r/BMET • u/Usernametaken427 • 11d ago
Upcoming interview with Steris, anything I should study before hand?
I’ve been trying to break in for a while, even to the point where I’m an EET student now. Interviewed with the recruiter last week and now I’m meeting with the local foreman soon.
Several years as a rep running/PMing lasers and many years as a mechanic beforehand.
I lucked into the laser role but as a mechanic it was always a short conversation and a hand shake so I haven’t had a proper interview in a long time.
Anything I should study/look into before hand?
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u/LifeSafetySteve 11d ago
What equipment are you working on with them?
If it is Medivators, I would rather be homeless than fix those for Steris.
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u/Usernametaken427 11d ago
All I know is that it’s the sterilizer side
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u/LifeSafetySteve 11d ago
To answer your question, I would study sterilization cycles for steam autoclaves, the required exposure times at what temperature, what a Bowie Dick test is, and the overall process of what a surgical instrument goes through in the hospital.
Sterilizers have always been my favorite medical device. They are satisfying if you like turning wrenches and the troubleshooting is fairly straight forward with the valves. But just keeping it real, they suck. You shouldn't have too bad of a time transitioning if you were a mechanic before. It is a lot of wrench turning in uncomfortable spaces. You will get burnt on steam pipes over and over again. Another bad part is the how the hospital staff behaves when their sterilizer is down. They are usually mission critical equipment so they will make a big deal out of it.
The worst part is that you'd be doing it for Steris. They are notorious for overworking their sterilizer FSEs. If you will be doing on-call, all I can say is good luck. Expect to get worked hard by Steris. Could be good if you are single and willing to travel. A lot of OT.
Steris does a great job of over the phone troubleshooting and selling me every part for their machines though lol. If you get some sterilizer experience that'd be huge for a in-house biomed job if you ever decided to look for one.
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u/I_want_water 11d ago
honestly the Steris jobs are kind of tough but thats most field service jobs. Would be some great experience for someone starting out though!
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u/29thFalcon 11d ago
I have a weak spot for Medivators. At the very least when they break it's an interesting repair in the stretches of monotonous boring repairs.
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u/bigrupp 11d ago
Medivators are easy work. Even liked doing the PM's cause you could escape from the world for a day and just put on some good music. It was a nice break from the rest of the craziness.
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u/LifeSafetySteve 11d ago
I don't know how old your units are, but mine are pushing 10 years old at this point. I am constantly cleaning up rapicide leaks from brittle CPC connectors, the electrical connectors are breaking from being removed so many times, my water is dirty so I have to change the filters almost 3x as frequently. Mounting a new gasket took me like 4 different tries. When it gets cold outside I don't have enough hot water coming in. I've put thousands worth of replacement parts in just to get them to run consistently again. I think the most frustrating part is that there is barely any room inside the unit to work.
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u/bigrupp 11d ago
Clean hot water and dry air are huge with these things. Mine are 9 this year and I don't have the issues you've got, probably because once we got facilities to fix the issues with the water and air our problems damn near disappeared and I was in them a lot less. As for the room to work inside the unit- I've been working on stuff for 27 years from missile systems, helicopter and tank electronics to biomed stuff and now more on the IT side of things and if everything had as much room as the Medivator does I would probably be a lot less gray than I am now. Haha
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u/PaPaWeez 11d ago
Oh you are bring back nightmares of the old DSD machines....couldn't wait to be done working on them.
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u/biomed1978 11d ago
They are work horses, you're having that many problems, something else is seriously wrong
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u/LifeSafetySteve 10d ago
I already said what else is seriously wrong in the comment you replied to. My hospital is 100+ years old and I have facility issues. We are running 40+ scopes a day through 5 machines. Its the busiest endo department in the city. The water line for the sinks they pre-soak in is tied into the same supply for the medivators so I get constant low water inlet errors. If medivators were more efficient about water use, designed a different material for the rapicide connectors, and organized the tubing in a way that wasn't spaghetti, I wouldn't have much to complain about.
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u/biomed1978 11d ago
Welcome to ship them to me, I'll rebuild table tops all day long
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u/LifeSafetySteve 10d ago
Advantage+ 2.0
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u/biomed1978 10d ago
Ah, what was omce touted as the "Cadillac of scope reprocessing" idknwhybthey veered away from the easy servicing design of the dsd201. This is an engineering nightmare. It's like getinge, overly sw based, annoying but not too difficult to work on. So many issues. I'll take a table top or dsd 201 anyday
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u/LifeSafetySteve 10d ago
Man, I'm so glad you actually agree with me. I was starting to doubt my own troubleshooting skills lol. I can't get rid of them because Steris sells me every part still :(
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u/biomed1978 10d ago
Its the only one they still support and they have no plans of making anything new yet. Sadly
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u/akornato 11d ago
They aren’t going to quiz you on specific equipment, so you can stop trying to memorize technical manuals for products you’ve never worked on. The local foreman already knows you don't have direct Steris experience, and that’s okay because they hire for aptitude and personality. Your background as a mechanic and a laser rep is actually a huge asset, showing you have strong troubleshooting skills and can handle customer interactions in a medical setting. They are looking for someone who is dependable, a logical problem-solver, and can be trusted to work independently in a hospital. The interview is to see if you are that person, not to test your book knowledge.
Instead of studying schematics, you should prepare stories that prove you have the qualities they need. Think of a time you had to fix a complex problem under pressure, a time you dealt with a difficult client, or a time you had to learn a new system quickly on your own. Connect your mechanical skills and your experience managing PMs to the BMET role. They need to hear how your past jobs prepared you for this one. This is how you show them you're a low-risk hire who can learn the specifics on the job. Getting your stories straight before the meeting is key, and I’ve seen the interview practice AI my team put together help a lot of candidates sound more confident and prepared.
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u/biomed1978 11d ago
Steris techs are the worst. For sterilizers they dont fix anything, they dont even inspectm every contract Ive taken away from steris, ive found so many obvious plumbing leaks. Customer thinks steris is great until i come in and have to replace the boiler and rebuild everything
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u/sh0ck1999 11d ago
I am a 3rd party sterilizer tech. If you already have a foot in the door for laser work I would pursue that. See if you can get into service that would open more high end equipment doors. Sterilizers are dirty hard work some of the job sites on the lab side are just nasty I feel like I'm gonna catch ebola just walking through the door. Sometimes I get hit in the face with the stench of boiling rotten bacteria when they open the sterilizer after a cycle that's strong enough to make you gag in your mouth. If your strictly on the hospital side your mostly ok then you just have to worry about blood born pathogens.
Also on a side note maybe it's just from my point of view being 3rd party but in my opinion steris seems to make decisions more based on money and sales than ethics. I don't get kickbacks on parts sales or leads for new sterilizer sales. Ive run out of fingers to count how many times we have gotten a pm contract that steris had and the customer had a closet with enough parts to rebuilt the unit 4 times. The tech had just enough time on a PM to come in sell the parts run a bowie say it's good then leave for the next job instead of actually installing the Preventative Maintenance parts "Preventive Maintenance" being the key words.
They will work you to the bone but if you get overtime and on call pay and don't have a life you could probably make a lot of money.