How to Land the Best Physician Job with Dr. Glenn Loomis

“When you get in there and actually start interviewing, does my supervisor seem like somebody I can get along with? And do my coworkers seem like reasonable people?”

Dr. Glenn Loomis is a seasoned healthcare leader with decades of experience as a physician, residency director, medical group president, and health system executive. Currently a board member at KVLR Capital Partners and Chief Medical Officer at Dapper Care, he specializes in physician compensation models, practice management, and leveraging technology to improve healthcare delivery.

In this special three-part series of How I Doctor, Glenn speaks with Offcall co-founder Dr. Graham Walker about how physicians can effectively evaluate potential employers. With decades of experience as a healthcare leader, Glenn provides a four-step roadmap to ensure physicians make informed and confident decisions about their next role.

1: Carefully Evaluate If the Job Fits Your Criteria

“The first thing I think is just figuring out, is this a job that I even want to interview for?”

Glenn recommends physicians evaluate five key factors before committing to an interview:

• Geography: Is the location right for you and your family?
• Workload: Does the job offer a reasonable balance for your skillset and lifestyle?
• Skill Alignment: Does the position match your expertise or allow for meaningful career advancement?
• Compensation: Is the pay structure competitive and fair for your specialty?
• Environment: Will the workplace culture and your colleagues foster a supportive and enjoyable experience?

By identifying your personal and professional priorities upfront, you can quickly determine whether an opportunity is worth pursuing.

2: Be Strategic and Consistent in the Questions You Ask

“The biggest thing I think is to have two or three core questions that you ask every single person and see if you get the same or similar answers.”

Glenn suggests that by asking consistent questions during multiple interviews you’ll quickly understand the alignment between leadership and team members. For example, “What’s the best and worst things about working here?” “What is the plan for the next three years?”

If responses across the organization show consistency, it’s a good sign of a cohesive and transparent culture. Otherwise it could indicate deeper issues, such as poor communication or organizational imbalance.

Glenn’s pro tip is to ask open-ended questions and actively listen. “People like to talk about themselves, and if you give them a chance, they’ll spill the beans.”

3: Do Your Due Diligence

“You'd be surprised at what you can get online, and you'd also be surprised at reaching out to people in the organization on LinkedIn, that works well sometimes. Even competitors can give you some good information ”

Your research doesn’t stop at the interview. Glenn recommends leveraging online resources, professional connections, and even competitors to gather additional insights about a potential employer. You can try searching LinkedIn to connect with current or former employees or reviewing news about the company on platforms like Medscape. Additionally, if you know someone at a competitor, then reach out for their perspective on the employer’s reputation within their organization. This additional research can reveal hidden red flags, such as high turnover rates or recent legal issues, that might not come up during formal interviews.

4: Trust Your Gut

“If they're interviewing you, they have their best foot forward, and so if their best foot forward is leaving you with that hinky feeling, then you probably shouldn't go there.”

Glenn stresses the importance of paying attention to your instincts during the interview process. Observing how team members interact, the tone of the conversation, and the questions you’re asked can provide valuable clues about workplace culture.

A supportive and collaborative interview suggests a physician-centric environment. A high-pressure or overly formal interaction may indicate a more competitive and rigid workplace. Ultimately, Glenn notes, “The mistake gets made when you say, ‘Huh, that’s a no,’ and then you end up going there. Chances are you had it pegged right to begin with.”

Evaluating a potential employer is about more than just compensation — it’s about aligning your professional goals, personal values, and workplace culture. By carefully assessing job criteria, asking strategic questions, conducting thorough research, and trusting your instincts, physicians can make informed decisions and avoid costly missteps.

To connect further with Glenn, you can find him on LinkedIn here.

To make sure you don’t miss an episode of How I Doctor, subscribe to the show wherever you listen to podcasts. You can also read the full transcript of the episode below.

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Transcript

Glenn Loomis:

One of the things that I would say is that organizations typically, if they're interviewing you, they have their best foot forward, and so if their best foot forward is leaving you with that hinky feeling, then you probably shouldn't go there.

Likewise, I mean, they can give you a good idea of what their culture is as well, and it's more like you're interviewing them. You probably know that that's a pretty tight culture, a pretty physician-centric culture.

Graham Walker:

Welcome to How I Doctor, where we're bringing joy back to medicine. In this third and final episode with Dr. Glenn Loomis, we discuss interviewing for a new role and some practical tips on how to make sure it's the right fit before you take that leap.

Glenn is a board member at KVLR Capital Partners focusing on acquisitions in the healthcare space as well as Chief Medical Officer of Dapper Care, a startup that combines telehealth and AI to make high quality, affordable healthcare accessible to everybody.

Interviewing for a New Medical Role: Tips for Finding the Right Fit

Whether it's your first job right out of residency or you're applying for a leadership position to be the chief of medicine of a hospital, the chief of staff, do you have basic recommendations for physicians when they're considering a new job and how to present themselves effectively?

GL:

Yeah, the first thing I think is just figuring out is this a job that I even want to interview for? And so I look at it in... I have four or five different things that I look at. Is it in the right geography? Does this look like the right workload that's reasonable for me? Is this a skillset that I have or that I'm ready to move up into? Is the compensation right? And then is the environment right? And by the environment, I mean when you get in there and actually start interviewing, does my supervisor seem like somebody I can get along with and do my co-workers seem like reasonable people that'll be good to work with?

Once you look at all those factors, if you think it's a job that you really want or that you want to pursue, then moving on to that interview phase makes sense. You may not get the environment piece until you get to the interview and we can talk about that.

GW:

I was just going to say that the environment piece, I think is the hardest to get a sense for. Whenever we're trying to find a new ER doctor, I try to put that person in touch with as many people as they want to, especially if they have some connection to that person that makes them like they can trust them more. The more people that you talk to that are like, "Yeah, I like this job, it's a good place but we're not trying to pull the wool over your eyes and trick you into joining our group," I think the better because that I think is the hardest piece to get a sense for like, "Hey, if I'm going to be sitting here multiple hours a week, am I going to like the people I work with? Am I going to enjoy the work as much as you can enjoy a shift in the ER?"

GL:

A hundred percent. That's exactly what I try to get if I was advising a resident, or another doctor. The couple of things that I would say is one, talk to as many people as you can to make sure that they give you a mixture of administrators and other physicians to talk to or other providers because there are different perspectives and you want to make sure that you're getting both sides of that coin to figure out is this a good group to work with or is it not? Is this a good environment to work in, is it not?

Key Questions to Ask During Medical Job Interviews

And then the biggest thing I think is, have two or three core questions that you ask every single person and see if you get the same or similar answers. And some of the questions that I like to use are things like, “What's the plan for the next three years?”

And you may get, “I don't know.” And if you get, “I don't know,” then you know the communication from leadership to down in the ranks is not good. Or you may get two people in leadership saying completely different things, and if that's the case, then you know there's a problem.

The other ones are, “What's the best thing about working here?” And you can ask that one to everybody and you should get sort of a theme. There should be a couple of themes that happen, and if there's not, then you have got to wonder maybe there isn't any good thing about working here. And the same thing is, “Well, what's the worst thing about working here?” And if you get a couple of consistent themes, you have to understand are those things that…

GW:

Yeah, are those my personal deal breakers?

GL:

Exactly, and the other thing is be open-ended with those questions as much as you can and let people talk. It's interesting. People like to talk about themselves, and so if you give them a chance, they'll spill the beans. You just have to sit back. If you're trying to impress them too much rather than listening, take some time to listen because that's where you really find out what's going on.

GW:

Yeah, I've tried to get better at asking more open-ended questions and then just be silent, whether it's with my partner or my patients. That silence sometimes speaks volumes as well.

GL:

And it's a hard thing to do because we're all used to that 15 minute visit where we're trying to extract all the information, but sometimes it'd be good if we actually left a little silence with our patients also and let them talk.

GW:

Yeah. Okay, Glenn, I'm going to say this one more time. Best to ask the same questions to multiple people so that you can calibrate their answers. The questions you like are, what's the plan for the next three years? That gives you a sense of, has the vision and the goals of leadership trickled down to the frontline team members, whether it's a nurse, a doctor, a tech, whoever. What's the best thing about working here and what's the worst thing about working here to see if there's themes about the place, the environment, things that either you like or you love about the job, or you love that everybody loves, the food in the cafeteria, or what's the worst thing about working here? Is it a deal breaker for you?

"Oh, I hate that I always stay late every shift," or “I hate that there's never a tongue depressor in the room when I need one.” If those are deal-breakers for you, probably not the best place for you to consider continuing the interviewing process.

GL:

Exactly. I think that's a great summation.

Leveraging Resources for Job Research in Healthcare

GW:

Glenn, do you recommend if people are having trouble getting recommendations of people to talk to? Do people ever reach out just directly on LinkedIn or social media to try to hear an honest take from somebody?

GL:

Yeah, absolutely. I think you should use whatever connections you have and also whatever information is out there. You'd be surprised at what you can get online, and you'd also be surprised reaching out to people in the organization on LinkedIn, that works well sometimes. Even competitors can give you some good information because if you don't know someone in that organization, but someone in the competitor, you may ask them, "What do you guys think about these guys." That they start saying, "Everybody's leaving to come over here," then you go, maybe that's not a great place for me to join right now.

On the flip side, if they say, "Oh, those guys do great medicine and we're dog-eat-dog competitors," then like, okay, well, if their competitors say good things about you, that's usually a pretty good sign.

So I use whatever I can get. I mean, you can do a Google search, look on Medscape for news that might've happened about the organization. You'd be surprised at what they don't tell you, and then you look and like, "Oh, you guys just are in the middle of a big lawsuit and lost a couple million dollars. Nobody told me that." Always surprising what's out there.

GW:

Yeah. I like the idea of seeing what your competitors say about you. It's almost like looking for comps when you're looking for a house or something. Just seeing, "Hey, what are other people paying?” “What are other people saying about that organization?" Especially if you're staying in a geographic area here in the Bay Area, Kaiser, CPMC, UCSF, and Stanford, we all kind of know each other, and so it's a very small world in medicine.

GL:

And a lot of people have worked in one or two of those other organizations at one point and they have friends over there and they can tell you, "Well, it's great for this, but it sort of stunk about this." Or, "My friends are saying that they've got a new leader and they're really doing great things right now." Whatever. So it's always interesting to get a separate perspective that's outside looking in rather than just the inside looking out.

GW:

Yeah. I would also just say trust your gut. If you ever get a weird vibe at your first round interview, it might not be the best place. It's possible they all just had an off day, but it's also possible that you're trying to get sucked into a job that maybe is not great fit for you.

GL:

I agree with that. I think one of the things that I would say is that organizations typically, if they're interviewing you, they have their best foot forward, and so if their best foot forward is leaving you with that hinky feeling, then you probably shouldn't go there.

Likewise, I mean, they can give you a good idea of what their culture is as well. If it's feeling really kumbaya and they're asking your opinion and it's more like you're interviewing them, you probably know that that's a pretty tight culture, a pretty physician-centric culture. Likewise, if they're grilling you on every little thing, you probably know that their culture is more dog-eat-dog within the physicians and that you better be ready to stand and deliver if you're going there.

And so you can get a pretty good idea on what the culture really is just by seeing sort of the style of the people in the interviews, especially if it's pervasive. If it's one person, well, one person is one person, but if everybody goes in a certain way, then you know that's probably how they do things.

GW:

I love that. That's such a great point. I remember in residency or applying to residency, I constantly was watching how the nurses interacted with the attendings and the residence and is it extremely formal or is it more familiar? Are people laughing and joking and happy, or are they extremely serious in every interaction they make? That tells you a ton about that environment piece, how people are going to be interacting with each other, how you will be interacting with them if you take that job or take that residency spot.

GL:

Absolutely. That's a very great analogy, and you get the same thing when you go see people in their environment of practice as well.

GW:

Yeah. It makes a huge difference to just like... I would imagine if you're a surgeon walking through the OR and just seeing if people are smiling and joking, and is there music playing, people singing, whistling, or is everybody just extremely rigid and it's uncomfortably quiet.

GL:

And maybe you're the kind of person who wants it uncomfortably quiet. So then that's great.

GW:

Absolutely.

Trusting Your Instincts in Medical Job Interviews

GL:

You've got to find the place that resonates with you. I'll tell you, advising residents and friends and colleagues, that's where the mistake. Trust your gut. The mistake gets made when you say, "Huh, that's a no," and then you end up going there because chances are you had it pegged right to begin with.

GW:

Yeah. That's my own bias. I want a place where people are smiling and playing music, but yes, other people may not want that. The danger would be, you hear great things about a place, they have great ratings, they're world renowned, and you go there and you're like, "I didn't like it. Am I wrong?" And it's like, "No, you're probably not wrong. Maybe they are a great place, but maybe just not for you."

GL:

Yeah, great medicine and great interpersonal culture are two different things and maybe completely different.

GW:

That's a great point. That's great.

Well, Glenn, I just want to say thank you so much for talking with us today. You covered things so thoroughly and had such great answers to everything that I feel like I learned a ton as well.

GL:

Awesome. I really enjoyed it. If I never help you with anything again, let me know.

GW:

A final thank you to Dr. Glenn Gloomis for all his time over these last three episodes. I hope you learned as much as I did.

If there's someone you think I should interview for How I Doctor, drop us a line at podcast@offcall.com. You can find How I Doctor on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts. We'll have new episodes weekly.

This has been and continues to be. Dr. Graham Walker.

Stay well, stay inspired and practice with purpose.