Looking for a new job? Insider tips for the experienced physician

If it’s been years since your last job search, prepare for a more corporate interviewing process than your last one.

Even just a few years ago, a physician or small physician group may have shown you around. Now it’s more likely to be a corporate employer with hundreds or even thousands of doctors on staff, says Steve Look, executive vice president of recruiting, The Medicus Firm, Dallas.

“The interview process will be more formal,” he says. As a result, more nonphysicians will be involved in the interviewing process, he explains. That means it’s important to be more politically correct. “It’s not the good-old-boy doctor talking to doctors as openly,” he says.

Your years of experience may show off your clinical skills. But be prepared to counter assumptions that anyone in practice for more than 10 years might not be flexible enough to fold into a new organization and its processes and procedures, advises Regina Levison, vice president, client development, Jordan Search Consultants, St. Louis.

For example, if you’ve been working for 20 to 30 years and haven’t been using an electronic medical record, that will be a red flag, she says. Or if you say you’ve had an EMR for 10 years and hated it every day, that will raise a red flag too.