Blogging with The Doctor Job

This blog is designed as a free resource for residents, fellows, and physicians looking for jobs, and for medical students and FMGs applying to residency programs. When it comes to physician jobs, you can have the best resume in the world and a cover letter that would knock the socks off of any employer, but if you don’t have anyone to look at it, it’s essentially useless.

So, let’s take a step away from looking for a job and look at the principle of successful marketing. If a business has created the best product in the world, if nobody knows it exists, it won’t get purchased. So, of course, businesses rely heavily on tried and true marketing techniques to build buzz, create a customer base, and ultimately to sell as many of their type of product as they can. They do this through advertising on TV, the radio, the Internet and through aggressive direct mail campaigns that still have strong effectiveness even after all of the advances in technology.

Any first-year MBA student will tell you that it’s all about the numbers. Send out 100 flyers, get 1-2 customers. Send out 10,000, get 10-20 customers. Send out 100,000 flyers, get 500-2000 customers. Send out a million, get 5000-20000 customers. It’s that simple. If you can’t understand this basic principle, then all may be lost for you.

So let’s apply that to a physician looking for a job.

Dr. Perry Cox has decided that he wants to move to Orlando and practice Internal Medicine. He’s an intelligent doctor, so rather than having some inflexible idea of what he wants, he’s more interested in seeing what the market has to offer him. By examining all of his options, he’ll be able to make the best choice for his career.

So Dr. Cox compiles a list of every single Primary Care Physician in the Orlando Metro Area. Every single one. Why? Because when a physician is looking for a job, missing even one opportunity can mean less than perfect success. Half of a job search is networking - you want to make sure that every person who might (a) Have a position, (b) Know of a position, or (c) Refer you to someone who has a position or knows of a position, will receive your resume.

Let’s assume there are 1500 Primary Care Physicians in the Orlando Metro Area (nothing farther than 15 miles away from Orlando). Dr. Cox, being savvy in the way of looking for a job, sends his perfectly-written resume and cover letter (since he reads our blog regularly) to all 1500 physicians.

Is the effort going to be worth it? Absolutely, without a doubt, yes. And this isn’t guesswork or conjecture or empty promises or theory. This is statistical fact.

Out of the 1500 resumes he sends out, Dr. Cox gets 25 phone calls and 15 emails. Some of the calls and emails are from physicians who refer him to someone else. Some are physicians who want to sell their practice and move somewhere else. Some of them are calls for hospitalist positions, and some of them are calls for outpatient positions. In the end, by speaking with all 40 interested parties, Dr. Cox narrows it down to 10 positions that sound perfect.

The chances are that none of these 40 positions were advertised in any real venue, which means that each of these employers is personally vested in hiring Dr. Cox because they have an immediate need that has not been filled, and there aren’t any other people competing for the position.

40 responses out of 1500 letters. That’s a 2.7% response. 10 interviews out of 1500 letters. That’s a .7% response. But those 10 interviews are going to be the best possible positions in this area. Dr. Cox is going to have his choice of the best salary, the best environment, the best benefits, and the best job. Why? Because he was smart, savvy about marketing, and flexible about his options.

So, as a resident, fellow, or practicing physician looking for a new job, be aware and be informed that your perfect job is out there. You’re unlikely to find it with a recruiter, unless you like to live hours and hours away from a major city. You’re less likely to find it on a job board, since they tend to be dominated by the same recruiters. The only intelligent, logical way to find a job that will be a career (and not a 2-year position that you hate from the moment you start) is to use the simplest of marketing and networking techniques to give yourself the best possible option.