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A Comprehensive Guide to Hiring Employees
Will your practice be worthy of attracting the right employees? Dentistry is a service business. You can only sell your time and knowledge. You can expand your knowledge but still only have so many hours in the day to work -- and play. The only way to do more in less time is to become more efficient and delegate non-dentist tasks and responsibilities to non-dentists. To delegate, you need employees.
But hiring and managing people are anything but smooth as we enter the 21st century. Employee turnover and the deafening silence to fill open positions in practices from Maine to California is beginning to weigh heavy on the stress levels and wallets of many doctors.
The demand for talent is far exceeding the supply and from all indications, the shortage of semi-skilled and skilled labor will continue well into the next several decades. The competition for employees may well be the most serious management challenge dentists have ever had to confront. Managed care and technological advances for better or worse may pose formidable threats to the status quo, but the inability to hire and retain a support team of administrative and clinical employees will crush a doctor’s ability to thrive.
The reality is the ability to hire competent, motivated and dedicated people is beginning to seem more like a trip in permanent white water. Dentists that learn to navigate the rapids will have the success stories of the future.
Your Greatest Asset -- People
Employees impact patient satisfaction, which leads to case acceptance and referrals, far greater than the clinical skills of the dentist. People, not chairs, hand pieces or computers, provide dental services. For the new doctor, hiring people is the single most consequential step you can take in growing a practice. Employee salaries and benefits will assume the number one place on your expense list. Choosing the right employees will guarantee you the greatest return on any practice investment you make, far greater than any physical asset you can purchase. Finding and retaining successful employees starts with a successful hiring process.
Employing the Right People Is Easy
Just make a competitive offer and tell her she has the job! That’s as easy as it gets. That’s all that hiring is. Hiring, however, is only the final step in the selection process. Recruiting is the first step in the hiring process but not necessarily the first planning step. Recruiting includes all the strategic and marketing efforts -- networking, advertising, reputation and competitive salaries -- that you put forth seeking out the best talent. Before you can recruit, you must know what you are looking for.
Selection is the second stage of hiring the right employee. This is the process of choosing the right person for the job and your practice from a qualified pool of applicants. But even before you select or recruit, you must clearly understand the job to be filled. A comprehensive listing of all the job requirements needs to be developed.
First Things First
Experience is no longer the best teacher or predictor of success when it comes to hiring. Doctors and managers can no longer hire by guessing, hoping, relying on gut reaction or believing a resume. The costs are too high and the results too threatening for the long-term success and profitability of a practice. Doctors must hire and train with special emphasis on skills like top notch verbal and listening skills, interpersonal effectiveness, willingness to cooperate, individual initiative and willingness to contribute. High performance employees will display good initiative, judgment, adaptability, ability to learn and a willingness to share what they know for the benefit of the patient.
The first requirement is to find out what job-ready skills the position requires so the employee can concentrate on the job and eliminate wasted time, energy and stress. What are job-ready skills, the nice-to-have and the need-to-have requirements of the jobs? These skills can include showing up to work on time; taking supervision; and the ability to multi-task.
According to Daniel Goleman, researcher and author of Working with Emotional Intelligence, these “soft skills” required to do a job well are nearly twice as important as intellect and expertise. In fact, in some positions, the intangible but measurable soft skills contribute close to 90 percent of the exceptional performance of successful people.
If a questionnaire or profile has not been prepared for the job, you must analyze the job by answering the following questions:
- What duties must the person perform?
- What skills, experience and education are essential to the job?
- Are there any other desirable experiences or abilities needed?
- Are there any unusual aspects of the job that must be identified?
- What is the atmosphere of the practice?
- Who are the persons the applicant would interact with?
- What interpersonal characteristics are needed to do the job?
- What is the salary range and benefits for the position?
- What advancement is possible from that position?
If the Job Could Talk
Job positions are very difficult to analyze because different people performing the same job see it differently. And different people doing the same job in different practices view the job through different filters.
These filters create biases, which include:
- How people would like to perform the job
- How the job should actually be performed
- How people are performing the job
Sorting out these biases provides you with the right information to understand what competencies are required in a specific job for consistent, long-term success. It is important to differentiate clearly between “essential” and “preferred” experience, skills and education. These requirements should be discussed and agreed upon by everyone involved in screening and recruiting.
Be aware that the tendency is to classify too many requirements as “essential,” creating a portrait of the ideal candidate that cannot consistently be satisfied from the pool of available applicants. In determining whether certain experience, skills and education are required, ask yourself, “Must someone have this component to be successful in the job within a reasonable period of time?” Some requirements may be highly desirable but not essential. Applicants who truly lack a component designated as “essential” should not be hired.
Until recently, assessing the competencies for success was expensive, if not impossible, for small businesses, including the dental practice. The DNA of Performance Competency Based Position Analysis©, however, is a patented process now available to identify the top competencies required on the job, in the job, and in the practice.
The DNA of Performance helps you:
- Select the right candidate
- Retain the right people
- Avoid lawsuits
- Write behavioral-based job descriptions
- Provide the questions for a structured job interview
What used to take time, money and a lot of effort, the DNA of Performance now streamlines the process by identifying the top five competencies required in the job. A competency is the skill, behavior, attitude or motivation that actually makes a difference in performance. The DNA also prioritizes the top 20 competencies, and establishes a predictable and legal interview process compliant with the Uniform Guidelines on Employee Selection Procedures, used by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission and the courts to evaluate hiring procedures.
Selection Tools and Interviews
After identifying and prioritizing the job-ready and required skills, one of the most common tools used for employee selection is the personal interview. Traditional interviews, however, provide less than a 2 in 10 chance of choosing the right person.
The objectives of the employment interview are to:
- Assess the applicant
- Describe the job and practice
- Create good will
Most dentists do well at describing their practice and identifying the activities of the job. Assessing the applicant and describing the behaviors expected on the job, however, need a great deal of improvement. The quality of the good will is clearly determined by the quality of the interview process.
Creating a good match between a job and the employee involves not only determining the candidate’s ability to interview well but also whether he or she can meet the challenges of the position, interact at the required pace and intensity, follow established procedures, and whether the practice and the job can meet the motivational needs of the employee.
Since success on the job is a function of not only the employee’s personality but the doctor’s as well, the successful profile for a dental position in one practice could be a real nightmare in another. There are literally thousands of personality assessments available today that are reliable and valid to match the job candidate to the job and practice profile.
What is important to decide before administering a test is whether the results they provide really do predict success in the job. Both choosing the wrong test or not testing at all for what is important is not only costly but opens the door to lawsuits for wrongful hiring or discharge.
To illustrate this point, you might determine that high intelligence or superior math skills are essential skills for an administrative position. I challenge you to prove that the most intelligent employees are the most successful and that poor math skills can’t be accomodated with a calculator and overlooked with exceptional interpersonal skills. Using the results of your job analysis, select only the tests that confirm the abilities of candidates when matched to the essential and preferred requirements.
Three of the most complete and accurate at determining successful placements for most positions, including associate dentists and hygienists, are the Managing for Success© Profile; Personal Interests, Attitudes and Values©; and Quality of Motivation Questionnaire©. The reports provided not only helps determine the fit, but provide tips on communicating, managing and motivating the employee.
In addition to the competencies provided by the DNA of Performance, an activity-based job description is necessary. An excellent reference for establishing guidelines for activities in the practice is Standard Operating Procedures for All Dentists, published by Dental Communication Unlimited.
Provide Training Beyond Clinical Skills
Developing employees’ “soft skills” has a far greater likelihood of success and a higher return on investment. Continuous learning opportunities should not only be encouraged but provided in weekly staff meetings and participation in continuing education. The availability of basic and advanced education is available from many sources and media, including CD-ROMs, videos, internet, video conferencing and off-site training. As an added bonus to receiving the skills identified as priorities in the DNA of Performance, a motivated person is more likely to take the initiative to learn and acquire new technical skills needed to grow and advance.
Hiring Right
Hiring people with the expectation of high performance, but lacking the right behavioral, attitudes and motivational skills, is unrealistic and delusional. High expectations and low performance torpedoes morale and dooms even the most highly skilled clinicians to mediocrity and frustration.
When you can match a person who brings the “right” talents to the job, you are on your way to “predicting” superior performance. These people are energized, focused and require little external motivation for superior performance. Mismatching people with the job, on the other hand, always ends up with poor performance and turnover.
Hiring and selecting employees the way “we’ve always done it” will threaten to derail many currently successful businesses. Dentists who make hiring and retention decisions based on the successes of currently practicing or retired dentists will typically limit their growth and under-utilize their capacity in the future. The ultimate choice: You can keep drilling for “people wells” knowing the people supply is low, or create a practice environment that attracts the best candidates, like water flowing downhill.
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