Seven Health is hiring for a nutrition practitioner and today’s podcast is all about the position – what it entails, who would be a good fit, and how to apply.
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Chris Sandel: Welcome to Episode 169 of Real Health Radio. You can find the links talked about as part of this episode at the show notes, which is www.seven-health.com/169.
Welcome to Real Health Radio: Health advice that’s more than just about how you look. Here’s your host, Chris Sandel.
Hey, everyone. Thanks for joining me for another episode of the podcast. The last two weeks’ episodes before this one have been rebroadcast episodes. My folks were over visiting from Australia, and I took some time off and we went to the New Forest in Hampshire. It was a really nice break in a very beautiful part of the world, but it’s meant that the podcasts have taken a bit of a backseat.
After the two weeks of rebroadcasts, if you’re hoping for my usual episode, I’m sorry to disappoint, but you’ll need to wait just one week longer because this is going to be a shorter episode than usual, and it’s actually less of a normal episode and more of an announcement. It’s something I’m very excited about, and considering the listenership of the podcast, I wanted to use this as an avenue to get the message out.
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The message is that Seven Health is hiring, and we’re looking to take on another practitioner to work alongside me. For the last 5 years, I’ve had increasing periods of being full with clients. I take on clients twice a year and work with these individuals for a minimum of 5 months. If I go back 5 years ago, it used to take me many months to sign up all of these clients. I’d then have a limited time of being closed to new clients, and then I would open up again.
But over the last 18 months in particular, the number of people applying to work with me has increased, and the time that it takes to sign up new clients has reduced. During the most recent intake in August time, it took around 4 weeks for me to sign up all the clients that I can handle to be at capacity. So I’m now in a position where demand is clearly outstripping supply, and when people get in contact to work with me, there can be 4 or 5 or 6 months as a wait period.
Given the nature of what I do, where people are wanting help to recover from an eating disorder or disordered eating, or they want to get their period back, or they’ve had enough with dieting and they want help navigating a different path, this kind of time delay for a lot of people is just too much. So I want to take on another practitioner to help meet this demand, so more of the people who want to make the changes can get the support they need.
I’ve set up a page on my site that has the job specification detailing what we’re looking for in a practitioner and how to apply. You can view that at www.seven-health.com/jobs. I will put a link to that also in the show notes for this podcast.
But what I want to do with this episode is just walk through what is included as part of the job specification and give more details and really flesh it out. I’ll then link to this episode on that page as well.
If you’re a practitioner and as I go through this, you think what I’m describing is something you can offer, then please apply. If you’ve worked with someone you think would be a good fit, then please send this over to them, or if you have a friend or you know of someone or you’re in various Facebook groups that potential practitioners frequent, then I’d be hugely appreciative if you could post it in there.
Given that this podcast will probably be shared with practitioners who are new to the show, I think it would be good for me to briefly describe the company, Seven Health.
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Seven Health works with women who feel obsessed with and defined by their bodies. Using a non-diet approach, we help clients transform their physical, mental, and emotional health. Our clients are primarily women, the majority of whom suffer from eating disorders and disordered eating, hypothalamic amenorrhea (not getting your period), and other hormonal imbalances.
Our small team works remotely but keeps in touch constantly to offer support and bounce ideas off one another. We’ve grown quickly over the last few years in particular and are looking for someone to help share the client load. In terms of the mention of a small team, let me just talk about who that consists of.
There is Drew. Drew originally started out helping as an intern a couple of years ago. She’s now the Marketing and Operations Director, and she helps everything around here run smoothly – or at least, as smoothly as a small business can run. She’s been a big part of Seven Health’s rise over the last couple of years, and I really don’t know how the company would function without her.
There is Taylor and Jane, and they’re helping with the social media side and the strategy side of marketing, from the bigger picture end of this, what’s the best way to reach and engage and develop relationships with followers across the various social network platforms, through to the more practical side of creating the imagery or editing the podcast for YouTube, for example.
Then there is Julie, who is my business advisor, and she runs the company Ellevated Outcomes. I’ve been working with her for nearly two years, and she keeps me personally accountable to the various goals I’ve set. She is fantastic with all the aspects of running a business, whether that be the financial side and looking at what ways make the most sense to be investing in the business through to branding and messaging and how I talk about what we do or how we as a company talk about what we do. Julie is a huge part of the reason why I’m now in the position to be taking on another practitioner.
Those are the people that make up the small team. I guess I probably should also introduce myself, given that there could be new practitioners listening to this who have no idea who I am. My name is Chris Sandel. I’m the founder of Seven Health. I’m originally from Sydney, Australia, but moved to the UK in 2003, and for the last 15 years this has been my permanent home, and I don’t see that changing anytime soon.
Shortly after moving to the UK, at age 21, I became interested in food and nutrition and I started reading pretty voraciously on the topic. At some point, I had the “aha” moment of “maybe this is actually what I want to do as a job.” I attended the College of Naturopathic Medicine, CNM, between 2006 and 2008, receiving a diploma in nutritional therapy, and in 2009 set up Seven Health.
Initially, I was unsure what to specialize in. At the time, in 2008, I was fairly heavily into exercise and was doing a lot of triathlons and marathons and cycle races. I toyed with the idea of sports nutrition, but I found the topic pretty dry – or at least, what I read on it felt pretty dry. So I originally started out very much as a generalist, hoping to help whoever came to see me, and feeling that I would discover what my niche would be through seeing clients and just experiencing who I liked helping the most.
At some point, maybe within the first year or the second year, I had this succession of clients who were struggling not only with physical symptoms but with emotional symptoms and emotional struggles relating to their body and self-acceptance. Despite being thin and in societally-accepted bodies, they so desperately wanted to lose weight and were obsessively focused on food.
It was with these clients that I really found I enjoyed working. Yes, I like the nerdy side of nutrition and physiology and reading research to understand how the body and how food works and how all the different environmental factors have an impact on health, and very much taking an evidence-based approach. But equally, I like the messier side of how this then translates into real life, like learning about psychology and exploring why people do what they do, and seeing in real-time how compassion and humanity and habit formation can transform someone’s life – not just with what they’re doing, but also with how they’re thinking.
This was then the start point of what set me down the path to the place that I’m at today, where I specialize in helping clients who have challenging relationships with food and with their body – those with eating disorders and disordered eating, those quitting dieting, those suffering with hypothalamic amenorrhea.
I consider myself a perpetual student and continue to read a ton and read very widely. I also regularly take further education courses and training. Since finishing my original diploma back in 2008, I’ve looked into many areas and trained in many areas like intuitive eating and motivational interviewing, Health at Every Size, eating disorder recovery, trauma, behavioral psychology, habit formation. There’s probably others, but those are the ones that come to mind.
That’s a short intro on me and who I am.
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When I think about why Seven Health has excelled with helping clients, it’s because of a dual focus that I alluded to a moment ago. One part is an understanding of physiology and the science of how the body works, and then the other part is understanding psychology and the mental and emotional side of our clients’ experience.
In this new practitioner role, that is what we’re looking for – someone who has both of those strengths: they understand nutritional science and they’re scientifically literate, and they’re compassionate and can support a client through an often difficult journey.
Let me read out how we describe the position, and I can flesh it out more as we go through it. We’re looking for an experienced, compassionate nutrition practitioner to join our growing team. This is a remote position that entails working with clients one-on-one online to improve health, body image, and relationship to food.
Personally, I am based in the UK, as I mentioned before. To be specific, I’m based in the English countryside in a small village called Lingfield in the county of Surrey. It’s a bit over an hour south of London. When working with clients, the consults are all done remotely, and they’re done via Skype or FaceTime or Zoom or whatever the client’s preference is for speaking.
If I’m looking at where most of the clients are currently based, in a rough order of the higher amount to lower amount, it would be the U.S., then the UK, and Canada making up about 80% from those three, with the rest being in Australia, New Zealand, and then many other countries in mainland Europe – at the moment, Spain, Germany, Switzerland, Italy, and other European countries with other intakes.
The reason I’m mentioning this is because the position might now be a little less appealing if you live in a time zone that’s going to make having conversations with people in those areas problematic or difficult.
We’re looking for someone who has been able to create their own business and presence online but still has capacity for working with more clients than they’re currently bringing in. I know there are a lot of people who are fantastic at working with clients, but maybe they aren’t so keen on the marketing side or the intake side of running a business. This side of running a business says nothing about someone’s ability to help clients. Not everyone is strong in both of these skillsets. It could be someone who was enjoying this before, but now has a child, so they’re more time-pressed, or they’ve gone back to school for a Master’s or a PhD and now have less time, and they just really want to see more clients. Or even if you do like the marketing and the business-building side of things, you’re still yet to get as many clients as you can handle.
I know that for me, it took a really long time to build up to a point where I was full. If I’d seen a position that allowed me to see clients that I didn’t have to bring in myself, I know how appealing that would’ve been to me at the time.
Just so I’m very clear, we’re not asking the successful candidate to shut down their own businesses. We’re happy for them to continue seeing their own clients and to keep doing what they’re doing. The position will eventually be 20 to 25 hours a week but will be less than this to start with. So it’s simply someone who has that amount of time available, even if, as I said, in the beginning, it’s going to be less than this.
This is a paid contract position with a competitive package that extends beyond salary. Remuneration will be dependent on the number of clients seen.
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Some of the characteristics we’re looking for: you are skilled at listening and allowing the client to be heard; an excellent communicator, both verbally and in writing; adept at knowing how to ask the right questions to get below the surface level, to understand what’s really going on with someone; well-versed in motivational interviewing, behavior change, and habit formation. You love the messy art of working with clients. You’re proactive and excellent at managing your time and schedule, as well as being flexible with the needs of clients.
In terms of training and experience, background training in nutrition. You could be a registered dietitian, you could be a nutritionist. This doesn’t have to be a degree or a Master’s, but we want to see that you have training in nutritional science, are scientifically literate, and have a strong understanding of the physiology.
A minimum of 5 years in clinical practice. This is actually really important. This isn’t a junior position. This is for someone who is experienced so that when they start with clients, we feel completely confident in their skillset. Now, there’ll definitely be conversations about how each of us does our things and works with clients, and I hope we’ll be able to learn from one another. We want there to be similarities with how we practice so that when a client signs up to work with Seven Health, they get the same high level of service irrespective of who the practitioner is that they’re working with.
So I want someone who is experienced enough that we’re able to leave them to get on with things because they’ve been doing this for years and have helped and worked with many, many clients.
But also, to be clear, I’m not looking for a carbon copy of myself. We would love someone who has many skills and experiences that I don’t have. I’ve never worked in an inpatient setting, for example. If someone has this experience, that would be fantastic. I’ve worked mostly with women. If someone has worked with a lot of men, this would be great. I’ve never undertaken research. If someone has this as part of their background, this is awesome. We’d love someone with experiences in different settings and with different populations. It’s not finding someone who is the exact same as myself.
I’m also open to people who have different opinions to me. If you’ve listened to my episode on tribalism, you know that I’m open-minded and like having my positions challenged and like having discussions on topics of disagreement. Now, obviously, when taking on a practitioner to work with in Seven Health, there has to be a lot of agreement in how we work and how we see the world. If we’re looking at the Venn diagram, there does have to be a lot of overlap. But it doesn’t have to completely overlap. I want someone who can push back on ideas or for discussions to come up so that we can both be better practitioners.
We want someone who has training and experience working with eating disorders and disordered eating recovery, training and/or experience with hypothalamic amenorrhea and recovering menstruation, and training and/or experience in intuitive eating. All these areas make up a bulk of the reasons that clients seek out Seven Health, so we want the candidate to have expertise in them.
We use a Health at Every Size and a weight-inclusive approach. This is crucially important, as we don’t do intentional weight loss. This is something that is a really big thing.
We’d like you to have the ability to write and create engaging and informative content. I know I said that this role would be about seeing clients and that Seven Health would be providing this for you, but I want people who visit the site to be able to find out about you, your experience, your thoughts, your beliefs, how you work with people, and the best way to do this is to create content that demonstrates your ability.
A bonus would be if you have experience interviewing or being interviewed on podcasts. This podcast is easily the best way for potential clients to get a taste of who I am and what I’m about, and I’m not precious about this podcast only being my thing. If a practitioner is open to doing solo episodes on particular topics or interviews, I would love for this to happen.
So as part of the role, we’d like you to be creating some content so clients, potential clients, and the readers and the listeners get to know who you are.
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In terms of technology we use, I’ve already mentioned Skype, FaceTime, and Zoom for client consults. We also use these for meetings within the company. Other technologies are the Google Suite, so Google Docs, and we use ClickUp to manage projects and workflow.
As part of the position, you need to have high-speed and reliable internet connection. I know this may sound like a pretty standard thing in these modern times, but I’m always surprised at how often this isn’t the case. Even in first world, developed countries and developed cities, internet can be patchy. Given that the role involves speaking over the internet as pretty much the whole part of the job, having this be good quality really is a must.
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The final thing to mention about the role is the start date. As I mentioned at the top, the way things are currently structured in Seven Health is that we do client intakes twice a year, and these clients then sign up for an initial period of 5 months. The next time we’ll be starting with clients is in early 2020, so late January/early February time. This is when the client side of the role would officially start.
But the onboarding would happen earlier than this so that I can get a chance to know who you are, and more importantly, the site readers and the podcast listeners can get to know who you are, and also doing the client interviews to sign people up.
Applications for the position opened on Monday the 21st of October, and then they will close on Friday the 8th of November. From the release date of this episode, there’s still a couple of weeks that you can apply, and then interviews will happen shortly after this. They’ll be conducted by me for the people who are shortlisted for the position.
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To apply, applicants should email drew@seven-health.com. As part of the email, please include your CV and a cover letter, and as part of the cover letter, there are three things we want you to include:
1) Why you believe you are the right candidate for the role
2) What is your favorite podcast (it doesn’t have to be health-related or eating disorder recovery-related or anything along those lines) and why is it your favorite podcast? In the unlikely event that this podcast is your favorite podcast, please pick your second favorite podcast and explain why.
3) A link to what you believe is the best piece of content you’ve created, whether it’s a blog post, a video, a podcast, a social media post, or any other option, and why you are proud of that piece of content.
That’s it in terms of the role. Thanks for taking the time to listen to this. It’s now my turn to ask a favor of you. If you are a practitioner and you like what you hear and think you would be the perfect candidate, then please send an email to drew@seven-health.com with your CV and cover letter. If you’ve worked with a practitioner and you think they may be interested, then please forward on this podcast to them or forward over to them the page that has this job spec on it, which is www.seven-health.com/jobs.
If you follow someone on Instagram or on Facebook or listen to someone’s podcast and you like the content that they’re putting out, then I’d love for you to DM them or email them or however you can get in contact with them and let them know. If you’re a member of a Facebook group and you think there might be someone or many people in there who would be interested in hearing about this, then please post a message and link to either this podcast episode or to the page, www.seven-health.com/jobs.
I could really use your help with this, and I know the value of crowds and the hive mind in getting this in front of the right people, so thank you in advance for whatever help you can offer.
That is it for this episode. It’s much shorter than the usual offering, but I am incredibly excited about taking someone on and being able to help more people. I’ll be back next week with another new podcast episode. I will catch you then.
Thanks for listening to Real Health Radio. If you are interested in more details, you can find them at the Seven Health website. That’s www.seven-health.com.
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