Job sites: Working the Web

It's more than spinning a wheel of fortune. Here's what to know before cruising the Web to get a job or to fill one.

By Tyler Chin, amednews staff. Aug. 27, 2001.

Fed up with managed care, Patrick Martin, MD, decided to give up private practice and become an employed physician in the spring of 2000. The internist immediately searched online for a clinical job in his hometown of Denver.

"It was the handiest, quickest, most accessible source for me at the time," Dr. Martin said. "It did not involve a financial commitment with a head-hunting agency. Basically, it gave me the information I needed right away without spending any money except for my dial-up service. I could use it anytime, get the information fairly quickly, and it let me screen opportunities without having to spend a lot of time in discussion [with a headhunter] about what I was looking for.

Seeking and recruiting: online tips
Links

"It was just right there."

Increasingly, physicians are surfing the Internet for jobs. In recent years, numerous physician-employment sites have popped up on the Internet.

Online recruitment sites are generally divided into mainstream job sites or industry-specific ones. The sites that are most useful to physician job seekers are those that focus entirely on physician-employment opportunities, said Gigi Hirsch, MD, founder and CEO of MD IntelliNet, based in Brookline, Mass.

Some of the sites are operated by medical societies and publishers of medical journals, including the AMA, which posts help-wanted ads from its print publications -- American Medical News, Journal of the American Medical Association and specialty journals. Others are operated by independent entrepreneurs, recruiters or both.

24% of physicians used the Internet for career development in 2000, vs. 16% in 1999.

Sites operated by medical societies, publishers of medical journals and entrepreneurs usually are nothing more than online job boards. Besides job listings, those sites offer free curriculum vitae or resume posting and e-mail job-notification services. Sites operated by recruiters, however, tend to supplement those services with city profiles and information about salary, schools and crime rates.

Regardless of who operates them, all sites let physicians view job listings free, though some require users to register first. How many physicians seek and actually land positions through the Internet is not known, observers say.

According to the "2001 AMA Study on Physicians' Use of the World Wide Web," 24% of physicians used the Internet for career development in 2000, up from 16% in 1999. Most of those physicians were probably looking up job opportunities, according to Suzanne Fraker, the AMA's director of product line development.

Surf and ye shall find

Dr. Martin was successful in finding employment via the Internet. He flipped through a medical journal to come up with the Web site addresses of search firms, which generally charge employers at least $20,000 for a successful placement.

Dr. Martin e-mailed the search firm he believed had the most organized Web site and had job openings in the Denver area. Within a short time, the recruiter arranged an interview for him with Colorado Permanente. The group-model HMO, a division of Oakland, Calif.-based Kaiser Permanente, offered a locum tenens position. He accepted.

"I did locum tenens for two months and during that time met physicians in charge of human resources, and regional and local managers, and they asked, 'Do you want to work for us [full time]?' " Dr. Martin said. The answer was yes.

Matthew F. Davis, MD, the majority owner of a 10-physician hospitalist group in Dallas, found the Internet to be an effective recruiting tool.

Since launching his group in October 1999, Dr. Davis and a minority partner have hired eight hospitalists. Five of the eight had responded to advertisements Dr. Davis had placed on about a half dozen sites. Dr. Davis advertised those five positions exclusively on the Internet, while the other three physicians were hired by word of mouth.

Dr. Davis advertised on the Internet out of necessity. "It was cheap," he said.

"When I started [the group], I didn't have any money to pay a recruiting firm, to be quite honest with you. Medical journals cost money to advertise, and the places I posted on didn't cost anything. That was the appeal."

His Internet ads drew responses from about 250 applicants. About a dozen were good enough to bring in for interviews, Dr. Davis said. The Internet enabled him to quickly grow his business.

"If we hadn't gotten anybody, we wouldn't be in the position we're in now," he said. "There's no way we could have expanded."

A bright future

Others, however, haven't had much success with online physician recruitment.

The University of Wisconsin Medical Foundation in Madison, a multispecialty organization of more than 900 physicians, advertised at least 10 openings last year. The group was looking for family physicians, pediatricians, an adult psychiatrist and other specialists online for the last year.

Some ads drew a good response rate -- five applications -- while others received little or no response, said Laura Schowalter, the organization's director of physician recruitment. That may be because most physicians still use more traditional avenues, such as medical journals, when searching for a job, she said.

So far, she hasn't hired anyone who applied for a job online, Schowalter said. But she predicts it's only a matter of time before the practice evolves and more physicians hunt for jobs online. So Schowalter will continue advertising online.

One of the benefits of online recruitment is that the Internet allows Schowalter to advertise jobs immediately. It can take up to several months to run ads in medical journals, she said.

Internet advertising also can cost hundreds of dollars less than medical journal advertising, she said. Schowalter would not be more specific because the cost of print advertising varies by ad size and journal, though she said that an average online ad costs a few hundred dollars.

While the Internet can be an "indispensable tool" for physicians, it also can work against them if they aren't careful, said Dr. Hirsch of MD IntelliNet. Physicians should think twice before posting their CV or resume online, because it's possible their employer or colleagues could see it, she said.

The advent of online recruitment also has made the job-search process more impersonal, with applicants never receiving acknowledgment from employers inundated with job applications they don't have the time to sift through. Those applications are dumped in a database, raising the possibility that they could be tagged as rejects and excluded from future consideration for employment, Dr. Hirsch said.

Networking, networking, networking

To search for a job effectively, physicians should supplement online resources with other strategies, Dr. Hirsch said. She singled out networking as the most effective strategy.

"Many physicians are extremely uncomfortable with networking ... but searching the Internet is simply not a substitute for networking," she said.

The Internet is an excellent resource for physicians seeking traditional clinical jobs, Dr. Hirsch added. But it is less useful in seeking nonclinical jobs in industry, because nonclinical jobs aren't as plentiful. Employers hire physicians for nonclinical positions because "they may meet a physician at a conference, the chemistry is right, the person is bright and brings certain skill sets that can add a lot of value," Dr. Hirsch said. "Personal relationships with people is still your most powerful tool. I can't overemphasize that."

Others agree. "That's the best way for anybody to find a job," said Betty Struckhoff, director of practice development at St. Louis-based Esse Health. In the past five years, the 75-physician, multispecialty group practice has had five openings, all of which were filled by word of mouth.

Although Esse posted the openings on its Web site as an afterthought, it hasn't needed advertising to fill positions because the St. Louis area is "an overdoctored town," Struckhoff said.

"We also have very good medical schools locally, and a lot of our doctors are involved in those training programs," she said. "So when we're looking for someone good, we're in the inner loop, and our doctors make personal contact with them."

ADDITIONAL INFORMATION:

Seeking and recruiting: online tips

Job seekers

Search the Web sites of the AMA, medical journals, your specialty society, search firms and specific group practices, hospitals, health systems, HMOs and other entities you are interested in.
Check sites regularly so you don't miss new listings.
Sign up for e-mail notification of new job openings. Some journals post the online version of their publications before mailing the print version to subscribers, meaning you can get a look at job opportunities before the competition.
Use a general Internet search engine such as Yahoo or Google to find job sites by typing keywords such as physician jobs, locum tenens, internist jobs, etc.
Be cautious about submitting your CV, applying for a job or publicly posting your resume on the Internet. Find out whether the site lets you control who can view your CV. If not, there's a chance your current employer or colleagues may come across it and learn you're looking to jump ship.
Visit the sites of potential employers to learn about job openings and research employers.
Use the sites also to identify potential contacts whom you can approach directly to learn more about the position or organization or to let them know you would be interested should an opening occur.
When communicating with potential employers via e-mail, make sure that whatever you submit to them is free of grammatical and spelling errors.

Physician-hungry employers

Advertise on as many Internet job sites as possible to widen your reach.
Use e-mail to communicate with potential job candidates.
Post accurate, honest and truthful advertisements describing the position, compensation, quality of life and other requirements to avoid wasting your time as well as the physician's.
State in the ad whether you're willing to sponsor applicants for H-1B or J-1 visas.
List job openings on your own site.
Respond or send a form letter to every job applicant if possible.
Remove online listing once a position has been filled.

Sources: Matthew F. Davis, MD; Gigi Hirsch, MD; Patrick Martin, MD; Esse Health; University of Wisconsin Medical Foundation; mdjobsearch.net, physicianwork.com