Fresh hiring market news and perspectives.
ETS is your greatest resource.

Have an interview coming up soon, but not sure how to prepare? We’re here to help! We’ve put together 10 tips for new graduates and experienced eye care professionals alike on how to find the best job opportunities, prepare for the interview, and land the position even when competition is high. Check out the final episode of our video series below!

In case you missed the previous videos from our series, you can get caught up on Part 1 here, Part 2 here, Part 3 here, and Part 4 here!

Tip #9: Don’t be afraid to negotiate

When reviewing an offer from a practice, simply keep in mind the things that are most important to you and stick to those key things. One thing that happens every year is fellows or residents will start comparing offers with their colleagues and find that things may be wildly different. It really comes down to the location, the practice model, and what you’ll be doing in a practice as to what the offer may be.

For example, compensation ranges may be wildly different depending on the location within the United States. One example is if you’re in a low cost of living area, you may tend to have a lower base salary, but these areas also tend to have higher production bonuses and better incentives applied to them as well. If someone is in a more high cost of living area, it may be more important for them to get a good jump start and have a good base salary, but that will also make the incentive and bonus thresholds a little higher as well.

Before even entertaining any offers, I consider it a best practice to speak with a recruiter such as myself or my colleagues. One of the things we can do at that point is give you an unbiased opinion on the compensation ranges, the type of practice models, the pros and cons of those practice models, as well as some of the partnership agreements we’ve seen previously. This can help you when
you go into an interview and when you start considering offers to discern better what you may want.

Tip #10: Overcommunicate

Many deals failed because candidates and practices don’t over communicate with each other. Things like vacation, the birth of a child, or sick family member may be reasons why you’re not talking to a practice or maybe someone at the practices isn’t getting back to you, but it’s really important that if these things may be potentially coming up that you do anything to let the practice know you’re still interested in their opportunities. Nowadays pretty much any form of communication is considered professional. They can be a phone call, an email, or even a text message. A text message is something nowadays that you can tell your phone to send and it’s voice-to-text, so taking those extra few seconds out of your day is a great way to ensure that your deal is not derailed and you don’t lose out on an opportunity you’re extremely interested in.

I can tell you from experience that silence is always perceived as a lack of interest to a practice. I’m not saying you have to call or email them every day or even every other day. What I’m saying is if you haven’t heard from them in a week or two and they haven’t heard from you, it may be good to send them an email or give them a call just to get a little update.

One of the most important things with communication is having the tools to properly communicate. If you have a voicemail that’s full, how is the practice supposed to leave you a voicemail? if you have an inbox that’s littered with junk mail all the time, you may miss an important email. If you have an overly aggressive spam filter, you may also miss an important email. On solution is if you have an inbox that’s inundated with junk mail on a daily basis or an overly aggressive spam filter is to set up an entirely new email account to communicate with practices. This way, none of the emails that are in there will be considered unimportant. You’ll know that every single one in that inbox is something that you need to respond to.

Lastly, if you’re working with a recruiter, it’s important to keep them updated on where you are in the process. This can be simply be CC’ing them on an important email. That allows them to know where the process is headed. By keeping them up-to-date with where you are in the process, they can be an extra set of eyes and ears on the process and this way they can leverage their experience making these deals to get you the best options possible.

We hope you’ve found this video series helpful! If you’re looking for an associateship, partnership, or ownership opportunity, don’t hesitate contact us today! We’d love to help connect you with the right opportunity.