beyond all hope said:
Many of us are now 3rd and 4th years, about to start looking for jobs. I have been asking many of my attendings about job hunting advice, but most of them have held the same job for many years and all of them are academics.
I am personally interested in doing academics but I wouldn't say no to a really nice democratic group in a good hospital.
What kind of advice would you attendings give for the job hunt? What are the most important things to look for in a job? What are the things that should make you think twice?
What is the best way to find out information about a program (other than having a friend who works there)?
Success and horror stories also welcome
beyond
Yes, it can be very stressful looking for jobs. I think many of us responded to a recent post by Quinn about interviewing, so you can look there for some help as well...
There is not much that I can help you with as far as applying for academic jobs, since all I have worked in so far is community jobs. Luckily all of my community job that had so far have been pretty good, so I don't have too many nightmare stories.
Since I finished residency, I worked with in the Kaiser system over the last three and half years. The Kaiser job was easy to find in that there are recruiters for each medical group. All you have to do is call the medical group in the area that you interested and find out what jobs are available.
In the last month, I decided to leave the Kaiser system for a job with a Democratic fee-for-service group in the bay area. Jobs like this one are pretty hard to come by, and often times you have to know somebody within the group in order to be hired. My connection for this job was a friend that I worked with at Kaiser. He also left Kaiser for this job, and has nothing but bit things to say about it. It's a whole different mindset working for a fee-for-service group and it is for a group where you are paid a salary. For example, at Kaiser I get paid at the same no matter how many patients I see, so when he gets busy one gets grumpy. In my new fee-for-service job, if I don't see patients I don't get paid. So during slow times I sit around twiddling my thumbs eagerly awaiting for another patient to come in. However over the long-term, I will make a heck of a lot more money working in his new job, since I will be collecting the fees for my services.
When I was first interviewing out of residency, I did interview it one or two scary places. They looked pretty good on paper, but during interview, I knew there was no way that I wanted to work in that type of environment. One job was in a pretty seedy LA neighborhood in a very busy single covered emergency department. During my interview the attending kept coming into the room, and begging for the boss (who is interviewing me at that time) to come out in help. When I walked out for my interview, the waiting room was packed with very angry looking people. I knew at this time that I would not be working at this hospital for any amount of money.
This is about the scariest experience I had on my interview trail.
I suggest that you pick a location that you want to go to, find out what hospitals are in the area. Then you could call the department administrator to find out who the medical director for the emergency department is and their fax number so that you could send your CV to them. If and when they call back, you can ask them what type of group they are, and all the other pertinent questions to find out if this is a place that you would want to interview at.
You could also use the resources of your residency, such as previous graduates or current attendings to find out if they have any connections in the area that you want to go to.
You can always look in the classifieds in all of the journals and throwaways. The annals, and academic emergency medicine journal are usually pretty good resources, and tend to post a lot of academic jobs. I would be wary though of the ones that seem to have advertisements month after month, since these are probably not very desirable jobs and have a hard time filling them.
In general, but not always, using a recruiter may not land you the best job. You have to wonder why a place would need to use a recruiter in the first place, especially if it's in a decent location.
This web site is also very useful in that there are many people in different areas. For example, I've worked mostly in the San Jose and West Los Angeles area, so I tend to know which are the decent jobs, and which jobs to avoid at all costs.
Good luck with your job search, I am sure that you will have no problem finding a decent job. But remember, most people out of residency only stay in their first job for one to two years. So no matter what job you take after your done with residency, he will most likely make some good connections in the location that you are. If you do a very good job and people notice you, you will most likely get recruited to one of the more desirable jobs in your area.
Mark
