Know What You Want in Your Ideal Physician Job Tips
Read these 7 Know What You Want in Your Ideal Physician Job Tips tips to make your life smarter, better, faster and wiser. Each tip is approved by our Editors and created by expert writers so great we call them Gurus. LifeTips is the place to go when you need to know about Physician Jobs tips and hundreds of other topics.
Don't Know What You Want In A Physician Job? Try Temping
It's normal not to know exactly what you want in a physician job. Even if you have some idea, physician job sites don't always tell the whole story of what a practice setting may be like or what duties the physician jobs entail. If you want to test out a practice setting or location, seek out physician staffing agencies whose business includes temporary physician staffing.
A short-term or locum tenens position is an ideal way to determine what factors are important to your personal and professional satisfaction. You can choose a large hospital, a small group practice or a specialty clinic. You can talk to a physician staffing consultant about your preferences for hours, salary and location.
Sometimes a short-term position will show you that you don't like a certain type of practice setting or location, and this knowledge is equally valuable in helping you identify what you want in your ideal physician job.
Writing The Right Cover Letter
Knowing what you want in a physician job helps you write a targeted, perfect cover letter. Whether you are responding to a physician job listing or physician jobs online, writing a customized cover letter that is concise and free of errors can be a giant step toward landing your ideal job.
When crafting your cover letter, keep these points in mind:
- Read the listing. Incorporate the criteria in the job listing into your cover letter, and explain (briefly) how your skills match the job. You can do this in paragraph form, or list the criteria for the position and then list your qualifications.
- Don't recreate your resume. A cover letter is your chance to elaborate on the parts of your resume that are most applicable to your ideal job.
- Make it personal. If possible, find out who is responsible for hiring, and address your letter to that person by name.
- Keep it short. A good cover letter is no more than one page, and each paragraph should be 3-4 sentences.
Tailor Your Resume To Your Ideal Job
When you know what you want in a physician job, it's important to make sure your resume reflects your interests and skills. This will help you find the physician job opportunities that provide the career satisfaction you are seeking.
Before handing over your resume to physician staffing agencies, follow this checklist to make sure you have everything right:
- Spelling: Even spell check doesn't catch everything. Read your resume carefully for spelling errors, and then ask a friend to read it.
- Punctuation: Make sure every full sentence ends with a period. Be consistent in how you use punctuation (e.g. When separating job title from date, don't use commas for some positions and semicolons for others).
- Grammar: Keep your resume in the same tense. It's OK to list duties you perform in your current job in the present tense, but duties in past jobs should all be listed in the past tense.
- Content: You know what you want in a job, so describe the duties you performed in past or present jobs that would be valuable in the position you are seeking.
Use Conferences To Identify Your Ideal Job
If you are at a transition point in your medical career, attending a conference in your specialty or in a subspecialty you'd like to pursue may give you some new ideas. Physicians looking for jobs often find that attending a conference is an opportunity to network, to update their skills and to find out the hot topics and issues in subspecialties they might want to explore.
Some tips for using a conference to help identify your ideal job:
- Don't be defensive if you are between jobs. It's OK to talk about your accomplishments in your previous job.
- Have a short summary prepared of who you are, what you do and what work you hope to pursue as the next step in your career.
After attending a conference, consider working with physician staffing agencies to help you sort through the physician positions in your area of interest. Talk to a physician staffing consultant about your goals, whether you want to advance in your current specialty or change directions, and he or she can help you find that ideal job.
When You Know What You Want, Tweet
By now most people have at least heard of Twitter, the blog-like social networking site that limits communications to 140 characters or less. Even if you think Twitter is frivolous, it is another relatively convenient way to make yourself known to people in your field.
Keep these points in mind for how to use Twitter to identify your ideal job:
- Tweet about issues in your field. This is one way to get members of your specialty (and potential employers) to “follow” you.
- Find experts in your field and follow them. You can stay on top of current issues in your specialty, which will come in handy during a job interview.
Although there are stories of people finding jobs via Twitter, it's best to think of it as yet another job search tool. In fact, if you use Twitter to identify prospective employers, you may be able to work with physician staffing companies to find out about specific jobs for physicians and land an interview.
Online Listings Help You Refine Your Job Search
As you determine what you want in your ideal physician job, it can be helpful to review physician jobs online to get a feel for what physician positions are available in your specialty. This includes jobs that are similar to your current position or those that are a bit different but you might like to explore.
If you know what you want in an ideal physician job, you can make a more targeted search. As you read physician job postings, think about what the daily and weekly schedule might be like for the jobs you see, and think about how those opportunities match up with your vision of your ideal job.
For example, most general surgeons block out three days a week for procedures and two days a week for in-office patient meetings. But surgeons who are owners or part-owners of their own practices dedicate a certain amount of time to business and administrative matters. Similarly, some primary care physicians make hospital rounds and see patients in an office, while hospital-based physicians focus on caring for patients in a hospital setting.
Use A Job Search To Reassess Your Career
Physicians looking for jobs may feel frustrated by the hassle of looking at physician jobs online and crafting resumes. But many physicians aren't happy with their jobs early in their careers for various reasons:
- Taking the first job that came along: Physicians who are just starting out may have taken a job that wasn't the right fit, because they were in a hurry to get to work and pay off their medical school loans.
- Taking the wrong advice: Sometimes pressure from parents, friends or even a well-meaning mentor or professor can push a physician into a position that doesn't suit him or her.
Use every job search as an opportunity to reevaluate your medical career. Are you happy in your current specialty? Did you only choose to pursue pediatrics because Uncle Bob was a pediatrician, but you find yourself envying your peers' fast-paced emergency physicians jobs?
Whether you want to stay in the same specialty or explore other options, physician staffing companies can help you make your next job your ideal job.
| Guru Spotlight |
| Ray Lokar |
