Blogging with The Doctor Job

I’m not sure whose idea it was to begin putting a “personal interests & hobbies” section on a resume, but I believe it to be one of the worst ideas in resume writing history. The basic reasoning behind the category is that it will help job applicants to appear well-rounded; that by listing your favorite hobbies, you can help paint yourself as a real person instead of just a bland list of degrees, jobs and medical certifications.

If you are answering a personal ad or trying to find a friend instead of an employer, then describing what you like to do in your spare time is an important thing to do. But the purpose of your CV is to get you a job practicing medicine. As a physician, you are looking for a serious job that involves life and death. Do you really think someone is going to be interested in hiring you because you like to travel, read mystery novels, and cook Mexican food?

The problem with almost all “personal interests and hobbies” is that they fall into one of two categories: 1) boring, or 2) lame. Boring interests are the ones that everyone seems to have: reading, traveling, cooking, biking, jogging, sports, hiking, etc. These are certainly not going to fascinate anyone. And if you think a prospective employer is going to say “Hey, I like hiking, too! I’ve got to meet this guy!” you’re wrong.

Lame interests are those which make you appear, well, lame: darts, checkers, scrabble, haiku poetry, needlepoint, crafting, scrapbooking, Star Trek, etc. If you list stuff like this you run the risk of being labeled a “loser” and having your CV passed around the office for people to laugh at. Believe me. In fact, at one company I worked for we had a Wall of Shame where we posted the most ridiculous “personal interests” sections that came across our desks.

So it’s not just that listing your personal interests won’t help you; it can actually hurt you. My advice? Leave them off completely. The opportunity to show how interesting and well-rounded you are will come when you’re offered an interview.

Physicians often worry about the content of their resumes, but don’t put much thought into the order in which the various categories appear. The structure of a physician’s resume can be a key factor in whether or not he/she receives an interview.

If I had 30 seconds to do a quick resume make-over for a physician client, the first thing I would tackle would be the resume’s organization. When I look at a physician’s resume I immediately form an impression of his/her medical experience based on what is at the top of the page. If the CV lists a medical degree from a foreign country, my first thought is “foreign medical grad.” If the CV lists a medical degree with a date prior to 1980, I think “old.” (Blunt, but true) If the CV shows a long list of jobs that are each two years or less in duration, my impression is “job-hopper.”

Are these assessments all correct? Yes. There’s no way of getting around the fact that a doctor graduated from a foreign medical school, is getting up there in years, or has held a lot of different clinical positions in a short period of time. What can be tinkered with is when that information is revealed to a prospective employer.

For instance, if you are an FMG but you have been practicing in the US for 10 years, your practice experience is what you want to highlight. If you graduated in 1967, don’t draw attention to that fact by making your degree the first thing employers see. If you’ve moved around a lot in your career, but you have strong credentials, make your undergraduate and medical education and post-graduate training the focus so that employers have a chance to be impressed by your strong points before they take note of any weaknesses.

To figure out the ideal way to structure your own medical resume, jot down the three most impressive things about your experience. This could be 1) the fact that you were Chief Resident, 2) that you went to an excellent medical school, and 3) that you published an article in a prestigious journal.

Now, if you are a fairly recent medical graduate, your residency and medical school might be at the top anyway since you have not had much practice experience. If not, there is a quick and easy way to bring attention to these things while still giving attention to your practice history: create a “Summary of Qualifications.” Adding this category to the top of your resume will give you a chance to put all of your best attributes in one place AND put them in a prominent location.

You can also play around with the categories you use. Don’t feel that you have to use the resume categories found in a template. Be creative and use categorization to your advantage.

For example, one recent physician client did a fellowship in sports medicine after practicing general pediatrics for 10 years. He wanted to make a career change to focus on sports medicine. Instead of doing the usual categories of “Post-graduate Training,” and “Practice Experience,” I created a “Sports Medicine Training & Experience” category. That way, I could list all aspects of his sports medicine experience (including fellowship, research, extracurriculars, event coverage, etc.) in one place. This helped paint him as a “sports medicine physician” rather than as a pediatrician who happened to do some training in sports medicine.

When it comes to your resume structure, pay attention to the first impression you’re giving off. If you feel that an employer will like what he/she sees in the first 15 seconds, then you can feel confident that your resume is structured well.

Whether you’re a physician struggling to make ends meet financially, your H-1 or J-1 visa is expiring, or you simply can’t take one more second practicing at your current position, you NEED a new job and you need it now.

Many physicians have been there at one point or another in their careers, especially in those early years. And if you’ve found yourself desperate for a new job, you’ve probably thought to yourself: “If only these prospective employers knew how badly I need this, surely they would hire me!”

Unfortunately this logic will only work against you when interviewing for a medical position. As contradictory as it seems, the best way to get a new physician job when you’re desperate for one is to act like you don’t need one at all.

Take these two examples: I recently worked with a client who was a foreign medical graduate (FMG) looking for an internal medicine residency position in the U.S. She had fantastic credentials. She had been a highly respected physician in China for several years. She’d published numerous articles and was an invited lecturer at international meetings. She’d also passed all steps of the USMLE on the first attempt and received very high scores. In other words, she should have had very little trouble finding a residency position.

Unfortunately, she was desperate for a position. She had been volunteering at a hospital for a year to gain clinical experience, and therefore had no steady income. In addition, she was on a J-1 visa, which was set to expire if she didn’t find a position within a few months. These facts in and of themselves didn’t hinder her from getting into a residency program, but what did hinder her was the fact that she let her desperation show. During her interviews, she all but begged residency directors for a position, going into detail about her desperate situation. Unfortunately, although her strong credentials got her numerous interviews, her desperation during those interviews meant that she did not get accepted into a single program.

Now I also worked with another client who was in a fairly desperate situation. Although he had a steady job with a good salary, he hated it with a passion. In addition, he needed to relocate to a new area quickly in order to live near his mother, who was battling cancer. Despite the urgency behind his job search, this client managed to keep his cool during his interviews. He had nothing but good things to say about his current employer, and when asked about his desire to relocate, he simply said he wanted to settle closer to family. He made it seem as though he had all the time in the world to find the best position possible. This client ended up juggling several offers.

The bottom line is: while relating a sob story may win you some sympathy points, at the end of the day no one wants to hire someone who they don’t feel is a commodity. When you act desperate, prospective employers think: If no one else wants to hire them, why should I? No matter how badly or how quickly you need a new job, you want the employer interviewing you to feel that they need you—not the other way around.

It always kills me when I ask my physician clients to describe what sets them apart from others in their field and they answer: “I’m good at my job.”

While it’s better to be good at your job than bad at your job, this type of answer is a total cop-out and won’t win you any points with prospective employers. If someone answers this way, it tells me that physician lacks self-awareness and needs to spend some serious time thinking about what they have to offer. Even if you are the most credentialed physician on the planet, you won’t be able to sell yourself to a hospital, practice group, or even a patient unless you have an understanding of what your best traits are.

Let’s forget the medical profession for a moment and instead focus on the food service industry. On more than one occasion while dining out, you’ve probably thought to yourself “He is a good waiter” or “She is a good waitress.” And chances are, your reasons for thinking that have varied. Perhaps one waitress was very friendly without being intrusive. Maybe you had a waiter who managed to refill your water glasses & bread plates without you even noticing. Another waitress might have had the foresight to bring a plate of sliced banana to occupy your toddler. Yet another person could have remembered that you like your kung pao sauce extra spicy.

There are all kinds of unique, sometimes intangible qualities that make a person good at his/her job. As a job-seeker, you need to figure out what special qualities you have and then sell those qualities to a prospective employer. If you need help determining what those qualities are, ask yourself these questions: What do others compliment me on? What is my favorite part of my job? What keeps my patients coming back to me instead of going elsewhere? What do I do that my colleagues don’t?

Physicians, before applying to jobs or going to an interview, make sure you’ve taken the time to do some self-evaluation and write down three or four reasons why you are good at your job. That way, when you’re asked what sets you apart, you will be ready with a good answer.

Terry is one of the staff of writers for The Doctor Job. Do you need your personal statement edited, or do you need help in writing one from the beginning? Click here for more information.

“Why I want to be a doctor” by John Q. Medical Student

I love helping people…
I want to save lives…
I want to make a difference in the world…
My parents were doctors…
I was a good science student…
I have always been fascinated by the inner workings of the human body…

Bored yet? You can guarantee that residency directors are. I have probably only read a small number of statements compared to a seasoned residency director, and yet my eyes glaze over when I read sentences like the above in medical students’ personal statements.

When coming up with topics for your personal statement, whether for a residency or fellowship program, use a little imagination. Perhaps you could answer this question: Describe one truly unique thing about you, or something that others would find surprising about you. Another trigger question could be: What accomplishment outside of academics are you most proud of?

In addition to general personal statement clichés, medical students and FMGs can also fall into the specialty cliché trap. For example, when it comes to Internal Medicine, “diversity of cases” and “being able to form a relationship with your patients,” fall at the top of the “most mentioned” list. For Emergency Medicine, it’s almost always “love of a fast-paced environment.”

Does that mean you can’t mention these things? No. It’s virtually impossible to be completely original when talking about why you like a certain specialty. But you can be unique in the way you talk about it.

Instead of saying “I love working in fast-paced environments and I thrive under pressure,” give a concrete example of a time you excelled in such a situation. Describing how you jumped into a pool to rescue your neighbor’s baby while everyone else stood frozen on the sidelines is much more compelling.

You might have the same reasons for pursuing a medical career as every other medical student out there, but that doesn’t give you an excuse to write a cliche personal statement. No one else has lived your life, so you are bound to have some interesting stories to tell that will help you stand out from the pack.

Terry is one of the staff of writers for The Doctor Job. Do you need your personal statement edited, or do you need help in writing one from the beginning? Click here for more information.

One of the biggest problems I see with personal statements is that they are rather impersonal. All too often they read like a prose version of a resume instead of giving insight into the medical student or FMG behind the application.

When writing a personal statement for a residency program or a fellowship, take advantage of the fact that this is the one area where you can exercise a little creativity. You don’t need to give an account of your life’s history, but you do need to give the program director a sense of what makes you tick as a doctor and what makes you different from all of the other residency or fellowship applicants out there.

If you are worried about weaknesses in your residency application, then you may need to use the personal statement to really elaborate on your strengths, skills and experience. But if you feel you already have a strong residency application, then you should focus on conveying some of your personality and background through your personal statement.

One way to do this is through your writing style. While you don’t want to be too informal in your writing, it is OK to use a little bit of humor or to write in a way that reflects your personality. Can you imagine how bored residency directors would be if everything they read sounded like it was written by the same physician?

Another tip is to tell a story with your personal statement. A well-told account of an event that was meaningful to you can be a powerful tool and can also give the program director a sense of who you are. For example, one medical student client recently used her personal statement to talk about her experience as a child prodigy piano player. Hearing about the ups and downs of her experience not only gave me the sense that I knew her a little better, but it conveyed a lot of her strengths (perseverance, discipline, etc.) without her having to spell them out.

Residency program directors and fellowship program directors are looking for smart and skillful medical student and FMG candidates, but they are also looking for likeable individuals. Use your personal statement to say what your grades and test scores can’t.

Terry is one of the staff of writers for The Doctor Job. Do you need your personal statement edited, or do you need help in writing one from the beginning? Click here for more information.

There is no simple “yes” or “no” answer to this question. Whether or not to bring up your poor USMLE test scores or bad grades in your application for medical school, a residency program, or a fellowship depends on 1) the strength of the rest of your application, and 2) the reasons behind those poor scores/grades.

You’ve probably heard the expression: “Excuses are like buttholes…most of them stink.” This sentiment applies to excuses for a poor academic performance. Think about it - what are the most common reasons people perform poorly on tests? 1) They didn’t study enough, 2) they’re notoriously poor test-takers, or 3) they’re just not that smart. Do you think that mentioning any of these excuses is going to win over the heart of a residency director? The first indicates that you’re lazy and can’t prioritize, the second means you freeze under pressure, and the third….well, that doesn’t need to be spelled out.

Here are some other poor excuses I’ve heard:

“I had a girlfriend during my first two years of medical school and my grades suffered because we spent too much time together.”

“I hated a lot of the subject matter during medical school, so I had a hard time motivating myself to study.”

“I drank too much the night before the USMLE.”

In these situations, honesty is NOT the best policy. You are better off leaving things unsaid until your interview, at which point you should skirt the topic as much as possible.

Now, there are some truly reasonable excuses for a less than stellar academic performance. If you have one of these, it is probably in your best interest to explain it - briefly and honestly. I highlight the word “honestly” because I am in no way advocating that you come up with a creative excuse to cover poor grades or test scores. However, if you had an uncharacteristically bad semester or bad test-taking experience, it is probably in your best interest to explain why. Otherwise, you run the risk that the person reading your application will jump to conclusions and think you just slacked off, while in reality you were taking care of your two-year-old nephew while your aunt received cancer treatments.

If you do decide to explain a poor performance, follow these two rules: 1) keep it brief, and 2) mention it toward the end of your statement. You want to have a chance to impress the person reading your statement before you point out any shortcomings.

This is just a brief article discussing Pathology for those medical students and FMGs who are still considering which medical specialty to enter. We’ll have these articles occasionally to act as a resource for anyone trying to make the most informed decision.

What to expect as a Pathologist

While most laymen associate pathologists with the dead, the fact of the matter is these doctors make decision of life and death everyday, usually without ever meeting the patient.

Pathologists determine the course of treatment though many patients by making minute and extremely accurate diagnoses that may mean the difference a lifesaving procedure or one doomed to failure. The information provided by a pathologist determines whether an organ can be repaired or must be removed.

It is a specialty that requires diligent study, an attention to detail in the extreme, confidence in one’s abilities and the ability to recognize the limitations those abilities. Pathology is the backbone of all medicine and so a pathologist supports the practicing physician. As William Osler, the first Chief of Staff at Johns Hopkins and founder of the residency method of training put it, the pathologist is the doctor’s doctor.

Choosing Pathology

Pathology requires an inquisitive nature and a voracious appetite for knowledge. Pathology training puts an emphasis on research, reading and study. First-year students looking to pathology will often concentrate in such courses as gross anatomy, cell biology, histology and chemistry.

There are two types of pathologists and the length of residency is dependent on the path chosen.

Studying primarily bodily fluids, blood and other patient specimens, the clinical pathologist is the laboratory expert. They key here is scientific analysis. They are concerned with the management of data, quality control and all facets of diagnostic testing. Clinical physicians often call upon these doctors to consult on what the best test might be, given certain symptoms These experts in scientific processes, both natural and in the laboratory setting, require three years in residency. Rotations include clinical chemistry, transfusion medicine and immunology.

Anatomic pathologists study the organs, tissue and cells to make exact diagnoses as to what caused that specimen to be removed from the patient. Through the use of biopsy, autopsy, fine-needle aspiration or surgery, this physician will conduct examinations from gross to microscopic. Where the clinical pathologist relies on testing and analysis, the anatomic pathologists determinations come largely from visual inspection. They remain alert for unexpected processes at work. Residency training for the anatomic pathologist is three years. Rotations include forensic pathology, autopsy and surgical pathology.

The third choice would be to study both types of pathology. This is a four-year residency program.

During residency, pathology students are not on call in-house. While they may be called into the hospital at night from time to time, for the most part, they adhere to a regular daily schedule. However, this specialty calls for intensive study and most pathologists use those nights off for that express purpose.

Pathology does not require an internship year.

Following residency, there are many fellowship programs available that can lead to certification by such bodies as the American Society for Clinical Pathology and the American Board of Pathology. These fellowships include such diverse subspecialties as Forensic pathology, Hematopathology, Medical Microbiology, Blood Banking/Transfusion Medicine, Cytopathology, Clinical Chemistry and Surgical Pathology.

In practice, the pathologist is generally an anonymous entity to the patient, much like the radiologist or anesthesiologist, in most cases more so. Physicians seeking to have a doctor-patient relationship of any kind should probably look elsewhere. To say that pathologists never meet their patients would be overstating it. Exceptions include such procedures as plasmapharesis and bone marrow biopsies.

The lack of patient interaction, or the common perception of pathologists as doctors to the dead, does not mean they aren’t lifesavers. Physicians rely on the work of pathologists in determine treatment courses. Careful specimen study by a pathologist may be what detects whether or not a surgeon fully resected a tumor, thus perhaps saving the patients from further pain or death.

The specialty is also ideal for those who wish to be on the cutting edge of medicine and technology. Pathologists use the latest equipment and scientific processes and have access clinical material in the course of their study. They are often on the front line of detecting new and unusual conditions and advance medical understanding of disease.

What your life will be like as a Pathologist

The average pathologist works a fairly regular schedule of just over 40 hours a week, very nearly keeping regular office hours. Late calls are rare, though in their capacity as consultants to other doctors, they are occasionally called in for emergencies. Surgical pathologists, for instance, must be present when an intraoperative consultation is called for. Generally, a pathologist’s career life allows ample time to spend with family or on outside interests.

The practice options open to pathologists are many and varied with the majority working in private practice, specifically in hospitals or laboratories. A smaller number choose to take the academic path and become take faculty positions at universities and medical schools, both in research and teaching jobs. The popularity of the CSI television programs has shone a light on the next most popular choice, that of civil service as a forensic pathologist in city and county crime labs and medical offices.

According to the American Medical Group Association, the average salary in this specialty is just over $220,000 annually. The American Society for Clinical Pathology places the bottom end of the range at $167,000 and the top end at just under $300,000.

As with other specialties, certifications will tend bring more money. Over half of pathologists surveyed by the American Medical Association have indicated that their current compensation package has exceeded their expectations.

Is Pathology for you?

While the lifestyle perks of the pathology specialty make the choice very attractive for some medical students, there are certain qualities that must be in place to succeed as a pathologist. An inquisitive nature and the discipline to maintain independent study (and not while in training) are imperative. Management skills will also be called for, especially as a clinical pathologist who may be in charge of a laboratory setting. If these apply and you enjoy serving as a consultant to other doctors rather than being more “hand on” in doctor-patient interactions and enjoy a challenge, then pathology is specialty that, though often overlooked, bears closer examination.

A physician’s job search is only successful if the physician finds the best job available to him or her. In any other situation, whether the physician finds a less-than-ideal job, no job, or decides to remain with the old job, that job search is a failure.

The only way to make sure that the search is a successful one is to (a) be aware of every job available, and (b) take the one that matches your criteria on as many levels as possible.

With physician recruiters telling you that a market is saturated, and only having one or two jobs in a metropolitan area, this might seem impossible. Savvy physicians know that the best jobs are unadvertised. They’re not available through recruiters and rarely posted on any type of forum. The only way to find them is by applying basic marketing principles to your job search.

1. You are a commodity. Your skills and experience make you into a product. Employers who want this product have to negotiate and offer money and benefits in order to enjoy what you have to offer. Many employers will not be aware that you are even available, even if they have a need for your product.

2. Identify your audience. Your audience is very limited. You’re not going to be a product that a grocery store or a hardware store wants. The only audience for you is comprised of single-specialty groups, multi-specialty groups, solo practitioners, hospitals, labs, researchers, and health care organizations.

3. Reach your audience. Imagine a five-person group that has a healthy patient base and is overworked trying to keep up with it. They are not going to run out and place an ad. They are not going to waste $25,000 on a recruiter. They’re just going to continue working, and working hard. This is an audience that does not know that you exist. They don’t know that you’re looking, and they don’t know that they need you. You have to reach them. You can do this with direct mailing, making phone calls, aggressive networking - anything you can. In the end, by using The Doctor Job, you can make sure that your search reaches your entire audience at once.

4. Assess your interest. Marketing is all about numbers. If you are selling a product, you might send out 100,000 flyers and hope for 2,000 orders. Likewise, your job search should be the same. Send out 1500 resumes. If you get a 3% response, that’s 45 possible opportunities in your area. This can be a big city like Chicago or New York, or an area like the DC Metro Area or South Florida. As long as it matches your geographic parameters, this is viable “lead”. Identify which, out of the 45 leads, are the best to you. You should be able to come up with 15-20 that are perfect.

5. Negotiate your success. When you have employers who have only recently been made aware of who you are and what you offer, and they have a need for you and are highly interested in you, use that to your advantage! Do not accept any job until you have tried to negotiate every term of the contract at least once. Only by making sure that you pick the ideal positions and negotiate the best for you can you make sure that your job search is an actual success, and not a failure that leaves you desiring a new job within a year.

It’s time for another story of a client of The Doctor Job who had great success after having no luck with physician recruiters.

Dr. A is a male Ob/Gyn in North Carolina

Dr. A graduated from medical school 36 years ago. He practiced in several different areas of the country before spending the last few years in Wisconsin. He did not enjoy it. The weather and the small-town environment was driving him crazy. He yearned to practice in a larger town in a warmer area. Since his grandchildren lived in North Carolina, he decided to try to move there.

Two years go by. He’s called every recruiter in the book. They don’t return his calls. When he manages to actually get one on the phone, they give him excuses about there being no positions for a physician his age. They tell him to consider locum tenens. Dr. A doesn’t want any more transitions. He wants one job that he can work at until he retires, and he wants to be near his grandchildren.

One day, he finds The Doctor Job. He calls, not quite understanding how our services work and expecting that we’ll treat him shabbily like every recruiter out there. To his surprise, we don’t. We explain that there are plenty of jobs in North Carolina - they’re just with groups who refuse to work with the same useless recruiters who wouldn’t help him! He discovers that most employers will not work with recruiters at all, so he’s been wasting his time by even trying to talk to them!

With our help, he sends out 1200 resumes to Raleigh-Durham, Charlotte, and other metropolitan areas of North Carolina. Within five days, he has received 10 phone calls from interested employers. Within ten days, he received 23 phone calls. By the end of two weeks, he’s gotten over 30 phone calls or emails from employers who are interested in him. After going on several interviews, he finds a job that is less than 15 miles from his son’s house with a small private group. This group never advertised anything and were surprised to get his resume, but after some consideration, they decided they could use his help.

Without us, Dr. A would still be pining away in Wisconsin thinking that his prospects were non-existent. Luckily, he found us, and we were able to help him find a fulfilling job very easily. Good luck, Dr. A! Enjoy your grandchildren and your new job.