How to Get More Out of Your Dental Job Posting & Search

How to Get More Out of Your Dental Job Posting & Search is the third part of the series Hiring Through a Dental Labor Crisis. Catch up on Part 1 and Part 2.

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With the dental labor market perhaps the tightest and most challenging it’s ever been for dental hiring managers, we’re closing out this series with some insight from one of our DentalPost team members, Amanda Hill, RDH. She recently helped fill a Front Office Coordinator position at a dental practice where she regularly provides hygiene services. We sat down with Amanda to get her perspective on her dental job posting and what that hiring experience was like post-Covid. Read on for Amanda’s tips, strategies, and perspective on how she leveraged the DentalPost platform to get more from her search.  

Here is what she had to say…

When I agreed to take on the hiring manager role for my office, I honestly had no clue how time-consuming it would be—keeping track of the applications, interviews, who I liked and didn’t––it felt overwhelming. But then I discovered some tools on DentalPost that kept me organized and my search on track.

Amanda Hill, RDH

Here are 6 tips for getting the most out of the DentalPost dental job posting platform: 

1. Do the prep work. Know who you are looking for. 

When you’re short-staffed, the knee-jerk reaction is to find someone FAST. But usually, the best fit isn’t the first one you stumble across. This sounds like a luxury (especially these days) but hiring the wrong person can make the work double exhausting and compound the already existing production problem. 

2. Decide who your ideal candidate is.

Before I started on the dental job posting, I had to figure out what we wanted out of this employee. Much like buying a house, we weren’t likely to find everything on our list, but we at least got an idea of what was important to us and what was a deal-breaker. 

At our staff meeting, I asked: If you could wave a magic wand and create the perfect team member, who would they be? What skills are most important, and what can we let them learn on the job? 

3. Know your core values as a team. 

Establishing these is key to ensure you maintain the right culture. If you’ve ever worked with someone that just doesn’t fit you’ll know what I’m talking about. DentalPost’s assessments are great to help you screen candidates and figure out yourself and your team. We took time to sit down and review the core values assessment as a team. So we wrote down our values and posted them in our break room. 

Focusing on our team vision helped us remember we are hiring someone who is the right fit for the practice and not just someone we “like.” As humans, we tend to default to people who are most like ourselves rather than the person who balances out our own traits. We have to consciously and mindfully watch our bias and automatic default so we don’t just hire clones of ourselves. 

4. Make a list of skill and personality gaps. What’s missing on the team when it comes to personality and work styles? 

 A well-rounded team with different strengths and drives is key to keeping things running smoothly. Missing that problem solver? How about an influencer type with charisma that inspires the team? Maybe you have too many dominant personalities and could use someone who is happy to follow another team member’s lead. Or maybe you have too many “big picture” folks and not enough detail-oriented team members. Having everyone on the team take the DISC personality assessment helped us see what makes us tick. Then, we were able to determine what we were missing. 

After discussion with the team, we determined that for our Front Desk Coordinator a “CS” (Conscientious, Supportive) DISC personality type would be ideal. Anyone with all “D” DISC type was likely to clash with the team dynamic. In the end, we ended up with a CD, but with a high S – and she is fitting in beautifully! While I’d never rule someone out completely based on their DISC assessment, it’s a great adjunct to helping make a smart hire.

5. Give a better interview experience than your competitor.

Gen Y and Gen Z are comfortable with video call interviews over Zoom, and this impresses them more than simple voice calls. Face-to-face conversation from the start gives you an advantage over a faceless employer to make a great first impression. In that interview, invite them to email or text their questions, and respond to them promptly. You are demonstrating respect for their time and need for clarification. Keep communication flowing while you are in your interview process with each candidate. Don’t ghost them and leave them wondering what happened.

6. Leverage features that help track applicants more effectively & efficiently

After posting the ad the applications started coming in on my DentalPost account. I immediately messaged each candidate through the application and set up a phone interview. It was a great way to weed out some candidates without bringing them in for an in-person interview. 

• Keep Notes & Feedback directly within each applicant’s profile! This was critical during the screening process to help me stay organized and track candidate details. The “Like” and “Dislike” functionality was a great first pass screener. After looking at many profiles and then stepping away for a bit, I was grateful to come back to the search and easily pick up where I left off without wasting time wondering if I had reviewed an applicant or not. Plus, these notes stay with the candidate so if they apply again to a future position, my notations are already there and saved. The big bonus is that the platform allowed me to keep all the resumes, notes, and messages in one centralized place that I could access from anywhere, which is a big time saver!  
• Schedule and track interviews directly with applicants to save time. I scheduled our in-person interviews right from our DentalPost account and kept track of who was coming and when. Both the interviewer and I really appreciated that we received an auto-email confirmation and auto-reminders in advance so it was definitely clear when and where we were meeting, and neither party forgot. DentalPost candidates ‘No Shows’ were taken seriously and had several deterrents in the platform to prevent this time-wasting phenomenon. 

Patience Pays Off

While it was tough being down one team member, we all realized it was better to band together and pitch in to find the right person, instead of just hiring the first warm body and having to do this again in a few months. We passed on many candidates before we found the best fit for our team. But it was worth it in the end. Knowing our office and understanding who we needed were vital components to hiring smart. Take your time, stay organized and use data to help you hire the right person.

Take Advantage of What DentalPost Offers

• Toolkits & Hiring Guides: I highly recommend reading the “Ultimate Hiring Toolkit.” It helped guide me to ask the right questions and stay on track when my brain was just too tired to figure out what to say or do next. The Toolkit was helpful in all aspects of the hiring process, from determining who we wanted all the way to onboarding them once we hired them.

• Take advantage of Premium or Super Premium plans from the start. In this job market climate, they actually save you money in the end, are cheaper than buying several basic ads or even a premium ad and a resume search.