Your first job search will undoubtedly be exciting. It’s your chance to put everything you’ve worked for into practice, to reap the benefits of the hard work of medical training. It’s also your chance to be in the driver’s seat, preparing to choose your best option, rather than hoping to be chosen. Below is helpful information about landing your first job after residency.

Of course, the job search also brings its share of new challenges, and the process will entail conventions and priorities you’ve never had to worry about before. 

As with so many tests you’ve aced along the way, though, you’ve got everything required to take this hurdle in stride. Knowing what needs to be done—and when—will help you enter the fray feeling prepared. 

First and foremost: introspection

It may seem natural to start career planning by tweaking your CV or sending out applications. But the switch from resident to attending is more than just an opportunity to finally get paid a significant salary and practice independent patient care; it’s also a decision about where and how you’ll practice. 

“As residents, during the whole application cycle, we’re putting ourselves out there and hoping that someone chooses us. It feels very different once you’re getting out of residency. It’s more like you’re choosing other people,” says Eliana Figueredo Zamora, MD, a dermatologist with U.S. Dermatology Partners in Cedar Park, Texas.

Thinking carefully about those “where” and “how” questions is key to both attracting offers that are right for you and making a good choice, says Adhir Shroff, MD, professor and clinical chief of cardiology at University of Illinois in Chicago.

“I tell my fellows to think about and talk about their top priorities. Is geography most important? Is it salary? And then there’s practice type—do you want to work in an academic practice versus a private practice or something in between? I think those are the three big things that I recommend thinking about.”

“Setting out priorities and goals is important because the paths will look different based on whether you want to work in a private setting versus an academic setting, a hybrid, or even opening up your own practice,” Zamora says, adding that deciding on these key priorities will make your next steps clearer. “A little web of other things to consider starts spilling out once you start thinking about it all.”

Prioritizing is also important because you’re unlikely to find everything you might want in a single job opportunity. The job that pays the most, for example, may not be in your favorite geographic location. Determining what weight you assign to each factor will help you home in on opportunities that tick off the most boxes.

Shroff says, “It’s very unlikely that you’ll get everything you’re looking for. You should be happy if you get two of your top three—and if you get three, that’s amazing. But you may not get three, and you should know if you can get two, that could still be a very good situation.”

It’s also crucial to consider others in your life who’ll be affected by your choice—spouse, partner and family. 

“Having discussions early on with the people you make decisions with is critically important,” Shroff says. “Don’t say to yourself, ‘I’m gonna just apply and see what happens’ or ‘we’ll cross that bridge when we get to it.’ You could be setting yourself up for stressful situations.” 

Licensing and documentation of procedures

Once you’ve narrowed your target locations, it’s a good idea to learn the state licensing process. Your license is one of a few key hurdles that must be crossed before you can practice in your new job, and the process can take many months. The further in advance you can start, the better.

“If you know which state you’re going to, I would just go ahead and start the license application process,” Zamora says. 

If you’re unsure which state you’ll practice in, it may not be possible to start the licensing process until you get to the offer stage. But if you do know and can take care of that requirement, it’s helpful to your future employer. If you’re up against a similarly qualified candidate for a single job opening, the ability to start right away might even swing the decision in your favor.

Kendra Outler, MD, anesthesiologist with John H. Stroger, Jr. Hospital of Cook County in Chicago, says if you’re planning to practice in an area where states connect, your employer may expect you to travel across state borders—meaning multiple licenses will be required. In some cases, a multi-state license option may be available, which can save time and money. “There are licensure companies if you want to pursue a multi-state license or plan to apply for several individually,” Outler says, adding that it’s a good idea to discuss which licenses are needed when interviewing because the employer may cover the cost.

Keeping up (or catching up) with your case logging in the ACGME system is also critical as you begin your job search. Individual employers have their own established minimum levels of experience with procedures that would be part of your job, so you’ll want to be sure you’re credited with every procedure completed. 

Update and polish your CV

Your CV is your introduction to hiring organizations. It should not only contain your relevant experiences and credentials but also make it easy for a hiring physician or administrator to understand how your history relates to the job. You’ll want to carefully prune the document as you go through training. Your goal should be to create a scannable, reader-friendly CV that matches up with the jobs you want.

Outler says failure to remove superfluous information is a common CV mistake new physicians make. For example, old jobs from your undergrad years may have added value to your CV early in training but will distract from more relevant, recent accomplishments as you exit residency.

“I see a lot of fluff on resident CVs. Jobs that don’t have a substantial contribution to your title as doctor should fall off. As you’re finishing residency or moving on to a fellowship, it’s time to make your CV clean and crisp. It should focus on your educational and professional alignments and contributions,” Outler says.

Maintaining your CV continuously as you proceed through residency is also a must, Outler adds. “You shouldn’t be digging up the bones, trying to figure your CV out” when the time for job hunting arrives. 

It’s also imperative to make sure it’s formatted consistently and proofed for errors. Your current contact information, education, board status and licensing information (with dates) should appear at the top, followed by your experiences in a consistent, bulleted style. 

As a general rule, reverse chronological order is preferable, starting with your most relevant, recent experiences. Online tools like PracticeLinkCV.com can help. 

Summarize key points in a cover letter

In addition to your CV, in most cases, you’ll want to provide a cover letter. This should be a one-page letter that gives a sense of you as a physician, spotlights the reasons you’re applying for a particular job and suggests why you’d be a good fit.

“The way I think about a cover letter is that it explains what you’re looking for in a narrative way. It should be a one-page letter describing a little bit about what you’re looking for, who you are and what you bring to the table,” Shroff says. 

For example, if you’re applying for work far from your current residency, explaining you have family nearby or your spouse has already secured work there can reassure employers you’re committed to living in the area for at least a few years. Customizing your cover letters can help differentiate your application.

A cover letter can also be a place to address anomalies in your CV that require clarifying but aren’t so personal or complicated that they’d be best addressed in an interview.

Spend time on your network

As you’re pulling your CV and cover letter drafts together, it’s also a good time to reinforce your connections with people in your program: your mentors, attendings you’ve worked with and friends you’ve trained alongside. People from your work life who know you well can help with everything from reviewing your CV, to suggesting prospective employers, to committing to speak as references for you. They can also provide you with support as you tackle the challenges of job hunting.

Shroff adds there are two broad categories of people you want to connect (or reconnect) with through networking. The first is key people you’ve worked with, who can help by providing references as your job search progresses. The second is well-connected people you can meet through introductions from friends and mentors.

“In the prep phase, when you’re networking and you’re getting your CV and cover letter drafts together, you’ll want to talk to your program director and to an attending you’ve worked with a lot who knows your work. These types of people are references that can speak of the quality of your work and your work ethic,” he says. “But then there’s people who trained at a program in or are from a city that you want to go to. These are people you will ask, ‘Hey, do you know anybody who trained at WashU? Are there people you know in North Carolina that you could put me in touch with?” 

Asking for help with connections to this second category of contacts may be daunting at first, especially if you’re new to networking. But it gets easier as you go.

“Networking is very important in this field,” Zamora says. “I’m more introverted, so I definitely had to step out of my comfort zone. I grew more comfortable with reaching out.”

Your specialty’s professional organization can be invaluable for networking and other job-search assistance, Zamora adds.

Tidy up your social media 

If you’ve spent time building a personal brand on social media, take time to review what’s visible before introducing yourself to prospective employers.

As Outler says, recruiters and hiring physicians will check to see what your online brand is like. While some content you’ve published could be considered an asset (such as educational content), much of it likely will not. It’s worth taking time to weed out anything that might undermine an employer’s impression of you before you even meet.

“Professional conversations that you have on social media, on LinkedIn and TikTok, those kinds of things do count toward scholarly activities now. It’s considered to have a type of value. As a young physician leveraging social media, you just need to put some careful thought into it, especially before putting your social content on the CV. You need to think about what your employer will find if looking to hire you, because they’re looking to see if you fit into the culture of their group,” Outler says. “You need to think about how [your social content] represents you.”

Content that’s purely personal, with no value to your medical career, deserves extra care in editing, adds Shroff.

“I don’t think it’s appropriate to have shots of you doing crazy things on your Instagram or Twitter, or any of that kind of stuff. You should take the opportunity to clean it all up. You might think that it’s not fair, that it’s infringing on my First Amendment rights, but people that you want to hire and pay you will want to know how you’ll represent their organization. It’s a trade-off—a reality of life,” he says.

If you haven’t updated your LinkedIn profile in a while, now is the time. “Make sure your LinkedIn looks professional, because people will be looking through it,” Shroff says.

Prepare for interviews

While the timing of application responses can be unpredictable, it’s not rare for an employer to respond with an interview request almost immediately, particularly if you appear to be an excellent match. It’s best to be ready!

You’ve already thought through your story in preparing your CV and cover letter. Now it’s time to think about how you’ll respond verbally to questions about your experiences, interests, work style and reasons for applying for a particular job. Keep in mind that when physicians leave a job after just a year or two, especially a first job, the costs to employers are high—so employers are keenly interested in how much thought you’ve given to where you’d like to practice, and why.

Prepare intelligent questions

It may seem like preparing for interviews is mainly about anticipating the questions interviewers will have for you. Be sure to also give some thought to questions you’d like to ask employers. 

Aside from providing you with information you need to know, your questions are another way to show employers your interest in the position is serious. The type of questions you ask can help them gauge how well you’ll fit in with their culture.

It’s best to leave detailed questions related to negotiable job terms until later rounds, when it’s clear you’re heading to the offer stage. 

Questions about the workplace culture can be both helpful to you and a chance to show you’ve done homework about the organization, such as asking about a new value-based care effort or physician wellness initiative you’ve heard about. Asking about how the need for the job arose (did someone leave, or is the practice growing?) can also be helpful.

When in doubt, it’s better to be transparent

Depending on your personal situation, you may have information to share with prospective employers that’s more complicated, or that could even cast a shadow over your application. It’s important to share them up front.

Zamora says her job search focused on the Austin area because her husband had just been assigned to a military post there. While that meant she’d be highly motivated to remain in her job for at least a few years, she knew some employers were looking for candidates with the potential to stay put for longer. She recommends candidates with similar constraints be transparent from the start.

“I decided I was going to be very upfront. I didn’t want it to be a surprise down the road, when I’d already been working for two years and then would have to pack up and leave. So even before we got into the details of what the job entailed—within the first few minutes of the conversation—I said, ‘This is what’s going on, and I’m only able to currently commit to you for three to four years,’” she says. “And, honestly, that did limit some of the choices that I had. Some people just weren’t as comfortable bringing someone on who couldn’t commit for the long term.”

Discovering that early in the recruitment process will avoid wasted time on both sides. You’ll also avoid potential offense to the employer for withholding the information, which might be important if your circumstances change in the future.

Prepare to be put on the spot

Shroff says there’s always a chance you’ll be asked to share your clinical knowledge during an interview, particularly in later rounds. While you can’t foresee every such scenario, it’s good to be mentally prepared for something like that to occur.

“Sometimes, when you’re on, say, an interventional [cardiology] interview, they might have you come into the lab and show you a case and ask you to give your opinion,” he says. “Or, I could see that in an imaging interview, they might have you look at some images and ask, ‘What do you think about this?’”

Project professionalism at all times

In-house recruiters often prefer to do first interviews using Zoom or Teams. You should dress the same for these interviews as you would for an in-person meeting. You should also be sure you’ve lined up a space that’s quiet and free of distractions in the background. 

“You should have proper lighting, and make sure you’re in a private area,” Shroff says. “I don’t think you have to go crazy [trying to create a perfect setting]. But you shouldn’t be on your phone, and you shouldn’t be at a public location where it’s loud.”

After you’ve made it through the first couple of interviews, you’ll likely be invited for a site visit, where you’ll meet with numerous people over a day or two. It’s a gauntlet to be sure—and it begins before you arrive.

“Show up dressed appropriately; assume you’re on the interview from the moment you get off the plane to the moment you get back on the plane,” Shroff says. It’s always possible someone you meet on your journey will be connected to your prospective employer. •