Compensation Survey Provider Review: ZipRecruiter

The healthcare field is full of independently negotiated contracts between organizations and providers. This creates great variances in how much healthcare providers are paid, and the variances are especially notable for physicians. The way toward an equitable and fair compensation package is knowledge of what all these contracts pay. The ZipRecruiter salary reports help physicians inform themselves.

Several third-party organizations have surveyed physicians to determine what’s paid across regions, specialties, settings, and other variables. ZipRecruiter is one of the major organizations that’s collected and compiled this data.

What is ZipRecruiter?

ZipRecruiter is an online employment marketplace for workers. The aggregator allows employers to widely disseminate job listings across more than 100 websites. Employees can sort and search listings that are applicable to them, and then apply for selected positions. The initial resume submission is sent through ZipRecruiter’s marketplace.

From all of these job listings and applications, ZipRecruiter has access to vast compensation data across fields. The marketplace makes this data available through salary reports, salary maps and other mediums. Among the vast ZipRecruiter salary reports are reports for physician pay.

The physician salary data from ZipRecruiter is broken down by location (city and state), specialty, and organization type. It’s reported as annual, monthly, weekly and hourly pay, for easy comparison..

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Is ZipRecruiter’s Salary Data for Physicians Reliable?

The method that ZipRecruiter uses for gathering salary data makes the data not only reliable, but also some of the most current data available anywhere. There are fewer better sources for finding out how much paychecks are.

Accuracy of Zip Recruiter’s Salary Data

An algorithm constantly scans current job listings for salary figures, and then categorizes those figures according to job title, job location, and hiring company. This is how the platform can break physician salary figures down by specialty, location and organization type,

Compared to other organizations’ methods, ZipRecruiter’s method is generally more accurate. Consider these other two ways that organizations sometimes gather salary data.

First, several online salary data websites have users self-report their pay. While self-reported surveys are generally accurate across large participant groups, these sites don’t always have large participant groups. They also don’t have any way to verify self-reported data, allowing anyone to make up a job title, employer and salary.

The small sample sizes that these websites have is often evident, and so too are the outliers that obviously report much higher (usually) or lower (less common) numbers than the standard deviation. Although these outliers could be eliminated on a case-by-case basis, they skew survey maps, charts and tables. Sometimes they give workers false hope too.

ZipRecruiter’s data comes not from self-reported figures, but instead from actual job postings that are created through the platform. Salary data is based on real-world numbers that employers actually offer prospective employees.

How Large is ZipRecruiter’s Sample Size?

ZipRecruiter’s sample size is among the largest in the industry, because its algorithm skims all of the job listings posted through the platform. The platform isn’t reliant on workers voluntarily giving information.

Timeliness of ZipRecruiter’s Salary Data

Second, many salary-reporting organizations (including survey websites) collect data from past sources. These may be employee or employer surveys that an organization verifies, or other confirmed methods.

Such data can be extremely accurate, especially if an industry-specific organization or government agency does the work. This data lags the current market, though. There’s simply no instant way to gather survey data and verify it. The organizations have at least some lag time.

ZipRecruiter’s live data is thus more reflective of what the job market is currently like. The algorithm searches real-time listings, and has virtually no lag.

When Was ZipRecruiter’s Data Last Published?

ZipRecruiter’s algorithm is constantly scraping and compiling salary information. They are constantly updating their salary database.

Limitations of ZipRecruiter’s Salary Data

The salary data that ZipRecruiter compiles isn’t perfect for every application, however. It’s limited in two notable ways that physicians should be aware of.

Limited Data About Benefits

First, ZipRecruiter’s data doesn’t fully capture the total compensation that physicians receive. The salary numbers don’t include benefits such as retirement plan options/contributions, paid time off, student loan repayment, professional dues payment, or insurance coverages.

While this is true for all fields of work, it’s especially notable for physicians.

Dental insurance, vision insurance, life insurance, and disability insurance are common benefits that can save physicians thousands (or more) each year. Life premiums aren’t cheap for professionals who want $1+ million per year, and disability insurance could be lifestyle-saving should a physician become disabled. Download our life insurance guide for more information, or request details on life insurance or disability insurance.

Retirement contributions and student loan repayments can also be worth thousands, or tens of thousands, per year. Even simple professional dues payments often save doctors a thousand or more annually.

Minimal Trend Data

Second, ZipRecrutier’s data isn’t the easiest to spot industry compensation trends with. The current data is only a snapshot of what’s going on right now. Although saving and collating data makes it possible to identify trends with this information, broad and long trends aren’t ZipRecruiter’s focus or forte.

Longer-term data is better when determining how compensation for physicians is changing over time. The organizations that collect verified information usually have data more well-suited for this purpose, and data from the Bureau of Labor Statics can be particularly helpful.

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ZipRecruiter vs. Other Compensation Survey Providers

ZipRecruiter is one of the most well-known salary data aggregators, but they’re just one of several. There are both well-known and lesser-known compensation survey providers that physicians may want to consult. Here’s how ZipRecruiter compares to them:

Medscape

Medscape is a compensation survey provider that focuses specifically on the healthcare industry. While the industry focus may be beneficial in some ways, Medscape still doesn’t have anywhere near the sample size that ZipRecruiter does. Its data also isn’t always as accurate.

Medscape offers free reports that are notably easy to digest. It’s therefore certainly worth checking. ZipRecruiter has more extensive and more accurate data, though.

AMGA

The American Medical Group Association (AMGA) is perhaps the premier healthcare-specific compensation survey provider. The association is well established and highly regarded, and its data is of like quality. AGMA doesn’t pull from as large a sample size as ZipRecruiter does, but its data can be more useful. The data is widely considered some of the most accurate salary information for the healthcare field. Reports include both compensation and productivity data, which are broken down by specialty and medical group.

Sullivan Cotter

Sullivan Cotter is one of the most established names in healthcare survey data, being respected right alongside professional organizations such as the AMGA. Compared to ZipRecruiter, Sullivan Cotter has accurate and complete data, and its completeness is an advantage.

The compensation reports issued by Sullivan Cotter include salary, bonus, relocation assistance, continued education reimbursement, and any other payment (but still not necessarily total insurance benefits). ZipRecruiter fails to capture all of this information. Also, Sullivan Cotter primarily serves organizations and thus has a slightly different focus in its reporting.

MGMA

MGMA is a company that provides physician-specific compensation data (and shouldn’t be confused with the AMGA). The report covers salary data along with benefits information, and is therefore more comprehensive than what ZipRecruiter gathers.

MGMA has a fairly small dataset, even compared to compensation surveyors other than ZipRecruiter. The company specifically focuses on smaller healthcare organizations, which usually have six or fewer physicians. The reports are more comprehensive and often more accurate for these organizations than what ZipRecruiter provides, as smaller organizations don’t place many job postings. MGMA’s data isn’t too helpful for medium and large organizations.

Merritt Hawkins

Merritt Hawkins is a healthcare professional placement agency. They draw their data from the job listings that organizations place with them, much like ZipRecruiter scrapes listings placed through its platform. Both have similar accuracy in their data.

Because the data that Merritt Hawkins gathers only comes through their job listings, however, they have quite a limited dataset. You shouldn’t consider their report as a full representation of the market. ZipRecruiter has a much more extensive sample size.

Comparably

Comparably provides online salary information across industries. ZipRecruiter and Comparably have partnered together, and many of the company-specific reports shown on ZipRecruiter are actually powered by Comparably. ZipRecruiter tends to show more extensive information than Comparably, particularly when looking for aggregate data across a specialty. The two use the same samples and datasets, though.

Salary.com

Salary.com can be thought of as the inverse of ZipRecruiter. ZipRecruiter begins with job postings, and draws salary information from those. Salary.com begins with reported salaries, and adds job postings to its pages.

Both ZipRecruiter’s and Salary.com’s data are helpful, and they’re similar in nature but sourced via different methods. Salary.com has ancillary features, including cost-of-living calculators and comparison tools, that are helpful when comparing two specific offers.

Bureau of Labor Statistics

Bureau of Labor Statistics: The Department of Labor’s Bureau of Labor Statistics is a federal department that has extensive salary information. The information includes physicians’ fields by specialty, and has specificity to the county level.

The BLS data is helpful for projecting longer-term trends, and the department even projects career growth out for the next ~5 years. This information is helpful when financially considering different fields, but ZipRecruiter has more current data on what job offers are currently like.

How Can Physicians Access ZipRecruiter’s Data?

ZipRecruiter’s salary information is freely available through its “Salaries” tab from the primary menu. The platform generates revenue by charging employers for the job postings that they place. There isn’t any charge to job seekers, including no charge for looking up salary information.

Although the information on ZipRecruiter is easy to access on a page-by-page basis, a fuller comparison across the healthcare industry isn’t immediately available. Instead, a compiled report that’s based on this data can be easier to use. This information is included in the Physicians Thrive Physician Compensation Report.

How Can Physicians Use ZipRecruiter’s Salary Information?

ZipRecruiter’s salary data serves as a useful gauge against which you can compare job offers. Physicians who are seeking new positions can compare the pay offered against specialty and regional ranges, to see how attractive the pay of a certain job is/isn’t. Physicians may also use the data to negotiate higher salaries for jobs that offer average or below-average pay. Having multiple reports is helpful if trying to negotiate higher pay, but ZipRecruiter could be one of the sources.

Physicians who intend to remain at their current job might also use ZipRecruiter’s data for negotiating raises. Again, the platform’s data can be used alongside other reports to establish that a job pays average or below-average rates (and thus should provide a pay raise). Alternatively, physicians who are at the upper end of the salary range may see that their ability to negotiate substantially more pay is limited. Well-paid physicians might try to negotiate more continuing education reimbursement, paid time off, or other ancillary benefits.

Using ZipRecruiter and Other Salary Surveys

Regardless of what you are using ZipRecruiter’s salary data for, it’s best to consider ZipRecruiter alongside other surveyors. Considering multiple reports provides the most robust understanding of physician pay. ZipRecruiter is helpful, but it’s not the only one worth checking.

For an easily digestible report that covers these physician pay surveyors, download the 2022 Physicians Thrive Physician Compensation Report. Our report sources all available compensation surveyors, and compiles the information in charts and tables that we designed to effectively convey the most important information. The purpose of the Compensation Report is to give you, the physician, the information needed to evaluate employment opportunities well.

Final Thoughts

In conclusion, ZipRecruiter’s data on physician salaries highlights the importance of understanding the market value of your profession and negotiating a fair wage. It’s important to remember that these numbers are just averages and your individual circumstances, including location, specialty, and experience, can greatly impact your salary. If you’re a physician seeking a more accurate assessment of your earning potential, we encourage you to contact us for a full review of your compensation and unique situation. By understanding your value in the market, you can confidently negotiate for the salary you deserve. Our legal partners can help you evaluate and develop negotiation strategies for specific contracts.

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