Public Policy

Changing of the Guard

Career Center FEATURES at-a-Glance

Below, some of the things you can do via the SHM Career Center:

  • View positions exclusively for hospital medicine professionals;
  • Post your resume to the site for employers to view;
  • Sign up to receive, via e-mail, new weekly listings that match your specific job search criteria;
  • Save positions you may be interested in and manage them when you have time to return to your job search;
  • Continually update your resume; and
  • Manage your job search confidentially without disclosing your personal information.

Meat and Potatoes: Post Your Resume

The Career Center’s features are state-of-the-art. You can create a resume and a cover letter. To post your resume in “My Account,” for example, select “Post My Resume,” then “Document Management,” and then “Resume.” You’ll need to open a plain text version (no bold, underlining, italics, or bullets) of your current resume on your computer, and then copy your resume to the clipboard.

Never done this before? Here again, you can open a guidance window or a printable FAQ to walk you through the process. Two minor system limitations appear here: You must click a box to make the text wrap automatically, and the site has no spell-check function. You have to spell check your cover letter and resume before you copy and paste. If you edit your text at any time while in the Career Center boxes, then be sure to proofread to ensure you haven’t introduced any errors. After you create your resume, you can open a text version (a file that ends in the suffix .txt) to see how employers will view it.

In the past, hospital medicine applicants could stand out with a well-formatted resume on quality paper. Online documents force every applicant’s information into the same mold, and this often concerns applicants. Will a skilled, tri-lingual, well-published hospitalist look like every other applicant when an employer is looking at a simple text version of your resume?

The Career Center allows you to upload up to three formatted documents that can be attached to applications. If you are unable to upload your documents, you may e-mail them to the site, which will then attach them to your account. Some applicants find it useful to have two specific types of resumes on hand: a traditional reverse chronological resume that emphasizes experience, and a less structured functional resume that describes transferable skills.

Depending on your computer savvy, the time it takes to set up your account and load your resume will vary. Hospitalists with robust skills may be able to load a resume in fewer than 30 minutes, but it may take longer for others. Regardless, the return on investment is large because the information you enter will form the foundation of your materials that a perspective employer will review. Once your resume is loaded, applying for a position only requires a few clicks.

Hospitalists & key words

An empty “keyword” box can be as confusing for a hospitalist as a blank page is for a novelist with writer’s block. Many hospitalists have a difficult time describing the skill set that most interests them or choosing the best words. In SHM Career Center, career opportunists can leave the keyword box blank, or type in a skill or interest. The Occupational Information Network, O*Net OnLine (http://online.onetcenter.org) can help identify suitable keywords, and it’s descriptions of various physician’s work can also help polish a resume. And, applicants should remember that they can use word fragments: typing “pediatr” will pull jobs that include the words pediatrics or pediatrician or pediatricians, for example. Reading the search tips takes only a few minutes, but can help streamline your results.—JW

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