Easy Steps to Your Best New Hire Ever

Auto-generated transcript: Easy Steps to Your Best New Hire Ever

You are listening to the dental practice owner's podcast. Brought to you by Prosperident. From our unique perspective as dentistry's and bezel-lit experts, Prosperident's team can bring you the information that is important to practice owners. The dental practice owner's podcast brings you strategies, tools and tips that you can use, and dentistry's thought leaders as guests. So sit back, relax, and listen to Prosperident's Amber Weber. Wendy Askins and David Harris talk about the issues that matter to you.

Welcome. We are so excited to have our audience with us on our monthly Prosperident Power Hour. Today we're going to talk about a very interesting, but yet challenging topic in dentistry, hiring your best employee ever, the easy steps for your new, for your best new hire ever. I have my amazing co-hosts with us tonight. Wendy Askins, she joined us from Texas. She's our supervising examiner. Our CEO, Dave Harris, way up there from Nova Scotia.

And then we have a special guest, Penny Reed, that we are excited to have you share her wealth of information for our audience. So we look forward to everybody being part of tonight's webinar. I have the job of introducing our special guest tonight. And as you know, we try to bring you some of the thought leaders in dentistry. And this lady is clearly one of them. She's Penny Reed. She has a long time consultant. She and I got started in dentistry around the same time.

I may have beaten her by a couple of years. But the difference was I was an adult at the time and she was 12. Penny has been a consultant and speaker and author for a very long time. Her book is called Growing Your Dental Business. And it's available. I think on Amazon Penny. Yes, it's on Amazon. Aside from all that, Penny has fairly recently started a new job. And why don't you tell us what you're doing, Penny?

Yes. So I still have a few clients with dental coaching institute. I recently joined ESS dental Solutions as their chief strategy officer. And we are also launching an educational platform called dental Zing, which is in its infancy. The brand was just born. So we're super excited about that. Wow, terrific. And we may hear a little bit more about ESS as we go through. But as I say, we're just honored.

Like you wouldn't believe to have Penny with us tonight. What I'll tell you about Penny and I've known her for a long time. There is no BS whatsoever that comes out of her mouth. She has this very direct and almost blunt way of putting things sometimes. And I just adore. So hopefully we'll get to see a little bit of that tonight as well. We're going to talk about a topic that is so incredibly important. So necessary for all of us and yet the majority of us at least in dentistry,

us left writers absolutely hate to do it. So here's what happens, right? You come in on a Friday, back door your office, your feeling good. Because you're going to have a great weekend and all of a sudden, your office manager approaches you and says, I need to talk to you. Now, you don't know exactly what she means, but you know it can't be good just by the turn of her voice.

And sure enough, she gives you her two weeks notice. Immediately panextract your heart as a lightning bolt strikes you in the head. And you would rather go out on the freeway and drag someone out. And on out of their car, into your office and put them in the office manager's seat, then to have to go through hours of resumes and hours of unending interviews. Right? We all get it. But today, what we hope that we can do is to give you some encouragement and give you just a few simple tips and

tricks that will make the process more effective and more efficient. So you can get that long term daytime family member and get them to stay with you. So I love this illustration because this is how we wish attracting the right team. Remember worked. Right? We wish that they would just show up on our door that it would be so simple. But we could simply say, hey, we're hiring and then boom, there they are just like the Easter Bunny used to deliver my Easter basket with mostly things in it that I liked.

Yeah, that's not usually how it, you know, we're younger in a day and time. Although last night, my husband and I watched a movie about Bonnie. So you couldn't really trust, but gotten a little more savvy and sneaky. So they're not just drawn, the right people are not just drawn to the office. As I say, it's a little bit of your gut instinct and a little bit of science or actually a whole lot of science into attracting those right team members. Let's talk about the wrong employee and I took a little bit of conversation here from this Facebook group, which is called trapped in the op. And so this is a group largely of people who are working in clinical positions in practices right now and we'd rather be doing something else. And the person who made this post and I quickly labeled her as cranky pants comma RDH.

Here's what she said. She said, and I can just imagine the whining tone that's going on when this is said and I probably can't quite mimic that. But my office wants hygienist checking out our own patients and collecting money from them when we are short handed at the front desk. And she went on to say, I don't exactly feel comfortable taking money from the patient. It feels weird and unprofessional. The doctor wants us cross-trained, but it's not like assistance and receptionist can do hygiene. And I am thinking to myself, you know, if I had this person working for me, I would shoot myself. Yeah, I think if I can comment on this. Yeah, please. I think what we're putting some of, you know, some of the best clients I've worked with and think about my first business partner who was in still is a practicing dentist.

And I remember when he told me. one of the leadership lessons that he had learned. And that is that he had to be willing to do anything as a leader that he asked the team to do, right? Scrub the toilet vacuum the floor, change a light bulb, not that he did those things all the time. But he had to be willing to do that. And then I think the other is I recently moved to Charlotte, North Carolina, and I've gotten a new everything, right? A new carer tractor, you know, new new bank, we're figuring all that out. And I had a late appointment a couple of weeks ago and guests who took my payment, the carer tractor, right? So, so if the doctor is willing to do whatever it takes, and that's what we're really looking for, right?

As someone who's open, it's not the fact that they don't want to take the payment, that's the issue, it's that whole mindset of why should I have to do that. And that is something that I don't want to say it's impossible to change with the candidate. But woo, yeah, I agree with you. Having something like that, would spread like wildfire on your team. You'd have cranky not only cranky pants, RTH, but the cranky pants gang. Absolutely. And you know what this all says to me is this is somebody who has not adopted the Office of Sismission as their mission. So, you know, this prompted a lot of conversation on the trapped in the op Facebook group. And one answer came out that I love because it was particularly funny, you know, this was somebody who agreed with cranky pants RTH and said, that's why I'm not my

previous Office. I asked him what part of patient treatment he wanted me to eliminate. So, I could take the time to collect for services and file the damn insurance. So, that's what that's what somebody else said, but it gets priceless in in a second. Because somebody else said, you actually quit your job because you're employer wanted you to cross-trained and the response was, nope, I got fired. That's awesome. Yeah, that's, anyway, that tells the story is as well as anything we could say. This is a really fun topic to be talking about for me, especially. I grew up on a cattle ranch in Wyoming. So, everything that I talk about in dentistry goes back to that saying basic, how do we get the one that catch the one that didn't get away? So, principles for making

hiring, hiring easy. I think of this as think of it as you're hunting and fishing, right? We just don't go out on a hunting and fishing expedition and not have a well prepared plan, you know. We have to have the tools. We have to have good bait if we're going to be hunting larger animals, people in western, telescopic lenses so they can see what's heading their way. So, you know, you need to kind of think of this. I know this is a very basic principle, but when I was in a management position, I always thought about this. I'm not going to take the first catch. I'm going to be very prepared for figuring out what else is going to be coming my way. But in order to do that, I need to have the tools in place to be able to make sure I don't

miss the one that got away. So, utilize technology. Have your things that will help you filter through. Who's qualified? Who's not? Don't be afraid to throw out the bait to several different fish. In my experience with knowing Penny, we had an experience together where we worked together, trying to help screen for an office, and we went through thousands of resumes trying to find the suitable candidate. So, we had to throw out a lot of bait and try to get a lot of different fish to come in to see if we could find the one that was going to fit that practice. So, always utilize your technology, look it, read through your resume through email. I love the principle of video application. Put a face with the name and you'll get to see a little bit of a preview. Kind of like you're

going to go to the movies, what a preview of those coming attractions might be. You'll get an insight of what may be walking this way through your door. And then random reference numbers. Make sure you're always double checking on their reference numbers. The other key thing is even though you throw not the bait, you've done your hunt and everything. You're trying to get that best catch. You want to make sure you have another system of making sure that you have everything in writing for these people, that they've understood, okay, we think you're suitable. Now let's go through the other process and really outline what we're going to do here to make you part of our team. We want to do some screening. We want to make sure you're okay with that. A pain consent for everything

that you're doing. If you're going to require a video application, make sure they're okay with that. So, I know that's a very simple analogy, but I always thought about when I was hiring people as an office manager that I needed to have all the tools so that I got the best end result, kind of like that hunting or fishing expedition. One problem that people are having these days is what's called ghosting of interviews. In other words, you book somebody for an interview and they never show up. And it seems to be maybe a bit of a millennial thing. And who knows, maybe the person got another job or they just weren't interested in yours. Part of the weed out rules that Amber laid out there was really involved in making people a little bit invested in the process with you.

It takes somebody a little bit of time and mental energy, for example, to make a two-minute video on send it to you. So, if you put that little obstacle in people's way, you very quickly weed out those who aren't interested enough in your job to take the time to do that. The random reference number, Amber, I might just just explain that a little differently to people if I could. What I do when I'm looking for when I'm trying to fill a position is I make up a reference number. I mean, it means absolutely nothing. And I tell applicants to quote that reference number in their cover letter. And everybody who doesn't do that, I throw their application away. Why? Because they can't follow directions. And they don't have attention to detail and for what I'm

looking for people for, that's the case of death. I'd suggest if you're hiring for your dental practice and looking for a friend of this person, you want exactly the same characteristics. So, see if they can follow instructions. And if they can't, that's an easy weed out. You know, when you're sitting there with 100 resumes and you want to get down to the five that you really want to talk to, these are some ways to do it. The application form should be standardized. Otherwise, you will be influenced by whoever has the prettiest resume. So, as far as not necessarily the attraction phase, but making things simpler, one of the things that I recommend as well, just to help you with your logistics is to set up a

dummy email. It can be a free Gmail account that everything goes to. So, that you're not having your whole world disrupted with resumes. So, I mean, you could do a, or if you're hiring in the person that you're replacing is still there, right? You know, so having recruiting. Type email, it allows you to easily put the ones in a different folder that you're not interested in. And, and if you are really having to go through a lot of resumes, I would put their names in a spreadsheet because what you'll find is the candidates that you don't close the instructions. But, but continue to send you resumes. Yeah. And I'll add to that. I know on the project that we worked together, we did that. And the one thing that on the screening process I want to add is, when you have an applicant come in, that you fill is qualified.

I would always respond to them and say, here's how this is going to go. Step one, we want to receive this video application. So I would respond to them and tell them, this is, this is the process of how the next phases of you becoming part of this team is going to be. And with a separate email, so that sometimes it's better because they don't exactly know who they're talking to on the other side of the email. And one more thing that I want to make sure comes out of this slide. It's really important that you tell people very early in the process what your screening approach will be. So if you're doing drug testing and we'll talk in a minute about what might be a proper workup before you hire somebody. If, if your workup includes drug testing, you should be telling people that as early as you possibly can in the selection process. Why? Because the idea is to have people self-select out who aren't suitable.

So if somebody knows your drug testing and they know they're not going to pass a drug test, you don't want to interview that person and then find out that part later. You want them to just vanish off the face of the earth as early as they possibly can. And the, the funnel that's in the background. Really, in my mind, you minimize this, how this needs to work. You want to, you want to get the most qualified applicants you can. And then you want those who really aren't going to end up getting hired to just self-select up. So one thing that I wanted to do is kind of ask Penny, because really the video application or video with application or sending a standardized application form like maybe emailing it to them and say filling this out and then send it back to me before that you can get into the office. I mean, just real quick, Penny, can you give us like maybe a one, two, three, four sequence that we should do that in and a little bit of instruction on on I mean, what's even in the video. Is it just someone dancing or listening to music or what?

Oh, no, no, that gives us another patient. All right. So so what I would do is I would have a standard response ready, right. So you set up your email, which could be something like recruiting Dallas, right, or recruiting Dallas DDS. If you were looking for a team member in Dallas have a standard response that says, thank you so much for your interest in this position. We look forward to speaking with you. Would you hear here are the steps, you know, here are the next steps. One, please complete the attached application and return the email, right, too. We would love a short 60 second to two minute video. Tell us who you are a little bit about your background and what would have you think you would be a fit for this role in our practice, right. So it's just an introductory video. The main thing that you're looking for is to even see that they do it, right. Number one, the second one is did they bother to change out of their pajamas and brush their hair when they did it. And then the other it's one thing to create the video. It's another for someone to figure out how to save it and send it and like David referred to earlier we want to create a little bit of inconvenience for people because, right, and people on their best was what we were looking forward to to count on because that's one of their best day.

And then I would ask for is for them to end a list of references on the were going to ask for previous employers. I like to ask for those two because I want to see if they can follow instructions. And then I would put a time frame, you know, if you could return these. I can trust within two business days then a member of our team will get back with you. So just really short. But if you've got that in a document and a word document on your desktop saved when you're responding to these because I believe we have to kiss more frogs than we used to to find princess and princesses in order to to hire and then when you do get to the interview process. One of the things that the pandemic has done is most people now have zoom on their phone. So that initial interview and I'm getting a signal here that my internet is in Stagel Appologize and I'm in a remote location tonight. Then once again, I know that they're willing to go above and beyond because that's the sort of team members that we want. Does that help Wendy? Yeah, I think that's perfect. Thank you very much. That's very helpful. So when we talked about having, you know, the principles and having a good structured foundation. Now we're going to talk about what what to build upon and I always like to think of this in the dental world is a new applicant is almost like having a new patient come in right.

We can't just make a diagnosis right at the last minute. So we have to look at all the parts that we need to hire somebody. We have to get our extra. You have to get period of turning. So we have to gather all of this data before we properly can diagnose what the long term is for a patient. So this is no different when you're hiring a possible new team member. Make sure you're gathering all of the data. Not just, you know, did you complete your video for our interview. Did you do all the basic rules of the initial phase really collect data on background tricks, check drug testing. If they if you're hiring someone that's licensed make sure their license is active. If there's anything on their license that you need to be aware of. The credit checks just that just what you kind of get a basic overview of how trusted and and how good this employee is going to be for your long term goal. So I always look at this as. We have to gather all the data before you diagnose and treatment plan what's going to happen in your office. 65 million Americans have criminal records. That is one in four adults in the country. I mean, as funny as this seems there are more Americans with criminal records than COVID even and to.

not check for criminal record when you hire somebody is reckless. Are you talking to the right people? And one of the things that I have found through the years, and I never will forget this exactly a dentist that I spoke with in Canada that well, not becoming a client, just a great guy. He just decided that at this time, coaching was not for him, and this will make a little bit more sense. He said, what's more important?

Having to work with someone like you, going ahead and getting started, or having a right team in place. And I said, well, if you don't have people that are going to do what I recommend, it's almost like you're throwing your money away. So are you talking to the right people? We think that we have to have people with experience. And I know we're going to dive deeper into this. There's a difference between someone having the certifications that they need,

like the licenses that they may be required to have in your state. And so that would be a given, right? Most of the people, at least the really, really bad ones, right? And I actually, I don't know when we want to get to it, but on your key ask of convicts, I actually interviewed one of those people. Yeah, that's a price. And get hired. That's a total different story that was funny when I was watching that.

We tend to think, right? We want the presto, we bring them in. They get matching grubs. Or, and that's one of the biggest things we make for people. You can train skills. You can't really, I mean, if you could train mindset, how many people that do go to jail wouldn't go back again, right? I mean, you would think locking somebody up would retrain your brain.

So it's a whole lot easier to teach a skill than it is to retrain attitude and values. Penny, I absolutely love that. Just to be your offer, just the second. David's favorite words. Let's just be your offer. Second. I can't tell you as a fraud examiner,

how many cases I've had where my current client figured out that the suspect that had stolen from him or her had actually worked in the case. And it actually worked in the Dell practice before. Yeah. And I actually think that falls under the category of dental experience required or dental experience needed. Because I've had clients tell me when this person walked into my front door when I placed an ad. She was everything I could ever ask for. She did marketing. She did accounting.

She did office manager. She did payroll. She did patient concierge. She did everything. Well, yeah. And she stole from you as well. Right? So if you're limiting yourself to dental experience needed or dental experience required, then you're looking for love in all the wrong places.

With that movie, urban cowboys. Anyway, as Penny said, there are some positions in which we absolutely cannot get around the no experience necessary. We have to have experience if they're a degree to license position. And but when we go a little bit further into it, there are so many people that you cut out of your office or out of your realm because you're narrowing the field. And also sometimes we start panicking hiring because we like to believe that that person is not going to leave us or that it's not an immediate action that we need to act upon because our place is so full with other tasks. And we put ourselves in the position where now we're panicking. We don't have any other choice.

We've got to have somebody that knows how to run dentrics or that knows how to run dolphin or that knows how to run dolphin. Or that knows how to file insurance. You know, if you have to have someone like that, a good place would be to go to some different websites that definitely will list like dump posts.net Dave. Yeah, there are also the local dental sites called dental peeps and there's one of those for almost every city and that's a pretty good place to look for somebody with a with a dental background as well. But I was going to say actually, you know, I got hooked up with prosperity and with David Harris, I was LinkedIn. And so that's been like the best thing ever in my career. But before we move on, I want to tell like one little story about how I got into dentistry just to drive the point home to you. I was a sophomore in college and I was studying psychology and criminology.

I have no interest in dentistry whatsoever. And there was a man at my church who was some kind of dentist. He was a tooth doctor or something. I didn't even know. And after church once and they. He came to me and he said, what are you doing? And I said, well, I'm home for the summer. I'm looking for a job.

And he said, we always need someone in my office to run errands or to make the point, meant, do you want to come work for me for a couple of months. And you know, first I said, well, I don't even know what you do. So he told me and the stability did. And he said, well, this is this is literally how young and naive I was. He said, you know, just show up tomorrow and where a pair of white pants and a white shirt. And I said, but I don't own any white pants. And he said, can you buy some before can a club tomorrow morning?

And I said, yeah, I can do that. And I had to borrow the money from my mom. That was a college kid. I had to borrow the money from my mom to go buy these white pants to start a 30 year career in orthodonics and dentistry. So I'm very passionate about that. Don't look at someone and say, you don't have what I need because you don't have any experience or maybe you don't even know what a pair of don'tist is. Because two weeks after I started working for that orthodonist, I had William Profits book contemporary orthodonics. I took it down off of his shelf and I was going through it every night, absorbing and learning everything.

I could about work at Onix because it was so fascinating. So don't we, those people out before you get a chance? Oh, one of the things that I wanted to mention was how I got my start. And that was actually my dentist hired me. And I had known him actually as wife was my seventh grade science teacher. So I knew him before he even became my dentist, right? And kind of grew up in his practice.

But we, the admin team members that I worked with, one of them that was there when I started, she had been a patient. That's how he found her. When we grew to the point where we needed to add another admin team member, she was a patient. The person that replaced me when I left to become a consultant, she was the friend of one of our hygienist.

So more than likely, you know someone that would be a great fit, even if they're not an admin right now with social media, I think often we feel like the only place to find people is through the Facebook groups or placing ads. And not that that's not a good resource, but more than likely, as we talked about in our planning session, if everyone is six degrees away from Kevin Bacon, I think you're probably only three degrees away

from your next awesome dental hire. Yeah. To me, when you get to the position where you say, I must hire somebody from within dentistry, there's already been a failure. And, you know, there are circumstances where that's the way you have to go. And as has been pointed out a couple of times. We're not talking about positions where you need a qualification

of some type, but particularly front desk. When you say I can only hire somebody from within dentistry, it means one of two things. Either you have to fill this position in a very short time, or you haven't built the resources to train this person. Your staff haven't crossed train, for example. So the person who just walked out the door took a whole bunch of your institutional knowledge with them.

And let's start looking at it in those terms. When we have to hire from within dentistry, something in our system is already broken. And that really demonstrates to us that problem. And the other thing, this is something that's very near and dear to my heart, is we always expect one person to be able to do it all. And now with technology and the way things have branched out, is there's so many things we can outsource now,

so that our practice can continue to be efficient, have great systems in place. And allow our team members to really, really focus on patient care. So for instance, we know pennies with ESSIST. There's a lot of things you can outsource and have a lot of basic things done in the office. And allow your team members to really grow in other ways that can benefit your practice more than you realize by outsourcing those things. So don't be afraid to utilize technology and contact and expert

and determine realistically how you can allow your team members to contribute to future practice growth and outsource these things that could be done by people who are definitely qualified. And that's what they specialize in. It was implied here, but not stated. What ESSIST does a lot of things, but its primary mission is to allow officers to outsource the filing of insurance, to follow up the entering of payments when they come in from EOBs.

So if you look at, for example, the receptionist job, that's some of the most technical part of it. And if you're in a situation where you want to hire from outside of dentistry, you know, whether this is a permanent solution or a temporary one, it gives you the ability to fill that position with somebody who knows less about that particular problem. Well, and we would think that technology and in some ways it has and in some ways it will continue to that things would have gotten easier.

PPO's have so complicated that part, you know, the contractual plans enough here at FIFA Service Office, which the case for most practices. So that's a very specialized and also they got their hands in your pocketbook. So to speak, so that's how I wound up with ESSIST. I had a lot of clients that had those openings and we didn't find qualified people. And either while we were training people to do the job or we just didn't find a great candidate, this wound up being a wonderful solution for them. Thank you for bringing that up, David.

No problem. You know, if you want to have more flexibility to hire, make the job a little similar. Mm-hmm. And what was the movie, Glenn Gary, Glenn Ross, with Alex Baldwin, always be closing. Yeah. That's a line. I've never can remember the name of the movie.

I've seen the little meme and the little clip probably a hundred times. So I like to say always be recruiting. I remember a particular client in Little Rock that mentioned that they had an opening at the front and he was a new client. He was sharing with me some of his recent frustration that they had hired these admin team members with experience and, you know, they either had no personality or they had experience, but then they got in there and they couldn't do the job. You know, they didn't even have the tech.

And she said, you know, I just don't know where to look. And so I asked, well, who, you know, where do you go when you're not in the out and they would tell me, like, where restaurants where you go or Starbucks? And he said, you know, there's there's a young lady and he did not want that hiring this person. But I just said there were people around you that all the time that impressed you. There was a young lady that worked at Starbucks and she would see him come in the door. And she remembered what his order was. So she would say, you know, when he came up to the counter, you know, you want to rendez,

vanilla latte extra hot. I don't know that that was the dream. But, and then she, or she would say, hey, doc, you know, she was always smiling and she and I said, whether or not it's her, that's the type of person that you want. And hey, prior to the pandemic, right, that's changed things a little bit. We encountered people like that all the time. So always be recruiting. You don't have to always be hiring.

But I would certainly let someone know, hey, if you're ever open to a conversation about coming to work in our practice, please, here's a card. You know, here's my self-own number. Here's my email. The other is this is one of my favorite lines. And I'm telling you one of my secrets here. I am interested in bringing someone on the my team or or I would mention this to a client.

So, you know, if there's someone, if it's a patient, you're just kind of wanting to fish. You say, you know what? We always love seeing you, here, you're listening, Amber's the patient. Amber, we always love having you come in the office. We just love your positive personality and how punctual you are.

And of course, you're great oral hygiene, getting cheesing now. And you know what, we were thinking, we would love to have more team members like you. Do you know of anybody that might be looking for a blank position? So it's actually one of the best team members I've ever had. On my team, I did that.

She went to my church. She was our pastor's wife. And I was thinking about a particular role in us in her Facebook message and I said, hey, but in it's 20 hours a week, it's, you know, for my own business and what about me? And that was what I wanted anyway. It works for any business.

You know, Penny, the irony is that everyone in the audience understands the wisdom of a short notice list for patients, right? We all understand the financial damage that having an empty chair and a practice creates. So everybody buys into that for patients. What they haven't done is made the logical extension that, you know, not being able to fill a staff position

quickly has a cost as well. And yet, so they don't apply the same kind of thinking to hiring. And I think one of the other easy examples, which has been a hot minute since some plate sports, think about your professional sports teams. Do they wait until they find out that their star quarterback is leaving before they bring on another winner?

Whatever the position is, they're always looking. Right? They always have their eye open to see if there's talent around them. And you know what, maybe you don't have an opening. But most practices, I would say, there's usually someone that they're kind of like, eh, not really sure if he or she's going to make it.

And you never know, someone can tell you they're moving, right? Or that they're not working more. So definitely when I have, and I'm not saying, hi, here, always. You know, the point is that if you're going to have the ideal team, the mindset that you need is that I am a collector of people. And you know, I will be encountering them in all kinds of facets of my daily life.

And when I meet somebody who looks like they might be a fit for my practice, they need to file that away, maybe make a note somewhere, do what Penny said, hand them, hand them your carding and initiate at least a basic conversation. But you should already have identified the next two or three people you would hire if you needed to. And if you don't do that,

then you're going to be putting this place where you hire an appanac. And when you hire an appanac, you compromise and you make mistakes. And neither of those is really where you want to be to have that ideal team that makes your office a joy to work at. So what does the ideal team member look like, Penny? Well, they definitely have some skills, right?

And in today's day and age, computer skills, being able to step in, learn new programs, that's something that we need. It doesn't necessarily have to be your dental software. Hard working, they need to have a great work ethic. They've got to be flexible and adaptive. Coachable is what I call it. And when we talk about some of the things coming up a little bit

later in the program, I'll talk about how you can assess some of that coachability or adaptability in an interview. And then we want team members that are loyal. And people, again, don't stay in places as long as they used to comment some does that also include in your opinion, their poultry, because that's something that can be run as a background check. And if I didn't do a good job somewhere,

I might leave that off of my employment history. So if you have someone who every two years has a different job, guess how long they'll probably be with you? Yeah, absolutely. And we did a session about a year ago where we talked about how to stay away from the wrong people. And one of the things that we cautioned the audience on then and Penny kind of brings it up now is people who make a lot of

lateral moves. So I'm a receptionist at one practice. If I moved to somewhere else to become a financial coordinator, that makes sense. If I moved somewhere else to become a receptionist, and it's not like my spouse got transferred, and I was just following them or something like that. You know, if there's no visible reason for that move,

then a lot of times it's personality issue. And we understand that not every human will get along with every other human. But when people do that regularly, you know, when they've been working in dentistry for 10 years, and they've had five different employers, and most of the moves had no real visible progression, that's trouble. Let's get to one of those questions I get asked a lot,

which is, is there some kind of testing that I can do to assess suitability of people? And what they're talking about here is what is known broadly as psychometric testing. So there are personality tests out there. And one that has been used a lot in dentistry that probably a lot of the audience is familiar with is disc. But there are other tests as well.

There's one called Myers-Brags. And lots of other tests that people could take. The people who design these tests will say fairly directly in most cases, they're not suitable for pre-employment screen. Disc measures your personality in four dimensions. To me, one of its really good uses is, when you have existing staff to find out sort of what their learning style is,

how they present ideas and how best to communicate with them. Not quite so good for hiring. And first of all, this test is not normal. There's no pass or fail on a disc test. It's simply measures where somebody is in four dimensions. And that lets you understand them a little bit better. The second problem that any kind of psychometric testing has is that it assumes that the person who's being tested

wants to be tested. The disc and I'll continue with that example. And I'm sure Penny's got some comments. Penny is a... qualified to do disc testing and she probably knows more about this than any of us, but I've taken disc test several times and most of the time the intent of the questions is pretty obvious. In other words, if I wanted to be seen as for example dominant, which is one of the four quadrants in disc, that suggests to me that I should answer the questions a certain way.

And I've never found it hard to really play games with those tests.

So, you know, one of the risks I would like to think David that was people are not as smart as you are. I don't think I'm much smarter than most people, but it's not hard in the disc test to tell which questions are getting at dominance, for example, or stability. So, you know, if I want to present a certain way I can't. Now, the other kind of test is apt to test. So, this is like an IQ test or the DAT that people take to get into dental school, or if you're looking to get into a law school, there's one called the LSAT. Those are a little bit harder. I mean, it's easy to understand your level with them. It's impossible probably to overstate, but the problem with this kind of test is that they don't really

measure your ability to learn what they measure as your ability to answer a certain set of questions. And inherently, they have first of all cultural and linguistic biases, and that opens the door among other things to discrimination claims. And I'll put it really simply, if you're taking a test in English and English is not your first language, you're probably going to score more poorly than your true aptitude. If English is your first language, it should be more accurate, but that's not necessarily guaranteed. So, if you apply this kind of test, you almost automatically are discriminating against people. Where English is not their first language, and that may get you in some trouble. So, I agree that disc cannot be the deciding factor, and I was thinking about what

might have been a fun background for, you know, moving the main event of dating myself now, right? Where they had boxing gloves on, and they were like head to head. Because we do use disc as a tool in our tool belt for hiring, and actually the distributor I use talks about, how to use it for hiring. You can't use it as a stand-alone tool. Best, I would say, in hiring. Well, once we administer it with a teen, and this is not scientific, but if you pull the rim, usually 90 to 95% of the time, people are like, oh my gosh, this is just like me, right? I took this home. I showed it to my husband, or I showed it to my wife, and they said, how did answering 24 questions come up with this? So, there are always people out there that will try to trick it, and I think if you're going to use it,

you better be smarter than the average person in understanding how to interpret it, and the ones that we use, actually show three different graphs. So, if you've got one that's only giving you one graph, for disc, you have no way of, well, even if, and here's the other part, is there any other assessment like that? If you're paying for it, I would not share those results with that teen member unless you hired them, because they can try to use it again to you. We made the, I just know that test is why I didn't get the job, right? But the other is, if you use it, and you know what your name is, you can see where they potentially might be a great fit, or they could be dominant off the charts, which means they're usually missing the get-alonging. Yeah, and again, I would never say

these tests don't have their uses, they do. We just have to be really, really careful with them in the hiring process. And the other thing that always concerns me is that they can easily become a crutch. You know, there are certain things that we want to look out for employees that you just cannot test for with with the personality or an aptitude test. You know, how much attention to detail to these people have. Again, if I'm taking a test that reports to measure that, I can easily see the questions that are pointed in that direction and answer them in the way that gives you the answer you want. We have to look at people carefully and as whole people, and I just don't think these tests are going to do that very well for us in pre-employment. Yeah, yeah, hey guys, I'm just an audience

to be manipulated and aptitude tests are our flawed for employment screening. Let's talk about the working interview. Now, there are some very controversial views on working interviews, but one thing that I have noticed is that in dentistry we tend to use them as a catch-all. Somebody we're not sure if we really like their personality or not, well, let's give them a working interview. As any was talking earlier, a working interview is a tool that you have in your tool belt, but it definitely should not be a standalone process or step in your new higher process.

I happen to favor the working interview because I think it offers so much so many opportunities for the staff members to see if they are comingling well, do their personalities get along well, but also, they could go to lunch together and find out a little more when the applicant is relaxed. They find a little bit more about that applicant that maybe they're not. The applicant is not willing to share in a clinical environment or is not willing to share with a person that's interviewing them. Either way that you choose to do it, if you choose to do a working interview or you don't choose to do a working interview, the one thing that I really feel passionate and I want to caution you about is that a lot of employers don't comprehend what a working interview is. To the IRS

and to federal agencies, it's not a working interview. You have hired that person for one day, that person is actually your employee. They're not an independent contractor, which is what I find a lot of dentists will say. Well, it was my mind when I hear a first of all, oh, well, it's a working interview. If they want to work here,

they'll come and work for free. That's not how the government says it should work and that's not actually fair to the person that's interviewing with you. Anyway, they are an employee, so you need an I9 and a W44 for them for taxes. The best thing is to have their paycheck for that day, ready to give them at the end of the day,

or if you're using an electronic third party system, go ahead and add them in the system that day and make them aware of when they are going to be paid. There are other concerns that I have about a working interview that have to do with hip-a-guide lines. And also, it has to do with the preservation of intellectual property, or the specific systems in your office

that's really working for you, that gives you that competitive advantage above the doctor down the street, or the orthodontist around the corner. Someone can come in, gather your intellectual, intellectual ideas or intellectual property, and then go on to the next interview and as Penny was saying before,

go on to the next interview and use that intellectual property that is stolen from you to make themselves sound a bit smarter. So this is a really, really tough area that has some great benefits, but it also has a lot of risks that go along with it as well. Dave, do you want to comment more on that?

I do. And let's be clear, the absolute best way to observe somebody in a job, the best predictor of how well they're going to do in a job is to let them actually do it. And that's the temptation of the working interview. I think it is a really bad idea for all the reasons that Wendy mentioned.

We end up with an employee for that day, and if you don't keep them after that day, now you have an employee who you fired, who can, for example, claim that the firing was discriminatory. If they get hurt on the job, you've got to work as a comp issue. You need to fill in the intake paperwork so that your hip-a-compliant, the hoops you have to jump through

to properly bring this person in for a day to decide if you want them, are just monumental. And to me, again, I will happily can see that it's the best way to observe somebody, but I don't think you should do it. What I think you need to do is look at how can we come close to a working interview, how can we get the same kind of

observation of somebody, but without actually making them an employee? And we cannot support the argument that they're an independent contractor. You know, if you have five other dental assistants who are all employees, and you bring in somebody else for a working interview, doing the same job as the other five, but you say they're an independent contractor, that duck will not hunt. So that is definitely something that I agree with Dave.

I used to really believe in working interviews, and some aspects I still do. But I want to talk about what other type of situations you can create when you go through the word interview, what kind of testing can work. I like to talk about what's the meaning interview, what is the interview mean to you? So you want to set up different scenarios.

Number one is role play. I've used this a lot when I was an office manager. For instance, I had a position open for a dental assistant, and I had several people that applied this, so they had dental experience. So rather than doing a working interview, I set up different trays on the back table where we had the actual interview to talk to the patient.

I said, we're going to do a root canal on number 30. Can you show me what tools and what materials you would get? So I created a setting in a situation where I can see how they would present themselves in that situation, but I wasn't taking on the obligation that you just talked about the legal implications. So definitely, don't look at this interview it's just a time to sit and chat and kind of get to know this person.

But your self is in a situation where you can roll act like you're a patient on the phone. And you just call if you're interviewing someone for the front desk and you say, I'm patient, pretend I'm a patient and say something that you would expect how they would respond to an angry patient on the phone. How would you respond? And do some role planes.

The next thing, and I have a very personal, fun story to share about this, is written communication exercises. I did that panic hiring when I was an office manager years ago hired this young, cute, bubbly girl that was really sweet. Had this great outgoing personality and I thought, yes, she's going to be perfect. She was number two on the interview list. So I hired the second person that walked through the door.

We did a lot of referrals to a specialist in end-adontists at the time. And I had had a close relationship with his office manager. Every time we refer to a patient, we send an email to their office with all the x-rays and everything that they needed. And on about day four, I get a phone call from this end-adontist that says, Amber, you need to look at the emails that we are receiving from this new golden egg that you have hired.

So I go back through the office email and the emails were like something out of a text message. Everything was abbreviated in the text message. KTYL, she ended every email with KTYL. It really did not end well for the process. So from this, use that as a screening process. What is their capability for what you're looking for for that position? As Wendy mentioned earlier, definitely want to have them get to know your team. Send them out with lunch.

Your team will see how they interact with them. And also, you know, they have a waiter or a waitress. What is their attitude in that environment? And if you have a great team, you know, they're your family. You want that feedback. So put them in another setting. Not just that, but we're going to get to know each other and see if you'll be a good fit for the office. And like I mentioned earlier, drop specific knowledge test.

And Penny has great information on this as well. But I always want to kind of do a little bit of screening. Like if you had to take a test to be able to go on to dental school, or you had to take a test to be able to get. your board, so pass your clinical or medical board. So I'll always have a little test. Don't just use it as a situation. We're just going to sit here and talk and chat a while. So I want you to think about a skills lab like you would think about practice and aim where you gave some great examples just a moment ago, but the difference between practice and a ball game.

So if we had a professional football team and we wanted to try out a running back, would we put them in the game, right, or would we put them in some practice scenarios and see how they did? So this is creating an environment where you can stay bring someone in. You can think of it as a lab, right? And but they're not actually working. They're not on the plane field, right? They're in your office. You're having them do things, but they are not indirect contact with your patients on the phone, to your side. You know, they are, it is very clear that you're not hiring them and you can, I would make it last no more than an hour, right? So that they can't construe that they came in and they worked all day. Now you could always bring them back for a second one. But if you were looking

for an admin team, remember what could you have been to? And this would be situational based on whether or not they worked in the dental office before or what their resume or application says that they have the ability to do. So the first would be some basic telephone. Do you want to know does this person have a same song and their voice when they enter the phone? Or, you know, they say some people have a face for radio. Some people really don't have a voice for telephone. So how do they sound and then give them some scenarios? You have an upset patient. Right? Here's what they're upset about. What would you say? Right? So if it's someone with a dental background, they might be a little bit more technical in their comments, non-dental background,

at least you can tell that they've got the smart to be able to think on their feet. But the other would be have them right a heartfelt handwritten. Thank you, no. I realize that we're in a digital record age. I still think the ability to be able to read someone's handwriting as well as you can't hide when you're writing something by hand. There is no spell check. So there's no grammar filter. So you know, you give them the essence of what you want to have happen. See if they can do it. The other would be if they say they have a background. Oh, yes, I was an insurance coordinator. Awesome. There's a few scenarios. Could you, we want to calculate the patient's copayment? They've method deductible. They haven't method deductible.

You know, give them a few scenarios. And then some contextual exercises and expectations to experience level. And one of the things that came to mind when we were planning this session was a client who I'm not a control freak when it comes to hiring with clients. I do want to be involved. Why? Because I've done it thousands of times. Right. I'm not saying that I always love it. Sometimes it's hardens and others. But this particular client needed a dental assistant. And we talked on the phone and then like the next week we had another conversation. He said, I found somebody. And I was thinking he meant to interview you. He goes, oh, no, she's already started. I said, oh, well, tell me he said, oh, this one, I hit the jackpot. She said, denture extriner. She's

a certified denture extriner, which I sincerely doubt based on what I'm about to tell you. So a few days into it, he sent me a message and said, we need to start looking again. And that's what happened. He said she typed with the eraser of a, on a pencil, one key at a time. He could not find her way around the intersex to save her life. So I don't know if she just happened to get lucky and pass the test or if she made it up. So you want to trust but verify. So if they say on a intersex trainer, have some dummy patient records in your system. You know, hey, let's add Mickey Mouse, Daisy Donald Duck. Let's put some information in there. Have them like her. I'd like to have them show you paint the fence. Watch the car.

Well, let's let's go back to where we started. And I put up the thing that I called cranky pants, RDH at the beginning. And it was abundantly clear to everybody in the panel. And I suspect everybody in the audience that this woman was just not a team player. And my definition of a team player is somebody who adopts the mission of the organization as their mission. So let's form our own idea of what the team players should be doing for us in our practices. So I hope that the people who work with you, our team players, as I say, if you have the people who have not adopted your mission as their mission, that's the time to be looking around. And with that, this would be a really good time to take some questions from you guys. All right Dave, I have a great question that

someone asked earlier during the presentation, but I wanted to save it for you at the end. How do you do a background check? That is a terrific question. Let's think about a little bit of terminology here first of all, because a lot of times people use the words background check and criminal records checks anonymously. And I don't think that's a good use of the words. To me, the background check is the entire process that you do. So we had a slide and we talked about a little bit. It includes things like checking somebody's credit history. That criminal records check that we talked about drug testing. Dentistry has allowed itself to become very casual about how it screams people before they get hired. And that's terrible. I mean, I can't get a job and I've

said this in webinars before. I can't get a job at FedEx delivering the junk people by an Amazon without a drug test and yet I can work in virtually any dental practice in the United States. That makes no sense. So there is no background check that's one step. It's a series of steps. To me, they're all important when that is vital that gets skipped a lot is speaking with former employers. And that should be your starting point. I want to talk to former employers. I want to find out how this person was as an employee because the best predictor I can have of how they're going to be as my employees. How do they do in their last job and how do they do in the job before that? And how you do that is very simple.

You find the phone number independently. In other words, do not ever call any phone number that an applicant gives you and you call that number and you get to speak to the dentist and You ask them some questions. The big ones I want to ask are What were the exact dates of employment? What was their ending position with you because a lot of times people will overstate that when they're applying at your practice and If they were available for work and if you had a position for them, would you be hired them?

And the beautiful thing about that question is anything other than yes, of course, in a heartbeat means no If you ask somebody the question and you get Three seconds of silence that's or you sense that somebody's choosing their words carefully That's just another way of saying no Drug test. There's a lab in almost every city that will do that and you just have to make an appointment and send somebody to the lab for the screening Criminal records check Typically you'll hook you hire a private investigator to do that for you And there's almost again certainly somebody locally who will do that for you

The other thing I'll mention is that and I think this was hinted at in them in our slides But I'll say it again We shouldn't be playing applicant survivor in other words. We don't take five applicants and drug test them all And hire the one who has the least toxins in their bloodstream

The idea is you use techniques like the interview The skills lab that Penny talked about to get down to the one employee you really think is the best choice and then the background check and get supply to that one employee This again if we're if we're drug testing five people we're doing something wrong That should not be your way to get down from five to one

I have a statement and then a question Our friend Laurie moaning is joining us tonight she's with Dr. Kirk's sex central coast orthodontics If you ever we've had several different webinars where we have talked about Dr. Spag and what a great team he has and Laurie I believe is the HR manager and they have I think about 65 to seven be employees in California so Laurie definitely knows what she's talking about and uh here is her

comments on working interviews She said if anyone is in California you essentially have to hire the person before doing it working interview Legal advice is to not do it unless they have It's not do it unless they just observe and don't do any work So there's another opinion on that from someone who knows well about it from California but another guest also ask Does the caution that we gave regarding working interviews does that also applying Canada

Yes, it absolutely does Yes and legally Yeah, it absolutely does these people become your employees I mean when you when you put them in your office and you get them to do the function that your office does They become your employees and um you know great comment on the California situation but it applies everywhere You know you cannot bring these people in and Pretend that they are not employees because at least for that day they are and with that comes all the obligation that you have as an employer to those employees

So my advice is really simple don't do it You can get them to do Comparable functions and that's really what Penny was getting at with the concept of a skills lab But as soon as they take and instrument and touch a patient Or they pick up the phone and answer it and there's a patient on the other end Their functioning as employees and to pretend otherwise is is falling

Don't do it and I think Sometimes you are working interview is different when For example, I come from orthodonics So instead of having someone come in and do a working interview with a patient why not hand a Mataipodont with the self-living getting bracket on it and see if they know how to open it or if they can figure it out Or they can bond a bracket on a bow line to you. They're band above iing to you Or you know they could put a last six around or o-rings around the twin bracket You don't even need to touch a patient to do that that would be a skills test that Penny was talking about that's exactly it again

I think we all agree if if there were no such thing as government The working interview would be ideal Okay, unfortunately despite the best effort of certain politicians government is still here and it's always gonna be here So let's just say that the working interview we can't do the question is can we Have the same kind of observation and and and Wendy's ortho examples are to me or great ones We can we can we can we can watch them in a work setting but Make them so they're not touching patients I think the other thing to

If we look at and I agree with you there are a lot of things that I think well is there a way that I would rather do it Yeah, but I'm also about following best practices what's legal What's going to get us in the least amount of trouble here's what I've seen with working interviews is that we throw people in and no one there's not a dedicated person paying attention necessarily to everything that this person is doing Right, it's we're short handed Well, how should they well, I don't early know Right because I was busy

Whereas when you create that laboratory experience you that's your main role right is to see Really what they do what they know and how well they end up and I'm probably already not a lot of people to grow this end the night because of all the technology I'm always having but one of one of the greatest The services that that I see in the dental industry in the dental practices is What we think that we have to accomplish during patient time

Right we think oh well this all has to happen if the practice is open seeing patients Monday three Thursday from eight to five Bride or Monday through Friday from eight to five You You really can't do an effective job of hiring when you're in the middle of the game Right, so maybe it's a half day Saturday That you schedule multiple like hour after hour or maybe you bring people in and are Greek. You want to see how someone really performs,

but I'm in a group interview, right? Have three of them sitting there doing some of those things.

Again, we have to think outside of the box if we want different results and what we've gotten in the past. And that is one of the downsides, even if it weren't the legal constraints or concerns, is that most of the time in a working interview, there's not someone right there with them to see from what I'm seeing. I'd love to hear Amber Eurgeon

when these comments when you've seen it. It's kind of like we just throw them in there and then it begins with a very people like how they do. Yeah. Well, one thing I want to point out also with the working interview, kind of think of it like a first date, right? You're telling that person,

we want you to come back for a working interview. So they're definitely going to put their best foot forward and really, really try to impress you. But think about when you bring someone in just for the first interview, people do not expect the skills assessment like you were talking, Penny. So you can actually get a better reading of how they're going to respond to things

because they're in a situation that they were not prepared for. If you have that set up an interview or like a skill assessment, whereas like a working interview, they can come in and just really show some shine and make you really think they'll they hung the moon and then after the first few days, you're like, whoa, that wasn't what we thought it was. I agree with what you said, Amber,

although I'll go back to something I said earlier, I think we need to be transparent with the process that people are going to go through when they apply. In other words, if there is going to be a skills-based assessment, they need to know that when they apply. And the idea, again, is to keep people who know they can't do the job from getting halfway into our employment process

and then kind of getting separated from that process because that's work. So in my mind, if we're going to do skills assessment, we want to tell them that up front. The real point of any of this, and we know that people are going to be at their best with any assessment that you're doing, whether it is a working interview and again,

I think working interview is a dead issue, so maybe I should just stop talking about it. But if we're doing a skills assessment, we know they're going to be at their best and their standard of day-to-day job performance is probably going to be somewhat lower than what they demonstrate to us in the skills assessment, the exact same way that when people come to an interview,

they're going to be dressed as the best they ever possibly could be. And I think the point of these is to say, if they don't meet my standard in the skills assessment, or they come dressed for an interview at a lower standard than what I would expect them to come to work at, we know that's trouble. I mean, if that's their best and their best isn't good enough, then we've got a problem for sure.

If they meet the standard in the skills assessment, or they come dressed to our standard for the interview, then the question you have to deal with is, how far down are they going to fall from there? But yeah, we need to see if their best will meet our standard, and if it won't, then there's no hope. But all thank you for visiting with us tonight. Amber and Wendy, thank you very much,

as always, for the work you put into these and for making it a great discussion tonight. And I'd really like to thank our special guest, Penny Reed. She did not disappoint one bit, but Penny, it was wonderful to have you and we will do it again with you. Well, thank you. Thanks for listening to the dental practice

on our spotcast. Brought to you by Prosperity. You can contact Prosperity through its website, WWW.PressedParrident.com, or by calling 888-398-2327. If you have questions about this podcast, if you would like to discuss your practice, or there is a topic you would like to see in a future podcast,

we would love to hear from you. Amber, Wendy and David will be back soon with another episode.