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Hiring the Right Candidate for Your Dental Practice
- The U.S. Department of Labor estimates that the cost of a bad hiring decision is 30 percent of the first year salary.
- Studies show that more than 20 percent of the information presented on resumes is false or exaggerated.
- Generation “Y” -- the 10 to 16-year old group -- will be the largest pool of young workers since the baby boomers. They will be idealistic, individualistic and anti-corporate. They will be culturally diverse and politically correct. They will want flexibility and a work-life balance.
- Nearly 50 percent of the population are minorities. This means that nearly one out of every two patients or employees might be Hispanic, Latino, Asian or African American.
Patient complaints, insurance hassles and computer glitches: You hate it but keep on going. But employee conflicts and turnover -- that’s enough to make you just hang it up! Maybe it’s time you consider selling to one of those management companies. How nice it would be to do dentistry without all the management headaches. But wait -- hold on to that ownership for just a minute. Maybe it’s time to do what the winning businesses do -- select people who best fit the job and share your beliefs, attitudes and motivations -- it’s easy.
Soon, the consumer and employee marketplace will become more diverse, more demanding and will expect more flexibility. With the availability of more jobs than people to fill them, doctors will be greeted by employees and patients with different personal needs and a wide range of cultural expectations.
Building financially successful and personally fulfilling practices will require a team of employees and people who are motivated, loyal and willing to contribute. The Hay Group, an internationally renowned human resource consulting firm, in a survey conducted for Fortune Magazine, confirmed that the ability to attract and hold on to talented employees was the most reliable predictor of overall excellence in business.
Doctors will be competing for people who share and understand their dedication, values, attitudes and motivations. Filling key positions -- from receptionist to associate -- promises to become more intense. Competition for competent, skilled employees will heat up on the labor battlefield. The labor market is squeezed. The more successful we are today, the more flexible we need to be. It’s simple -- when you want someone to say yes, you must take your knee off their throat!
Thriving and profitable businesses are already building flexible, motivating environments in response to changing demographics. This is not good news for business owners attempting to hire “the way we always did it” -- by gut feeling and by using America’s Great Work of Fiction, the resume.
One of the most efficacious things a doctor can do is match people with jobs that play to their expertise, skills and internal motivations. Making a good match requires that doctors possess rich and detailed information about their employees. But this takes time and therefore most dentists tend to hire by using the warm body test: Hire the most eligible and available. Over time, businesses with a reputation for warm-body hiring are likely to attract less qualified applicants and lose high potential appliance and employees. These results are unsatisfactory, and will take big chunks of money right out of your pocket.
Now, while you are accepting less dedicated, higher-risk employees from the small pool of available workers, your competition for employees are building practice and business cultures that acquire and develop people who possess the interpersonal skills and technology to thrive in the next century. Responsive business owners and managers are filtering out the best people from a shrinking pool of employees. Which side of the filter will you use to select your employees?
Taking the Guess Work Out of Hiring
Performance assessment tools takes the guesswork out of selection and retention. With advanced software technology, doctors can readily identify the potential of current and prospective employees, measure gaps that may exist between current and expected performance, determine skills may need to be developed, and discover what behavioral and motivational barriers might inhibit or counteract efforts to train or retrain an employee.
Very simply, performance assessments help:
- Understand who you are working with
- What natural skills an employee brings to the workplace
- What training might be needed to close any skill gaps
- How intense this training needs to be
- How much resistance you can expect from the employee
Balancing Life and Work
Based on the LifeThrive™ performance model, a proven process that balances work and personal needs, doctors can minimize the risk of hiring or retaining the wrong employees. Through the use of proven and validated employee surveys and assessments, doctors can match the people with the right motivations, values and behaviors to the right job in the right environment. The result is less stress, improved productivity, reduced turnover and increased profits.
LifeThrive is like a three-piece puzzle. The first piece represents the cultural environment, which encourages and strengthens the motivations that people bring to the workplace. It likewise discourages or eliminates those motivations that interfere with business and personal performance. The second piece determines which jobs will be required to satisfy the professional strategies and personal needs of the people. Each job should be identified by certain technical skills. Successful performance, however, will be measured by the behavioral, attitudinal and motivational performance requirement of the job or by identifying what makes your top performers do what they do. In the past people hired on experience and fired on performance. It’s time to hire on performance and train the skills. The third piece of the performance puzzle matches the employee’s performance capabilities and preferences to the job performance template.
Where Do You Start?
There are hundreds of different personality and performance assessments on the market. Two of the best and easiest to use are the Managing for Success® (MFS) and Personal Interests, Attitudes and Values™ (PIAV) series.
The MFS series measures behavioral preferences, based on the DISC model, for employees or jobs. Four behavioral style points are identified for each person or job. Each point represents a particular preference. For example, a core “D” style is likely to be direct and to the point. These people enjoy a good challenge and finding new approaches to problems. They live by the motto: ready, aim, fire. A core “I” prefers to interact with a lot of people, is generally optimistic and certainly likes to influence other people. I’s live by the motto: fire, fire, fire. A core “S” style is very steady. They prefer to work at a consistent pace and to finish whatever they start before moving on. Core S people are always: ready, ready, ready. A core “C” style prefers structure and rules. They like to do things right the first time. Their motto is: aim, aim, aim.
With several hundred dental personnel in our database, the overwhelming preferred style for current and prospective dental assistants and front desk employees is a low D, high S and high C. The “I” factor varies from office to office. Since people tend to surround themselves with people like themselves, it is not surprising that over 75 percent of dentists have this same pattern.
Your Attitude Is Showing
The PIAV is an awesome tool. It measures why people do the things they do, what they value and what they like. These attitudes are not rights or wrongs. They simply indicate that people view the same things differently. The interaction of these divergent attitudes drives reactions, actions and decisions.
Six attitudes are identified and measurable:
- Theoretical -- Loves to research, understand why things happen, solve mysteries and learn about new things -- anything. Want to find the best buy or do research for a case study? High theoretical is the people for you -- just don’t put them on the Internet; they get lost in cyberspace!
- Utilitarian -- Interested in practicality and getting a time or money return on every investment. High utilitarian people definitely like convenience and usually economic reward.
- Aesthetic -- Appreciate making things run effortlessly and enjoy the pleasant environment and harmonious experience. High aesthetics see the big picture. They make things run smoothly, but may be a pain in the neck when it comes to introducing something new.
- Social -- Invest their time and resources into helping other people reach their potential. They are very generous and selfless. High socials want to help others succeed. They make great team players, but have difficulty saying no and may have trouble collecting money.
- Individualistic -- Wants to achieve the highest position and influence others to achieve goals. Individualistic value also measures how intensely the other attitudes will be expressed. High individualists may be self-centered and good team leaders, but poor team players. They want to be recognized for their efforts.
- Traditional -- Reflect the strength of a person’s set of beliefs. Strong traditionals will go to the wall for you if they share your cause, but you will definitely hit a brick wall if you try to change them with their approval.
History Repeats Itself
Recently, a client called me to announce his chair-side assistant “Sue” was leaving. Sue had already completed the MFS and PIAV as part of our employee communication enrichment program. Dr. X interviewed job candidate “Deb” and after a favorable first interview, she also completed the MFS and PIAV.
The results were a first for me. Incredibly Deb came up with a 10-point match with Sue. I quickly called Dr. X to review the results. My first question was, “Tell me about Sue; how would you describe her? Would you hire her again?”
Dr. X described Sue as pleasant and agreeable, so agreeable that this caused some problems with the other employees -- she agreed with everyone, even taking both sides of an issue. He wished she would have been a little less chatty, had taken more initiative and would have moved a little quicker. When I asked would he hire Sue again, Dr. X responded, “probably not.”
Dr. X had been given a second chance. When Sue resigned, despite the old gut-wrenching process of hiring a new employee, he saved himself the agony of putting up with mediocre performance or terminating an employee. Preferring to avoid any form of confrontation, which is the pattern of most dentists, Dr. X certainly would tolerate the nonperformance for some time.
Relying on the traditional interview, resume and admittedly questionable interview skills, Dr. X would have undoubtedly replaced his employee Sue with Deb, who by every indication would have acted, talked, walked and moved in much the same way. Dr. X changed the names, physical size and expertise. He changed everything but what really mattered -- performance.
Unfortunately Dr. X hired Deb anyway. In his rush to get the selection process over with, he made an offer even before Deb took the assessments. True to form, nothing changed in the practice. On the bright side, Dr. X reports, “At least I knew who I hired, and it isn’t any worse than it was before.” Phew! Another brush with change successfully avoided.
Rolling the Hiring Dice in Your Favor!
Now let’s visit Dr. Y’s practice. Three applicants -- we’ll call them Helen, Paula and Marsha -- were offered the assessments, MFS and PIAV, following a first interview. All three preferred non-confrontation, a lot of interaction, a steady, consistent pace and some rules and structure. We identified Helen, however, would be more comfortable with a faster paced office (lower S style).
Both Helen and Marsha shared similar attitudes and values. We determined Helen may ask more questions and be more interested in learning new things (Theoretical). This would be much more evident when compared to Paula, who prefers to be told how to do things and would only read and learn what personally interested her.
We began to shake the dice. The selection process began. Paula lost key performance points when her results on a pre-employment screening assessment called SELECT for Health Care came up invalid. SELECT measures integrity, energy level, frustration tolerance, positive service attitude, multi-tasking and empathy. Helen scored well in integrity and performance. Marsha was considered an “avoid” in performance. She received “flags” on energy level, frustration tolerance and multi-tasking. The clear integrity choice was Helen.
Helen behavioral preferences and values fit well with the practice culture. This particular practice values teamwork and collaboration (high Social, low Individualistic and Core “S”) and continuing education (high Theoretical) and consistency (Core S and C). She fit well with the position, based on the performance templates of other successful employees. Helen brought the right attitudes, behaviors and motivations to the practice and the position. The dice is rolled -- 7’s! Helen is a good fit.
The Managing for Success report offers another advantage. It is a dynamic management tool. Each report is approximately 20 pages. It not only describes the communication preferences of the person but offers suggestions on how to manage and motivate this employee and the do’s and don’ts of communicating. It even includes an action plan for performance improvement to be completed by the employee and evaluated by the manager or doctor.
Hiring Right Means Never Having to Say You’re Fired!
Preparing your business to recruit and retain employees will require very different strategies and an acute understanding of different cultures, needs and priorities. Not only will new job candidates look very different in the next 50 years, but also the dearth of entry-level employees in today’s market translates to a scarcity of qualified people in the future.
Targeting selection, training and development dollars to the people who can most benefit and give the fastest, largest return on investment makes financial sense, helps retain core employees, and attracts employees who are prepared to function in a sometimes out-of-control world.
Software assessment technology such as SELECT, Managing for Success, and Personal Interests, Attitudes and Values are cost-effective, easy to use and provide a predictable, comprehensive, on-going performance management process in response to a demanding and diverse marketplace.
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