Surgical Oncologist/ Surgical Oncology how do we find a job?

[majandi25]

Hello All,

My husband is a fellow in a Surgical Oncology program, first-year fellow. We have been debating on how do we go about finding a job. Any resources, websites, connections, or anything that may help, would be greatly appreciated.

When do we start looking?
Where to look?
Academic vs private practice?
Salary?
Call time?
Research?
CV?
Specialty?

---

Members don't see this ad.

 

[mikeGR]

First, your husband (and you) need to decide what he (and you as a couple) want for your future. Academic or private, taking general surgery call, research, subspecialty etc are all very personal decisions. He should definitely connect with his senior fellow(s) and any mentors to go over the process and discuss these personal decisions.

In general, most people start looking 9-12 months in advance, although realistically most jobs start to materialize around December. Keep an eye on the SSO career board and any other subspecialty boards he may be interested in (i.e. breast, endocrine, HPB, colorectal etc). PracticeLink also has a number of positions (usually more private). Some of the jobs you will see advertised can either be fake or outdated or already assigned and they're pretending to conduct a "search". Salaries vary but most of the new grads start around 250-350k (depends on academia, location etc). For some institutions the search takes 9 months and for others 3 weeks. Oftentimes you will not hear back from the places you've applied to.

Once your husband decides what he's looking for, he needs to reach out to mentors/sponsors who can potentially help him. This includes people from his hometown, med school, or residency program. His mentors making some calls for him is probably the single most important factor in landing a good job. Some jobs are never advertised, and some jobs are created from scratch for candidates that institutions want to retain.

 

[Dr.LeoSpaceman]

@mikeGR pretty much covered it.

But just to second the fact that the first thing is making personal decisions about what he wants his practice/career to look like. If it's an academic/research career, just be aware that this will mean generally needing to be much more flexible on geography. The number of academic positions that open in any year is limited, and so if you limit your search based on specific geography it will only make it that much more difficult.

The second thing that cannot be overstated is the importance of his network. Both at his current program, and people he may have previously worked with in residency (or before). This is not only how you may find out about jobs that don't get advertised, but also how decisions get made on who gets the job. If you aren't asking mentors/faculty to make calls for you, you're approaching the process with one (two?) hands tied behind your back. This means that though the actual job search doesn't start until the summer between first and second year, it's important to start getting a feel for who are the faculty that are going to make these calls and and at which institutions they may have contacts. It also means that it's important to keep his mentors/faculty/PD aware of what he's thinking with respect to his job search. These people may get cold calls, and you certainly will want what they say to be similar to what he says. For example if he is telling a job he wants an academic HPB job and someone calls a faculty member who thought he was looking at private melanoma/sarcoma jobs, it's going to raise eyebrows..