5 Helpful Tips for Landing a Physician Job Immediately After Residency
You’ve finally completed countless hours of study and training and hustled your way through residency. Now you have to face the daunting task of going through endless job openings and deciding which state and you’d like to practice in. Unfortunately, physician turnover rates have always been high in an industry that’s already short on medical practitioners.
While landing a job immediately after residency is important, candidates must take the necessary steps to secure a good job otherwise risk losing valuable time and effort.
In this blog, we highlight 5 helpful tips for landing a physician job immediately after residency.
Start Early
One of the surefire ways of landing a job immediately is to begin the job search while you’re still in residency to reduce the downtime between placements. Surfing through job openings, locating the ideal candidate, and going through the offer or interview process are lengthy and time-consuming processes.
Physicians today often delay the application process which works against them. Waiting until the last minute to start exploring your options will place you on the back foot.
Starting the process just a few months before the residency comes to an end causes many candidates to panic and accept the first offer that comes their way. Accepting a job without vetting the position is a dangerous move to make.
By starting early, you can explore different options and consider each one carefully before making a decision.
Develop a Network
Perhaps the most underrated factor for a successful job search is networking and establishing connections with your colleagues and preceptors. Developing key relationships is an essential tool to gather valuable experience and learning about potential job openings, both in your current place of residence and elsewhere.
Keeping in touch with your peers allows them to notify you regarding any job openings of interest. Not everyone gets selected for a position in the hospital where they are enrolled for residency training.
By networking with your peers and mentors, you end up creating potential opportunities in the future. Brush up on your CV by including a cover letter, stating your interests, qualifications, and experience and send it to career websites to be picked up by hiring managers.
Do Your Research
With an expected physician shortage of more than a 100,000 by 2030 according to the Association of American Medical Colleges, healthcare recruiters and human resource managers are under a lot of pressure to recruit qualified candidates.
Using this knowledge, you can leverage your position at negotiation tables by exercising increased bargaining power. Do your research on expected growth in various regions, potential expansion investments, and physician concentration-levels in areas of interest.
Expansions in healthcare systems are indications of future job openings and opportunities for new and experienced job seekers. According to a Physician Report published by Statistica, places like Massachusetts, Maryland, and Washington DC have the highest physician concentration levels in the country. Densely populated areas such as these attract a high number of job seekers due to potential career opportunities. However, this results in a large pool of resident job seekers coupled with fierce competition.
Instead, you should consider exploring other options with lower population density and competition. Rural practices have the greatest need for physicians and nurses and are a good option if you’re looking to work in a more natural environment away from urban settings.
Attend Hospital Meetings
If you’re interested in working at a certain hospital or department, then consider attending one of their meetings. It’s a great way to interact with the physicians and human resource staff and pass on your CV You never know when a doctor can recommend you to the hiring manager and help get your foot in the door.
Attending meetings is also important because it allows for face-to-face communication. By doing so, you create a positive impression on the doctors; display an eagerness to work, and establish strong connections, all of which is impossible by simply sending an e-mail.
Explore Different Avenues
While all of the above-mentioned steps represent tried and tested methods, you’ll also need to explore additional avenues to increases your chances of getting recruited immediately. Now that job recruitment platforms such as CareerBuilder and Indeed are saturated with spam applications, landing a good job requires you to take a different approach.
Try relying on your networks and make calls even to hospitals that don’t have job openings. You never know when someone’s considering to add a new physician to their workforce.
An effective way of quickly landing a job without investing significant amounts of time and effort is to contact a qualified healthcare recruitment firm. Medical Associates Consulting is a medical recruitment agency in New Jersey that helps both new and experienced candidates to quickly land the perfect job. Contact us today for more information.
