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          Audrey Becker 
          2341 Seven Pines Suite 5
          St. Louis, MO 63146

Phone: 314.878.6888
Toll-free: 877.583.3255
Fax: 314.878.1827
Audrey@ObOnly.com

WORKING WITH A RECRUITER

You may be in you last year of residency, well trained and Board Eligible. Other residents laud your clinical judgment and admire your procedural skills. Your Program Director predicts that you will enjoy a deservedly rosy future.

Somewhere.

Or you may be a practicing physician, seasoned and Board Certified. Your patients acknowledge your saintly bedside manner. Your colleagues seek your opinions. But you know there is a better position than the one you have.

Somewhere.
The question is where?

If you are reading this you are probably among those physicians who, for one reason or another, are contemplating a step into the unknown. If that is the case, you will find plenty of people ready to lead you across the void. They are physician recruiters.

They write and call (more often then you would like), offering to tell you of wonderful practice opportunities. Their counsel, they are quick to assure you, costs you nothing.

Some of them are in-house recruiters, seeking physicians for their own organizations. Some are recruiters for search firms, retained by a particular hospital, clinic, or group to find physicians to fill specific needs. Some are contingency recruiters, looking for candidates to supply a broad client base.

It is the contingency recruiter whose work is the least understood and, in many ways, the most complex. Unlike the in-house recruiter (who is typically a salaried employee) and the retained recruiter (who usually receives partial payment "up front" and then bills the client for expenses and effort), the contingency recruiter receives nothing unless a successful match results between candidate and client. This arrangement offers advantages to both the physician seeking a job and to the hiring entity needing a doctor.

What's in it for the Candidate?

Whether you are a resident or a practicing doctor who has decided to relocate, the contingency recruiter offers access to thousands of potential employers. While the in-house recruiter represents one client and the retained recruiter represents several, the contingency recruiter has a wide and diversified client pool, representing every section of the nation. This extensive client base allows the contingency recruiter to consider your preferences and aspirations to a degree which other recruiters cannot.

The contingency recruiter's first task, therefore, is to get "inside your head," to find out what makes you tick, to learn as much about you as possible, to discover things not listed on your curriculum vitae. The purpose of such probing questions is to uncover the subtleties that determine whether an opportunity is right for you. Would you be happy in a high-powered academic setting? Or are you better suited to a more relaxed, patient focused office? Do you want to work 40 hours a week? Or 50?

How important is geography? Where are you from? Where do you want to go? Where do you have "connections"? While considering your preferences, the recruiter may also try to expand your horizons. Perhaps you grew up in Texas, attended medical school in Nebraska, and did a residency in Ohio. What if the perfect practice appears in Georgia?

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