Published in Today’s Hospitalist’s Career Section
According to interview veterans, candidates should do some serious homework before they even get to the face-to-face interview stage.
Maria Hoertz, DO, MPH, a hospitalist who’s now based in Phoenix, takes the time to do a search on the doctors with whom she’d be working, looking specifically for board actions and malpractice awards. She also does a search on the hospitals where programs are based to see if any of their billing practices have made the wrong kind of headlines.
Dr. Hoertz points out that she has ended up deciding to not pursue interviews with groups based on what she’s learned.
Another big item to research is the location of the job. “If the geography won’t meet your or your family’s needs—in terms of schools, rents, housing prices—you need to figure that out ahead of time,” says Jasen W. Gundersen, MD, MBA, president and chief medical officer for the Tennessee-based TeamHealth Hospital Medicine.
He’s actually spoken extensively to candidates on the phone and passed all their information over to a hospital to set up a site visit. “Then they call and say, ‘I looked it up on the map, and I couldn’t live there.’ I always say, ‘Really? You couldn’t have done that first?’ ”
For more, read Job Interview Dos and Don’ts, published in the March 2013 issue of Today’s Hospitalist.
