The dental job market is like the ocean. There’s an ebb and flow to it. There are busy seasons where the job market is extremely competitive and swift, and seasons where it appears to be evaporating and dry. This is true for both job seekers and employers. When you are hiring, it’s important to know what season in which the dental industry is in your area. At Dental Temps Professional Services, we have witnessed many hiring errors throughout the seasons over the years. Sharing the top three with you may help you to assess your own hiring practices and inspire you to make changes in order to keep your hiring costs under control, while ensuring that you find a great fit for your open position.
Top 3 Hiring Errors:
1. Not Offering Competitive Wages – Offering wages for the position that are below the average in your job market is a big mistake and time waster. If your goal is to find the best-qualified and most-experienced candidate for the lowest salary possible, you are wasting your time and money.
Example: an experienced front office candidate who is able to walk in without training, is proficient on your dental office software and has a working knowledge of all front office duties—including insurance knowledge—and is currently making $20.00 an hour sits down to interview and is offered $16.00. Yes, this happened recently and prompted me to write this blog. If you think offering a lower salary is going to save you money, the loss in productivity alone could make up for the amount you are trying to save.
The candidate will decline the job and will tell every one she knows in the local dental community about the negative experience, thus wasting an hour or more of your time AND giving you negative press. Know the going rate for the job description in your region.
If you want the best, you need to do what it takes to attract the best. You get what you pay for. The candidates you interview will shout it from the mountaintops that you take great care of your employees. and you’ll have more resumes than you’ll know what to do with. Quality candidates will be attracted to your office.
2. Delays From Interview Time To Making A Hiring Decision – When you take four to six weeks to make a hiring decision, you’ve lost the candidate you were desperately searching for. Dragging out the interview process not only hurts you, it also hurts your staff and your job candidates. I have witnessed a dental office miss out on a wonderful candidate because they took too long to make a decision to hire. The candidate had several job offers, and after a reasonable amount of time, accepted another offer. When the hiring manager finally called the candidate to make an offer, she was upset to learn the candidate accepted another job. The hiring manager found herself returning to the search, which equals time and money.
Your interview process should be dedicated to a few days. That’s two to three days. Having a short interview window allows you to compare candidates easily because you can remember them and quickly compare. When you drag the interview process out you have a harder time making a decision, you can’t remember one interview from the other, and your office is not running a full speed. The bottom line? It’s costing you money.
3. Incomplete or Inaccurate Job Description – Candidates want to know exactly what they are hired to do. When you fail to inform the candidate of their job description, you hire them, and six months down the road they are giving you their two weeks’ notice because the job is not what they expected. You’re now back to square one, and have lost both time and money.
Example: If you hire a dental assistant and require them to also work at the front desk, have it noted in the job description when you post the job. More often than not, candidates who learn what the job entails and are not suited for the position will not apply. The dental assistant who knows she is not suited for the front desk and has no desire to work at the front desk will not apply for the job. On the other hand, a dental assistant who has front office skills and enjoys the flow of work from clinical to front office will jump at the opportunity to apply. If you want to hire the right person with the right skills and mindset for the job, have a brief job description with key points in the ad you’re recruiting with and give them a copy of the job description in more detail–in writing–at the interview.
Take a look at your hiring practices, keep up-to-date with the salary within the standards for your region, focus the interview without dragging out the process, and have a written job description for the position you are hiring for. These three tips will help keep hiring costs low and ensure you find a good fit for your open position no matter what season the industry is in.
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