Hiring an associate can be a very painful process. Trying to find somebody who is not only clinically good is hard. I talked to a lot of dentists that don't want somebody right out of dental school.
Well, that goes back to "Do you have a clinical development program"?.
If you've got multi locations, you should definitely have that in place. You should definitely have a clinical director, as that's how you can take younger people and really develop them.
That's how you get them to stay. The ones that really help them.
But if you do need to hire somebody that has experience, they're going to probably have more demands. They're going to probably want to do more than bread and butter dentistry.
They're going to be doing some advanced procedures as well.
So you really just need to be organized. Understand that it can be a painful process. But if you think about what you want, and you can guide them and give them what they want, then it will be easier.
It will also make it easier down the road to retain them, because we have these agreements up front. And we can certainly change those if we need to. But now we know exactly what we expect out of each other.
I get the question about how to find associates. And it's different for everybody. And it really depends on where you're located.
With my more rural clients that are concerned about "Will somebody want to live out here?" Well, I can tell you, those are sometimes easier to fill.
There are candidates that don't want to go move into the city and have a lot of traffic and congestion and deal with that.
I firmly believe if you are persistent, you will find associates willing to live in your community. This is going to go back to your brand.
If you've developed a community based brand, it's easier to promote someone local because they will be authentic and be relatable. If it's somebody that lives in the city and drives out to the practice that can still work. It's just easier for branding purposes to try to get them to live in the community.
Now one of the best ways to do that is to fill your pipelines, as I call it. Are there dental schools that are bringing you great associates? Maybe they are a couple years out by the time you get them, but they train them well. You know that way your associates can actually go help you find more associates. The internal team members are the best way to find your next hire. Incentivize them to do so.
You can always do online sources like Indeed. I think that's probably the one I see that has the most success. A lot of people post on Facebook. I think that can be effective, but lots of times you get a lot of candidates you're not crazy about. So the best thing to do is to try to have your resources, your network, your connections, and they're going to help you find those associates you want.
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