Good canned response to research position request?

[zyrtecforall]

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I’m an MD-only junior faculty member (finished fellowship 2 years ago) working towards my K. I do mainly lab-based work using human samples but have written reviews on clinical treatment of my disease of interest.

Now that I’ve been listed as corresponding author on a few reviews, I’ve started to get emails from FMGs (or IMGs? I get confused about these abbreviations but this is folks doing MD or MBBS in a non-US country which is where they are from) requesting research positions.

How can I nicely respond to these? I don’t want to totally ignore them but definitely can’t support a position and the nicer part of me wants to give them feedback on their selection of who they’re emailing.

Main issues:
- The work I do cannot be remote and even if I wanted to have them do chart review my institution isn’t big on non-citizen employees working remotely from another country so I don’t see a pathway to Epic access
- I can’t fund a position and am not very senior (see “I don’t even have a K” above)
- It feels icky to have someone self-fund a position
- If you come to my institution on a J-1 as a research scholar you cannot do technician or coordinator duties and these folks have no PhD or lab experience

In the past, we’ve had people funded by their government work with our larger group as formal parts of training programs (Masters student from France, clinical trainees from England and Thailand).

Maybe I shouldn’t think about it too much since it doesn’t seem like a lot of thought goes into these emails. My vibe from these emails is they’re emailing any address they can find… thoughts?

 

[SurfingDoctor]

I’m an MD-only junior faculty member (finished fellowship 2 years ago) working towards my K. I do mainly lab-based work using human samples but have written reviews on clinical treatment of my disease of interest.

Now that I’ve been listed as corresponding author on a few reviews, I’ve started to get emails from FMGs (or IMGs? I get confused about these abbreviations but this is folks doing MD or MBBS in a non-US country which is where they are from) requesting research positions.

How can I nicely respond to these? I don’t want to totally ignore them but definitely can’t support a position and the nicer part of me wants to give them feedback on their selection of who they’re emailing.

Main issues:
- The work I do cannot be remote and even if I wanted to have them do chart review my institution isn’t big on non-citizen employees working remotely from another country so I don’t see a pathway to Epic access
- I can’t fund a position and am not very senior (see “I don’t even have a K” above)
- It feels icky to have someone self-fund a position
- If you come to my institution on a J-1 as a research scholar you cannot do technician or coordinator duties and these folks have no PhD or lab experience

In the past, we’ve had people funded by their government work with our larger group as formal parts of training programs (Masters student from France, clinical trainees from England and Thailand).

Maybe I shouldn’t think about it too much since it doesn’t seem like a lot of thought goes into these emails. My vibe from these emails is they’re emailing any address they can find… thoughts?

No. Do exactly that... ignore them. Send them to the trash and don't respond. They are a dime a dozen.

The only time they are useful is if someone you personally know and trust sends you their CV... AND you are desperate for help. Then... maybe... possibly.

Otherwise... junk folder.

 

[tr]

These are spam. These people are sending hundreds of emails, and as you note the barriers to employing foreign nationals are much too high to make it worth the trouble.

If you feel obligated to respond, it's fine to just say something like, "Sorry, we aren't able to take on foreign nationals. Good luck with your search!"

If your institution has a master's program you can also say, "Sorry, we are only able take internal trainees; if you are interested in a program at our institution here is the webpage to apply."

I get a lot of US CVs as well and usually just say we don't have any open positions, which is almost always true since these come in multiple times per week and we only hire new people maybe once every year or two.

 

[zyrtecforall]

Sounds good. Am now getting f/u emails requesting responses though. Bold!