Career insights from medical professionals

EMPLOYER: CHI St. Vincent’s, Little Rock, Arkansas

TRAINING:

Residency: General Surgery, UT Southwestern; Anesthesiology and Pain Management, UT Southwestern 

IN PRACTICE SINCE: August 2025

“A J1 Physician’s First Job Search”: Matishak enjoys finding new recipes to cook for his wife or trying new restaurants. He also enjoys golf, exercise and is trying to get into gardening.

What surprised you about your first post-residency job search? The amount of recruiters that have found your information and message you about jobs without knowing much about you. 

What’s your advice for residents beginning their job search? Start with online resources like PracticeLink to get a good idea of the market.

What was the most important factor in your search for a new job? Location and work environment. You want to live somewhere you enjoy being. You also want the hospital to be a place that you enjoy being, since you will spend a lot of time there. Go to the interviews, meet the current staff and tour the facilities.

How did you find your job? PracticeLink. I was a J1 resident and needed to find places that would be able to sponsor my waiver. It made it simple to search and refine it to places that matched what my wife and I were looking for in our next chapter. 

Anything particularly unique about your job search? Being a J1 physician is daunting. It’s important that the hospitals you are looking at have done this before and know the process. 

How did PracticeLink help you in your job search? PracticeLink made it easy for me to see all the locations that would be willing to sponsor my visa, which was able to give me so much peace of mind. 

Any other advice? Being able to sign my contract early made my last year of residency much less stressful. I was able to focus on honing my craft, my board exams, and enjoying the last few months I had in Dallas. •