Let me introduce our next speaker, who is Dr. Arash Salavita-Barr. He's a congenital calf doc at Nationwide Children's Hospital and he's assistant professor of pediatrics at The Ohio State University College of Medicine. And today he's going to talk to us about the pink elephant in the room, the job search and securing employment. All right, so thanks so much everyone for being here and for inviting me to give this talk. There's going to be a lot of information packed into all these and I, just like Brian said, I encourage everyone to reach out to us and ask a lot of questions at the end, but then also reach out to us after this and we'll chat a lot about all the things that we're sending your way. And no disclosures. So one of the most common rumors we all hear, so we talk about the job search early on in our lives and our careers and we think about, you know, what is it like to go through this process? And the most common rumors are there are no jobs in cat, you'll end up somewhere you don't want to be and take what you can get. And I can tell you that these things are very nuanced. These are not, you know, you know, phrases that are helpful. So I want you to understand that there's a lot that goes into every year and everything changes in the job market from year to year. And you can tell right now there's a lot of movement in the interventional cardiology world. And so you should take all these things as a, with a grain of salt, because they're, they're not really true in the majority of the times that people are looking for jobs. So what's the timeline? So there's no wrong or right time. And what that means is that you should really think about this early, but not stress about it early and never underestimate how important it is to make connections through people like mentors, people like conferences, people that you meet on the fly, because all those interactions can lead to something really important down the line. And they teach you a lot about yourself, the process and where things can go. Job openings can come from a lot of different opportunities. There's a domino effect of, you know, people leaving institutions, retirements, and other changes in institutional levels and across the country. Cases go up within a certain institution, they say we need an additional personnel to take cases and offload some of that experience. You can come in with experience and expertise in a certain niche, right? If you, the things that Brian is mentioning that are important and the things that Casey's going to mention in her talk are going to be really important for this, for this respect. And I think that this is harder when you're a fourth year fellow going into the first attending job, because you feel like you don't have a niche yet, or you feel like it's still developing. In a lot of ways, that's true for most people, but that doesn't mean you don't have anything to offer. Your training program very likely has something that is unique to it that can make you competitive in that job market and your interests overlapping with that niche can really make you a competitive applicant for your first job. And then you have to be likable, right? Job opportunities come up often because the place that you are applying to or the place that you're interested in likes you. If they don't like you, it's a lot harder to make that process work. So that's probably number one out of all these. What are the approaches to this? It's going to be a cross between number one and number two on this list. So waiting to hear, right? You have word of mouth, which is how we hear about a lot of things in this, what is really a small field in the end. We have all these listservs and new ones and old ones that have been telling us a lot about jobs that are out there, both CAF and non-CAF. But then it comes back to a lot of what you've been hearing, and I think you're going to hear these trends in all of our talks. Talk to your mentors and identify mentors that are really going to provide the path towards success in this process, because they've been through it, they've counseled other people through it, and they're going to have their ears open to the rest of the rest of the country and how these jobs open up and when they might open up before they ever make that word of mouth or the listserv pathway. Email programs, and I suggest you do that, the ones that you're interested in early on in your fourth year. Even if it's just to say, I am a fourth year at this institution, I'm looking for a job and I'm really interested in hearing what you have available or might have available down the line. And then network and do that before you look for a job. January, if fourth year comes up to you, you know that they're looking for a job. January of second and third year, they're not looking for a job, they're looking to meet you and get to know you and for you to get to know them. And so if you develop that relationship and they see your face, they know your name three or four times before you're ever looking for a position, that goes a long way. So what are the factors to consider? Is this a CAF job with some cardiology or is it a cardiology job with some CAF? There's a distinction between those two. It's not black and white, but you want to pick a position that you, or look for a position that matches your interests. You don't want to do general cardiology for four days out of the five days of the week if that's not what you're looking for. And so you want to make sure that you're going in informed when you're looking for that job. Mentorship comes back again. You're going to want either institutional mentors and or out of your institution mentors who are going to be able to help you through situations, whether they're in the CAF lab or outside of the CAF lab, because all of us, no matter how experienced or inexperienced you are, need to phone a friend. Location and loan forgiveness programs. Those are all going to be very personal, right? You need to sit down and really be in your mind, thinking about how high those are on your list of priorities. And everyone's going to be different, give that answer differently. And then based on how that priority is set, you're going to match it up to what's available and what could be available, even when you're not anticipating it coming up. And then think about early career. My advice is, if you're looking at a job and you're saying, what's this going to be like 20 years down the line, you may be missing the boat on what it's going to provide for you over the next few years of your early career period. Your needs are going to be different in that time frame than they are going to be in your mid to late career. And so my suggestion is to think of it in that sphere rather than the larger picture. Interviews. So this is generally the most common scenarios that you're going to have to two visit academic interview model. The first visit is getting to know each other. So there's some mutual interest. You're getting to know each other. You're understanding what the interests are in the position, what the position entails, what the institution is like. The second visit is them telling you they're interested enough in you to invite you back for that second visit. And that's when you talk a little bit more through specifics, you build upon that first interview. And you're going to go to this unless you absolutely know you're not interested in the position, right? Because if you don't go, you eliminate your chances altogether. If you go that, you leave that door open and you at least give yourself a chance to either yourself becoming interested in them or them becoming interested in you or both, hopefully. Pay attention to the red flags. If you're going through every single interview that day and everyone's saying they don't trust their surgeons or they don't trust the cath lab or they don't like their leadership or whatever else it might be, that should tell you something. If you ignore it, you're ignoring a trend that could be you the next time someone comes and interviews at that institution. So pay attention. That doesn't mean that that happens commonly, but you certainly can happen if you want to make sure you get that from the people you're speaking to. Don't talk money in the first visit. And there's a nuance to that. It doesn't mean don't talk money at all during the process, but don't talk money on the first visit right away. You want to spend that time learning what that job opportunity is for you. If they offer that information, that's great. Then you don't have to ignore it, but you don't have to necessarily ask for it. The person that comes in and says, how much am I going to make to every single person that they interview with is going to come off as not necessarily being interested in what the program can offer and what you can offer the program, but rather the material things that come with it. And that's all important eventually, but that shouldn't be the first thing you say. If you have a particular niche, find out how that fits in well to the program. So programs might need a lymphatic expert. And if you trained at a place that does a lot of lymphatics, that's going to be really valuable to them. Even if you're right out of fellowship, that can be of value to them. And they're going to hint towards that in some scenarios. And sometimes you need to sort of just tell them the things that you really see molding in your career, especially early on. And then how they plan to support junior faculty and promotions are going to be a really important point as well. And you want to make sure you ask that question straight off, and you can be very specific about that. How often and how successful are they in promoting their junior faculty and what do they do to get there? All of this might seem like a game, but it's not poker, right? You want to make sure you do show your hand a little bit. You want to make sure they understand where you're coming from, what type of position you're interested in. If you're really interested in, again, a niche or a mentorship opportunity, you want to make sure you express that. My advice is, unless you 100% know it's your dream job, you have something on paper that they're telling you it's your job, don't put all your eggs in one basket. Because you may have a lot of interest in them, they may have some interest in you. But if you don't have a guarantee that that's something that you're going to be able to take advantage of, you want to be able to leave open other opportunities and use that to your advantage to understand maybe there's something out there that is better than what you expected. And then how much you commit before an offer actually comes to you just depends on how badly you want it. And I'm happy to talk about sort of what this all means and how that all interplays, because obviously it's very nuanced to the institution and the applicant. And one of the things that no one talks about, right, the things that you need to know. So salary, signing bonus, startup funds, these are where the money comes in initially. You're going to have a base salary, you may or may not have a signing bonus, there's going to be travel expenses early on that are often reimbursed. Startup funds are not money in your pocket, they're money for your academic interests, usually research related, sometimes other interests. And these are all things that are often in some respect negotiable, often less so early on, but still possible early on in your career. But there are things that are, you know, they're difficult for us to all ask about, but you should feel free to ask, especially this crowd here while we're talking about this upfront, because they're important things. You want to know what is my clinical to admin slash research ratio? So how many days am I doing clinical work? How many days do I have to write reports, do my own research, work in a lab, as a non-cath lab lab? How many days on average per week am I in the cath lab? And so how much volume does that translate into? So you know, you're making sure that you're getting the volume that you really want. How much baseline clinic am I getting? Is that general pediatric cardiology, is that interventional cardiology, and how does that work? And then how many service weeks? And this can be a big range, this can be nothing to a couple weeks to, you know, several months of service per year, depending on what the program needs, where they see you fitting in. And you should talk about that if it's important to you and understand what are they already thinking? And then what were you thinking? And how does that interplay? Again, within reason, you don't want to come in and say, I want to take that eight weeks down to one week right off the bat. And then start date, I recommend a little bit of time. Too much time is also not great for a number of reasons. But give yourself a few weeks just to get yourself transitioned from that fellowship to new attending life, new year family, whatever else it might be. Thanks so much, guys. And I'm happy to answer questions at the end here. And I'll pass it back over to Ellen. Great. Thanks, Arash. Can't emphasize enough, taking a little time off for yourself. That's important after so many years of training, going right through to the next step. A couple things in our chat, which has gotten hot here is the, I saw they talked a lot about weight rotation. I think having a targeted approach is important to that. And then, looks like one of the things that's applicable to you, Arash, is someone, Chris just asked, how much is negotiable in that first job, such as research, academic time, clinic days, vacation time? What do you really feel like you can actually fudge on, if you will? So how much stuff is negotiable is, your first job is a tough question, right? So it really depends on the personality you're working with. You have, I think, to be quite frank, this is not to downplay what you could get out of your first sort of negotiation setting, we have the least amount of negotiating skill as a first attending, and you will as someone who's five to 10 to 20 years out, of course. That doesn't mean that you can't take advantage of opportunities within an institution that might have opportunities for you. So if you're interested in research, and you're not getting enough research time, be creative with the needs of the institution. So if they have a research core group, or faculty are dedicated to providing a research resource to the institution, to the Hart Center, and they have reimbursement opportunities to go get your degree in an advanced research certification of some sort, that might be something you're actually interested in that wasn't on the table for a negotiation, but they may be able to provide time to do that over the course of your first one to two years where you're now part of their research core, and you're now have an additional degree that they reimbursed for you or whatever else it may be. So things like salary and bonus structure, the things to know about that are, there's no right answer, I can't tell you, you know, ask for this percentage more than they're giving you. But I can tell you that it's to the program's benefit to give you a higher signing bonus, so your benefit to have a higher base salary, because signing bonus happens once base salary is what determines everything that happens after that point. So what you negotiate for may not be always up to exactly what you want, but if you're going to try to give yourself the most longevity out of that negotiation in a very gentle way, the amount of time, amount of little bit of extra that you get in your base salary will take you longer, and that's what every promotion is based off of when you get an increase in that salary. Time in clinic, time in service, all that stuff, it just depends on the institution's needs, but you can make a case for how that time can be better spent with other things. So you have to read that situation and possibly ask a little bit behind the scenes about how negotiable that all is, because you don't want to come off, again, saying everyone's doing six weeks of service, but I want to do two, right, that's not going to fly. But you can make some adjustments to that based on, again, your needs and the institution's needs. Hopefully that answers your question.

Dr. Arash Salavita-Barr

job search

employment

connections

developing a niche