I get job advertisements mailed to me, see positions posted online and in journal, even receive telemarketing offers to interview. Any advice for separating the initial wheat from the chaff?

As with any other commercial decision, you must learn to be a very discerning consumer when sorting through your career choice and direction.  Use your career assessment tools as a basis for comparing your options and opportunities.

Pre-call interviews are a good idea for getting a general sense of a practice or a program and then winnowing it down, use the interview process to learn more about each opportunity. All these steps will greatly increase the likelihood of finding the “right” position, and obtaining an offer from every position visited.  Once you’ve obtained offers, you can then evaluate which one is ideal and begin the process of employment contract negotiation.