Episode 3: Physician Job Interview (Transcript)

SPEAKER_00: Welcome to the Heroes of Health Care podcast special edition. I'm your host Ted Wayne. Our guest today is Roger Bonds, CEO of PhysicianCareerAdvisor.com. He has advised physicians on their career for over three decades and has reviewed over 3000 physician employment contracts and physician partnership agreements with private practices, hospitals, academia and managed care companies. He speaks at medical seminars and conferences with over 2000 presentations attended by over 150,000 medical and health care professionals. We're excited to have Roger here. So let's jump right in. Roger with multiple options available. How does a candidate decide which facility to visit and who should attend the interview? Is it just a physician or the entire family?

SPEAKER_01: Well, I hope you are going to be able to have more than one particular job opportunity that you're going to look at. This is your career. This is your life that we're talking about and whether you have found that position through networking or whether it's looking on the Internet or what have you. We have to look more in depth about what this position is all about. Ideally, if you have some networking that can help you with that particular position, that's going to give us the best information. If you could talk to other physicians who you trust and have an even faster network, you would never talk to this physician in your life. But she has been recommended by another physician and you ask her confidentially. Can you tell me more about this position or what is it like to work there? What sort of problems do you have working there? How many other doctors have left? Now another key to this when you're looking at different organizations and a lot of younger physicians don't realize that. Those of you who have been in practice know this. And what's leadership like in that particular organization? Again, whether it's a private practice, a managed care company, it's a hospital university. What's management like? What do they like to work with? And this is going to help determine for you. Is this going to be a good place for you to go to after all? Because we're trying to compare different opportunities ideally before you get on a plane and fly out and see them. Now I would suggest that you want to look on the Internet, find as much information as you can within reason there. Ask around to other networking outside of that institution. What does anyone know about this? And when you're looking, let's say the networking, maybe they give you some information you need to follow up on that. Or you're networking, you say, well, who else knows about that particular practice? Or you're looking online, you see something, ooh, I'd like to know more about that positive or negative. Maybe we're interested in the amount of research, kind of researcher you're going to be doing. And we want to know what research projects topics we might have? What is the funding that we might have? What's the source of the funding? Are you going to have to go out and be a fundraiser or not? What kind of supporter are you going to have on research? Is this going to just be you? Or are you going to have a research assistant? Are you going to have someone to help you go out and raise the money such as they have a contract writer who's going to help you with this? Is he the contract or employee with them? So you're going after significant dollars perhaps. But when we're considering all of this role together, helping to decide if this place is for you or not, there can be various depths of information that we're going to look at. You know, when we think about who should attend the interview, this could go either way, should it just be you or should someone else perhaps go with you? Now, the employers oftentimes, because they want to find out more about you and get your whole family, extended family involved so that you can together make a decision. That's kind of a sales technique that they do. But you may want to go in the first interview just by yourself. You're very, very serious about that. But let's say that you're in a situation that your spouse, your partner, your significant other, that he or she needs to be involved to decide are you going to go forward with this at all. You might even require, tell them that if I come to your organization, I need you to fly him or her in to be with me. And let's take a look at the whole community as well as organization. Sometimes, of course, your significant other is going to be looking for their own job, their own career move as well. And that's perfectly normal. If an organization says, no, we don't want to talk to them and you just explain to them how important that is, maybe that's not who you need to be going with. The majority of them will allow you to bring somebody at their cost because they know if they're trying to recruit you that that individual is going to be a big part of that. Now, what I do not suggest, I used to suggest the opposite, I do not suggest taking children with you on these trips, especially the first trip. You're flying in, you're driving over to that interview. Perhaps you have a significant other with you and you're going to take kids with you. The whole whole situation changes when you have children involved. So I would suggest pulling back on that. Again, we used to say just the opposite.

SPEAKER_00: Now, afterwards, if they are undecided, how do they respond and keep the door open with the employer? And who pays for the travel interview expenses? And as always, Roger, please give us any red flags that you think a doctor or physician should be aware of during the onsite interview.

SPEAKER_01: You know, we're thinking about these red flags and there can be many, many out there. Remember this. You're interviewing them as much as they're interviewing you. And we think about the red flags. How do they even treat you when you are contacting or first discussing with them about their position? Were they very informative? Were they helpful? Were they wanting you to interview for this? Or were their ideas and their heads up in the clouds and their treating you kind of as that citizen who doesn't rank up with them? So we're thinking about that. And these are red flags too. Maybe say it's even to travel in to see them. Are they going to pay for your expenses? Now, if you're just driving across the city or just across the state line, maybe that's no big deal because you're going to drive over there today and you're going to drive back tonight. But especially if you're flying in, they should be paying your expenses and paying at least the big expenses, like the hotel and the airfare, pay those up front. And if they're not, that's a huge problem, a red flag. Most physicians are not at least being paid for their expenses, whether they're paid up front or reimbursed. Then that's such a red flag I find they turn the job down because that is a precursor of what's to come. If they're already being so tight right now, many of those organizations, they're anti-physician in the first place. And there's so much to be an anti-physician. It could be the culture. It could be how they're managed their leadership. It could be how they write their employment agreements and much, much more. So we're looking for red flags. You may think, oh, that's terrible. Now, why don't we find so many red flags you look for? Well, you go around the box many times as I have. I'm looking for red flags. I'm looking for things to stop. Let's take a look at this. Maybe it's just a yellow flag that we say, wait a minute. That's suspicious. Like compensation is not what we think it should be. Let's ask more questions. Now, when we're talking to them in an interview, these red flags, let's say that they're going to low-value as far as the basis of income, I would suggest that you ask ahead of time before you travel to see them what that income might be if they haven't already set it. For example, you're going to fly 500,000 miles to 2000 miles to see them. Ask them about the position as far as income-wise, but you don't say how much you're going to pay me. What you want to say is the number of qualifiers, so it doesn't sound nearly as bad. And those of you who've been in my national audiences have seen this in my presentations, you might ask something like, can you tell me the approximate amount of income someone might earn in a position like this? So it's not me being selfish. I'm just asking, what might somebody earn? Maybe not this position, but something like this. It's hard for them to say no on that. Now, if they do turn around and say, oh, we don't know that red flag right there. I'm not sure if I waste my time going to see them unless you're just trying to get some interview experience. And hopefully you're not in that situation because there's so many wonderful positions out there. But we're also looking at those red flags if they're going to be forthright with you. Are they giving us dependable information? And look for this. Is everyone saying the same thing either before the interview, the actual zoom call where you're interviewing, or when you fly in to interview with them? If you're hearing one bit of information from this person, something very different from another, that's confusing, right? We're not sure what the truth is. And so if you still want the position, you have to drill down further. I do this all the time in the consulting, trying to figure out that that institution, they're trying to hire or recruit these doctors. So what is the truth here, what they're doing and what they're not doing? So you do the same thing, trying to figure out what they're doing and what they're not doing. So how do we work at once you have interviewed with them? It could have been in person, or maybe it was by zoom call or what have you. And if you're looking at other positions, other opportunities, how do we get these lined up? Well, first of all, let's say that things went very well and you want to respond to them, then, of course, write them a thank you note. Typically, it's going to be on an email. So get the email address of all the key people who you actually met with there and send them a thank you email. So very savvy physicians also were writing old fashioned handwritten notes. And I guess attention, it does in the industry because it's so unusual, but most of the time, it's going to suffice to build and send that email. And we're saying thank you for their time. Now, also, if you can work it into, even though that initial email, perhaps that's when you ask that first question or two or three. So asking good questions. What we oftentimes are going to do too is say if they haven't already given us their actual employment agreement or whatever that type of offer is. Maybe it's going to be a letter of intent or what's also called a term sheet where it outlines the basics out there that already asked them for that. You can see if they'll go ahead and respond with it. Now, what about if we have different positions? And one is already gone to the point where it has the employment agreement and the other is just getting started with you, but you want to be able to compare the two because you're very serious about them. Then we can tell that one that's in second place, time wise, that we need to get that information as soon as possible. They'll understand that. If they don't want to understand that, then maybe they're going to lose out. What if you think you might be more interested in this particular one? Yet we have this one, quote the bird in the hand. Don't let this one go. Very common question is, just go ahead and tell them, no, I'm telling you that if you haven't signed anything, no, let's not let them go. It happens too often. It's somebody just shops and shops and shops and this falls through that falls through. And at the end of the year, they don't have anything. So what we want to do though is keep these alive. And how do you do that by asking good questions? Sometimes we know where these guys are way ahead. Let's just ask our certain basic questions right now. Then typically we put it in the email and ask them, respond in the email and keep that going. And then we ask a second side of questions and a third side of questions. We're serious about getting those answers and we're trying to get these other guys to catch up.

SPEAKER_00: Thank you for these insights which are really valuable for our physician community. If you enjoyed this information, please look out for the other topics we'll be covering with Roger. If you want to learn more, visit PhysicianCareerAdvisor.com. Thanks for joining us on this special edition of the Heroes of Healthcare podcast. We'll see you soon.