Additional Resources for Your Job Search

List of additional resources for your job search

The most valuable book for the physician job search is "The Ultimate Guide to Finding the Right Job After Residency" by Koushik K. Shaw, MD. It is very easy to read, written in superb style, thoroughly researched, has the right attitude, and has outstandings chapters on evaluating a practice, what to ask during an interview and how to negotiate a fair contract. Every physician looking for a job should read it at least once! Excellent overall. Published by McGraw Hill, costs $22 at Amazon.

This is another book that I highly recommend, even though it is meant for everybody, not just for physicians:
What Color is Your Parachute? By Richard Nelson Bolles at 10 Speed Press, 2007. Less than $15 on Amazon.
The Classic, the bestseller on finding your career, changing careers and finding a job. Full of most valuable information and results of research, and full of surprises. Things might be a bit different from what you thought. It has numerous excellent references about books, websites, search engines, search methods, interview behavior and and and. A must read and it might just be the only book you will need on this topic.


Comphealth has posted a guide to job search on their website which is free (no wonder, it is a marketing tool that tries to get you to call them and get a job through them). The info in this "Best Friend's Guide to finding a practice" is good (in the areas where they offer information). Look at it as a valuable complement to my blog and ignore all the marketing for Comphealth.

"TheDoctorJob.com" website and blog has a "careercorner", where they publish good tips about how to write a cover letter, CV, how to prepare for and behave during an interview.

http://www.healthecareers.com/ the most professional appearing large recruitment website with enough employer ads to be useful.

Medical Economics Journal has a series of 5 or 6 articles on the physician job search. Find it by going to the "Medical Economics" website and then search for "job search"

A thoughtful article you should read before responding to recruiter calls. Even though it was written by an emergency physician, many of the points and caveats apply to all areas of medicine. http://www.emra.org/Index.cfm?FuseAction=Page&PageID=1002108
Some of the best articles for new physicians can be found here: http://www.newphysician.com/library.cfm. Be aware that this is the website of Merritt and Hawkins, a retained search firm, so will encounter a favorable bias towards using recruiters in your job search - which we know is nonsense.

Quintessentialcareers.com has a website with information for job seekers and career changers. They have so much useful information, links, book recommendations, that it is almost too much. You have to take care not to get lost in the sea of information. They are also a great company to write or re-write your CV and cover letter. When looking for any section of career and job search, they have the information or at least a link to the information. I highly recommend it, even though it is not tailored to physicians.

Pam Pohly's website, www.pohly.com
Produced by a former-executive-turned-recruiter. The site contains a list of numerous resources, most of which are very good. You will find great lists of professional associations, hospital directories, very good tips about writing a cover letter and CV, how to prepare for interviews, how to conduct yourself in an interview. Just skip the whole section on "recruiters" and the whole talk about recruiters being helpful in your job search.

www.Collegegrad.com While not written for physicians, the chapters on resume writing are excellent and the interview tips are not bad either. This site offers a lot of very good content - for free.

http://www.studentdoc.com/
Info by medical students and residents concerning job search

At http://www.aafp.org/fpm/20060700/37find.html you will find an article by consultant Jack Valancy, who occasionally publishes on the website of the American Academy of Family Physicians. He emphasizes finding your perfect career and job and to help you with this he has published a questionnaire called "Finding the perfect job". It helps you find out what matters most for you and what feelings and goals you should base your career planning on.

www.princetonreview.com/cte/articles/hired/searchsuccess.asp
This article in the Princeton Review emphasizes: know yourself, know your strenghts, then decide what you want to do and apply

The American Academy of Family Physicians (AAFP) in general has good and balanced info, but does not go into details, a bit superficial.

The website of the American College of Physicians ACP has only moderately valuable information, visit http://www.acponline.org/counseling/
I was disappointed by the shallowness and lack of depth of this info. Sorry. Not recommended.

New England Journal of Medicine website. They have a few tips concerning job search, but they still feed the misconception that recruiters have more than a marginal function in the physician job search. Overall well-meaning website, but does not have really good information. Misses the bite, in part because it tries to be politically correct and neutral.


http://practice.org/resources/resources.html. This website offers a bit more advice and less distracting recruiter blabla, so it is worth looking at.


http://www.cejkasearch.com/resources/careerdevelopment/default.htm#jobsearchstrategies this link will take you to some good and interesting advice on job searching by Cejka search. It is a valubale source of information about writing cover letters, CVs and interviewing. Otherwise they are just trying to lure you onto recruiter websites and into recruiter offered jobs. They discourage you from looking in the big cities and try to tell you that "the country side is much better" - no surprises here.

Less interesting links, only if you have time:

http://caps.uchicago.edu/resources/materials/books/jss.html#jss this list of the University of Chicago has numerous resources and books, but just the titles. you will have to do the rest yourself

http://jobsearch.about.com/od/findajob/a/onlinejobs.htm
http://jobsearch.about.com/od/findajob/a/howtofindajob.htm
http://jobsearch.about.com/od/toppicks/tp/jobsearchbook.htm
interesting pages on about.com that has many ways of searching for a job and gives good tips

Job Star Central.....http://jobstar.org/index.php a good list of info from the public libraries in CA
http://www.your-cv-coach.com/resume-writing.html general purpose tips for writing a CV and cover letter, not specifically greared towards physicians. Moderately useful.