From a financial aspect, what should you think about before accepting a position?

Before considering salary offers or making a request, have you decided what your personal needs are? Younger veterinarians tend to have a need for higher proportion of salary in immediate wages as compared to retirement plan contributions. The cash is needed to make repayment of student debt and other loans and obligations.

Your personal circumstances may dictate that you prefer a position where the salary is higher, but no retirement (pension, profit or otherwise) plan is offered. On the other hand, you may have very little debt and prefer a practice offering a 401k or defined contribution plan that would allow pretax dollars to be put away.

Your ability to negotiate a better salary is contingent on the ability of the practice to generate income. Since your wages will be approximately one-fifth of what you produce for the practice, the more that you can produce, the better. Ask to see a copy of the fee schedule. Is the fee schedule commensurate with what you know to be realistic in terms of charges?

If the fees seem very low or if the average transaction fee is $20 less than other practices you have visited, you know that you might have problems living up to the salary you desire. At the same time, you need to be comfortable with the fact that the fee is fair and can be charged out to the client. If you are uncomfortable with an average transaction fee of $90 to $110 an invoice, you may not be the right fit for a practice that is charging a fair fee for the services involved.

Ask to see some medical records for recently treated patients. How are cases worked up? Does case management fit with your philosophy of medicine and surgical service provision? If not, you may be uncomfortable when co-workers and employers pressure you to conform your recommendations to that of the practice as a whole. If you believe in high-end diagnostics, working up animal illnesses appropriately and charging for it, and the practice does not have this history, you may not be able to generate the type of income you envision, even though the fee schedule looks appropriate.

Mentoring, performance reviews

Use the interview for questions about mentoring and regular job performance feedback. Most individuals enter positions assuming that they will be there for at least two or three years. In the course of that time, you periodically negotiate for salary and benefit increases, assuming you have been able to keep up with the needs of the practice and the employer's expectations. If you only wait until the end of the year to obtain feedback, you will miss the chance for gradual improvement leading to a better salary in each successive period.

Practice, professional ethics

If the practice has a set of ethics that is different from your own, not only from a medical and surgical perspective, but from a business, client and pet attitude perspective, too, you might find yourself burned out within short order and disillusioned about veterinary medicine as a whole. Ethical considerations are a very important point of interview discussion.

Particularly, if you are thinking long term toward ownership in the practice with which you seek a position, ethics become extremely important. Are personal expenses run through the practice? Is cash pocketed, rather than reported on the tax return? If so, you might want to distance yourself from such a practice. Make sure you are associating yourself with the right individuals.