Four Signs it’s Time for a New Job

With spring in the air and a long winter finally behind us, many find this time of year to be a season of fresh beginnings, new adventures, and personal growth. For some, however, the daily grind of traffic jams, long lines, and eight hours in a less-than-fulfilling workplace never seems to change.

Hopefully this doesn’t describe you or your current employment situation. If it does, though, there is something you can do about it – as a matter of fact, you’re the only one who can do something about it. Moving to another practice or starting a practice of your own is a serious decision that involves planning, strategy, and forethought, but the benefits of such a decision, as one might expect, can be life-changing.

If you’re thinking it might be time for a new job, consider these four warning signs and see how many apply to you:

1. You’re Always in a Bad Mood: While work may not be the most exciting highlight of your week, a day at the office should not leave you feeling disgruntled, defeated, or depressed. Having a negative emotional connection with your workplace can spill over into other areas of your personal life if you’re not careful, so it’s important to pay attention to how you’re feeling as you walk out of the office every evening.
2. You Do What You Do Out of Obligation: If you feel like your job is what you “ought to be doing” instead of what you “want to be doing,” you’re probably not going to enjoy going to work every day. Being in a practice environment that motivates you is the key to finding long-term career satisfaction.
3. You Don’t Feel Challenged: Too much stress at work, as most of us know, can be a bad thing. Too little stress can be just as bad, if not worse. If you feel like you’re not being challenged daily or that you’re capable of more, it might be time to start looking elsewhere.
4. Your Co-Workers Are Driving You Up a Wall: The people we work with play a larger role in our lives then we can imagine – after all, it’s likely you spend more time with them during the week than anyone else. If you’ve tried to resolve issues with your Vision team but still find yourself counting down the minutes until you can get away from them, consider looking for career opportunities elsewhere.

While most of the above issues can be addressed through alternative means, in some cases getting a new job could be the best option. The most challenging part of any job change, of course, is in the details.

Whether you’re looking to take on more responsibility, start your own practice, or relocate to an area that better suits your needs, ETS Vision is happy to help make that transition as smooth as possible. Feel free to give us a call and get started today!

ETS Vision is a Vision Recruiting firm specializing in finding and placing Optometrists, Ophthalmologists, and Vision Staff throughout the United States. www.etsvision.com

Job Opening: Only Superstars Need Apply

When you Google, “How to hire great employees,” one of the first answers offered is to only hire superstars. It's great advice. If everyone in a company is the best in their field, the company will be unstoppable. Unfortunately it is a hiring strategy that most companies use—and it clearly doesn’t always result in superstar-only companies.


Organizations take great pains to find these impact players. They cast a wide net, eliminate people because of the slightest flaw, and put candidates through rigorous tests and interviews. Yet, no matter how logical these methods seem, they often skip over exactly the type of candidates they are meant to find. And these searches always seem to start with a resume.

In addition to helicopters, armored tanks, and scuba gear, Leonardo da Vinci is also recognized to have written the first known resume. In 1482, while trying to get a job with the Duke of Milan, da Vinci submitted a nine point summary of his skills and experience. By the early 1900’s resumes had become common place, though often consisted of little more than a handwritten career summary. In the middle of the century though, they had come into their own as resumes began to resemble what we know today; a single page typewritten summary of a life and career.

In today’s market, a wide net can quickly bring in hundreds if not thousands of resumes from the most active candidates. With that sea to wade through, resume screening quickly becomes perfunctory. Each resume at first pass can really only get seconds of attention and minor—non-superstar related attributes—become reasons to exclude people from consideration.

“The more dismissive you are of candidates, the less likely you are to actually find who you are looking for. As recruiters we obviously look at resumes, but that is just the first step. The evaluation doesn’t even start until we actually have conversations with potentially qualified candidates.”

To make the process simpler, employers and HR departments are frequently turning to technological solutions to parse resumes and automatically cull the herd. These solutions, though, are still constrained by the narrow manicured view provided by resumes. And people who advertise themselves as superstars, rarely are.

“It’s through a very inaccurate picture that most candidates are rejected. With limited information, the screening process isn’t about finding top candidates, but simply focuses on eliminating as many as possible. Impact players get skipped over every day because a critical skill wasn’t highlighted, the wrong word was used, or because of nothing more than unusual formatting.”

Most every attempt to shorten the screening process seems to do little more than handicap it. So how do you find a hay shaped needle in a haystack?

“Talking. Talk to the candidates, use video if possible or meet in person. Turn interviews into business conversations. Bring a candidate into a problem you are trying to solve and ask for their advice. You’ve got to dig for not just how they work, but how they think and approach problems. If you don’t have time to talk to every candidate who matches the basic requirements, look for reinforcements or use a recruiter. The hardest thing of all is to not eliminate candidates for reasons which don’t matter. At the end of a long search, the best candidate is often one that didn’t stand out on paper and if you’d been just a little more selective, you might have never considered them at all.”

ETS Vision is a Vision Recruiting firm specializing in finding and placing Optometrists, Ophthalmologists, and Vision Staff throughout the United States. www.etsvision.com

How Well Do You Know Your Employees?

Winter storms may have caused employment to be a bit sluggish, but as we move into spring, job growth continues to accelerate. Staff retention is becoming a top priority in 2014 for employers, as confidence builds in the economy and job market, making companies more vulnerable to losing key talent. Organizations will have to ask themselves tough questions about how attractive they are to candidates and employees, and whether they are doing a good job of communicating career development opportunities that have the potential to mitigate costly staff turnover.

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According to many recent surveys, employee turnover is projected to rise significantly as the job market improves. This means that employers will need to place greater emphasis on employee retention to complement their recruitment strategies.

"While companies can develop and deploy a host of retention strategies focused on engaging staff and strengthening employee morale, one simple thing they can do is assess their employees' perception and awareness of internal mobility or career-tracking programs," says Nancy Halverson, vice president of global operations for MRINetwork.

The recent LinkedIn Exit Survey reveals that there is a considerable disconnect between employer and staff awareness of employee mobility programs. According to the survey, HR and talent acquisition professionals overestimate employee awareness of their internal mobility programs by more than 2X. Further, respondents in the US, UK, Australia, Canada and India overwhelmingly say it is easier to locate an open position outside of their company, than to be promoted within.

Halverson provides the following tips for building awareness of internal mobility programs:

• Brainstorm how your organization can develop an internal mobility program, if one doesn’t already exist
• Begin discussing internal mobility programs during the onboarding process
• Leverage and publicize internal mobility programs through employee referral programs to raise visibility
• Communicate internal promotions through multiple internal and external channels to create stories about employee advancement within the company
• Routinely assess employee awareness of the organization’s internal mobility program and adjust communication channels accordingly

Employee mobility programs have always been a great tool to encourage staff retention. Now they are increasingly important as companies face growing talent shortages due to skill gaps, and more workers begin to feel confident about seeking other job opportunities. Halverson adds, "Ultimately, internal mobility programs should be built into the company culture and employer branding efforts. Current and future employees should not only have a clear understanding of the career opportunities available within the company, but also see that there are viable paths for advancement."