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.