Tuesday, February 6, 2007

The best way to find a job for physicians

The Physician Job Search Summary

The best, most powerful, most successful and therefore least advertised way of finding a job

1. Decide where you want to work and live.

2. Buy a list of all addresses, phone number and fax number of the physicians in your specialty in that area. You can do this online very easily and quickly by going to InfoUSA.com, WebMD or MMS (the marketing arm of the AMA). You can drill down very accurately to the selection of physicians you need. Go on InfoUSA.com and try it. It typically costs 75 cents for an address with telephone and fax number.

3. Have your CV and your cover letter written (or at least reviewed) by a professional service, e.g. Quintcareers.com. This will cost another $200-300, but it is well worth it unless you are a copy writer or an English major with advertisement experience yourself.

4. Mail-merge your cover letter with the address list to create personalized letters on your computer and mail your cover letter and CV to all doctors in your target area.

4a.As an alternative you may also fax your cover letter and CV (or maybe just your cover letter) to all physicians in your target area. Do this using JBlast.com, a fax broadcast system that allows you to Mail-Merge your letter with your list of addresses with the same ease as Word. You can literally fax your letter to hundreds of physicians with a single click. This costs about 6-10 cents per fax. Please consider the laws about unsolicited faxes - you are doing this at your own risk.

5. You can have all this done by someone else and pay for the service. TheDoctorJob.com is such a service and they will charge about 1.50 to 2.00 for each letter they write, print and mail. It is slightly more expensive then doing it yourself, but it saves you time. They have been doing it since 2003 and are pretty good at it. Since 2006 Doccafe.com also offers this service.

The response rate will be 1-2%, meaning if you mail or fax 400 letters, you will receive about 4-8 interviews. The more physicians you contact, the more interviews you will get.

Voila! This is the least expensive and most effective, most successful way to find a job - and you can find it exactly where you want it. Obviously, you may repeat this after a few months if it does not work the first time.

Did I mention physician recruiters? No, because you do not need them if you do this yourself. Yes, It may cost a little more for you now upfront, but you will not have to pay those 20,000 that you always end up paying for a recruiter indirectly and silently - because the fee for the recruiter most certainly will be counted as your overhead and deducted from your income.

Read my document of Job Search for Physicians. Please contact me with any feedback - good or bad, at my email address a@b, a being muenzerus and b being yahoo.com. Thank you and good luck and success. Matthias Muenzer, MD