What is the best way for me to build a successful dental team?
Every dental practice benefits from having a strong and organised team that works well together, yet recruiting and retaining the highest level personnel for every role is not an easy task. Recruiting new staff members, whether administrative or clinical, can be a time-consuming and often frustrating process and is something that needs to be undertaken carefully to avoid any potential pitfalls.
Getting the recruitment process right first time
One of the most important tasks that contributes to practice success is getting the recruitment process right from the start. The dental team is the beating heart of any practice and when recruiting it’s important to find people who will fit well into the existing team. Having the requisite skills to do the job is one thing but having the ability to work closely with other staff and patients is equally as important as technical ability.
The first step is to create an accurate job description for the vacancy. This includes drawing up a list of job responsibilities, and clearly identifying the knowledge and skills you are looking for, any necessary qualifications, the pay range for the position and a summary of the working conditions and benefits should also be included. An accurate job description will attract the right candidates and gives an increased likelihood of filling the position with the right person.
Doing things differently
Recruitment should always be a priority for the management team and there needs to be a strategy in place in order to find the right candidates. When you combine this with the fact that the recruitment process has changed a lot in recent years, the help of a specialist dental recruitment agency such as MediCruit, a Henry Schein company, can really help.
Unlike general recruitment agencies MediCruit specialises solely in dentistry and has a team of experienced consultants with specific industry knowledge, backed by cutting-edge systems and technology. Our focus is on building professional relationships with both candidates and recruiters through our custom-built, in-house database, to make sure we get the right people into the right job. Our database holds details of over 70,000 dental professionals and there are hundreds of ‘live’ jobs on the system at any one time. This access provides unique personal contact with dental professionals across the country, even if they are not actively looking for a new job.
Every candidate is expertly matched to each vacant position and we only notify the people we feel are best suited to the role. When a new position is registered, we send out texts and emails to carefully selected candidates and then give them a quick call at their preferred time to check they are happy to have their details put forward.
We are firm believers in getting to know and keeping in touch with our candidates, and it’s really important that potential employers do as well. When suggesting a candidate to a practice we always recommend an initial telephone interview first, before meeting face-to-face. This allows for an in-depth conversation and means that each party can assess the suitability of the candidate for the role.
Finding the perfect match
Finding the right candidate-to-job match is essential to the success of both the clinical and operational aspects of any dental practice. With so much depending on these decisions it saves time and frustration to enlist a specialist recruitment agency to maximise the chances of finding the perfect match, in the minimum time.
