Best Practices for Staffing Your Dental Practice
Attracting and hiring the best-qualified team for your dental practice might feel like an overwhelming task. And over 80% of dentists said they have struggled to find enough qualified people to staff their offices since 2020. In fact, a 2021 poll from the ADA Health Policy Institute found that:
- Nearly 36% of owner dentists were recruiting dental assistants
- Almost 29% were hiring dental hygienists
- Over 26% were looking for administrative staff
- About 13% were hiring associate dentists
And the numbers haven’t changed all that much in the past year. Recruitment challenges remain. But don’t despair! Check out the following strategies, that we here at MDent have recommended to our own clients.
Leverage your website to attract potential employees
If you’ve maximized and optimized your website, use it to recruit new staff. Not only should it offer good information for current and prospective patients — it should have a section dedicated to employment, too. Chances are one of your website’s most visited pages is its Team page. Prospective employees are probably taking a look, too, so put it to work for you.
If your website doesn’t already have a Careers page, add one. A “Join us” page should include the following:
- An overview of your practice, its mission and philosophy, and why someone should want to work there
- Details about your office culture, so potential applicants can see what your office looks like and get a feel for the team dynamic and day-to-day operations
- A list of all open positions with hyperlinks to another page with the specifics about each job
- These “child” pages (hygienist, front office receptionist, associate dentist, etc.) simplify the process for job posting and make it easier for search engines to return prospects to your webpage when people search for available dental clinic jobs near them
Your website manager should use structured data — HTML code on each hiring page telling Google to aggregate subpages when someone’s searching for “dental hygienist jobs in my area” and then display the results on the Google Jobs Board, for example.
Leverage social media
In 2022, over 270 million people used social media in the U.S. That’s 80% of the country’s population. Post open positions on your business’s Facebook page, LinkedIn, and even Instagram or Twitter. Facebook allows you to boost job posts to reach a wider audience for a fee. You can also purchase Facebook Ads if you have the budget, which enables you to target specific markets and geographies. So if you’re opening a dental clinic in Parsippany-Troy Hills, for example, you can set a specific ad radius to populate people’s Facebook feeds with ads listing open positions within that geographic area.
Leverage job search websites
There are dozens of job search websites on the internet. While the number one job site globally is Indeed, your best bet is to research the most effective job search websites in your area. Others that might work include GlassDoor, SimplyHired, and ZipRecruiter.
Don’t neglect job boards specifically geared toward the dental industry, like ADA Career Center, Dental Post, and the New Jersey Dental Association.
Create a staff referral program
Patient referrals can generate hundreds of new patients each month in larger practices — so why not take advantage of that approach to attract new employees? In 2022, 30-40% of new hires came from referrals. Take advantage of it! After all, your current team already knows your work culture, patient philosophy, and work ethic — and understands your practice. Who better then your staff to know which of their peers might be the perfect fit for your clinic?
If referrals help you build a robust pipeline candidate pipeline, consider rerouting the budget you’ve earmarked for marketing jobs to paying referral bonuses instead. You could offer motivation through an incentive program that offers cash, flex days off, gift cards, or additional PTO if they recommend someone you hire.
You might opt to implement a tiered cash bonus incentive program. So, for example, a current employee who recommended a qualified candidate who was hired would receive $500 initially and then, after the trial period of 30, 60, or 90 days, another $500.
To encourage staff referrals, make it easy for your current employees to share their opinions about your practice — and why it’s a great place to work. They could post reviews on hiring websites like GlassDoor, Indeed or ZipRecruiter, explaining the benefits of working in your clinic. Or record and post staff testimonial videos to your “Join Us” page and social media channels.
Finally, keep a file of potential employees
Perhaps you’ve gotten more resumes from qualified people than you have spaces to fill — that’s a great “problem” to have because positions will open in the future as current employees leave or retire — or you expand your practice.
Whether you’ve just opened a new dental clinic and need to build a full dental team or you have just a few openings to full, learn more about how MDent Consulting can help you find the most qualified staff for your practice.