers. |
| Here Is the Uncomfortable PartIf a founder told you they collect payment 90 days after delivering care, would you know whether to be impressed or alarmed? If they said they are out-of-network and "working on contracts," would you know what that actually puts at risk? If you paused on any of the eight, or on why some of them even matter, that is not a knock on you. Almost no one is taught this. It is not in the job description, and no hiring manager is going to hand it to you. But it is exactly what separates the people who land good roles from the people who take a job at a company that cannot survive its own reimbursement. And right now, in a job market that is anything but stable, that difference is everything. When you understand how a company gets paid, you stop hoping it will make it and start being able to tell. You can sit in an interview and decide for yourself whether this is a business you truly believe in, regardless of how much you love the mission. Final ThoughtAsking the right questions is step one. Knowing what a strong answer sounds like, and what to do with it, is the actual skill. If you want to close that gap, I'm teaching The Business of Women's Health and Reimbursement 101 in a few upcoming free sessions. We'll walk through how the money really works, so you can not only ask these questions but understand exactly what you are hearing. | So what: Passion will get you started in women's health. Understanding the business is what gets you hired, and keeps you smart about where you go next. |  Jodi Neuhauser · Founder, In Women's Health | | | Want the full picture? The fall Mini-MBA is open now, and it's our last cohort of the year. |
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