Another grrrreat recruiter email! Have fun

Hello Dr.

We have many new and Great opportunities available in ALL STATES which include, $alary increase, sign on bonus, relocation packages. Locums and Perm National Positions Available!!! Open ended Assignments!!! Great rates $$$ All expenses are covered including lodging, mileage, and malpractice for Locums. VERY FLEXIBLE HOURS!!! GREAT FOR THE FAMILY!!! Must have a State license for Locums and Client will wait for Perm. Recent grads are welcomed. Excellent support staff and coverage. Possibility to covert to a permanent position. Low Stress Environment!!! All Submissions are strictly confidential.

Thank You,

Besides the very personal approach so familiar from too many recruiter emails "Dear Dr.", this recruiter apparently had help from his children armed with their new crayons! And I love the specific details! Are all his jobs so great? I guess so...I suspect he put all the superlatives from many many ads in a blender and out came....
It was very, very hard to resist calling him!
What else can you say if you receive such a customized personal message? You truly believe that he is "going to customize a search for you".

Reading recruiter ads

Funny and sad at the same time, but very true. You need a dictionary to read recruiter ads. Since the funtion of recruiters is to sell the leftover jobs to unsuspecting and inexperienced physicians, to fill the less desirable jobs, the jobs that everybody else has looked at and declined, well, because of this physician recruiters have to be very, how should we say this, "creative" in their wording.

The colleagues of "Ace Medical" in Gardenia, California, who have created the blog "careermedicine", have published their own tips about how to decipher recruiter lingo. Careermedicine is a good blog. Their idea is to share the experiences made during job search as well as during the opening and running of a medical practice. Publishing these experiences for the benefit of your colleagues is not done often enough. We all have valuable experience to share and we should share them. It will help us survive the avalanche of insurance abuse and government overregulation, the two main problems for physicians today.

But here is the quote from the careermedicine website about recruiter language:


Reading the Physician Recruiters Ads

Well, on a lighter note , here is the code for understanding those mailers sent to you by the Physician recruiters:

1) Located in the heart of paradise = a very very rural area.

2) Charm of a small town life = Here fine-dining is Apple Bees

3) easy access to all amenities = If you drive couple of hours looking for it!

4) 15 minutes inland from the ocean = Be careful! lots of hurricanes!!

5) For those who love outdoor activities = It is deep in the jungle.

6) Enjoy year long skiing = You got it! Very very cold!!

7) Opportunity of a lifetime = We are having tough time finding applicants.

8) Opportunity to do it all = No specialists available around...you will be on your own.

9) Low cost of living = If you buy that house in the Ghettos.

10) Option of Partnership track = Just kidding!!

Thank you careermedicine!

What Physicians Think of Recruiters

A quote posted by "PsychMD" in one of the forums of studentdoctor.net, which I am adding to the other quotes from physicians who somehow have arrived at the same view of physician recruiters as I have. I have described this very extensively in my past blogposts.

Just a general comment re. recruiters mailing you. Everyone starts getting junk mail recruiting around the time when they start to appear listed in several databases (available free for anyone who looks), such as medical licensing boards, the Specialty Board Certification site, hospital privileges staff lists, even final year resident rosters which are available on many programs' websites.

I wouldn't encourage anyone to pick a job pitched by a recruiter who has your name from a database and has no clue who you are and what you want. Plus, of course, they will all tell you that the "market" is pretty tight in the major cities, because most major hospitals in most major cities do not even go through these recruiters; they have their own in house recruiters, or recruit staff through internal networking; they have where to pick from. Look for a job based on where YOU want to live and where YOU are familiar with the local medical scene. Do your homework well. Lots of jobs picked through recruiters are jobs that are not already filled locally for a variety of reasons, not all of them good, in many cases.

All that aside, there are some rural area jobs that are GREAT, and the only reason they don't get filled is their more remote location. For someone who doesn't have a lot of pre-existent family obligations (such as a spouse who also needs to find work in a non-medical field), or are just starting their families, and do not mind being 1-2 h. away from a major airport or other larger city amenities (nowadays a lot of stuff can be available on line anyway!), some of these jobs are true gems.

(This pertains to all specialties, not just cardiology.)

Recruiters Have the Less Desirable Positions

A colleague whom I know from emails, but with whom I have never spoken about recruitment or recruiters, sent me an email today which I am quoting literally after having removed his name on request.

I am amazed how closely his experience mirrors my experience with recruiters.
May I point out that he finds that positions coming through recruiters are in "...less desirable practice locations...a candidate must keep in mind that these recruiters work FOR the hospitals, and not the candidate...these recruiters usually will not heed the candidates' needs...since stopping my search, I continue to receive recruitment flyers and e-mails (as I am sure many of you do)...those who would take these job opportunities may lack the insight into the economic realities of private practice..."
Recruiters may argue as much as they want, this is how they come across to a majority of physicians. And, please, do not tell me "it's a few bad apples", those few bad apples seem to incredibly busy and seem to just pop up everywhere!


"As a relatively recent recruit to (2003), and subsequent recruiter (2005-6) for my former practice, here are my observations.

When I was searching for a position, I looked at these incredible and unbelievable offers. I too, looked at Merritt, Hawkins, and Associates' findings over the last 6 years. I then observed a trend when I actually called these opportunities / offers. Although not universal, most of these positions offered by "recruiters" such as Merritt, Hawkins & Associates are in less desirable practice locations. Not necessarily rural, but nonetheless less desirable. Factors including geographical location, payer mix, competition, etc., may all come into play.

One must ask why a hospital needs to utilize these search firms and pay them tens of thousands to recruit a urologist. A candidate must keep in mind that these recruiters work FOR the hospitals, and not the candidate. Even if a candidate specifically mentions he/she does not want to join a multispecialty practice nor want to be on the east coast, these recruiters usually will not heed the candidates' needs and will contact the candidate anyway when they have any job offer remotely resembling (or NOT!) what the candidates want.

Since stopping my search, I continue to receive recruitment flyers and e-mails (as I am sure many of you do) advertising $500,000 starting salaries almost on a weekly basis. I know of one such offer and its exact location if anyone wishes to move to a rural Arizona town. Contact me directly and I won't even charge you a finder's fee!

Now the question: How do all these practices afford to pay these huge salaries with all these benefits? I will bet the practices are not paying these costs. These incentives are subsidized by the hospitals.

I can not imagine offering these incentives and having the recruit be "let down" in year 2 when the hospital subsidy ends and reality hits. The short term gains may be great for the candidate, but one must evaluate the long term consequences of taking such a job position.

Those who would take these job opportunities may lack the insight into the economic realities of private practice, and may not be ideal candidates whom I would want to eventually call "partner". Experienced managers know the emotional, production, and financial costs of having to replace an employee. Imagine the headache of having to replace a urologist... It's true that this recruitment process is like choosing a life partner (for both the practice and the candidate); one must chose very, very carefully."

A Former Recruiter Supports My Judgement

Comments about my blog come in two flavors.

One is "yes, that is just what I have experienced" and "excellent post", "residents need to know this", "Why do they not tell us this in residency" or something along those lines. This opinion usually comes from fellow physicians, who ran into similar problems and experienced similar frustrations with recruiters.

The other flavor is "You have no idea what you are talking about" "Of course there are a few bad apples among the recruiters, you just have not spoken to enough of them". That view would be, you guessed it, from active recruiters themselves.

I have plenty of experience, ooohhh, yes, do I have experience with recruiters. Too much for my liking. That is exactly what turned me against recruiters. But in the last few posts I have happily demonstrated that my views are actually shared by recruiters themselves, or by former recruiters. Of course they know what they are doing, they are not blind....And here is another one of these statements from a former recruiter. It could have come from my keyboard, I love it...

By Rahulazcom, "Senior member", SDN student doctor network

Start quote...

I used to be a recruiter before I went to medical school...

...I would advise you to not use recruiters at all. Recruiters are like Real Estate Agents. They provide the impression that they have certain resources or skills that you don't possess until you see what they actually do and realize you can do that on your own. This is what they do. They cold call groups and hospitals to see if they are interested in their services. Then these recruiters pay a large fee to Monsterboard or some other major search engine to post job descriptions. No, they don't have secret sources in high positions like you think. That's what they want you to think. Candidates will usually respond through e-mail and then they forward their resumes (with their names blacked out) to the hiring person. Recruiters will also send flyers or e-mails to program directors or specific departments "fishing" for applicants.

Be aware that the best companies are not actively looking for people. The companies that are willing to shell out 30-60K in recruiting fees are those that are desperate to find someone or are really struggling to find someone. This is not alway true but it's true most of the time.So if a recruiter is discussing a job opportunity, please keep that in mind. Ask yourself why is that job open and why have they contracted a recruiter?

Also, see if you can assess the experience of the recruiter. The bad leads are dumped on the new guys to see if they can close them; the senior guys will not want to work those bad leads. Also, if a recruiter calls you and starts rehashing information from a database, that's usually the newbie that is calling old leads that is stored in a database which is an ominous sign.

Back to my original point...., by applying directly to hospitals and groups, you will actually increase your chances of landing a job because the group/hospital doesn't have to pay a larger recruiting fee (30K to 50K) to hire you.

Okay, so here is what I would advise all of you to do if you are in the job hunting stage.

1. Have an idea where you want to settle down. Narrow your search to one or two cities

2. Create a portfolio by having your CV, photo and LORs photocopied and placed inside a large envelope.

3 Mail the packages directly to groups and hospitals and make certain to let them know you are not being represented by a recruiter and that you are representing yourself. Make sure to address your portfolio to one of the physicians. Don't address it to the title of the practice or the hospital department because it could end up in the HR/Office manager's hands and they could just dump it in the trash.

4. Follow up with them to see if they received your portfolio.

5. Be aware that the best groups are not actively looking to hire someone, but if the right candidate lands on on their desk and they don't have to pay a large recruiting fee to hire him or her, they will strongly consider hiring that individual.

6. AVOID the HR! That's a recruiter basic! Talk to the decision-maker or one of the partners. You can talk to the HR later in regards to benefits etc. but the physicians/partners are much easier to deal with.

End of quote....

He has it almost right. Just mail a letter to every single doctor in your area of interest, not just to the groups and hospitals! And I should mention that "thedoctorjob.com" could do it for you for a modest fee...

What happens when you register at the recruiter job bank

The following quote is from the "dochunterdiary.com" blog, written by Jim Stone and Bob Collins, two competent and smart recruiters from the search company Medicus Partners, who work in committees of the NAPR as well. It lists in great detail what happens when you, the candidate, registers at the recruiter tool "World Job Bank". Extremely enlightening!

Here is the blog post. I do not like to quote that much, almost a complete post, but this quote is so full of data that it cannot be shortened without loosing impact.

Start quote:

"A World Job Bank Physician Registrant’s Experience

Ever thought about the kinds of contacts our physicians receive when they register on the World Job Bank?

This will give you an insight into one physician registrant’s experience: Dr. X, a female, board certified internist, registered on the World Job Bank. She wanted a traditional, permanent internal medicine position and limited her geographic preference exclusively to New England.

Within hours she received numerous voice mails and e-mails. Over the course of six and one-half months, she received 189 e-mails from recruiters at 35 search firms and 72 voice mails from recruiters at 20 search firms.

The following is a breakdown of the e-mails Dr. X received: She received 66 e-mails with brief practice descriptions from one recruiter. Of the 66 e-mails, three positions were for geriatricians, one was for emergency medicine, one was for a hospitalist position and 60 were for general internal medicine. Sixty-five of the 66 e-mails were for geographic areas in which Dr. X was not interested. Only one of this recruiter’s e-mails was for a position in New England. Dr. X also received 33 generic e-mails containing no practice information (e.g., “Are you still looking for a position?”). Of those 33 e-mails, six had nothing in the subject line and one recruiter sent a questionnaire for the doctor to fill out (requesting her geographic preferences which Dr. X had just listed on the World Job Bank). Another 32 e-mails were from one recruiter. One of his e-mails described a practice opportunity in Dr. X’s desired geographic area, the remainder (31) gave brief practice descriptions for geographic areas in which she was not interested. Fifteen e-mails were received from a second recruiter at the same firm, none were for the geographic area in which Dr. X was interested. Dr. X received another 43 e-mails from other recruiters which contained brief practice descriptions. Seventeen of the 43 e-mails gave brief practice descriptions for geographic areas in which Dr. X was interested, the remaining 26 were of no interest to her.

The following is a breakdown of the 71 voice mails she received: One recruiter left 14 messages asking if Dr. X was “entertaining practice opportunities,” but did not mention any opportunity. Another recruiter from the same search firm left three voice mails which were identical in wording to the first recruiter’s messages. A recruiter from another firm left 14 messages stating he had a practice opportunity but gave no details and stated he would “take her off his list” if she indicated she was not interested. A recruiter from a different firm left three messages about Dr. X’s supposed preference for jobs in the Chicago area (she only wanted New England.). One recruiter gave brief information about a practice opportunity but didn’t provide a state or even a general geographic area where the practice was located. Another recruiter apparently dialed the phone and forgot, or didn’t realize the doctor’s voice mail was recording. No actual message was left but Dr. X got to hear a recording of the person chewing and crunching on what sounded like a carrot! Thirty-three voice mails contained nothing more than the recruiters’ names, phone numbers and infrequently their companies’ names. Only three voice mails gave some information about practices in Dr. X’s desired geographic location.

To summarize: Dr. X received 260 contacts (both e-mail and voice mail). Of the 260 contacts, only 20 contacts provided information about practice opportunities in her specified geographic location that were potentially of interest to her."

End quote.


I am speechless from the shock that a recruiter would actually publish this. I have nothing to add, except that it matches my personal experience exactly! Dr. X, I feel for you! Since I have this representative story, I can postpone counting and examining the statistics of the response that I have received. You may have read it in my previous posts, I have been looking in one particular Desirable City, where recruiters typically just cannot find jobs. We all know why. Who in their right mind would be sitting in a practice or hospital in a fabulous location and pay a recruiter $$$$ to have a position filled, when a simple ad in a few journals, at NTNJobs and eHealthcareers would bring in dozens of applicants?

The other remarkable point is: Recruiters are in such a marketing and selling frenzy that they simply do not pay attention to what candidates want. Right from the start I found this rude and careless. I always wondered why on earth recruiters did not read my profile and kept on sending me positions that were as far away from my desired city as could be.
Now I know that they are just too busy emailing and cold calling and mailing anybody that leaves their contact info within their reach that they cannot think. It is a selling frenzy.
And by the way, no wonder recruiters have "to work so hard" if they waste their time in this fashion. They spin their wheels for nothing, or worse, they get a backlash. I am part of that backlash, by the way.

My humble opinion: I you do not want to be the next victim of time-wasting spam called recruiter advertising, don't bother using recruiter job banks!

Instead, read my blog for better ways to find the great job you want!

Letter to a recruiter - Why I am disappointed

Here is a letter that I wrote to a recruiter with whom I had worked in the past. He came across my blog and was very upset. We exchanged a few emails. Here is the last of them that summarizes what I think about recruiters and why I promote other ways of finding job for physicians.

Beginning of letter:

You are right, I may have generalized my personal experience to "all recruiters". Nevertheless, I have been searching for jobs since 1999, in excess of 7 years. I therefore have been in touch with recruiters for about 7 years. I have spoken on the phone to dozens, maybe a hundred recruiters, seen countless recruiter websites, aggregator websites that publish ads from multiple recruiters, and read innumerable newspaper and magazine ads. I may not be the "national expert", but I think I am most certainly knowledgeable enough to voice an opinion. I am definitely more knowledgeable than your one time job seeker.
In case you were wondering, I have been searching for that long due to quirky personal circumstances that have nothing to do with my training, my performance at work or with any kind of legal issue. It's just personal.

I have stopped job searching in March 2007 and at the same time started a blog about my experiences with my search, because other physicians need to know what I experienced. Other physicians should not have to go through the same thing.

The fact that made me search for so long is in part due to insisting on very select locations, such as inside Boston and inside Miami. Due to this the same sequence of events kept repeating over and over and over and over and over again: Recruiter: "Contact us, we have lots of great jobs" Me: "Well, do you have something in Miami?" Recruiter:"No, but ...30-50 miles away". And after the hundredth or so phone call and email that goes exactly the same way, you start to get frustrated, then you get aggravated and then you get cynical. I did become cynical when I read "great jobs everywhere, the best jobs, the best practices" etc etc.

For me, the preferred place to work is in a large city. Since it is my preferred place, I call it the "best place" and the jobs in the large cities the "best jobs". That may not be everyone's opinion. But, like it or not, the majority of physicians prefer larger cities. And therefore, the jobs in large cities are filled without any help. Job is large cities are filled because physicians network their way to those jobs.

My mistake was that I mainly searched passively and not actively, meaning I kept on looking at print ads, internet ads, recruiter emails etc.
Since I could not find a job that I liked, I even started to believe that good jobs (good according to my definition, meaning in large cities that are attractive to live in) were just not available to me, that somehow I could not get them! That was painful and made me feel helpless.

My beef with recruiters is actually that they do not have jobs inside cities such as Boston and Miami (you are literally the exception that confirms the rule) and that nobody, but really nobody told me that recruiters are just unlikely to get them. I would have been ok if recruiters told me "Hey if you are looking inside Boston and Miami, you have to approach your search differently! Do this or that and you will find a job". Only one recruiter ever told me, and it was an older, seasoned recruiter. And he added before telling med: "I believe that I will be rewarded for this some day somehow".

It is my firm opinion that recruiters should tell physicians about their limitations, about the areas where they either do not find jobs or are very unlikely to find jobs. It would dramatically cut down on criticism. Disclose your limitations and drawbacks. Even home sellers have to disclose what is wrong with the home they are selling.

Now I know that recruiters do not get the desirable jobs in the big cities. Now I simply do not ask anymore. But now I know how to find jobs in highly desirable locations myself without any outside help. I am not helpless anymore.

After a while I started asking the recruiters head on: Why do you not have jobs in Miami? One of the answer was: "we usually get positions in areas where there are more jobs than applicants. In Miami there are more applicants than jobs and therefore we tend not to get them".

That is the kind of answer I had hoped to get several years ago.

But recruiters all act as if there "simply are no jobs", the term is "that area is oversaturated". What they convey between the lines is "If I don't get jobs there, then there simply are no jobs there". I sometimes think they even believe that nonsense themselves.

And then of course there is that other cute sales answer that I received 6 or 7 times: "I will call my clients in Miami and see what I can do" - meaning he or she actually has "clients" in Miami, meaning he or she is in regular contact, has good business connections to them etc. Sounds impressive at first. But the being impressed faded away, when, not surprisingly, I never ever heard back from any of those people.

So, I think I write from experience. I know that recruiters are human, I know that there are a lot of good people among them. I mentioned that I like the two owners of Medicus Partners that write the blog "Dochunterdiaries". I like their blog, I like their opinions, I like what speaks through the blog, I like what I perceive as the people behind the blog. They are great guys and I agree with most of what they write. But there are also a lot of people that just sell. And nobody, not the good ones and especially not the bad ones tell you how to find a job in the desirable cities.

And, no matter what, for recruiters it is exceedingly hard to overcome the 20K handicap. And, of course, you get called to fill the positions that are difficult to fill for many reasons.

Your.....


End of letter

"We personalize a search for you"

While physicians and HR people usually comment on my blog in words like "you are so right", "you point very well out what is wrong with recruiters" etc, recruiters are very upset at my blog and usually claims that I do "not have enough experience with recruiters".
Ooohh, yes, believe me, I do. I have been searching for a job for over 7 years and I have been in contact with recruiters for about 7 years. I have spoken on the phone to dozens, maybe a hundred recruiters, seen countless recruiter websites, aggregator websites that publish ads from multiple recruiters, and read innumerable newspaper and magazine ads. I may not be the ultimate expert, but I am most certainly knowledgeable enough to voice an opinion. And I most certainly write pretty much everything in this blog based on my own blood, sweat and tears.

And, before I continue, I have found a way to find more jobs than any recruiter, click here to read it
But, to support that I am not alone, here is another experience with recruiters that mirrors my own.

It is from a pediatrician in North Carolina who had serious legal disputes with a hospital at which she was practicing, who consequently lost her practice and is now recieving recruiter emails offering her employment in her own former practice! It does not get much better than that! It is the perfect example for the claim of many recruiters: "We personalize a search for you", "We taylor a search to your needs". Thank you, Dr. Johnson, for this contribution!

Here is a quote from Dr. Johnson's blog:

I know I'm supposed to be on a break, but the following e-mail (from a physician head-hunter) was in my In-Box today:

Dear Doctor Johnson

Our firm is representing an excellent opportunity for a pediatrician to join two others in a beautiful community in central NC.

This employed position offers a strong income and benefits package with shared call of 1:4. The physicians have their own autonomy in clinical practice and management decisions are made by the practice administration in consult with the physicians. Physicians do attend C-sections as required.

This position is supported by a private, not-for-profit, 145-bed community hospital and is the only hospital in the county serving a population of over 130,000. The facility had 800 deliveries last year. Located in the beautiful, rolling hills of central NC, the community offers all the charm and quality of life expected in a small town. Residents enjoy all the advantages of living in a small town while enjoying quick access to the Research Triangle. Greensboro, North Carolina’s third largest city is just 25 minutes away, while Charlotte, the largest City is only 1.25 hours south.

If you would be interested in learning more about this outstanding opportunity, please forward a copy of your CV for review or respond to this email. I will not send your CV to anyone without your prior approval.

Regards,

X

Mr. X obviously didn't know that I am more-than-familiar with this "opportunity". Over the years, I've gotten dozens of these . . . as more Pediatricians came and went from the practice whose doors I opened in 1995.

Makes it kinda hard to just "forgive and forget".

......some material left out.........

Anyway, this is the umpteenth e-mail I've gotten about this job "opportunity" from headhunters who, if they had done the smallest amount of research, might've thought twice about sending me this particular "invite". And you'd think the geniuses running this practice would say to the recruiter, "If there's a Mary Johnson in your recruitment files, it's probably best not to send her this one."
Sometimes, I reply. Sometimes I shrug it off. Today I replied:

Mr. X, you are talking about Asheboro, North Carolina. It is my hometown. And a long time ago, I bought the sell. It is the worst professional mistake I ever made.

www.drjshousecalls.blogspot.com
www.asheboropediatrics.com

"The physicians have their own autonomy in clinical practice and management decisions are made by the practice administration in consult with the physicians."

That was not the case ten years ago. When this "practice administration" (still in power after all of the nasty & illegal things they've done) fired me after I intervened to save a newborn baby's life . . . a baby being mismanaged by another physician whose neonatology skills they falsely marketed to the public. Then they pulled every dirty trick in the book to ensure I could not stay and compete.

This "non-profit" has pounded me into the dirt for years and laughed as they pounded. But this story is getting out and around.

Respectfully, you (and every other locums company that has contacted me about this job in the last several months) should do a little more research on the situations you represent.

Mary Johnson, M.D., FAAP

And no. I don't feel any better for sending it. This guy has money to make and will blow me off.

No comments are necessary. Click here to read my instructions for searching the right way and finding more jobs than any recruiter can - click here.