20 Warning Signs When Interviewing Doctors For A Job

Over 33 years of practice, I’ve interviewed hundreds, if not thousands of doctors – from residency applicants, to fellowship applicants, to hospitalists, to specialists, to medical directors, and to CEOs. And I’ve missed some things, sometimes really, really important things, that have come back to haunt me later on. Here are some of the warning signs that the doctor that you are interviewing is going to end up being a problem after he or she is hired.

1. They’ve been arrested for something. Most hospitals will have some question on the application like “Have you ever been convicted of a crime other than minor traffic violations?“. We hired a doctor who truthfully answered “no” to that question but he had actually been accused by multiple women of lewd behavior and sexual assault. In fact, there were plenty of articles about him in his local newspaper that I only found out about after we hired him (we suspended and then fired him as soon as we knew about it). I learned my lesson and started Googling every candidate’s name with associated key words like malpractice, crime, and lawsuit. On several occasions, I found out that physician applicants were involved in multiple civil suits or had been indicted but not convicted of serious crimes. The lesson is, always Google the applicant.
2. Stuff they post on social media. I personally do not have a Facebook, Instagram, or X (Twitter) account and really don’t have any use for them. But you can learn plenty about me by my blog posts. If the applicant has social media accounts with public access, always see what they have to say and what pictures they post. You don’t want to hire a doctor that regularly re-tweets racist tweets or a doctor who proudly posts pictures of himself passed out drunk at a party.
3. Swastika tattoos. Job applicants usually keep their tattoos covered up during interviews and then you don’t know what is tattooed on their forearms until they are wearing scrubs in your ICU 6 months later. Most people take no more note of the details of tattoos than they would the print details on a necktie or blouse. But a person’s tattoos tell you a lot about them. If an applicant’s tattoos are visible, take a careful look at them to be sure that they won’t be offensive if viewed by hospital staff or patients. Don’t hire a doctor with a naked woman tattoo visible on his arm or any kind of tattoo that could be seen as racist, political, or otherwise socially unacceptable.
4. Time period gaps. Most job applications require the applicant to list the dates of the training programs and previous jobs that they have held. From that you should be able to construct a timeline of everything that applicant has done since graduating from high school. Gaps in time are a red flag and you need to specifically ask the applicant what they were doing during those time periods. Usually, these gaps are innocuous: studying for a board exam, maternity/paternity time, etc. But the chances are that the applicant is not going to list on the CV the 4 months that they were in a mental hospital because of catatonic schizophrenia.
5. Drug and alcohol convictions. Most physician job applications have a check box with a question something like “Have you ever been addicted to alcohol or drugs?“. Many applicants will check the “no” box for that question because they don’t consider themselves to have an alcohol or drug problem. But the applicant who has had 3 DUIs has an alcohol problem no matter what the applicant thinks and you shouldn’t hire that physician unless he/she has completed an alcohol rehabilitation program. I had one physician applicant who had been arrested twice for DUI violations but in both cases, his attorney was able to get the charges dropped on technicalities so they did not show up on his job application. It is best to have a question like: “Have you ever been charged with a DUI offense or illegal drug offense?”.
6. Always call the professional references. As a species, doctors usually write positive or at least neutral letters of recommendation for their colleagues. Sometimes, it is because we are trying to get rid of a problem doctor by helping them get a job elsewhere. Professional references will usually give you a more honest opinion if you call them on the phone and speak with them confidentially. One of our particularly problematic division directors looked great on paper and her reference letters were all fine. It was only after we hired her and someone ran into a couple of those references at a medical meeting that we found out that she was abusive, didn’t get along with anyone, and entire medical staff was delighted to see her leave their hospital. If a doctor’s professional references won’t return your calls, that should also be a red flag – it may mean that they are trying to distance themselves from that particular physician. Also, beware of the applicant who only lists references from many years ago – it may mean that the applicant has developed personality problems that any recent reference would have mentioned.
7. They make jokes that aren’t funny. A fellowship applicant once told me during the interview that he wanted to become a critical care physician “Because critical care is like internal medicine on crack!“. OK, so exactly how do you know what being on crack is like? We didn’t hire him.
8. They failed their board exam the first time they took it. I get that not everyone passes the board exam on the first go. People sometime have bad days – maybe they were up all night the night before the exam because one of their kids was sick. Or maybe they had a recent death in the family. But doctors have to re-take board exams every 8-10 years and if they can’t pass those recertification exams, they won’t be board-certified. And if they aren’t board-certified, they can’t stay on the hospital medical staff. At the least, doctors who fail the board exam once will likely need your attention in the future to ensure that they go to board preparation courses, etc. so that they don’t fail their future recertification exams. I’ve had to personally tutor hospitalists who failed their internal medicine board re-certification exams in order to help them pass them the second time around and to keep them on our medical staff.
9. They move around a lot. There are several reasons why a doctor might change jobs frequently. Sometimes it is because they have a spouse who has to relocate frequently because of job transfers. But sometimes it is because they are ambitious and trying to rapidly climb the medical leadership ladder. And sometimes it is because they can’t get along with doctors and nurses at all of their previous jobs. Regardless, the doctor who frequently changes jobs warrants scrutiny. If it is because of ambition, then that doctor may do a great job for you but will likely leave for the next promotion opportunity in a year or two. If it is because they don’t get along with others, then you’re going to spend an inordinate amount of time doing conflict resolution if you hire them.
10. They cleaned out the hotel minibar. We interviewed a moderately famous physician for a division director job. She looked great on paper and interviewed well over the 2-day visit. When we got the bill for her hotel stay, there was a huge charge for the hotel minibar. It turns out that she packed up everything in the minibar and took it with her when she left. We didn’t ask her back for a second interview.
11. They are too successful in research. In academic medicine, we frequently judge physician candidates for leadership jobs by their research productivity. After all, it is easy to quantify research success based on a candidate’s number of grants and publications. But all too often, successful physician researchers make terrible leaders. Research success is all about your own personal accomplishments. But success in leadership is all about fostering accomplishments of everyone around you. I interviewed a candidate for the chairman of a different department who had an enormous CV full of millions of dollars of research grants and publications numbering in the hundreds. Although he interviewed well, I was very skeptical and gave him a thumbs down. But the dean of the college wanted him in order to bolster the department’s research productivity. Within 6 months of arrival, he was fired because he completely mismanaged the clinical activities of the department and belittled the clinical faculty as second class citizens compared to the research faculty. With the department losing money from declining clinical revenue and unhappy physicians leaving the department, the dean had no choice but to remove him and start the job search all over again. Division directors, department chairmen, and deans get their jobs based on their research success but lose their jobs based on their financial failures.
12. They say dumb stuff at the recruitment dinner. I have a personal rule for recruitment dinners – get a non-alcoholic beer when no one is watching. That way, everyone thinks I’m drinking but I’m actually trying to keep my mind sharp so that I can observe the candidate’s behavior. If I can’t get a non-alcoholic beer without others knowing it, I order a beer that I don’t particularly like and nurse it all evening. Candidates usually let their guard down at dinner and it gives you a better idea of how they are likely going to behave in the hospital. If they are rude to the restaurant staff, they’ll be rude to the hospital staff. I was at a recruitment dinner once when the doctor called the waiter over to tell him that table’s bottle of wine was “corked” (i.e., suffered from cork taint) – she might has well stood on a chair and shouted: “I’m a prima donna!“. We didn’t hire her.
13. They ask inappropriate questions. I interviewed a division director candidate once who looked very promising on paper and had a long list of publications. We had hired a search firm to help identify candidates and the firm’s consultant told me that this particular physician was the best candidate he had seen in years. During his interview, the candidate asked me whether as the division director, he would be allowed to put his name on all of the articles published by the division’s faculty members. That questions showed that he saw the job as a means for his personal benefit and not as a means of benefiting anyone else around him. We hired someone else.
14. They don’t make eye contact during the interview. I think I’m pretty good at recognizing overt psychopathology during an interview but I have more difficulty recognizing more subtle personality disorders. One of the things that I can reliably judge during the interview is communication skills. If candidates babble on and on during the interview, they will babble on and on during teaching rounds and faculty meetings. If they don’t make eye contact with you as an interviewer, they likely won’t communicate well with patients, either.
15. They talk down about their previous or current employer. I acknowledge that physicians usually change jobs because the new job offered something more than the last job. The emotionally mature candidate will put their desire for a job change as a positive, such as “I’ve had a good job at my current hospital but I see more opportunities to grow professionally at your hospital.” The candidate that says derogatory things about their current or past employer will have no qualms about saying derogatory things about you.
16. They don’t dress the part. I don’t expect a physician candidate to come wearing a tuxedo or an evening dress but I do expect at least a minimum of formality in attire. I had a hospitalist candidate show up for his interview wearing jeans, an untucked golf shirt, and sneakers. I figured if he showed up that way for his interview with me, he would likely show up that way to take care of patients. We didn’t hire him.
17. They show up late. Okay, I accept that there can be traffic jams, canceled flights, and car flat tires. But a candidate that is late for the interview better have a really, really good excuse. Otherwise, that candidate is also going to be likely to show up late for work, for meetings, and for rounds.
18. They focus too much on time off and salary. I understand that these are questions on every candidate’s mind but the initial job interview is not the time to be excessively asking about the number of vacation days and salary structure. It comes across as pointing toward the candidate as a potential problem child, and not a team player.
19. They run another business. Personally, I like it when physician candidates have outside hobbies and activities. I think they keep the physician grounded and help promote sanity. But a second job can become a time conflict. I interviewed a division director candidate who had started a company manufacturing a medical device that he had designed. He was world famous and had a lot of invited lectures on his CV. I was skeptical but we hired him anyway. He continued to travel regularly for invited lectures and company board meetings to the point that he was gone from the hospital more than he was there. One night when he was on call, I was covering our ICU and I paged him – he was in another state. I like physician candidates who are mildly famous, but not too famous. A second job can be a conflict of time.
20. Expertise out of proportion to typical training experiences. I had a family medicine residency graduate who was interviewing for a hospitalist position claim that he had performed dozens of central venous catheter placements, arterial lines, and endotracheal intubations. He even produced procedure logs as confirmation. Family medicine residents rarely have this much experience performing ICU procedures. But things seemed in order so we hired him and credentialed him for those procedures. Within weeks, he had left a guide wire in a patient during a central line placement and caused a pneumothorax during another line. He repeatedly needed to call for back-up after inability to successfully place endotracheal tubes in emergencies. I suspect that he doctored his procedure logs from residency. We let him go before the end of his probationary period.

March 11, 2025