What do fellowship admissions care about? What about employers post fellowship?

[Histo-Lad]

About to start AP/CP residency at a really great institution in my preferred geographic location. I would like to stay at my home program for fellowship and then transition to community/private practice in the area as an attending. Aiming most likely at cyto, heme, maybe GI or BST. What should I be doing - aside from passing my boards on first attempt - to secure my place here?

1) What should I do to ensure a good fellowship application?
Just research, electives in the subspecialty, and strong LORs?

2) And what are employers looking for?
Just make local connections? Do they even care about research, volunteering, leadership, or other CV items?

I enjoy doing extracurriculars and don't mind going the extra mile. I just want to know where I should focus my efforts outside of performing well at reading slides and passing boards.

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[KeratinPearls]

About to start AP/CP residency at a really great institution in my preferred geographic location. I would like to stay at my home program for fellowship and then transition to community/private practice in the area as an attending. Aiming most likely at cyto, heme, maybe GI or BST. What should I be doing - aside from passing my boards on first attempt - to secure my place here?

1) What should I do to ensure a good fellowship application?
Just research, electives in the subspecialty, and strong LORs?

Be a good and enthusiastic resident. Be a team player. Don’t be a lazy ass. Letters of rec are prob most important as they will convey how you were as a resident and what the fellowship program will be getting as a fellow.

2) And what are employers looking for?
Just make local connections? Do they even care about research, volunteering, leadership, or other CV items?

Some private groups never advertise and fill their positions by word of mouth. If you are out of that loop then you won’t even be considered unless they post their job as online.

Employers are looking for people who are competent most importantly and can get along well with others. Some people lack one of these two main qualities.

No employers don’t care about volunteer work. They just want to know if you can do the job and have the particular fellowship they are looking for. Private groups don’t care about research. If your CV is padded with research, it may actually hurt you in that groups may think you are more interested in academics.

I enjoy doing extracurriculars and don't mind going the extra mile. I just want to know where I should focus my efforts outside of performing well at reading slides and passing boards.

Being a a good communicator. Able to talk to clinicians as they are your customers really. Communication skills and being a likeable person will go far in life in general. Don’t be the typical pathologist-introvert who doesn’t like to talk to people.

Being reliable and trustworthy. Clinicians want to know they are getting an accurate diagnosis in a timely manner.

Being efficient. You can’t be slow in a busy private job.

Know how to write a coherent pathology report.

 

[Histo-Lad]

Be a good and enthusiastic resident. Be a team player. Don’t be a lazy ass. Letters of rec are prob most important as they will convey how you were as a resident and what the fellowship program will be getting as a fellow.

Some private groups never advertise and fill their positions by word of mouth. If you are out of that loop then you won’t even be considered unless they post their job as online.

Employers are looking for people who are competent most importantly and can get along well with others. Some people lack one of these two main qualities.

No employers don’t care about volunteer work. They just want to know if you can do the job and have the particular fellowship they are looking for. Private groups don’t care about research. If your CV is padded with research, it may actually hurt you in that groups may think you are more interested in academics.

Being a a good communicator. Able to talk to clinicians as they are your customers really. Communication skills and being a likeable person will go far in life in general. Don’t be the typical pathologist-introvert who doesn’t like to talk to people.

Being reliable and trustworthy. Clinicians want to know they are getting an accurate diagnosis in a timely manner.

Being efficient. You can’t be slow in a busy private job.

Know how to write a coherent pathology report.

Thanks. I feel like I already have most of those soft skills down. I've very consistently received good feedback on my communication, reliability, team skills, easy-to-work-with, etc. and residents/attendings alway remark that I'm people person/extrovert.

But wouldn't things like leadership, chief year, QI initiatives, and volunteering help convey these traits on my CV?

 

[KeratinPearls]

Thanks. I feel like I already have most of those soft skills down. I've very consistently received good feedback on my communication, reliability, team skills, easy-to-work-with, etc. and residents/attendings alway remark that I'm people person/extrovert.

But wouldn't things like leadership, chief year, QI initiatives, and volunteering help convey these traits on my CV?

Employers don’t need to see to see a CV with a long list of “leadership, chief year, QI initiatives, and volunteering” to be able to do the job. Sure it doesn’t hurt to have those things but you don’t need it.

You can literally have none of those but still be qualified to do the job aka being a medical director of a lab as long as you have people skills, can work well with people, you are willing to do the job and are willing to learn.

All those things you mentioned are probably more attractive in academics versus a private practice pathologist. Probably would help if you are applying for a leadership pathologist position but if you are a typical private pathologist looking at slides all day then I don’t see how much those extracurriculars will help you.

 

[Med Director New England]

To get the fellowship

Get involved with research with the faculty in the division you’d like to stay for fellowship - projects, posters & most importantly FINISH the projects / get the paper(s) published. Having a lot of posters but never writing the paper will be noticed.

in general work hard in all of your rotations. You don’t want to piss off anyone really.