So we should be suspicious if someone is excited and has a positive job description?
Maybe. It depends on how you're using the term "job description".
Because if you mean "describing the job they have", no.
@Lamount wrote earlier about being happy in their job a few years in. I am not suspicious of that.
But if you mean "job description" as in someone who hasn't worked a job summarizing the position as it could be written on the ASTRO job board, then yes, you should be suspicious.
This has nothing to do with RadOnc, it is common advice across industries. Have you ever read a negative "job description" on ASTRO? I haven't.
Why is this important? Because for 20 years, this distinction has not been made. The health of our job market has been based on literally two things: the Ben Smith paper, and the ARRO survey of job
descriptions and contracts.
There's really only one time that follow-up data was obtained,
by the pioneer Daniel Flynn in 1996:
Of those working part-time, over half wound up doing so against their will. On the plus side, there was slight improvement in those working involuntarily part-time or unemployed.
I find the heavy and exclusive use of the ARRO survey by ASTRO dishonest and manipulative.
This is exactly what happened to me in my first job. I was sold magic beans. Prior to starting work, I had incredibly positive experiences and job description. Even for the first month or two, it seemed to be "as advertised". Then, the summer ended, people who had been on vacation or medical leave returned, and the "real" job was apparent by Thanksgiving.
I am genuinely curious about everyone's job coming out of residency. No one signs a contract based on a negative job description, whether you're a doctor or a cashier. But, as demonstrated by the ERAS bump, the short-term increase in job availability has led to changes in behavior for long-term career decisions.
Based on my personal experience and direct observation of my friends' experience, the binary "yes/no" of "have you signed a contract" only tells a small piece of the story - because we all signed contracts with positive descriptions.
I'm not talking about you, @Radonky, personally. This is a collective issue for all of us. The only power any employee ever really has is the ability to walk away.
Most of the time, RadOnc has very limited ability to walk away. But, for this one point in time, which conditions it took a once-in-a-generation pandemic to create, we're seeing high churn. When the dust has settled, probably sometime in 2023-2024, we'll have the most accurate "rankings" ever.
I am very aware of how negative this sounds. But as I said earlier in the thread: no one talks about this.
There's so much data and surveys and descriptions for medical schools and residency programs. But...what about the rest of the career? This is something we're committing to for life after a minimum of 13 years of training and education after high school. That's a high level of mystery for something with such an expensive cost of entry.
