As an emergency physician, your only reliable source for on-line job searching is via sites devoted exclusively to emergency medicine. There are plenty of them. Some have been around a long time, and some are new and upcoming. Some are hosted by contract groups and independent recruitment firms, while others are open to all job listings.

Some are hosted by professional associations while others are job boards on specialty information sites. Some are the online versions of print classified ads. The most important thing is to chase the web listings in a way that produces strong results and little hassle. Let’s talk about where you can find real opportunity while retaining confidentiality and safety.

Still king of the mountain (maybe not for long) is EDPhysician.com. This is still the premier site for finding EM opportunity based on sheer numbers alone with more than 1,500 jobs around the country. There are separate sections for Administrative jobs, Locum jobs, Urgent Care jobs, Pediatric Emergency jobs and even PA/NP jobs. There is also a section that provides the contact information for every state medical board.

The style is free form, though the owner, Dr. Ralph Single, is restricting individual listing size to 300 words. Click on a state and jobs come up in random order. Leave the site and come back in, click on the same state and the order changes.

It’s easy to navigate, the actual employers are easily identified and you can email a specific listing to yourself or a friend. You will notice that the listings have reference numbers. Those are more for the site than the employer so, if you contact an employer, don’t use the reference number as an identifying item.

With this as with many sites, you can contact the employer/recruiter directly from the site. The email goes to the employer and is identified as a response from a specific job listing, provides your email address, a phone number (if you provide it) and the opportunity to pen a quick note from you to the employer.

It is state driven and each state has a “top of the box” option for employers, which allows for the same listing to show up on top every time.

EM Career Central at www.emcareercentral.com, the career center by ACEP and EMRA is remaining steady. Listings there total about 500 emergency physician jobs around the country.

The biggest problem with this site is the cost to employers/recruiters for listing – easily the most expensive of all the sites which cuts down on usage by potential employers. The format is fairly simple, though I have often encountered technical issues on the cover page and had problems applying filters for the search. Other emergency department job listings, including those for mid-level providers, nurses and then the locum community are mixed in with the physician listings as well, requiring more targeted scanning.

This is the “official job site” for the College, so don’t ignore it. There is a great deal of meat here, so it is definitely worth the time and effort.

Climbing the ladder swiftly is the newer site EDSource.com.

The first line on the “about” page states “edSource is the leading provider of emergency department news and emergency medicine news on the web.”

I think my friends here at ACEP News might take exception to that statement! This site has the appearance of a newsletter and, in fact, offers one. They copy articles from the specialty journals and other publications, listing them on the right hand side of the cover page under the heading “EM News.” The problem is, when I clicked on any of the headlines my browser couldn’t find and open any of the articles; I tried for 4 days in a row with no luck.

They are obviously trying hard to appear “official” and Emergency Medicine friendly, also offering a series of links at the bottom of the cover page to web sites for ACEP, ABEM, AAEM, even the CDC.

This is all very pretty, but I believe they would be better served putting the effort into their actual job search function and forget about all the fluff.

No registration is required to search the jobs; good on them! When you start the search process, a map of the country comes up and you can click on individual states. Again, locum assignments are mixed in with permanent listings along with mid-level provider jobs, but they are clearly identified and easily skipped over. About 300 positions for emergency physicians are available and fairly evenly spread over the 50 states. However, there’s no requirement for employers to identify themselves.

The rates for advertising are pretty good and definitely competitive. Another problem with this site – there is no telephone connection available – no identification of who is in charge of the site, who owns it, who runs it and they do not respond to email requests for communication. In fact, the only email address they provide is the one to list a job. It’s all a big mystery; a bit concerning, that. Still, very worth a look and one hopes they will eventually work the kinks out.

I love Elad Bicer, M.D.’s site EMedCentral.com. It’s a website for emergency physicians by emergency physicians and nothing costs you a dime. Their job board is free form and very low cost to post. I’ve seen as many as 600 jobs posted on this board in peak season. It is so easy to maintain, edit and update your listings as an employer/recruiter.

The site also has a running activity line with who is doing what and when. They provide terrific popular blogs, Questions and Answers, even feature specific emergency department and residency programs. There’s something for everyone on this site including some pretty terrific jobs – and they are exclusively for emergency physicians.

If you are a member of AAEM and will only take a job with an employer who commits to the tenets of the association, the AAEM.org job board may be your best bet for job searching. You won’t find a lot of quantity but the quality will be there. In some cases, the listings are blind with no employer provided, so you have to submit your CV to the AAEM job board administrator who will then refer it to the employer.

This is all quite archaic, but at least you can be fairly certain it won’t end up plastered on a telephone pole in Dubuque. Obviously if you are interested in an academic job, the board at SAEM.Org is the place to go.

EDOpenings.com is a brand new player in the field with great potential. It is run by Melissa Moody, who has been involved with print recruitment classifieds for years. It is a fairly simple format, state driven and though very short on numbers right now, I expect it to grow rapidly. My only complaint about this site is they are set-up for physician registration on site, so that employers can click on the option “find a physician.” Granted, you must have an account and log in to utilize the function. They have made a nice start and are definitely worth a look; just give them a little time to get up and running. By August when the Fall market begins, they should be a serious player.

Finally, I couldn’t do a piece on this topic without pointing out the job search boards based on the ads that appear in printed Emergency Medicine monthly magazines such as ACEP News. Classified job listings in the back of that publication can also be found at www.imngmedjobs.com, a generalist site that gives you the option to immediately choose EM and narrow your search by job title and/or employer.

The site has fewer than 100 emergency medicine jobs but the details are there and so are some of the smaller groups and hospital employers. Even the Annals of Emergency Medicine gives you the option of skipping their classified pages and go straight to www.elsevierhealthcareers.com.

You can filter your search by state and specialty (this is a generalist site) and there appear to be about 250 jobs. There are also featured employers, featured jobs and even a featured video. Worth looking into as some smaller employers tend to stick with Annals exclusively. The secret to successfully using the web as your job search source is to use it often.

Check back into sites once a week – new stuff is being listed on a daily basis, especially during peak hiring season of September through April. Be smart when using the web. Don’t put anything out there you don’t want seen by the world. Contact only those employers/recruiters that have something very specific to offer you. Contact a prospective employer before sending a CV – call first if you can. Know who is going to get your paperwork and what they are going to do with it. I am advocating paranoia, just good common sense and judgment.

Happy hunting!

Barb Katz is the owner of The Katz Company EMC, Inc., an emergency medicine consulting and recruitment firm. She has been writing about emergency medicine careers and teaching effective job searching for nearly 20 years. Beginning this month, Ms. Katz will provide quarterly updates on everything from preparing to job search to creating effective paperwork; from identifying strong opportunity to recognizing the pitfalls. Her annual Job Market for Emergency Physicians will continue with the Location Report in September and the Compensation Report in October. She can be reached at katzco@cox.net.