In areas of high physician demand, there are many physician jobs for which having an M.D. or D.O. after your name and no black marks on your record are the only credentials required in order to receive an offer for employment. Many physicians desire to work in these areas, and they are fortunate to feel that way, because for them good jobs are likely to be abundant. However, many places that physicians seek out (places that offer built-in amenities such as beaches, or mountains, or large metro areas, or other factors that can make a city into a destination location) are in very competitive job markets where receiving offers for employment can be challenging. This causes many physicians to eventually compromise between the job of their dreams and the location of their dreams.
The first step toward receiving any physician job is obviously the submission of your curriculum vitae to the person or entity that is in charge of recruiting (sometimes gatekeeping) for the job in question. In the competitive markets we mentioned earlier, there are some obvious qualifications that recruiters look for on your CV such as medical school/residency training, gaps in work history, and licenses/certifications. There are also some less obvious criteria that may cause you to be prescreened out of a given job. Here are some of the less obvious criteria that recruiters look for in the process of prescreening a candidate’s CV:
- Ties to the area – A physician’s personal connections to the area he or she wants to practice in likely has little relevance to his or her performance in the job, but it is still one of the biggest concerns that employers have when selecting which candidates to interview and eventually make offers. A physician candidate who has personal ties to an area is generally viewed as more likely to be a long-term hire, which is extremely important to most employers of physicians. When a job is located in a place that many others view as a destination location, the odds are good that even the physician jobs receive a lot of applications, and the employer becomes more likely to use ties to the area as a criteria for prescreening applicants.
- Job stability – Another criterion for prescreening which physician employers who are flush with candidates use is job stability. The amount of required stability varies in correlation with how difficult it may be to source candidates for the job, but basically the more short-term jobs that are on your CV, the worse off you are in this situation. Lots of physician employers perceive anything less than three years at a given job as short term, and in really competitive markets, the standards may even be higher.
- Geographic distance from job – If you are a physician practicing in Massachusetts, it’s going to be tough getting a job in San Diego, California, even if you have great credentials, reasonable ties to that area, and good job stability. This is because it’s a competitive metro area, and you are so far away that there are other comparable candidates who are easier and cheaper to interview. That example is fairly obvious, but the same circumstance may apply to the primary care physician working in Georgia who had his eye on an outpatient only job in Naples, Florida. There may simply be enough good candidates who are already in Florida that interviewing an out-of-state candidate doesn’t seem necessary. You might be able to encourage an interview by getting yourself in state and letting the appropriate recruiter know of your plans as far in advance as possible.
We are generalizing in this post, and there are undoubtedly many individuals who have found that exceptions certainly exist. If you are encountering problems with your job search and suspect that some of the issues we’ve described could be affecting your search, we would still advise you to keep trying. However, looking for jobs in areas where you have reasonable ties and emphasizing those ties on your CV, working to build job stability, and making yourself more geographically available are all ways to open doors in your career.
