Healthcare expertise is in-demand today, whether you are a clinical frontline worker or a back-office administrator. Each year, thousands of residents and fellows enter the job market, along with new graduates from nursing to coding to physical therapists, and many more. Then there are the thousands of workers seeking change as they look at new positions. It’s tough to juggle the job search and interview process because few healthcare workers are trained in the business of medicine and have difficulty navigating all of the inquiries and offers. It doesn’t help that healthcare is so chaotic during the pandemic. All of these factors make it easy for mistakes to occur during the job search process. Here are some mistakes you may be making during your healthcare job search—and how to avoid them.
Top Healthcare Job Search Mistakes
In a field like healthcare, where there is typically strong demand for experienced or highly skilled workers, it’s a mistake to not cast a wide net for the right role. We’ve seen doctors take the first role offered as they’re coming out of residency, in part, because they’re worried about their loans coming due or are simply eager to apply their skills. Med school doesn’t teach much about the business of medicine, so finding the right cultural fit and understanding the implications of an RVU-based compensation structure or even the real-life impact of on-call are areas that it’s easy to miss. This is why most new doctors don’t stay in their first job long, typically about five years.
We also see many healthcare workers gravitating toward metropolitan areas. In those regions, there are often many applicants competing for the same roles. In these cases, the employer ends up with the negotiating advantage. However, the cost of living and many times the salary ranges are less than less urban environments. For clinicians and healthcare workers, looking to the community or rural healthcare settings naturally escalates a candidate to the top of the pile because there is a diverse array of jobs in these markets. For doctors, especially new doctors, there are even loan forgiveness programs available in community facilities that, when taken with competitive salaries, make working in these rural facilities more attractive than their urban counterparts.
We also encourage patience in the job search process. Finding the right fit takes time, so to increase the odds that you’ll land in the perfect place, allow up to a year or longer for the highest credentialed positions. It’s also a mistake to start the interview process right after school or residency is over. Starting early allows you more time to find a better fit instead of settling for a role you have to take.
There are also several tiny mistakes that often happen within the search process that could include:
- Not knowing exactly what you want or where you want your career to be in five years. While this will change over time, having a general sense of where you want to go in the future is critical to finding the right fit.
- Failing to research your target employer. From housekeeping to the highest certified clinical professional, there are many roles available in healthcare today. Making sure you research the right targets for your job search will ensure you find the best cultural fit.
UHC Solutions is proud to represent our healthcare clients, matching candidates to the right job. Talk with our team—we can help you avoid common job search mistakes in the healthcare field.
