AADOM QUICKcast: Why No One Wants to Work…For You!
Video Description:
We will delve into the essential strategies and best practices that dental office managers need to master to effectively hire and retain top talent. As the backbone of any successful dental practice, having the right team in place is crucial for ensuring efficient operations, high patient satisfaction, and overall practice growth.
Course Learning Objectives:
- Understanding the Importance of Effective Hiring
- Assessing Candidate Fit and Competence
- Strategies for Successful Onboarding
- Retention Techniques for Long-Term Success
- Monitoring and Improving Hiring and Retention Practices
Sponsored by: ToPS – Total Patient Service Institute
Why No One Wants to Work… for You!
How to Reach Out and Reel in Prime New Hires in This Historically Tight Job Market
Time of Challenge
Never, in our experience, has it been so tough to fill vacant positions in dental practices.
With overall unemployment rates near record lows, pretty much all professions and branches of business face shortages of eager, solid job candidates. More than most, we in dentistry also deal with lingering aftereffects of the Covid pandemic, when practice team members shifted into other lines of work. Some out of necessity, others out of choice. Four years into it, and they are NOT coming back.
Different Makes All the Difference
Those tasked with finding and hiring good job candidates need to answer one urgent question:
What are you NOW doing differently?
We’re talking truly new, novel, previously untried, original, bold and/or daring departures in all you do to get the word out and pull in people you want on the team.
Doubling or tripling down on efforts that worked just fine, pre-2020, doesn’t cut it. It’s merely more of the same. While you don’t need to give up on tried-and-true recruiting methods, you cannot count on them the way you used to.
Do more. Do different. Extraordinary business conditions demand extraordinary strategies.
Inside Out
To find who you’re looking for, on the outside, start by looking inside the walls of your dental practice. Is it a great place to work? If so, what’s great about it?
Top prospects, who have abundant choices, need to know before they’ll even think about saying, “Yes! When do I start?” They won’t get there until they understand the shared purpose and positive spirit of your practice team.
This means you need to project it. Our term for the human totality of a workplace is Culture. It could be yours needs an upgrade. It’s a rare office that doesn’t need at least a tune-up, with more whole-team emphasis on creating and maintaining a place where people WANT to work.*
ESP
That’s our acronym for Everybody Search Plan. It engages the entire team in the effort to recruit, hire and train the best prospective team members. When there’s a gap in staffing to be filled, involved the entire practice team. Ask them to work their circles of acquaintance and get the word out about your exciting job opportunity.
Make select patients part of your ESP, too. Inclusion is flattering to them. And there’s no more credible, powerful endorsement of what you and your team are all about than good words from people who have experienced your care.
SEEP
This one stands for Search Everybody Everywhere Plan. Always be on the lookout for individuals with standout work ethic, skills, and positive energy. It’s good for the spirit, and it can pay off big for the workplace team.
Case in point: One night, dining in Dallas, I was absolutely awed by my super server. I knew I was looking at underutilized talent and said, “I’m looking for someone just like you for a client of mine.” I told her about a vacant position at a leading dental practice. She immediately asked for details and said she had been looking for a career that fit her need for more challenge and regular daytime work hours suited to rearing her five-year-old. From the start, she was a great fit for that position.
Note, please, that a wide-angle talent search, whenever and wherever, does not pertain to filling positions with specialized training and certification. Finding your dream dental hygienist in a restaurant is unlikely. But you may meet your next office superstar.
The best practices we work with ace killer recruiting, hire for personality and energy, then train in needed skills. They get the cream of the candidate crop by being great places to work. Great hires can always learn software, master routines and tasks, while their unique human attributes shine through.
Change Up Your Ad Strategy, Part A
Look hard at where you post job openings and go bigger, broader. At the same time, focus and fine-tune placement to fit your own local media ecosystem and job market.
Mega-sites like Monster.com, Dentalpost.net have immense reach, but it could be that people in your world pay particular attention to certain local job boards. Different strategies win in different job markets. Learn the ins and outs of yours.
Ad Strategy, Part B
Think through wording, thrust of messaging, even more carefully than your media placement strategy.
Read everybody else’s job listings… then beat them, no mercy!
Make your job description stand out with words about key attributes of your practice and the personal and professional rewards of joining your team. Say, briefly but compellingly, why it’s great to work right here, right now, with you.
Lose old-time stuff about required or desired experience, specific skill sets. That’s just discouragement in print, telling people why they shouldn’t bother applying, because they don’t fit the bill.
Recruiting Fast…and Forever
Ask a fisherman what to do when you get a nibble. You set the hook now, or the fish gets away!
Follow up on inquiries immediately, and personally, and keep up contact. And never stop recruiting. Maintain a reserve roster of people who would be great additions to the team. If you wait until you have a job opening to start recruiting, you are already way too late.
Steven J. Anderson is the founder of the Total Patient Service Institute, Crown Council and Smiles for Life Foundation. He is the author of THE CULTURE OF SUCCESS: 10 Natural Laws For Creating The Place There Everyone Wants to Work, the textbook on Creating a Culture of Success in Your Practice®. Order online at www.theyespress.com for a step-by-step system for upgrading your practice culture TODAY so you can recruit the best talent in your market.
