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Did anyone have trouble finding jobs when they graduated?
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Job Market
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As shark pointed out, your question is a bit vague - but I will do my best to answer it. There are a few threads on this topic which I have found quite informative and, generally accurate. Shark has posted in said threads, and I will allude to the theme of his message. In essence, the coasts (or any desirable city) command applicants make sacrifices in their pursuit of the perfect job. If one wishes to live a 'metropolitan life' (being in a city with ample distractions outside of work including exotic cuisine, fine arts, concerts, sporting events, and girls that do butt stuff), they must be ready to sacrifice salary, vacation, work volume/hours, and a part of their soul. Radiology jobs in less desirable parts of the country (like where Trump draws big rallies and riles up the anti-Mexican establishment) will afford higher salaries, less volume/hours, and vacation -- all while being more abundant. Some may argue that higher vacation and pay are necessary to escape the demons of your past while working in these places (an example being a 2 week trip to the Vatican in order to ask forgiveness for banging a slow witted pig when you were bored after work one evening.)
I've talked to many people in my program as well as reading these boards, and, the general consensus is the market is opening up. That being said, nothing will be like the golden days of radiology - when big cities were flooded with positions, immediate partnership (in some markets), salaries were amazing, hospital admins would blow you under the desk while you scrolled a negative head CT from the ER, and orthopedic surgeons would clamor the name of the radiologist who diagnosed os navicular in the physicians lounge (aren't your balls turning red just thinking about it?)
Anecdotally, I've spoke with the fellows at my program and all have found employment. I don't know them well enough to ask if it was their first choice or is a perfect job, but I can tell you the type of work they found. Our IR fellow (who already completed a neuro fellowship) landed a job in a very desirable west coast city. He will be required to do the bulk of procedures, cover all imaging except breast, and take an unfavorable call schedule for his first year. Apparently the pay is pretty good and he will partner in 2-3 years. Our body fellow will be heading to the rural midwest for a job with a starting salary much higher than the previous fellow, will cover all imaging, do less procedures, and call is split evenly in his group. One of our other MSK fellows couldn't find work in their desired location and will be doing locums work as a scribe in the ED (he doesn't want to lose his dictaphone skills.) Three of our neuro fellows were also not able to find desired jobs and will be working as fluffers on an upcoming adult film (I'm told it's very tasteful and appeals to a high brow crowd.) Our final, and most celebrated fellow, is blind. We will keep her on as faculty and continue lying to her, as we have led her to believe she is a pioneer in PACS braille. Her dictations are amusing and our attendings love citing her to burn first years, "Even the blind fellow spotted that finding!" We are truly awful people.
I've talked to many people in my program as well as reading these boards, and, the general consensus is the market is opening up. That being said, nothing will be like the golden days of radiology - when big cities were flooded with positions, immediate partnership (in some markets), salaries were amazing, hospital admins would blow you under the desk while you scrolled a negative head CT from the ER, and orthopedic surgeons would clamor the name of the radiologist who diagnosed os navicular in the physicians lounge (aren't your balls turning red just thinking about it?)
Anecdotally, I've spoke with the fellows at my program and all have found employment. I don't know them well enough to ask if it was their first choice or is a perfect job, but I can tell you the type of work they found. Our IR fellow (who already completed a neuro fellowship) landed a job in a very desirable west coast city. He will be required to do the bulk of procedures, cover all imaging except breast, and take an unfavorable call schedule for his first year. Apparently the pay is pretty good and he will partner in 2-3 years. Our body fellow will be heading to the rural midwest for a job with a starting salary much higher than the previous fellow, will cover all imaging, do less procedures, and call is split evenly in his group. One of our other MSK fellows couldn't find work in their desired location and will be doing locums work as a scribe in the ED (he doesn't want to lose his dictaphone skills.) Three of our neuro fellows were also not able to find desired jobs and will be working as fluffers on an upcoming adult film (I'm told it's very tasteful and appeals to a high brow crowd.) Our final, and most celebrated fellow, is blind. We will keep her on as faculty and continue lying to her, as we have led her to believe she is a pioneer in PACS braille. Her dictations are amusing and our attendings love citing her to burn first years, "Even the blind fellow spotted that finding!" We are truly awful people.
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A+.
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Please sticky this.
D
da8s0859q
This right here is why my wayward emergency medicine self reads this forum. I mean, we all love a bunch of anonymous ranking threads, but... hey.
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10/10. Would read thread again.
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stumbled upon this while lurking.....epic!
Agree with the above. Job market is opening up again. This year, all the fellows at our program had jobs lined up by February. All but 1 was able to get a job in the state of their choice. Salaries are still fairly high, though volume is increasing. Mammo was the most in demand, followed by generalist positions, followed by everything else.
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You have to know about specific conditions of each job. I don't say the market is not opening up but just simply saying that your fellows found jobs does not mean anything.
You have to specify the location.
You have to specify the volume.
You have to specify the hours of work.
You have to specify the salary.
You have to specify the future of the job.
Otherwise, anybody can find a high volume low salary night job somewhere.
Location: Most popular locations were major cities in Florida and Texas, followed by suburbs of DC/MD/VA/NJ. Other examples: NYC, small city in Michigan, major city in Kentucky, suburbs of Boston, suburbs of Philadelphia, and San Diego. Others were in Midwest or South, but these specifically needed to be there for family/personal reasons. One needed to be in St. Louis but was unsuccessful so instead settled for a major city in Florida. In terms of NYC, Manhattan private practices pretty much only wanted mammo fellowships, but a few I know got jobs in other boroughs of NYC with other fellowships such as body or neuro. For some reason, private practice jobs seemed to not exist for downtown DC, Boston, or Philadelphia (possibly because the larger academic centers already had these regions covered?) but they did exist for suburbs of these locations. Of note, Texas was the strictest in that many practices required you to already have an active state license and/or take their jurisprudence exam!
Volume: Varied, ranging from busy to crazy high. No private practice job had low volume. Academics were also busy but not as high volume as private practice. The only job I heard with below avg volume/call was a mammo only job in Long Island, NY.
Hours: Varied a lot, but generally NO overnights. The most common hours were typically like 8-5ish on weekdays, with weekend call around 1 in 6 weeks, and occasional evening call. The NYC one was more like call every 1 in 4 weekends. The only 1-2 fellows I know (from last yr, none this yr) that ended up with overnight only jobs specifically sought them out because they wanted to make more money right out of fellowship; everyone else I know ran away from these. I saw a ton of ER (predominantly evening/overnights) job postings for almost every academic hospital, including many prestigious hospitals, and no one I know applied to these.
Salary: The most insane salary was in private practice in North or South Dakota. Nice salaries for high-volume private practices in Florida and Texas. The lowest were in Mid-Atlantic and academics everywhere. Anecdotally, the lowest salaries were in the most prestigious academic centers in the Northeast and Mid-Atlantic, and the highest academic salaries were in Cleveland. NYC academics ranged from avg to below avg.
Future: Most private practice jobs were ~3 yrs partnership track, where you start off below avg but then this increases by ~1.7x after 3 yrs to become above avg. NYC and Long Island have little to no partnership jobs unless you do mammo but they have non-mammo non-partnership jobs that still pay starting decent salary (i.e., above the starting salary in a partnership track but below the salary after it increases after 3 yrs in a partnership track).
Other: Only 1 fellow I know this year chose to do a second fellowship but this was for personal/family planning reasons and not forced. No one applied for any teleradiology/locums positions out of fellowship.
Overall: I would say there are like equal # of jobs and applicants. Early in the year, there was a lot of anxiety, mostly self-induced. Although there did not seem to be much jobs posted on a daily basis, reasonable jobs do appear over the course of 4-6 months. People called/e-mailed/applied to a ton of places, often >30. Out of this, people eventually heard back from like 5 or so places, did about 5 or so phone interviews, and went on like 2-3 in-person interviews. It was a very slow moving process (lasting approximately 5-6 months on average), but in the end, seemed like everyone found a decent job. No one went unemployed. The 3 I know who had the most difficulty were because their spouse/significant other had to be in a certain city. No one was banished to some rural area in the Midwest if they didn't want to go there. By Feb nearly everyone essentially had a job that they were pleased with, and there are still jobs being posted so if someone is still looking for a job they can have their pick. My overall impression is that salary and/or vacation are overall fairly high, but the main downside is volume in private practice (and even some academics) is above avg to crazy high, and so you are working hard for every penny and nearly everyone is eating their lunch at the workstation. Also, many private practices expect you to read studies or do procedures that you might initially not feel entirely comfortable with. The majority of private practices seem to be in the suburbs. You can still get a job in a major city like NYC with a decent salary but you may be working more hours with less vacation in a non-partnership track.
Ultimately, everyone has different priorities in terms of location, salary, hours, # of evening/weekend calls, presence/absence of overnight call, volume, scope of studies/procedures, partnership track, malpractice and other benefits, and non-compete clauses. Roughly, I would say fellows who accepted jobs this year are getting around 7 of the above 10 criteria and are overall happy with their decision to go into radiology and with their upcoming jobs
Most did not accept a job out of desperation but rather actively accepted the job after weighing all the pros and cons. The people who wanted to earn a higher salary were willing to read higher volume and/or work more hours, and the people who valued lifestyle more were able to find jobs with less call and/or more vacation, but I feel that pretty much applies to any job both within and outside of medicine.
Hope that helps! Keep in the mind all of the above was based on a sample of size of ~20 people, predominantly body fellowships with some neuro, MSK, IR, and breast.
Volume: Varied, ranging from busy to crazy high. No private practice job had low volume. Academics were also busy but not as high volume as private practice. The only job I heard with below avg volume/call was a mammo only job in Long Island, NY.
Hours: Varied a lot, but generally NO overnights. The most common hours were typically like 8-5ish on weekdays, with weekend call around 1 in 6 weeks, and occasional evening call. The NYC one was more like call every 1 in 4 weekends. The only 1-2 fellows I know (from last yr, none this yr) that ended up with overnight only jobs specifically sought them out because they wanted to make more money right out of fellowship; everyone else I know ran away from these. I saw a ton of ER (predominantly evening/overnights) job postings for almost every academic hospital, including many prestigious hospitals, and no one I know applied to these.
Salary: The most insane salary was in private practice in North or South Dakota. Nice salaries for high-volume private practices in Florida and Texas. The lowest were in Mid-Atlantic and academics everywhere. Anecdotally, the lowest salaries were in the most prestigious academic centers in the Northeast and Mid-Atlantic, and the highest academic salaries were in Cleveland. NYC academics ranged from avg to below avg.
Future: Most private practice jobs were ~3 yrs partnership track, where you start off below avg but then this increases by ~1.7x after 3 yrs to become above avg. NYC and Long Island have little to no partnership jobs unless you do mammo but they have non-mammo non-partnership jobs that still pay starting decent salary (i.e., above the starting salary in a partnership track but below the salary after it increases after 3 yrs in a partnership track).
Other: Only 1 fellow I know this year chose to do a second fellowship but this was for personal/family planning reasons and not forced. No one applied for any teleradiology/locums positions out of fellowship.
Overall: I would say there are like equal # of jobs and applicants. Early in the year, there was a lot of anxiety, mostly self-induced. Although there did not seem to be much jobs posted on a daily basis, reasonable jobs do appear over the course of 4-6 months. People called/e-mailed/applied to a ton of places, often >30. Out of this, people eventually heard back from like 5 or so places, did about 5 or so phone interviews, and went on like 2-3 in-person interviews. It was a very slow moving process (lasting approximately 5-6 months on average), but in the end, seemed like everyone found a decent job. No one went unemployed. The 3 I know who had the most difficulty were because their spouse/significant other had to be in a certain city. No one was banished to some rural area in the Midwest if they didn't want to go there. By Feb nearly everyone essentially had a job that they were pleased with, and there are still jobs being posted so if someone is still looking for a job they can have their pick. My overall impression is that salary and/or vacation are overall fairly high, but the main downside is volume in private practice (and even some academics) is above avg to crazy high, and so you are working hard for every penny and nearly everyone is eating their lunch at the workstation. Also, many private practices expect you to read studies or do procedures that you might initially not feel entirely comfortable with. The majority of private practices seem to be in the suburbs. You can still get a job in a major city like NYC with a decent salary but you may be working more hours with less vacation in a non-partnership track.
Ultimately, everyone has different priorities in terms of location, salary, hours, # of evening/weekend calls, presence/absence of overnight call, volume, scope of studies/procedures, partnership track, malpractice and other benefits, and non-compete clauses. Roughly, I would say fellows who accepted jobs this year are getting around 7 of the above 10 criteria and are overall happy with their decision to go into radiology and with their upcoming jobs
Most did not accept a job out of desperation but rather actively accepted the job after weighing all the pros and cons. The people who wanted to earn a higher salary were willing to read higher volume and/or work more hours, and the people who valued lifestyle more were able to find jobs with less call and/or more vacation, but I feel that pretty much applies to any job both within and outside of medicine.Hope that helps! Keep in the mind all of the above was based on a sample of size of ~20 people, predominantly body fellowships with some neuro, MSK, IR, and breast.
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Just on point to add. Without starting a job and being in that practice for a while you can not say whether it is a good job or not. Fellows may be pleased because they have a job and they don't have the stress of not finding a job.
In the recent years I have seen a lot of fellows changing jobs. This year we interviewed for a position and I was surprised by the number of people who were changing their jobs.
In the recent years I have seen a lot of fellows changing jobs. This year we interviewed for a position and I was surprised by the number of people who were changing their jobs.
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Without getting too much into specifics the job market has definitely improved this year compared to previous. We put an ad up (in so cal) late Jan and got 8 total applications. Most fellows had already signed offers by then. That's definitely the sign of a healthy job market.
I agree with this. I know of at least 3 fellows from last year who changed jobs this year. One was tired of overnights. One wanted to move back to her spouse's hometown. One did not like the hours worked per day/stability of the practice. Hard to predict the future.
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Doing a fellowship is essentially a requirement even in those locations, however I know of a couple guys who went to private practice right after residency recently which you definitely hadn't seen for several years.
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Cbus is a pretty desirable location, def need a fellowship and connections to land a gig there
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IR has better job opportunities than diagnostic, in general.
This question is difficult to answer because there are so many variables depending on how restricted you are. Overall I would say the current job market is outstanding for mammo and average for the rest of diagnostic radiology. It is still reasonable in the sense that most of my colleagues ended up with a job they were pleased with in the end (see my prior post on this thread which described mostly diagnostic radiologists) but it wasn't like the job was handed to them on a silver platter. The whole job search process still took a fair amount of work (around 4-6 mo search process, calling/e-mailing/applying to a ton of places (often >30), getting around 4-6 replies, going on around 2-5 interviews, and maybe getting around 2-3 offers). In the end, most of my colleagues found a decent job in a region/state (but not always the city) of their choice. The pay overall still remains higher than most other specialties but also involve working harder and reading higher volumes in contrast to the cush lifestyle med students perceive radiology to be. Also, keep in mind that many diagnostic radiologists still do basic procedures in private practice such as breast biopsies. Bottom line, based on what I have seen my colleagues get this year, radiology still seems to be a good gig compared to most other specialties but you will most likely have to do some soul searching and ask yourself what is most important to you: salary, vacation, call, location, and what modalities/procedures you are willing to do. You will probably be able to find a decent job that meets the majority of your criteria but no dream job exists that will meet all your criteria. The more flexibility you have in terms of location, the better. If you want to be in a certain region (e.g., VA/MD/DC), you will probably be able to find a decent high paying job. However, if you must absolutely only be in a specific city (e.g., downtown DC) because that is where your significant other has a job and you are not willing to find a new apt/house, then the job market will be tighter. Nevertheless, taking everything into account, I would say the job market, even for diagnostic radiology, has improved from 2015 to 2016.
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I am a physician and I believe in hard data. Here is an objective measure and a quick bar graph. It compares posting on the ACR website roughly in the same month or two.
Source:
2016: http://jobs.acr.org/jobseeker/search/results/
2015: https://web.archive.org/web/20150207201825/http://jobs.acr.org/jobseeker/search/results/?
2014: https://web.archive.org/web/20140211022633/http://jobs.acr.org/jobseeker/search/results/
2013: https://web.archive.org/web/20130404022742/http://jobs.acr.org/jobseeker/search/results/
Conslusions:
1. While I haven't done hypothesis testing or serious regression analysis to account for confounders, I believe in retrospect we will view 2013 as the bottom of Rads job market. There is also much hullabaloo on the match data which I will be analyzing (working on a analytics blog - will post once I get it going)
2. I am also comparing off cycle - most acitivity in the market is Oct-Jan; most fellows are signed by now. I saw 430 jobs last month.
To the incoming matched applicants - welcome and you may be entering on an upswing!
Source:
2016: http://jobs.acr.org/jobseeker/search/results/
2015: https://web.archive.org/web/20150207201825/http://jobs.acr.org/jobseeker/search/results/?
2014: https://web.archive.org/web/20140211022633/http://jobs.acr.org/jobseeker/search/results/
2013: https://web.archive.org/web/20130404022742/http://jobs.acr.org/jobseeker/search/results/
Conslusions:
1. While I haven't done hypothesis testing or serious regression analysis to account for confounders, I believe in retrospect we will view 2013 as the bottom of Rads job market. There is also much hullabaloo on the match data which I will be analyzing (working on a analytics blog - will post once I get it going)
2. I am also comparing off cycle - most acitivity in the market is Oct-Jan; most fellows are signed by now. I saw 430 jobs last month.
To the incoming matched applicants - welcome and you may be entering on an upswing!
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4-6 replies and even less offers after applying for 40+ positions is not evidence of a robust job market.
But hey, still beats the living hell out of clinical medicine.
D
deleted564680
Maybe it's you and not the job market...
I'm sure you're a good candidate but obviously personal credentials vary as well as the location people are looking at. Can't forget those factors.
This was for a highly desirable popular coastal metropolitan city so it may have been an exception. I included cold calls/e-mails in the 30-40+ tally. (Some other applicants in less competitive areas were able to send out e-mails to a few places and get replies the next day!). The actual # of applications I submitted was more in the 10-15 range. In terms of ratio of jobs to applicants, I just said it was around equal number of jobs to applicants...never said jobs were growing on trees like crazy. In recent years, everyone made it seem like the radiology job market was horrendous and people were taking jobs they hated or getting banished to some remote rural area or being forced to take evening/overnight jobs or having to do a second fellowship. This sounded scary! However, this year, pretty much none of those horror stories seemed to materialize and everyone was pleasantly surprised with the end result. I wouldn't say the job market has completely recovered to golden age levels, or ever will, but it is definitely back on the upswing and there is hope that it will continue to improve. Given that most of this year's fellows were able to find a job in the location they wanted and still make a pretty decent starting salary and not get banished to some remote location where they have no friends/family, the market appears promising. Yes, I admit, there are probably more jobs available in any given location for internal medicine, family medicine, pediatrics, etc. But the tradeoff is you'd probably be making less money and potentially working just as hard. So if the options are to specialize in radiology, struggle a little bit to find a job, but in the end still find a decent high paying job vs. doing some other specialty and getting a job no problem but having it pay not as much, I would still choose radiology again as a med student and still recommend it as a viable option to medical students. When I hear what my co-fellows will be making in their private practice jobs over the next 5 or so years, I am very impressed at how high it is. (This is of course a very small sample size, and it is possible that they all chose high volume high stress jobs.)
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Any feel for whether this recovery in the job market has legs or whether it's just a statistical blip? And if it has legs, what structural factors are driving the improvement?
Only time will tell if it has legs. But its been 2 years strong and ~400 jobs on ACR is a pretty good indicator. When I was looking 4-5 years ago there were 250 jobs on ACR. Probably more older rads retiring lately (baby boomers).
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Trend from the graph above is positive. Again "statistical blip" would mean this is chance. For me to do hypothesis test like that I need more data. Anybody has that can PM me so then I can say it with p<0.05
As an attending to be I have realized world is more about networking than anything else. In medicine we become our own LLC/business - gain skill, sell skill. Except once you are trained you still gotta go out and market yourself. So the most successful of my peers were the uber networkers and go getters. The quiet ones had a bit of a rough time but still got jobs which tells me market is good and oh yea the chart about is a good sign.
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As an attending to be I have realized world is more about networking than anything else. In medicine we become our own LLC/business - gain skill, sell skill. Except once you are trained you still gotta go out and market yourself. So the most successful of my peers were the uber networkers and go getters. The quiet ones had a bit of a rough time but still got jobs which tells me market is good and oh yea the chart about is a good sign.
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Is it harder to get a job if you train at a regular state program and not one of the big names???
I feel the main driving forces were how flexible you are in general...what regions/locations you are looking at...city vs. suburbs...what subspecialty you did your fellowship in...what studies you willing to read/what procedures you willing to do, etc.
