Do you get hundreds of phone calls from various physician recruiters? Ever wondered whose side are they on? Let us find out.
Physician recruiters are salespeople. There job is to sell you a ‘physician job’ or a ‘physician job interview’ depending on how the recruiters get paid. There is big money to be made in physician recruiting(Sometimes double of the monthly salary offered for the physician job! ).
The physician recruiters contract with physician employers and may elect to get paid if they are able to send a physician candidate for interview. Or they may instead elect to get bigger payout only if a physician signs up for the job. For a recruiter, who is getting paid just to get candidates into the door for physician interviews, his main objective will be to get as many interviews set up as possible. An unethical recruiter will not care whether the physician job suits you or not. He will not care whether the physician employer may like that candidate or not. He would want you to just show up for the interview. So if you get kind of calls from recruiters, who are pushing you to go to a certain desolate place for interview, that’s what it is.
If the recruiter gets paid only if a physician candidate signs up for the doctor job, they have to be more careful about selecting physician applicants to recommend for interview. But again, they would like to send more candidates to increase the chances of filling the physician job.
Lets look at another scenario: The physician recruiter is agent for two physician jobs: Job opening A and Job opening B. Job Opening A is a lucrative physician job in Beverly Hills and Job opening B is in the middle of Sonoran Desert. If the recruiter is supposed to get double commission for filling up the Sonoran Desert physician job opening, then its obvious he will try to sell that position first. If he comes across a medical resident who sticks to his job criteria, and refuses to go to middle of no where, not even for an interview, then the recruiter will disclose the position in Beverly Hills.
Summary: Physician recruiters are salesmen. They will try to nudge you to go for physicians jobs which offer them more commission. They probably care the least about what physician candidate wants or what physician employer wants. Unless you bump into a good physician recruiter. Therefore keep your guards up.
We will discuss how to chose and handle physician recruiters in our next post…Happy Holidays!