[djhworld]

One of the things that always interests me around our industry is this.

I'm wondering how other industries do it, I mean, once Doctors get their medical license, if they want to move to a different clinic or hospital, do they have to attend an interview demonstrating their knowledge, doing a whiteboard session on a "Dr House" style medical problem that they have to diagnose in < 10 minutes?

Or do they present their medical credentials, and get interviewed on their bedside manner, their ability to work in a team (if applicable), anecdotes about their past experiences etc?

[lloyd-christmas]

Med school is difficult. An internship is difficult. A fellowship program is difficult. Undergraduate degrees are a rubber stamp, CS included.

There are 20k oncologists across all fields of oncology within the US. That's also about the number of engineers Google employs. Most other industries we like to compare ourselves to are leagues above ours in individual merit. My father is an oncologist, and I'm reasonably confident he has some familiarity with every genitourinary oncologist in North America, Australia, and Europe. More importantly, he's on a first name basis with all of their educators. When he needs to hire a new doctor, he doesn't post an ad on health stack exchange. He makes an offer to a specific individual who he already knows.

One thing that we as an industry fail to understand is that we're not special. We desperately claw to it in these conversations. I'm willing to admit it: I'm easily replaceable. Very few of us have any name recognition that exists in other fields. I worked in finance for half a decade before moving to software. When I'd go to interview, people already knew who I was because of the basic human interaction I had as part of my job. When I walk into the door of my next interview, the only thing people know about me is what's on my resume/blog/stack overflow answers.

Personally, I find technical interviews to be a cheap and easy filter. You may not always get the best person from your pool of applicants, but you get someone that's better than most of them. The marginal benefit of one vs. the other is rarely meaningful. OP complained about having to do this, but some of the other applicants might have found it difficult. Sounds like it was successful.

[llamaz]

My sister is a doctor. In Australia at least, they generally don't bother with interviews or resumes. Right out of university they write down preferences for where they would like to work, and based on their grades they are assigned a position. After that, when moving from one stage of training to another (e.g. resident to registrar or registrar to GP/speciality) they take another test and they are given a position based on their grades on the test. It's like university, but extended to the rest of your life.

Also, in Australia there is the option to do medicine as a 6 year undergraduate degree, which ends up being a very relaxed and easy going degree. Residency and registrar is a 9 to 5 job, where as a registrar you have a six figure salary.

Of course we also have the 4 year long post graduate medicine degree, which would be much harder of course.