Results For: 2011 Staff Satisfaction Survey: Fill & Download for Free

Flipkart may well be the incumbent and the player to beat in the Indian market, but Amazon brings with it close to two decades of experience – experience of battling it out in conditions that are very similar to the Indian market in several respects.Monopolies may have the luxury of getting distracted. If you were a Microsoft in the 1990s, you could force computer manufacturers to pay you a MS-DOS royalty for every computer they sold, irrespective of whether the computer had a Microsoft operating system installed on it or not. You dared not go against Microsoft, because if you did, it could snuff you out – “cut off the oxygen supply”, to put it more evocatively. But if you are a monopoly, you do have to keep one eye on the regulator, which distracts you. If you are not a monopoly, you have to keep one eye on the competition (despite what Amazon may keep saying to the contrary, that they “just ignore the competition”).Few companies exist in a competitive vacuum. In Flipkart’s case, the competition is Amazon – make no mistake about it. Yes, there is SnapDeal, eBay India, and even HomeShop18; but the numbers speak for themselves. Flipkart has pulled ahead of the pack. As long as Amazon had not entered the Indian market, Flipkart’s rise was more or less certain, thanks to its sharp focus on expanding its offerings, honing its supply-chain and successfully raising enough capital to not have to worry about its bottom-line while it furiously expanded.Amazon India made a quiet entry on 5 June 2013, with two categories – books, movies and TV shows, but followed up with a very splashy blitz two months later in August (it offered 66 percent discounts on many books to mark India’s 66 years of Indian independence – I should know, I binge-bought about 20 books!). A little more than a year later, in September 2014, Amazon turned the screws even more when its iconic founder-CEO Jeff Bezos, visited India. In a very showy display that earned it a ton of free advertising, Bezos wore a sherwani and got himself photographedswinging from an Indian truck, met Narendra Modi and reiterated Amazon’s commitment and confidence in the Indian market - all this without ever taking Flipkart’s name. It didn’t help Flipkart that on 30 July 2014, Amazon India had announced an additional $2 billion investment in India. It didn’t hurt Amazon either that it timed the press release exactly one day after Flipkart closed $1 billion in funding - this was entirely Amazon’s way of jiu jitsu-ing its competitors (so much for “ignoring the competition”). Flipkart on its part ran into more needless problems with its much-touted “Big Billion” sale that was mercilessly ambushed by competitors, and resulted in its founders having to tender an apology for several glitches its customers faced during the sale. Then there were questions on just how much money it actually made from the event, which I analyzed.Flipkart seemed to be getting distracted.When facing a charged-up Michael Holding, you cannot afford to let your guard down, even if you are batting on 91. Ask the legendary Sunil Gavaskar. Amazon is the Michael Holding of competitors. Ask Marc Lore, the founder of Jet, which is "planning to launch a sort of online Costco later this spring with 10 million discounted products”. Marc who? He is the co-founder of Quidsi. Quidsi what? Quidsi is (was) the company behind the website Page on diapers.com, which was acquired by Amazon. Therein lies a tale.Page on diapers.com was the website of Quidsi, a New Jersey start-up founded in 2005 by Marc Lore and Vinit Bharara to solve a very real problem: children running through diapers at a crazy pace, and “dragging screaming children to the store is a well-known parental hassle.” What made selling diapers online unviable for retailers was the cost involved in “shipping big, bulky, low-margin products like jumbo packs of Huggies Snug and Dry to people’s front doors.” Page on diapers.com solved the problem by using “software to match every order with the smallest possible shipping box, minimizing excess weight and thus reducing the per-order shipping cost.” Within a few years, it grew from zero to over $300 million in annual sales. It was only when VC firms, including Accel Partners, pumped in $50 million that Amazon and Jeff Bezos started to pay attention. Sometime in 2009, Amazon started to drop prices on diapers and other baby products by upto 30 percent. Quidsi (the company behind Page on diapers.com) lowered prices – as an experiment – only to watch Amazon’s website change prices accordingly. Quidsi fared well under Amazon’s assault, “at least at first.” However, growth slowed. “Investors were reluctant to furnish Quidsi with additional capital and the company was not yet mature enough for an IPO.” Quidsi and WalMart vice chairman (and head of Page on walmart.com) Eduardo Castro-Wright spoke, but Quidsi’s asking price of $900 million was more than what WalMart was willing to pay. Even as Lore and Bharara travelled to Seattle to meet with Amazon for a possible deal, Amazon launched Amazon Mom – literally while the two were in the air and therefore unreachable by a frantic Quidsi staff! “Quidsi executives took what they knew about shipping rates, factored in Procter and Gamble’s wholesale prices and calculated that Amazon was on track to lose $100 million over three months in the diapers category alone.” Amazon offered $580 million. WalMart upped its offer to $600 million – this offer was revealed to Amazon, because of the conditions in the preliminary term sheet that required Quidsi “to turn over information about any subsequent offers.” When Amazon executives learned of this offer, “they ratcheted up the pressure even further, threatening the Quidsi founders that “sensei,” being such a furious competitor, would drive diaper prices to zero if they went with Walmart.” Quidsi folded, sold to Amazon and the deal was announced on November 8, 2010. Marc Lore continued with Amazon for two years after that – most likely the result of a typical retention and no-compete clause in such acquisitions.The tale of Quidsi is one cautionary tale for any company going head-to-head with Amazon. For more details on the fascinating history of Amazon, I would recommend Brad Stone’s book, The Everything Store: Jeff Bezos and the Age of Amazon – from which I have adapted the example of Page on diapers.com above. You can read another report here. I suspect you may well find some copies of the book lying around in Flipkart’s Bengaluru offices!In their evolution and growth as an online retailer, Flipkart has adopted and emulated several of Amazon’s successful features. Arguably the most successful innovation from Amazon has been to reduce, or entirely eliminate in some cases, the friction of ordering goods from their website. The pace and extent of innovation is quite breathtaking. A brief overview will help illustrate the point.Amazon used to charge for every order placed in addition to a handling charge per item (typically 99 cents). In 2002, it launched “Free Super Saver Shipping on qualifying orders over $49” as a test. After seeing the results, it lowered this threshold to $25. For over 10 years that price held, till 2013, when it raised this minimum to $35. Not content with this, to lure in that segment of customers who wanted to order even a single item and have it delivered in two days or less, Amazon launched a new express shipping option – Amazon Prime – where “for a flat membership fee of $79 per year, members get unlimited, express two-day shipping for free, with no minimum purchase requirement.” This proved to be a blockbuster hit for Amazon and the company piled on goodies to this program – Amazon Instant Video, an “instant streaming of selected movies and TV shows” at no additional cost. That same year it launched “Library Lending for Kindle Books”, which allowed customers to “to borrow Kindle books from over 11,000 local libraries to read on Kindle and free Kindle reading apps”, with no due date and added that to the Prime program at no extra cost. In 2011 it launched “Subscribe & Save” – that let customers order certain items on a regular basis at a discounted price – basically you had to select the frequency and the item would be delivered every month/quarter without your having to re-order it. Amazon launched “Kindle Matchbook”, where, “For thousands of qualifying books, your past, present and future print-edition purchases now allow you to buy the Kindle edition for $2.99 or less.” Similarly, its “AutoRip” program allowed customers to receive free MP3 format versions of CDs they had purchased from Amazon (since 1998) and which was extended to Vinyl Records.If all this was not enough, in 2015, Amazon launched a physical button called Dash Button – on 1 April, no less – that would let customers order an item of their selection with one press of the button. It could be their favourite detergent, dog food, paper towels, diapers – an expanding selection. You could stick that button anywhere – your refrigerator, car dashboard, anywhere. It was indeed so outlandish that many thought it was a gimmick for April Fool’s Day.Amazon has been relentless in eliminating friction between the customer and the buying process on Amazon on the one hand and on squeezing out its competitors with a relentless, ruthless pressure on the other. It manages to do all this while topping customer satisfaction surveys, year after year.Flipkart has certainly not been caught flat-footed. It’s been busy introducing several similar programs. It began with free shipping, then raised the minimum to Rs 100, then Rs 200, and eventually Rs 500. Somewhere in between, it modified that to exclude books fulfilled by WS Retail (which was co-founded by Flipkart founders and which accounts for more than three-fourths of all products sold on Flipkart) from that minimum. In May 2014, it launched Flipkart First, an Amazon Prime-likemembership program that entitled customers to free “in-a-day” shipping for an annual fees of Rs 500. It also tied up with Mumbai’s famed 'dabbawalas' to solve the last-mile connectivity problem for deliveries.Flipkart’s foray into digital music however was less than successful. It shuttered its online music store Flyte, in June 2013, a little over a year after launching it. Some speculated it was unable to compete with free offerings like Saavn, Gaana etc and was unable to meet the annual minimum guarantees it had signed up with music labels for. Whether it really needed to pull the plug so soon is debatable – for all purposes it may have signalled weakness to the world. Competitors watch these developments very, very closely. Its e-book business has been around for a little over two years, but is not clear how much traction they have in the market. With the launch of Amazon Kindle in India, Flipkart will see it being squeezed even more. The history of the ebook market is not a happy tale – if you are not Amazon or the customer.The market for instant-gratification refuses to stand still. Amazon upped the ante by launching Amazon Prime Now in December 2014. Prime program customers were guaranteed one-hour delivery on tens of thousands of items for $7.99 (two-hour delivery was free). This program was launched in Manhattan and rapidly expanded to half a dozen cities in the US by April 2015. Closer to home, in India, it launched KiranaNow in March 2015, in Bengaluru, promising delivery of groceries and related items in four hours.More than anything else, the online retail world is a race to eliminate friction from the buying process, to accelerate and enable buying decisions – as frequently as possible and to provide instant gratification through instant delivery (in the case of e-books or streaming music or video) or one-hour deliveries. Flipkart may well be the incumbent and the player to beat in the Indian market, but Amazon brings with it close to two decades of experience – experience of battling it out in conditions that are very similar to the Indian market in several respects. More ominously, for Flipkart, Amazon has won many more battles than it has lost. Distraction can prove to be a fatal attraction and affliction.

(Anonymous because of comments about one of my employers)Shut the Door. Have a Seat.One of my contracting clients is a large aerospace and defense firm. The local plant was established in the 1940s when they manufactured parts for World War II bombers, and parts of the parent company go back further than that. I regularly encounter people who have 30 years of service with the company, and people with 40 and even 50 years of service are not unheard of.In the US it is generally accepted that there is a long-term cultural shift towards shorter job tenure, less job security, more career changes, and more ad hoc employment (freelancing, contract work, small-scale entrepreneurship). I am in my early 30s and my father, a Baby Boomer who worked for the same big company for over 25 years (before they pushed him into taking an early retirement package-- he now works for a startup) firmly advised me not to have any expectation of lifetime employment with one company or even of decade-long employment with one company. The days of joining a company shortly after graduation and settling in there for the entire course of one's working life were already long gone by the time I was a kid.The aerospace firm was acquired about a year ago, and the new owners have since initiated several rounds of layoffs. Some people were able to take a voluntary separation, and for long-tenured employees that can be a pretty sweet deal. I sit in the Human Resources area so I overhear them being thanked for their decades of service and talking about their pension benefits.Many of those separations are not voluntary, though. And hey, wait! What's a pension? No employer has ever offered me one of those. I just have a 401(k). Hmm.Age and Job TenureAge does correlate with job tenure (i.e., younger people do tend to job-hop more than older people) but this is not a recent development.A Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) longitudinal survey begun in 1979[1] followed people born between 1957 and 1964, at the tail end of the Baby Boom. It found that on average, people in the cohort held 11.3 jobs between the ages of 18 and 46 and that half of those jobs were held between ages 18-24. However, while the length of time a person remained with one employer did go up the older the person was when they started the job, older workers could still show job turnover. For workers who started a job when aged 40-46, 33% held the job for less than one year and 69% held the job for less than five years.I unfortunately don't have time to get into the raw data[2] so I am cautious about drawing too many conclusions. Many people aged 18-24 are focused primarily on education, so they only hold temporary and student jobs. Looking at people aged 25-30 might be more instructive. And without knowing what total percentage of people aged 40-46 started new jobs at that age or more details about the older job-starters, I can't tell whether job movement is actually common in that age group or if the older job-starters were just constitutionally unstable.Still, an average of 11 jobs held between ages 18-46 certainly falls short of showing a pattern of lifetime employment for Boomers. Youthful job instability didn't start with "young people today".A Rolling Stone Gathers No Moss?So knowing that younger workers do job-hop more than older workers, the next question is "why?" The same BLS study indicated that annual salary growth was also strongest for younger workers, with the highest growth occurring before age 30. This gives people an incentive to maximize their earning power in their 20s as a hedge against wage stagnation later on. However, remaining with one employer during this time is not the most effective way to do this. People assuming that they will receive substantial annual raises from their current employer are in for some disappointment. A well-rated employee might reasonably expect a cost of living adjustment plus a small percentage salary increase for good performance (but in the last recession and the current climate of straitened employment, plenty of people didn't receive even that). The time to pursue really big jumps in compensation is when negotiating a new employment agreement, not when working for one's current employer.Millennial-generation workers also tend to prioritize having work that is meaningful and personally fulfilling more than workers from previous generations, who placed a primary emphasize on stability and steady growth. When I talk with my grandparents, they express puzzlement at how much personal reward younger people expect to get out of their employment. For them work was a means to an end, and as long as the job paid sufficiently and was not dangerous, abusive, or unethical it was more or less acceptable. They worked to support themselves and derived their personal satisfaction from family, hobbies, community work, and so on. Younger employees expecting that work will be a primary source of existential happiness may feel motivated to move between different jobs in pursuit of learning opportunities and different experiences, in search of a role that they feel has a positive impact, or to leave an employer that does not demonstrate compatible values [3], [4].Some industry cultures (the tech sector being a prime example) even encourage movement between companies, believing that staying in one place for too long fosters stagnation and that long-tenured workers (especially those who have remained in a particular role for a long period) are less agile, less motivated, and generally stale.I Won't Scratch Your Back If You Won't Scratch MineMy generation has no Great Depression, but we have seen the effects of long-term economic instability on our parents and on ourselves. We have seen once-stable jobs get outsourced. We have seen how pressure to be not just steadily profitable but constantly growing motivates companies to cut staff. At the aerospace firm, I see how many of the involuntarily laid-off employees are smart, dedicated workers with valuable skills or long-time, loyal employees with rich institutional knowledge. If employers feel no particular loyalty to their employees, no one should be surprised when employees respond in kind.Google's free cafeteria and Apple's shuttle buses from San Francisco to Cupertino get a lot of press, but overall companies seem to be making less meaningful investment in their employees than they used to (and let's be honest-- a free shuttle bus is hardly a meaningful investment). Defined-benefit retirement plans in the private sector had gone the way of the dodo well before I joined the workforce. If I am lucky my employer will chip in a little money to my 401(k), but the expectation is that I am on my own to fund my retirement. The parent company of the aerospace firm used to offer exceptional education benefits (close to all-you-can-eat higher education), but while they are still generous they are now substantially diminished. Other companies I have worked for offer such paltry educational programs with such restrictive terms that they are effectively useless in a world where a master's degree will cost me tens of thousands of dollars. People from my parents' generation sometimes express surprise at how little training my employers have provided and assume that companies are happy to fund continuing education. This is no longer so.There is evidence that Millennials' job movement is as much defensive as it is aspirational. A Price Waterhouse Cooper study found that the 2008 Great Recession impacted young workers' expectations about job stability. Where in 2008 75% of the Millennial workers they surveyed expected to have between 2 and 5 employers, in 2011 only 54% felt similarly[4]. A 2011 Capstrat study actually found that young workers actually placed a very high value on stability and job security, with good benefits even winning out over salary in importance [5].I myself have been laid off twice (once as a contractor about two weeks after receiving a good performance review and a raise, and once by a company that had previously given me retention bonuses but decided to sell my product group). I don't take it personally, but I can't ignore the lesson that companies will cut staff without a second thought if it helps their bottom line and that being a highly-rated and hard-working employee isn't enough to keep me off the chopping block. In that framework, moving between employers is not just a means to growth but a necessary survival strategy.[1] Number of Jobs Held, Labor Market Activity, and Earnings Growth Among the Youngest Baby Boomers: Results from a Longitudinal Survey Summary[2]Page on Bls[3] Page on Netimpact[4] Key findings[5] Page on Capstrat

Q. How competitive is the job market for radiologists?A. The job market for radiologists has finally turned around.New survey finds radiologists are back in demandThe Radiology Job Market Must Change with the TimesTwo ways to make the most of the improving radiology job marketNew survey finds radiologists are back in demandBy Brian Casey, AuntMinnie.com staff writerJune 8, 2017 -- For the first time in a decade, radiologists have landed back in the top 10 of search assignments for U.S. physicians by recruiting firm Merritt Hawkins, as employment conditions in the specialty continue to improve.Merritt Hawkins noted that radiologists had been absent from its top 10 list since 2007. The specialty's return is due to an increase in diagnostic imaging procedures, a more limited pool of candidates, and the proliferation of teleradiology services.The firm said it received 80 requests for radiologist searches in 2016/2017, up 100% from 40 in 2015/2016. The growth was enough to land radiology in the tenth spot on the list, which was topped by family medicine physicians, psychiatrists, and internal medicine doctors.The firm also reported an average salary for radiologists of $436,000 in the 2016/2017 period. The company characterized radiology's resurgence as the continuance of a comeback. Demand for radiologists had diminished starting in 2003, when the specialty topped Merritt's list of most requested search assignments. Contributing to the decline was a "robust" supply of residents entering the job market, reimbursement cuts, and utilization suppression.But renewed demand for radiologists is "inevitable," according to the report, "because imaging remains central to diagnostic and procedural work in today's healthcare system, in which very little transpires without an image." Also, due to an improving economy and an aging population, "demand for radiologists was going to rise at some point." What's more, close to 50% of radiologists are older than 55, "and attrition is beginning to reduce the candidate pool. "Teleradiology has affected the field, but Merritt noted that demand is at the level where clients are seeking both traditional onsite radiologists as well as teleradiologists. The report can be accessed by clicking here.The Radiology Job Market Must Change with the TimesApr 14, 2017 | Nisha Mehta, MDAll signs indicate that the radiology job market is turning around. The number of available positions in 2016 well exceeded the number of finishing trainees, and this trend is expected to continue as more senior radiologists retire or cut back. A 2013 Health Affairs study projected that as the U.S. population ages, demand for radiology services will grow approximately 18 percent between 2013 and 2025 (Health Aff (Millwood). 2013 Nov;32(11):2013-20). When accounting for other factors leading to an overall increased utilization of radiology services, the increase in volume will likely be larger. Compounding this numbers problem, a higher proportion of radiologists are interested in limiting the number of hours they spend at work. So along with the other challenges facing the field, radiology is now in the position of facing a shortage of physicians.In 2015, applications for radiology residency were the lowest in a decade, according to data from the National Resident Matching Program. Conversations with medical students yield concerns about declining reimbursement and uncertainty about the future of the field. However, this factor only accounts for a fraction of their concerns. Compensation cuts and rapidly evolving practice landscapes are realities across the board in medicine, and radiology remains one of the better reimbursed fields. So what is it about radiology that’s causing a decline in applicants?Digging deeper, a less discussed factor provides some answers. Medical students have been listening to the complaints of those they rotate with. As an increasing percentage of women and millennial physicians enter the job market, simply looking at compensation downplays the crucial role that work-life balance and job satisfaction play in selecting a specialty. Millennials have consistently shown that they are willing to take significant salary cuts to achieve better work-life balance. For women, who stereotypically place more emphasis on this, the numbers indicate that radiology is not faring well with recruitment. Although nearly 50 percent of medical students are female, only approximately 27 percent of radiology residents are female.1According to a recent study published in Mayo Clinic Proceedings, radiologists ranked fifth out of more than 23 surveyed specialties in their reported burnout rate (Mayo Clin Proc. 2015 Dec;90(12):1600-13). While 47.7 percent of radiologists reported experiencing burnout in 2011, that number jumped to 61.4 percent in 2014. Contributing factors include increasing volumes, the heavy emphasis on reducing turnaround times, decreasing reimbursement and the amount of required after-hours work. Also, as radiology groups look to compensate for lost income by taking back the night from teleradiology, companies and hospitals are increasingly requesting in-house (and in some cases, subspecialty) coverage and the frequency of in-house calls has become more burdensome. It’s been cited as a reason why many switch to teleradiology jobs, as well as a reason why competitive medical students choose to pursue other in-demand specialties, which for the most part allow calls to be taken from home and utilize physician extenders to cover basic needs in the hospital. While medical students are expressing a preference for lifestyle-oriented fields, the average radiology group is actually shifting in the other direction.Traditionally, radiology practices have operated on an egalitarian model, with work responsibilities, income, and vacation being evenly distributed amongst partners. There are obvious benefits to this framework, and its simple nature is appealing to groups that don’t want to get caught up in the many nuances that arise if they stray from it. Accommodating part-time physicians can significantly complicate work and vacation scheduling, for example. And employing part-time physicians can contribute to the mentality that shifts extra responsibility onto full-time partners, adding to an already perpetually increasing administrative burden. Structuring partnership agreements to reflect varying commitments to the practice while still remaining fair to everyone involved can become very subjective, and often contentious.Regardless, it is now time for a change. Although many groups would (understandably) make the argument that they are looking to recruit people who are willing to work more, rather than less, these radiologists are in limited supply. Recruitment and retention of full time radiologists with large call responsibilities will become increasingly difficult as the demographics of trainees change. The lack of part-time options or flexibility in scheduling is one of the most common cited factors in the decision of a growing number of radiologists to shift to locums or teleradiology positions. As this trend is often blamed for undermining the private practice radiology group’s ability to negotiate with hospitals, commoditizing radiologist skills and driving down reimbursement, groups should pay close attention to this new demographic.We as a field need to become more creative and address changing demographics and physician burnout. We need to make it possible for people to work varying amounts and recognize the needs of those who would trade a portion of their compensation for increased flexibility. As groups grow larger, the potential for these opportunities should increase. This would help groups with the recruitment of new physicians while also helping them keep senior partners who might be looking to scale back a bit.Time off is an obvious area that groups should revisit. Most radiology groups offer generous amounts of vacation, but also tend to offer vacation in one-week blocks to ease scheduling complexity. This process is problematic for those hoping to take more three day weekends or have an occasional day off to go to a school event. By offering at least a portion as individual days off, radiologists could choose to work less days a week, and part-time positions could be more easily accommodated.Job sharing doesn’t have to only involve two people; it could be a combination of three or four people who make up an even number of full time equivalents. Tailoring worklists such that certain assignments could be handled remotely would also allow for greater options in larger groups, including an expanding role for home workstations and the ability to customize work hours. The utilization of physician assistants can provide additional latitude. Many groups have found “weighing” shifts to be helpful, heavily incentivizing those who are willing to work nights, weekends and holidays. Those who don’t want to take as much call should be permitted to outsource their calls to other radiologists in the group or even locum radiologists.Groups in the Midwest and the South will have to adjust first, as this is where the largest percentage of open positions are right now. These groups have conventionally attracted fewer applicants, but have been able to successfully recruit by offering higher salaries and lower costs of living. Given that millennials are less lured by these factors, recruitment will become increasinglydifficult. This will be compounded by the fact that many of these groups are smaller and may need radiologists who are willing to be generalists. Today’s trainees, who are completing mini-fellowships in residency followed by formal fellowships after residency, may find themselves uncomfortable with these positions. Having more flexible options than those offered by in-demand urban groups would provide these groups with a competitive edge.Lastly, more groups may want to consider providing paid maternity leave. In the larger scheme of a radiologist’s career, paying for a few months of time off is likely a drop in the bucket. However, for young female radiologists coming out of training, who are often burdened with medical school debt, this unpaid time can be quite stressful. The prospect of paid maternity leave not only relieves that stress, but fosters goodwill in showing that a group is family friendly. This trait can be incredibly important to women physicians, and may be the reason why they pick one job over the other.Market forces will ultimately force radiology groups to adapt, despite the hassles that come along with shifting away from traditional models. Happy radiologists are good for business, and maintaining the competitiveness of radiology applicants is good for the field. The evolution of our group practice models is consequently not only necessary, but smart.Two ways to make the most of the improving radiology job marketBy John P. McGahan, MDFour years ago I recall writing in this space regarding a downturn in the radiology job market.How things have changed!A recent (2016) ACR-commissioned survey of radiology groups reveals that between 1,713 and 2,223 new jobs will become available this year. This represents over a 16% increase from the prior year. Breast imaging remains the most sought-after subspecialty, constituting 14% of job opportunities. This is closely followed by general interventional radiology (13%), and then by neuroradiology, general radiology, body imaging, and musculoskeletal imaging, which all share nearly equal opportunities for radiologist employment. Also worth noting is an upward trend in emergency radiologist hiring, at 10% of position openings. As a brief aside, the survey found that a relatively large portion—28%—of practicing radiologists are 55 or older.The survey results reflect my own impressions which, based on anecdotal evidence, indicate the job market is much more robust than it was even a year ago. At my own institution, I have seen a resurgence of our fellows obtaining multiple job offers in desirable locations. This was not the case just two years ago.At the same time, on our recruitment end, we are having a much more difficult time filling our openings in abdominal imaging. Two years ago my section had 55 applicants for one position. In the past year that decreased to 15 applicants. Surveys of program directors show them offering positions in academic radiology to their best fellows at the beginning of the year, knowing the pool of qualified applicants will be diminished by mid-year.I would argue that this all means we need to do two things: 1) spread the word to our residents, and especially to our medical students, that radiology job opportunities are back, and 2) broaden the scope of our radiologic training.An interesting study published in 2015 by Arleo et al showed that 50% of respondents going into radiology were concerned about outsourcing, and 45% of those not going into radiology thought the radiology job market was shrinking. This same study showed that intellectual challenge was listed as the top reason for students going into radiology, while degree of patient contact was listed as the most common reason medical students chose other specialties.Another telling survey statistic is that in 2009, 87% of radiology residency positions were filled by United States medical graduates, while in 2015, only 56% were filled by U.S. graduates. In addition, only 2.8% of women, compared to 11.8% of men, applied for radiology positions.The same survey found only a small fraction of residency applicants previously had radiology rotations at their medical schools. Having such a rotation was correlated with a higher likelihood of choosing radiology. Thus, to continue the supply of top-tier applicants into radiology, it would seem that elective rotation exposure to the specialty in medical school is vital.Preparing for the job marketWith these recent improvements in the job market, how should radiology residents prepare to be successful job applicants? For one thing, it helps to have broad training.Certainly, in the 1980s it was rare for radiologists to seek fellowship training: in 1984, only 8% had fellowship training compared to 95% of radiologists today. Furthermore, up to 18% of radiology residents pursue two fellowships.What are some important skills sought by prospective employers? Three-quarters of those in private practice are seeking applicants with subspecialty training and general radiology skills.Academic departments seek similarly prepared applicants in 38% of cases, while 44% seek candidates with specialty training only. This may have implications for fourth-year radiology students and their selection of fellowship. Residents and fellows should realize that finding an isolated niche in one subspecialty may not make them competitive for the current job market. Thus, some have suggested that the fourth year of residency should include multiple or all subspecialties of radiology.For example, at my institution we still provide an obstetrical ultrasound rotation, yet one of our seniors planning for a career in interventional radiology preferred to skip that rotation in favor of another on the interventional service to further prepare himself for his fellowship. However, given the data noted above, more competence in multiple areas of radiology may be preferable, especially to provide on-call coverage. The potential for fellows to handle many specialty areas beyond training points to the need to preserve a strong level of general radiology training rather than do a pseudo-fellowship in residency before an actual fellowship where true specialty training should occur.While I certainly hope that ongoing job growth in radiology will encourage U.S. medical students to choose our field as a specialty, there is more we can do to keep radiology a robust and popular specialty. One is to get the word out about radiology earlier. It seems wise to provide medical students more contact with radiology earlier in their clinical training, rather than confining it to a fourth-year elective, when it is too late to influence their specialty selection.Second, we need to broaden the scope of our training. If prospective employers are looking for broad-based skills to provide appropriate coverage, it seems the senior year of residency should provide diverse training that emphasizes general skills. Added experience outside the primary specialty definitely appears important, particularly in the private practice setting.Amid the uncertainty of how today’s political climate in Washington will impact health care, I believe that taking these steps can help prospective job seekers make the most of the improving job market in radiology.ReferencesBluth EI, Bansal S. The 2016 ACR Commission on human resources workforce survey. J Am Coll Radiol.2016;13 (10):1227-1232. doi:10.1016/j.jacr.2016.06.006Arleo EK, Bluth E, Francavilla M, et al. Surveying fourth-year edical students regarding the choice of diagnostic radiology as a specialty. J Am Coll Radiol. 2016;13 (2):188-195. doi:10.1016/Journal of the American College of Radiology 2015.08.005Sharafinski ME, Jr., Nussbaum D, Jha S. Supply/demand in radiology: A historical perspective and comparison to other labor markets. Acad Radiol. 2016; 23 (2):245-251. doi:10.1016/j.acra.2015.10.009Glover M, Patel TY. The radiology fellowship arms race cannot be won. J Am Coll Radiol. 2016:13 (4):461-464. doi:10.1016/j.jacr.2015.11.025Bluth EI, Larson PA, Liebscher LA . Radiologist hiring preferences based on practice needs. J Am Coll Radiol.2016; 13 (1):8-11. doi:10.1016/j.jacr.2015.06.011