We are certainly seeing a recurring theme: fierce competition in the job market.
Which means just from a probabilistic standpoint there's gotta be, to coin
@thecarbonionangle's turn of phrase, increasing numbers of people in the breadlines. But personally I believe if I were in the breadline my energy level to write about it would be zero. So we may only be hearing the "How I Cheated Death and Survived" stories for now.
Chalk this one up as a
@scarbrtj How I Cheated Death and Survived Story. In fact, might better to change the name of this thread to that...
- Did you get the location you want? In a desirable area?
Yes. Yes.
- Academics, satellite academic, hospital employed, private practice employed, or partnership track?
Hospital employed, academic.
- Is this what you wanted?
Obnoxious cliche warning: yeah, dream job.
- How was the compensation and contract terms?
starts around 300, upwards from there to >500. Got a small signing bonus.
- Did you have any bargaining power to negotiate from the initial offer or was it take-it-or-leave-it?
Mostly take it or leave it. Signing bonus was the only thing I was able to negotiate
- Did you have a non-compete agreement?
Yes. Was it fair? Yeah. It's pretty mild. No restrictions on practice location, only agreed not to solicit health system patients for a relatively short period of time if employment terminates.
- What kind of competition did you experience?
In general, a lot. For this specific position, not much. It opened up rather suddenly and they knew I wanted a position like this, so it was an easy yes from both sides.
- Did you feel lucky to get your job or did you have a lot of other similar offers and good choices?
I feel very, very, very lucky. I applied very broadly and interviewed at 8 places across the country from small, semi-rural PP to large metropolitan academic. Was offered 4 postions. Had originally signed an LOI at a smaller PP in a smaller suburban area but pulled my acceptance once this current position was offered. Of course, my current position was offered to me shortly before the corona pandemic and I've been sweating bullets that my offer might get pulled while I was waiting for the contract to get finalized (not fast). Feels like I got in by the skin of my teeth. Can't imagine how bad I'd feel if this offer had been pulled, knowing I'd had one essentially locked down back in February. Overall, the places that offered me a job were solid places and good to great offers.
- Do you have a positive outlook on the job market going forward?
No, not particularly. Why? Because #math. There's more trainees and no increased need for rad onc. At some point this job market walks off a cliff...it just wasn't this year. Even still, this was an incredibly stressful process. I count myself lucky because of the three As, affable is my strongest one, which helped a lot in the interview process. I had 4 ASTRO interviews and all 4 offered me subsequent on-site interviews. There was still a ton of competition and a lot of places I sent applications to just never got back to me. Overally I'm happy and relieved to finally have a signed contract, and for a great job in the area my SO and I wanted to be in. But I don't envy anyone following in my footsteps, especially this year with the economic devastation of the covid pandemic starting to bite. Actually still not 100% confident I'm not gonna get an email at some point between now and my start date saying that my contract is getting terminated due to covid financial-related difficulty. Of the people I know who were job-hunting this year, I don't think any of them found it easy (small sample size).
- What resources did you use to find your job?
ASTRO site, personal connections
