THINGS TO CONSIDER ADJUSTING WHEN THE JOB SEARCH JUST ISN'T GOING ACCORDING TO PLAN.

You've set your goals and established your priorities but the perfect job isn't forthcoming. None of your friends know of companies hiring and no suitable jobs are listed on internet job sites. Your phone is ringing off the hook and your email box is full of messages from recruiters with jobs you don't want in locations you don't want. Now what?

Now it's time for you to make a backup plan. It's a logical way to wade through the overwhelming task of sorting through a ton of ‘not what you really want’ job options. Let's talk strategy. Here is where your head finds a way to balance out what your heart wanted when you established your dream job priorities. The truth is, although you are in a field where there is a huge demand, there are geographic areas and some types of clinical settings where there are few CF options and competition is fierce for any full-time job that becomes available. So here is some inside information to help you beat the odds, accomplish your goals (eventually), and find a CF position that meets your needs, even if it doesn't meet everything you wanted in your first job. In some locations, in some clinical settings, and at some compensation levels, there are very few jobs. Knowing it’s not you, it’s the job market, helps you both stay calm and focus your plans on where you will have the best chance for success

1. Location

Location can be a huge stumbling block for your job search plans. If you are geographically specific in a tight job market you may need to consider ALL options. Here are some details to keep in mind when assessing if the location will need to be the priority that you adjust.

• A nearby SLP University Program will have a huge impact on your clinical options and compensation. If there is a University Program in your target area, draw a 40-mile radius circle around the school. Draw a 50-mile radius around a school that is in a more sparsely populated area. Inside the circle will be the most saturated job market. In some areas, there are two, three, five and even seven SLP programs with overlapping 40-50 mile radius circles. You will have more job options outside of these circled areas.
• Specialty clinical settings are usually based in areas with denser patient populations. The job market is stronger in these areas because, in addition to the most common SLP jobs available in Schools, Nursing Homes, and Home Health services that are in all geographic areas, the areas also draw people into the area to receive specialty services. There is less diversity of employers and job types in rural areas so you will almost always have a higher quantity of job options in the largest communities in your target area unless that is also where a University Program is located.

Exceptions: Specialty skills may be hard for employers to find even in a tight job market, Specialty certifications, Bilingual SLPs, and specific AAC device experience are all important to include in your resume along with all diagnosis you worked with. Online resume submissions are often screened by a keyword search applicant tracking system before a human eye considers the best matches. Your resume must include the detailed words plus the preferred words for the available position in order to make the cut.

https://www.asha.org/siteassets/surveys/2020-schools-survey-slp-workforce.pdf

2. Clinical setting

If you are looking for a specific clinical setting and not finding it in your target job market you may end up compromising between either a clinical setting or geographic location. If you settle for something that is a clinical compromise you will have a harder time building the skill set that makes you competitive for the job you really want. If you compromise on location, you will strengthen your skills in your preferred clinical setting but will spend a year or more outside of your targeted geographic area. It’s a tough choice to make. Here are some details to keep in mind when assessing if the clinical setting of your CF job will need to be the priority that you adjust.

• Over 50% of all SLP jobs are in the schools and the majority of CFs obtain their CCCs in a school setting. Schools are everywhere and they are also one of the few settings where obtaining a clinical mentor is not usually a problem. It is not difficult to transition to a medical position after working in the schools for a year because it is such a common occurrence.
• State license and teacher certifications are different in every state! Some clinical settings have a harder time employing CFs because the CF license is a restricted or provisional license in their state. There will be a tighter CF job market in these areas. Compare both the state license and teaching certificate requirements to see if there is a difference in the state in which you plan to work. It’s not about how easy or hard it is for you to get the license or certificate. It’s about how easily the employers in some clinical settings can meet the requirements of a CF-SLP.
• Niche specialty positions such as accent reduction or voice may be out of reach for a CF and require more than one strategic job step in order to eventually secure the dream position. Sometimes you can find positions that have a piece of the clinical component that you want. Often these types of positions can be found in school positions, but you can also find these types of positions in clinics, hospitals, and home health if you know how to look for them and negotiate that some of your caseloads will include these populations. Expect to dig deep and build your own professional resource network in these situations because there may not be a specialist available to help you with your work for your specialty caseload responsibilities.

Exceptions: Specialty skills such as Bilingual Spanish, sign language, AAC, ABA, etc. can also open the door for you to gain more experience in other specialty clinical areas of interest. Use your in-demand strengths to leverage yourself into more specific opportunities. Sometimes, just being willing to work in an undesirable location is a sufficient strength to get more of the job you want clinically or to negotiate a higher compensation rate.

https://prep.asha.org/siteassets/surveys/supply-demand-slp.pdf

3. Compensation

The compensation varies between different geographic areas and clinical settings. It is sometimes hard to reconcile what you have set as your minimum acceptable wage and what is being offered, especially in some of the more desirable locations and clinical settings. Within clinical settings, the rate of pay is somewhat tied to the level of productivity that an employer can calculate.

For example, a Home Health job may pay per visit and the employer is only paying for productive work hours. An SNF job may come with a productivity expectation of 85% or more. A larger Private Practice might book your appointments back to back to back. These tend to be the higher-paying positions. Hospitals, smaller private practices, pediatric clinics, and schools tend to have a less stringent billable hour accountability structure and also generally pay less. Contract companies and other for-profit companies tend to pay higher wages than government and not-for-profit employers. Look at the bigger employment picture as you assess your expected salary expectations.

• Accurate salary information is hard to find and hard to compare because every employment structure has different tax and benefits implications. You can check salaries through a variety of places but they may not be very helpful. Using ‘average salaries’ for comparison means you are likely trying to compare your compensation offers to that of someone with 12-15 years of experience. Expect your CF offer to be lower than ‘average’ even if you can find something exactly for your specific geographic and clinical areas.
• Your benefits can be up to 40% of your compensation. If a company isn’t offering an employee status for tax savings and strong benefits, your compensation rate might be significantly less than you think! When employers pay for your benefit expenses and also pay a portion of your payroll taxes, you don't have to pay for them yourself. Only considering the payroll amount when comparing compensation is a costly mistake.
• Watch out for the game changers to know when you are trying to compare apples to bananas in your job offers. Here is some basic information regarding the three biggest game-changers.

1. Benefits add a lot to your bottom line over the course of the year so before you accept that hourly rate make sure you know what your benefits package will be. Benefits are usually tax-free plus they save you from having to pay for these items yourself out of your paycheck with after-tax dollars.
2. Independent Contractors receive no benefits (paid time off, health insurance, etc), are responsible for both the employee and employer payroll taxes, and have additional tax reporting requirements. They are usually only paid for direct service hours and their paperwork and case management work is usually uncompensated. Find out more information about independent contractor status by speaking with an accountant (not a tax preparer) and reading up about the requirements on the IRS website before considering a position as an independent contractor
3. Travel Status is a legally defined compensation structure under the IRS tax code. It allows you to claim certain expenses as a tax deduction and/or allows your employer to provide for certain expenses such as your housing on a tax-free basis. To qualify for Travel Status you must have and maintain a legal residence, accept a job that is not commutable from your legal residence and make a commitment to that job location for a period of less than one year. Find out more information about Travel Status by speaking with an accountant (not a tax preparer) and reading up about the requirements on the IRS website before considering a position as a travel therapist.

Exceptions: Some rural and urban areas realize that they need to pay an incentive salary in order to attract someone to the area. These areas will be where there are no nearby programs offering your degree and/or have a perception of other undesirable qualities such as poverty, crime rate, climate, etc. These areas pay higher wages for a reason, but they can also offer you exceptional opportunities! Don’t let what you’ve ‘heard’ keep you from checking them out. If you don’t know where these higher-paying jobs are located, ask a contract company. We work across multiple states and know the areas where there are few applicants and employers are begging for more staff. That’s one of the reasons they use us!

https://prep.asha.org/siteassets/surveys/supply-demand-slp.pdf

Takeaway tip: Sometimes you need to look at other aspects of the equation to make all the pieces balance. Consider these options and strategies to help maximize your available dollars.

• Live with family or roommates
• Stay on parents' insurance
• Consider PRN or part-time work
• Apply for income-based loan repayment plans