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Hiring at the family services desk
Guide and instructor jobs with two weeks shadowed first.
Healthcare jobs in Austin that are not at a bedside. Patient guides, class instructors and front desk staff at 71 Mill Street, and nobody takes a call or a room alone until they have sat beside someone who has done it for ten working days.
- Roles we hire for
- Guide, instructor, front desk
- Where you work
- 71 Mill Street, Unit B
- Shadowing
- 10 working days
- Largest room you teach
- 12 seats
- Apply by
- Form, phone or email
What these jobs are not. None of the roles below gives a diagnosis or says a word about medication. That is the clinician's job, and we will ask you in the interview how you would pass such a question on.
Northwell's guides and classes are not medical care and do not replace your doctor. If something is urgent, call 911 or go to the nearest emergency department.
Patient guide and instructor jobs: what a Tuesday in each involves
We post openings here and nowhere else first. If a role is not listed as open when you write, send the form anyway. We keep applications for the next opening and tell you when we have deleted yours.
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Patient guide
A patient guide owns a caseload of people who have called with one question: where do I go, and what do I bring. You call them back, find the right location, walk them through the paperwork and send the letter with directions and the checklist. The day before the visit you call again. Most of the work is parking, entrances, forms and who drives whom home. It is less dramatic than people expect and more exacting.
The phone is answered on the third ring on weekdays, so guides work in a rota. After six the line goes to voicemail, and whoever is on the early shift returns those calls before ten the next morning. You will make forty or fifty calls on a heavy day.
- You need
- A clear phone voice and the patience to explain the same parking lot four times without sounding like it. Tidy written English too, because every call ends in a letter.
- Useful
- Time on a front desk, in a pharmacy queue, in insurance admin or anywhere people arrive worried and in a hurry.
- You will not
- Advise on symptoms, read test paperwork for anyone or book an emergency. You pass those on the same minute.
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Class instructor
Class instructor jobs here mean teaching one of the published programs in the daylight room at Mill Street: hospital stay preparation, the new parents evenings, the caregiver skills Saturdays, CPR and first aid, or the steady movement class for people over sixty. You teach the syllabus as written. You learn every name before the first break. That is a rule, not a suggestion.
Some programs need a current instructor qualification from an outside body before we can put you in front of a room, the CPR course and the movement class in particular. We ask for proof of it at interview and do not arrange it for you. Other programs need teaching experience and a steady hand with a group of strangers.
- You need
- Experience running a small group, and the ability to hold a timetable. A 90-minute class ends at 90 minutes.
- Useful
- Adult education, community classes, coaching or any job where you taught with your hands as well as your voice.
- You will not
- Seat anyone who has not met a program's entry rule, such as the signed physician note for the movement class.
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Front desk
The front desk is the first face a class participant sees. You open the door fifteen minutes before each start, check names against the seat list, collect clearance notes where a program needs one and keep the preparation room stocked. Linen folded, manikins wiped down, training bed made, spare pens where the pens should be.
You also take walk-in questions. People come to the desk with printed letters, wrong addresses and occasionally the wrong day. You fix what you can and hand the rest to a guide by name, never to "someone".
- You need
- Reliability before anything else. If the desk is empty at 08:45, twelve people stand on the sidewalk.
- Useful
- Reception or hospitality work, and being unbothered by a line out the door.
- You will not
- Give directions to a clinical department from memory. You check, or you ask a guide.
The part nobody sees
The room is ready before anyone arrives
Every job on this page shares one habit. You get there early and you set the room up properly. The caregiver course needs a made training bed with a draw sheet. The CPR course needs adult and infant manikins cleaned and laid out on mats. The new parents class needs weighted practice dolls and a car seat with its harness loosened.
We do not have a cleaning crew that does this for you. The person teaching or staffing the desk does it, and the person who taught the last class leaves the room in the state they would want to find it.
If that sounds beneath the job, this is the wrong job. Most of our best guides started on the desk.
Your first ten working days
What the first two weeks look like
Every new hire follows the same plan, whatever the role. You are paid for all of it. You do not work alone during it, and you can ask to repeat any day.
The most common mistake we see in week one is people trying to sound helpful by guessing. Guessing is the thing we train out first. "I will find out and call you back by four" beats a confident wrong answer every time.
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Day 1
The building, the door and the phone
Keys, the alarm, the fire route, and where visitors park. You spend the afternoon listening in on guide calls with a headset and the microphone off.
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Days 2–3
The letter and the checklist
You learn the standard letter line by line, including page two, which is where the parking answer lives. You draft five letters. A guide corrects all five.
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Day 4
The questions we pass on
A full morning on what a guide never answers. Symptoms and medication go to the clinician, and anything urgent goes to 911. You practice that handover until it is automatic.
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Day 5
Sit in on a class
You attend one program as a participant, usually hospital stay preparation. Instructors learn what the seat feels like. Guides learn what they are sending people to.
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Days 6–8
Doing it with someone beside you
Guides take calls with a senior guide listening. Instructors co-teach a section. Front desk staff open the room while the regular desk lead watches.
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Day 9
Records and privacy
How inquiries are stored, who can see them and how long we keep them. The same rules we publish in the privacy notice, from the inside.
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Day 10
A sign-off conversation
Thirty minutes with the person who trained you. Either you start on your own the following Monday, or we agree what to repeat and for how long. Both outcomes are normal.
Applying
How applying works, from form to first morning
No online test and no video interview recorded to a camera. You talk to people, at a table, at Mill Street.
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01
You send the form
Name, contact details, the role, and a few lines about what you have done. A CV is welcome by email but not required.
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02
A call within a week
Someone from the careers team phones you. Twenty minutes, mostly about the hours and whether they suit you.
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03
An hour at Mill Street
You meet the desk lead and one person from the role. Guides do a mock call. Instructors teach ten minutes of anything they like.
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04
Checks and references
Two references and the background checks the role requires. We tell you which ones before we start them.
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05
Offer, then Day 1
The offer letter states hours and pay in writing. You decide. If yes, Day 1 of the two weeks above.
Questions applicants ask us
Do I need a healthcare qualification to be a patient guide?
No. A guide's job is logistics and plain English, not clinical judgement. Several of our guides came from hotel reception and airline check-in. What we test is whether you pass on a question you should not answer.
Who is this not a good fit for?
Anyone who wants to give people advice about their health. We say no to that fifty times a day, politely and firmly, and a person who finds that frustrating will not last a month. It also suits nobody who needs to work fully remote. Guides are on site at least three days a week, and the desk and instructor roles are in person entirely.
Can instructors teach more than one program?
Yes, once you have taught one for a full cycle. Each extra program has its own shadowing, usually two sessions co-taught. You can see every program we run, with its timetable, on the programs page.
What happens to my application if I am not hired?
We keep it for eighteen months, the same period as any other inquiry, in case a role opens that suits you. You can ask us to delete it sooner by writing to [email protected]. The data request route explains how.
Is there a recruiter or agency involved?
No. Applications come straight to the careers team at Mill Street. If anyone contacts you claiming to recruit for Northwell and asks for a fee, it is not us. We never charge applicants for anything.
Apply
Send an application to the careers team
The form goes to the same inbox the careers team reads every weekday morning. You can also call +1 (779) 555-3858 and ask for careers, or email [email protected].
- 01We read it within two working days.
- 02If there is a fit, we call within a week.
- 03If there is no opening, we say so and ask if we may keep it.
Thirty-eight people, one desk.
Read how the desk started in 2011 and the rules everyone here works by.