The 5 Best Resources for Navigating the Community Emergency Medicine Job Market

With the abundance of job search options and generic job sites like Indeed and ZipRecruiter, it’s easy to feel overwhelmed when trying to decide which resource to use. EMRA asked Dr. Leon Adelman, co-founder and CEO of Ivy Clinicians, about available job search options — and the upsides and downsides of each — for residents specifically as they plan their post-residency careers in EM. Here’s Dr. Adelman’s advice.

At the start of my final year of EM residency, our department chairman set up a meeting to discuss my job search. It was brief. He said, “I think you’d be a great fit at our new community affiliate site. Want the job?” I said yes.

In the 12 years and four job changes since, I’ve learned that there’s usually a lot more to finding the right community EM job than a five-minute chat with your department leader. Below are the best job search resources for EM residents, with pros and cons of each.

Word of Mouth
As with my first job search, your attendings and peers are your best resource. They know you well and (should) want to look out for your best interests. Questions worth asking them include:

• Where do you think I would fit best post-residency?
• If you were looking for a community EM job, where would you apply?
• Which community EM leaders would you recommend working with?

A surprisingly powerful predictor of workplace success is having a close friend at the company where you work. According to workplace consulting and global research firm Gallup, “Having a best friend at work fuels greater performance… For example, women who strongly agree they have a best friend at work are more than twice as likely to be engaged (63%) compared with the women who say otherwise (29%).”¹

The main downside of the word-of-mouth approach is scope. You will only find out about the opportunities your colleagues are aware of. This limitation is especially pronounced if you are looking for jobs in a region other than where you are training.

Job Boards

Community EM attending physician jobs are posted in many places online. Commonly used boards include emCareers, Health eCareers, PracticeLink, PracticeMatch, Doximity Careers, and LinkedIn.

Job boards are excellent places to find currently open positions. You can narrow down the search by location and specialty. Job boards are usually free for candidates.

EM job boards have several weaknesses. Most importantly, boards include only currently open positions. Since most sought-after groups recruit in advance of openings, the best jobs often never make it onto a board.

Most residents look for jobs well in advance of graduation. The goal is to find a future position rather than one that’s currently vacant. Generally, only about one-tenth of emergency departments can be found on a job board at any given time.

Also, a key piece of information is usually missing from community EM job posts: salary. Fewer than 10% of job postings list pay.² Not including salary puts the candidate at a disadvantage, as the physician cannot filter potential employers by pay in advance of setting up interviews.

Recruitment Agencies
For some job searches, recruitment agencies can be helpful. Examples of search firms include Merritt Hawkins, Jackson Physician Search, and VISTA Staffing. The key benefits of working with a recruitment agency include:

• Finding out about a wider set of potential opportunities
• Speeding up the job search
• Assistance with financial negotiations
• Helping you find the right fit

The main downside of working with a recruitment agency is that many emergency medicine employers do not hire through agencies because of the extra cost. Search firms typically charge $20,000-$30,000 to the employer per physician placement.³

Locum Tenens
Looking for an adventure? Locum tenens may be for you.

Locum tenens is the fancy term for physician, PA, or nurse practitioner temporary positions. Leading locum firms include Weatherby Healthcare, CompHealth, and locumtenens.com.

Locum tenens advantages include high pay, schedule flexibility, and exposure to multiple health systems. Downsides include:

• Time away from your family and community
• Requirement to learn multiple sets of ED processes and to complete multiple sets of credentialing paperwork
• 30-day cancellation clauses in most locums contracts⁴

Sought-after EDs don’t often contract with locum tenens physicians. As a result, most locum opportunities are in rural areas or at challenging EDs.

Emerging Technology
As with the travel, dating, and real estate markets, new technology is being developed to simplify the physician job search.

The most widely used social media platform for EM careers is Facebook’s EM DOCS JOBS group. Only emergency physicians are allowed in the group, which enables more openness about job details. Salaries are required in job postings, for example. Candidates can also post what they are looking for, allowing physicians from potential employers to respond with offers.

EM DOCS JOBS’ downsides are inherent to Facebook. Candidates cannot search geographically or sort the posts by salary (or other preferences).

Ivy Clinicians is a new online platform for EM jobs. (Full disclosure: I am a co-founder of Ivy Clinicians.) Ivy has connected each ED in the United States with its clinician-employer. On the site, candidates can search geographically, filter by preferences (e.g., ED volume, EM residency site, etc.), and connect securely with matching EM employers. The site is free for job searchers; Ivy charges employers 1.9% of first-year salary once a contract is signed.

A downside of Ivy is its novelty. The site launched in August 2022. Also, much like on a dating website, Ivy cannot guarantee that an employer will respond to a physician who indicates interest through the site.

In summary, you are not alone. There are many resources to help you with your search for a great emergency medicine job. And if the job doesn’t work out, you can always return to these trusty resources — or call your old residency leaders for a referral.

Leon C. Adelman, MD, MBA, FACEP, is co-founder and CEO of Ivy Clinicians.

References

1. Mann A. Why We Need Best Friends at Work. In: Gallup [Internet]. 15 Jan 2018 [cited 16 Aug 2022]. Available: https://www.gallup.com/workplace/236213/why-need-best-friends-work.aspx
2. Maurer R. More Employers Post Salary Ranges to Attract Workers. In: SHRM [Internet]. 16 Aug 2021 [cited 16 Aug 2022]. Available: https://www.shrm.org/resourcesandtools/hr-topics/talent-acquisition/pages/salary-ranges-.aspx
3. Nabity J. Physician Recruiting: Merritt Hawkins Review. In: Physicians Thrive [Internet]. 1 May 2020 [cited 16 Aug 2022]. Available: https://physiciansthrive.com/contract-review/merritt-hawkins-review/
4. Locum Tenens Contract: How to read the agreement in one minute or less. In: Locum Tenens Guy [Internet]. 16 Jul 2021 [cited 16 Aug 2022]. Available: https://thelocumguy.com/locum-tenens-contract/