New Grad Interviews

[DelawarePA]

Hi all,

I am a recent grad and I'm beginning the fun interview process. As a new grad I'm realizing that I don't know much (or at least enough) about what I should be looking for from employers. At the moment I have an interview with an outpatient cardiology clinic/office. I was hoping someone might give me some ideas of things I should be looking for, looking out for or just general questions that I should be asking. I had an initial phone interview and I only had one concern so far. I was told that hours generally run 8-5, somedays 8-6. I wasn't given salary information at that time. I can appreciate that I am a new grad and can't afford to be too picky, however, the thought of potentially having 60hr work weeks, with a family at home, does have me a little anxious. 

Would greatly appreciate any insight!

Thanks!

[Brooks]

I would start by reading the contract/negotiation section. There is a plethora of advice found in that thread. Best of luck to ya! 

[UGoLong]

Be outwardly enthusiastic (as opposed to looking like you’re trying to find a reason not to work there) while you remain inwardly alert to what the place is actually like. You can ask questions and pick up clues as to how people like the place.

 

I worked in outpatient cardio for 9 years(just parttime now with inpatients, but in the same practice.) You will have a “process job,” meaning some days there will be lots of people and someone is off and somehow the people have to be processed, regardless of how much time that takes. You can’t just leave when your scheduled time comes and handle everyone else in the morning.

 

The range of your duties can be broad or not. Taking call, running stress tests, checking pacers, etc. Try to get a sense of that and how they plan to get you up to speed.

 

I agree with the last poster as to getting input as to salary and negotiation. The interview is a fact-finding exercise, for both you and your prospective employer.

 

Good luck!

 

 

Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

 

 

[sas5814]

Besides the above advice see if you can spend some one on one time with a PA who works there now. If possible buy him/her lunch so you can have a good visit out of the office.

The second biggest thing for me behind $$ is the style of the practice and everyone's relationship and how people are treated. All the money in the world won't make a lousy work environment palatable.

This is random but if any significant other is the office manager or nurse... run. Trust me. The times that works out is miniscule compared to the times it becomes "us against you". 

[Lightspeed]

I’m an NP

 

I want to know everything I can sink my teeth into... even where they want me to park. All of my clinical sites offered me jobs, and that meant I had a good grasp of things like daily census, knowledge about who handles rooming patients, who works on the pre auths, deals with phone calls and messages, handles scheduling, does vitals, fills out forms, handles med requests, handles drug screens, lab draws, does medication reconciliation, billing,....all the workflow issues. If that’s all on me, no big deal, I just want to know before I get hired. There was one place that recruited me really hard that I wasn’t familiar with from my clinical rotations. I asked them all those kinds of questions. I wasn’t worried at all about being a burden with them. I think it’s important to know everything you are curious about upfront, even if you are hard up for a job. Refer to the new post here about knowing your worth to get a grasp of what you really are, which in some cases can mean you are more profitable in some cases than a physician based on production and profit margin. I’d also want to know what kind of philosophy your supervising physician wants you to follow as far as your level of autonomy. As a new grad, you might be thinking about how to stay close and learn from your SP, and deviating from that guidance might be the last thing on your mind. However, you also could find yourself someday in the position where your philosophy on something like controlled substances doesn’t match up, and that’s what you’ll want to know how to handle. In my case, I’m independent as an NP. The physician made it clear that activities would march to the beat of the drum he/she was striking. So they could be telling me to prescribe more opiates for “their” patients than I’d be comfortable with. Then I go to jail or get fined when the attorney general wants to send a message, and my license gets yanked. I can’t pass the buck. So you want to know that kind of thing before you sign on. To me, that realization that a boss could be a liability to me as much as I could be to them was striking. 

You want a lawyer to look over the contract, and get things in writing. 

There’s only so much you can glean from current employees that you can’t simply see with your eyes. They work there and live with the consequences of whatever they say to you. They have their own set of loyalties and priorities, which don’t include you. Some of what you come away with from your interactions will be based on intuition. I’d seek out former employees if feasible. Ask around with other places to inquire about the reputation of the place you want to work. 

Then there are details about how it works to call in sick, request and obtain time off for vacations, what the rotations are for holidays/weekends, how you get time off for maternity/paternity leave and how people fill in for those that are taking time off, what the circumstances are for pay raises, what the contract requires as far as notice. 

The list goes on and on, and not many of these issues come up with the actual boss, or whomever is doing the negotiating. Every place that wanted to hire me had a process for the negotiation and overall wooing. I didn’t want to hit on all those points at the expensive dinners with the brass, but did ask to sit down with someone from admin to cover “nuts and bolts” issues before things were signed. I politely asked that I have those information sessions before things progressed to any decision on my part, and never had anyone raise an eyebrow. It’s not like I’ve done this all the time, but as a new grad, I certainly did that. I wanted the best deal from the start, and wasn’t shy about my desire to settle into a good job. And because most of that info was gleaned during rotations, I only really had to play catch up on a couple of facilities that I didn’t rotate at. I literally kept files on each site I did rotations through that I could refer back to when it was time to get a job. Lots of passive research, jotting down things as a student that I heard as I went. Also had a good network of mentors and peers to help me. Consequently, I could literally compare among almost every aspect of my prospective employers to get a sense of what I could be getting into. 

I loved the negotiations and the whole process of comparing offers. It paid off. It’s an active process, and just being ready to dig for answers and interviewing potential bosses is a good skill to have. In my opinion, all this should unfold over a few weeks, not a couple meetings. That might not be the reality for all specialties or all jobs as far as how much they will accommodate you. In some circumstances, you’ll be looking at a real quick process, and not a lot of patience. I’d argue that kind of job would be one to avoid anyway. But I’ve found that when I approach things this way, it attracts a good type of attention too.

Edited October 11, 2019 by Lightspeed

[DelawarePA]

Thanks for all the information!

[AbeTheBabe]

How'd you calculate up to 60 hours/week? Outpatient clinics are usually M-F so 5 days/week. Even if you worked 8-6 every day without a lunch break that gives you 50 hours/week.

[Lightspeed]

New grad trying to keep up with documentation, maybe. Could be factoring in the commute. Sounds like no surgery involved, but if they were scrubbing in. At some point, call. Most likely they are considering being there for lunch part of the work week, albeit unpaid. If I’m eating lunch on salary, I’m working. If I’m eating lunch while being paid hourly, I’m still not at home relaxing. Cardiology is among the specialties I could see putting in a lot of time. 

Edited October 14, 2019 by Lightspeed

[rev ronin]

On 10/14/2019 at 11:22 AM, AbeTheBabe said:

How'd you calculate up to 60 hours/week? Outpatient clinics are usually M-F so 5 days/week. Even if you worked 8-6 every day without a lunch break that gives you 50 hours/week.

As a new grad family med PA without call, a M-F 1.0 FTE job saw me on site 50-55 hours regularly, plus more charting from home, so 60 hours seems like a reasonable estimate to me.