Beat Medical Blog

Blowing the whistle on referees

Posted by Beat Medical

It is inevitable that you're going to be asked to provide details of referees for any locum position, training program, hospital or GP job.

The most common questions we are asked about referees are:

-who can be my referee?
-how recent do they have to be?
-what can I do if I get a bad reference?

Reference checks are used by employers and recruiters for a few different reasons. It ranges from the need to verify certain skills and experience, assess fit and personality, to simply 'checking out' what you have said in your application. In many cases, reference checks are used to differentiate between a number of similar candidates.

When providing a potential employer with referee details, consider the following:

1. Have they worked with you in the recent past?

A referee from twenty years ago is far less likely to provide meaningful, supportive information for your application. Try to stick with someone you have worked with in the past few months, up to twelve months ago at the maximum.

2. Were they your supervisor or peer?

Depending on your seniority, and the position, it is important to clarify for your potential employer who this person is in relation to you. In some cases, a reference from peer may not cut it. However, if you are applying for a very senior position and have not been actively supervised in many years, it may be your only option.

3. Does your referee relate to the position you are applying for?

Although your McDonald's shift supervisor from your high school job may be very positive about your performance, it may not be so relevant for that employer looking for a GP locum. Make sure your referee is suitable for the role you are applying for. We suggest even customising your referees to the position to make sure they can offer maximum value to your application.

4. Have you asked your referee to help?

Many of the referees we speak to every day have not been asked to be a referee. Not only is this uncomfortable for the referee, it makes life hard for the person taking the reference check. Do you think a surprised referee is going to give a positive, neutral, or negative reference? If you are going to be a locum, they may be contacted many times - make sure you let them know that, and the nature of the jobs you are applying for.

5. Afraid of a negative reference?

It's okay to ask your potential referees whether they will provide a positive reference about you. You might be surprised by the answer!

If you suspect that a referee has provided a negative reference, in most cases you can request a copy of the reference check from the potential employer. Under the Privacy Act, they may be required to provide a copy.

You should always have at least five potential referees up your sleeve. Not having one available may mean the difference between getting the job - and not.

9 things you must have on your CV - Resume writing for locums, Part 2

Posted by Beat Medical

In the first part of this series, we pointed out 23 things that you should never put on your CV. Who knew that there were so many ways to go wrong with a CV?

We often have a response of incredulity to our ‘resume rules’ (such as “Why can’t I have my Year 11 rugby victory on my CV?!!!”) but the results the locum doctors who work with us get by following these rules is proof positive that they work!

There is no right or wrong format for a CV. In terms of layout, make sure that the font is plain (such as Times or Arial), and that it is appropriately spaced. Use of dot points is encouraged in order to create a sense of white space and encourage ease of reading.

The most important factor to consider is the relevancy of the information on your CV for the position you are applying for. If you are applying for a position as an Emergency locum, make sure that your resume has an emphasis on the relevant skills and experience for that position. You may end up with a few different versions of your CV for different types of positions.

So, what to put on the CV (in order):

1. Contact details

This should include your name, postal address, home and mobile numbers, and email address.

2. Summary

This is a two to three line precis of your professional experience. For example: “I am a New Zealand trained General Practitioner with over 25 years of experience in primary healthcare, corporate consulting, emergency medicine, and academic teaching”.  

Make it as simple as possible.

3. Key Attributes

This is three to four dot points on what makes you stand out as a candidate for a position. For example:

-Experience in regional and remote environments
-Postgraduate qualifications in Womens and Children’s Health
-Appointments to the University of Auckland as a lecturer and clinical tutor
-Recipient of the college award for XYZ

4. Current positions

List the positions you currently hold, and the name of your employer

5. Career History Summary

This is simply a list of the relevant positions you have held, starting from the most recent. A (shortened) example:

General Practitioner, City Medical Centre
Emergency CMO, Auckland Hospital
Visiting Medical Officer, Auckland Women’s Health Centre

....and so on to your first intern position.


6. Detailed professional experience and achievements

This section is the most detailed part of the CV, and is what really goes into detail about your experience, and what you have done in each position. Where relevant, we suggest that you break it down into various sections according to the type of experience, such as “Primary Health Care Experience”, “Women’s Health Experience”, “Academic Experience”.

The individual positions are then listed under the sub-heading; as below:

General Practitioner Experience

General Practitioner, January 2005 to present

-City Medical Centre, Auckland NZ
-Write 4-5 dot points on:
-Key achievements (e.g. started respiratory clinic for elderly population)
-Educational/research duties (e.g. ran meetings for registrars)
-Clinical duties (saw X patients per day, procedures, etc)
-Management/Administrative (attended quarterly management meetings)
-Key skills utilised

7. Publications

List relevant publications in the format convention of your college or discipline.


8. Education

List the title of the course, awarding institution, and year. The most recent should be listed first.

e.g. Bachelor of Medicine/Bachelor of Surgery, Sydney University 2006

9.Courses and workshops

List relevant courses, with the most recent first.

e.g. APLS Course, Sydney 2001






The most important thing to keep in mind is that a CV is an evolving document, that must change over time in line with your professional growth. 






Beat Medical offers a free CV coaching service to our locums. Join our team as a locum here.





 

23 things NOT to put on your CV - Resume writing for doctors, Part 1

Posted by Beat Medical

This is Part One of a two part series on CV/resume writing for doctors. Follow us on twitter to receive article updates and job alerts.

Is my resume ok? Is it what is expected?

We hear from many doctors who work with us as locums, or those who are wishing to work in the Australian medical system that they are not confident about their CV. They fear it is too long, too short, in the wrong format, the wrong font, doesn’t include the right information, or is not what is expected in Australia.

For the most part, their fear is well founded.

Having recruited to a number of different professions, I can say with absolute confidence that medical CVs are among the very worst I have ever seen. Somehow, amazingly, many doctor’s CVs seem to really hit every mark of ‘what not to do’. Rest assured, though, that it is certainly a problem you can fix.

Why is it so?

The short answer is ‘market forces’. Did you need to supply a CV to get an intern job? No.

When you applied for your next job as an RMO/HMO, did it really matter what your CV looked like? Probably not - there were plenty of jobs.

There is a huge surplus of medical jobs in Australia, so by necessity, you haven’t had to learn the skill of writing a CV. Just a few years ago, you could most likely get a locum job with half a CV written on the back of a banana leaf.

What has changed?


Slowly, the medical employment market is becoming more competitive, and regulated. Many colleges are not increasing the amount of training places available and most employers are heavily formalising selection and employment of locums, even for short term jobs.

There is now a need to really master the skill of getting your CV right.

What not to do, in a nutshell

First, forget everything you learnt at school about writing CVs. It was a waste of time.

Second, never include any of these items in your CV. You may laugh at some of these, but most of them we see every single day on resumes, some are rarer - but are real examples of what I have personally seen.

1. Photograph
2. Marital status
3. Health status
4. Hobbies or interests
5. Details of children
6. Any paragraph longer than 40 words
7. Sporting achievements
8. Anything negative
9. Anything untrue
10. Your race or colour
11. Date of birth
12. Referees names and contact details (Why? Because you want to control access to your referees)
13. Religion
14. Political affiliations
15. Height or weight
16. Weird or offensive email addresses (such as hotpants69@sexylady.com)
17. Irrelevant jobs
18. Irrelevant education
19. Salary/income expectations
20. Anything spelt incorrectly
21. Irrelevant rants about your life, travel, desires, etc
22. Lists of every single procedure you have ever done, or considered doing in your life
23. Detailed background of your Medicare fraud activities

There are some exceptions to these rules - for example, when an employer or college specifically asks for certain information to be included.

Your homework

Open up your CV right now, identify anything that should not be in there, and delete it. For some of you, you may have only a blank page left!  You now have an excellent starting point to a killer CV.

The next part in this series will be about putting your CV back together to build a Killer CV- what should be in there, why you must have more than one version of your CV, and why there is no ‘best’ resume template/format.

Living tropical - an alternative lifestyle as a GP

Posted by Beat Medical

There are so many options for where to live and work as a doctor in Australia that it can be a bit of an overwhelming choice.

As an overseas trained general practitioner, you are generally restricted to working in a regional or rural area of Australia. Although this might mean being some distance from a capital city like Sydney or Melbourne, it opens the door to a much higher quality of living.

In this article, I am going to focus on Townsville - which is in Queensland. Although there are some similar cities around Australia, Townsville has the enviable quality of having over 300 days of sunshine in the year, and is directly across from Magnetic Island, one of the most spectacular natural retreats in Australia.

Being in a regional area doesn't mean that you have to sacrifice education and lifestyle- with the best in public and private schools, a large international university (which has an excellent medical school and world-class school of tropical medicine), amazing sporting facilities, and easy childcare it is truly the best of both worlds. If you do need a fix of the 'big city', there are regular flights to Brisbane and Sydney, as well as flights north to Cairns which go onward to Bali and beyond.

In comparison to the larger cities, drive time to work is a maximum of 30 minutes (the more common average being 5-15 minutes), crime rates are relatively low, and you get a sense of being part of a community. The best part is you can enjoy your time away from work with proximity to the coastline (within sailing distance of the Great Barrier Reef), and myriad sporting and recreational facilities.

If you don't enjoy warm weather, and a relaxed lifestyle, Townsville is most likely not for you. Otherwise, consider going tropical!


At the moment, we have a number of GP positions available in a rapidly growing area of Townsville.

Career Planning for Health Professionals

Posted by Beat Medical

Is your career at a critical point of change? Just starting out? Shaun Hughston talks about how to navigate your career crossroads.

Do I really need to floss?
A dentist routinely asks her patients whether they have been flossing. They think carefully, and say “Yes, of course”, knowing that the last time they flossed, Happy Days was the most popular show on television. It’s something we should all do, in order to avoid an ultimate negative outcome - but for some reason, most of us don’t.
Career planning tends to fall into that category, and is often on the list of things you do once in your life, like knit a scarf, take salsa lessons, or hit a hole in one. Like most things worth doing, though, career planning is a process - not an event.

Who will be at your funeral?
Before you start, do this exercise - imagine you have been lived a long life and you passed away at the age of 101. Write a eulogy for yourself based on the way your life is going now. Be honest - it has to have the good, the bad and the ugly.

Now, write another eulogy based on how you want people to remember you - what they will say you did, how you carried yourself, and what you achieved.

What is the point?
The point of this exercise is to get you thinking about a day other than today, tomorrow, or next week. Even though your plans will change, you have shifting goals, and you will change your mind over time. Now is the time to start planning how you’re going to get to that ultimate destination.

Writing a career plan
A good career plan needs to come from the heart - nothing more than one handwritten A4 page. It can have words, flowcharts, timelines, pictures - really anything that makes it clear for you what you really want out of your career, and how that relates to your life. We don’t suggest any particular format or template, but it should at a minimum contain the following elements.

Your unique points
List as many unique points about yourself as you can think of - be positive, and specific. You might even use a mind-map to do this. For example, if you are a good communicator - partition that particular skill into subsets, and keywords, such as “Superb presentation skills”, or “Excellent bedside manner”.
The purpose of this activity is to find at least ten areas you excel at - this should give you a picture of where you should be heading. Take time to think about the feedback others have given you, and consider the activities you are most passionate about. You should use these points (and your own personal values) as a guide to where you are going. They can also be used as keywords to build your resume, application letters, and interview scripts (we’ll discuss interviews in more depth in a later article).

Your team
Consider two doctors. They both aspire to be neurosurgeons, specialising in a particular paediatric neurological disorder only found in Venezuela.  One has a mentor who already does that job. The other does not.  Which would you assume would be the most successful?
Having a mentor means support, guidance, a role model, and accountability.     You may even wish to have a few different mentors to give you a balanced view - and feedback on how you are going. It can be confronting, and a bit embarrassing to ‘ask’ someone to be a mentor - but most mentoring relationships are informal - and the word ‘mentor’ is never even mentioned.
Being a mentor can be just as rewarding - there may be a junior doctor, a medical student, or even an international medical graduate who would appreciate the opportunity to have guidance from someone who has “been there and done that”.

So, write on your career plan at least three names of potential mentors, and a plan for how to arrange a time to meet one on one. Also think about the type of person you would like to be a mentor to.

Another very important part of your team is your referees (who may well be your mentors). All too often I hear the phrase “so and so didn’t even mention they wanted me to be a referee”. Any reference following this statement is usually less than ideal!

Think very carefully about who your ‘verbal’ referees are. By asking them for a written reference as well, you will get an indication of what they will say to a potential employer, or recruiter. If the written reference states “Bill worked here for one term in 1987. His performance was satisfactory, he was well liked by his peers”, you are in trouble. You need postitive, glowing, incredibly enthusiastic references. Keep looking until you find people who can help you in this way. They are your slam-dunk after an excellent interview.

The final part of your team is professional representation. Sportspeople, actors, and other professionals have agents- so why shouldn’t you? Professional healthcare career planning and recruitment organisations can add a new dimension to the breadth and scope of your career by helping to open up the ‘hidden’ employment market - and helping you keep on track with the basics of resumes, interview planning, and contract negotiation.  

Networking is for losers
As I write this section on networking, I can feel the psychic cringe from our readers. Networking does not need to involve specific events, anything related to pyramid schemes, or handing out business cards. Rather, networking is consciously considering how you can help others, and how they can help you.

One key to good networking is collecting information - phone numbers, email addresses, and details about the people you meet. When you meet other  professionals, show genuine interest in what they do, where they work, and what they are saying.
Imagine you meet someone at a conference who mentions a need for specific training at their hospital. Later on, you realise you have a colleague who carries out that training on a regular basis. By connecting those two people, you have created positive energy which helps to build a consistently positive perception of you.

In you career plan, think about people you would like to set out to meet at conferences, or social occasions in order to build your network. It is simply about collecting information that may help others, or you at a later stage. Keep in touch with these people - with a note from time to time, visit when you are in town, or a Christmas email.

Knockbacks and failure
Knockbacks and failure are reality. There is no silver bullet we can suggest to make it feel better.
You may be rejected for your dream job - perhaps repeatedly. This means they don’t want you, or you don’t want it enough.
If they don’t want you, find out why. Make a time to go see the interview convenor to discuss it. Instead of asking them for feedback on how you went - which will invariably make them defensive and uncomfortable - ask them “what did the successful candidate do to get the job?”.
On your career plan, you need to have some go-to actions to turn to when you are facing difficulty in following your plan. These alternate paths and back doors will be there to help you evaluate the situation more effectively, and to take the right action in that moment. For example, your crisis action  points might be:     1. Talk to mentor
2.    Come up with 10 options in this situation
3.    Take a day with no action to think

Plan for the speed humps now, and you will see the difficult times with more clarity.

The path to enlightenment
Here is where we depart from typical career planning. We do not encourage a career goal, or ultimate job. Your career plan simply needs to be consistent with your unique points, values, and the advice of your team.  So, on your career plan, write at least five ultimate career options (i.e. the job you want to retire in). Pick one of these, and run with it for now.
You may choose twenty potential careers, and end up in none of them. One person’s options might be:
-Emergency physician
-GP
-Farmer
-Mother
-Philanthropist
-Writer

For now, choose the path you are most passionate about, explore it, test it - then accept or reject it. The good news is that you might be able to follow more than one path at a time.

The rules
The final section of the career plan should be ‘your career rules’. These should be based on your principles, beliefs, and values. For example, you might write “I will never let others’ perception of me guide my career choices”, or “I will always work in a position that benefits others”. These may change over time, but set the ultimate direction now.

Share and be accountable
As soon as you have written your draft career plan, take it to one of your team (mentor, partner, friend), and discuss it with them. Encourage them to be positively critical - and to challenge you on why you have chosen the paths you have. In considering the feedback and perception of others, take it into account, think upon it, and let it pass.