Help! I need somebody now!

Dental job boards, dental placement agencies, and the cloud

You’ve got a full schedule, one of the busiest days this year and suddenly you are short staffed of a critical member of the clinical team.  You haven’t had to face this dilemma too often, but when it happens, you need to find an extra set of experienced hands immediately.  

Whom do you call?  Hopefully, you have a few people that can come in a moment’s notice; however, that is not the case for most practices.  You don’t want to cancel the scheduled day, nor do you want the phones on answering service and have your Business Coordinator glove up to help.  This is a typical scenario and not the best for many reasons. 

A traditional way and one that has been around for decades is the local Dental Employment Agency or appropriately called the “the temp agency” that acts as a middleman to recruit, and screen qualified personnel to fill the needs of dental practices.  A fee is charged to the hiring dentist, not to the applicant and can vary depending on the salary set and whether the position is temporary or permanent. 

If you want more control over the hiring process, you have to eliminate the middleman and go to job boards such as indeed.com or ziprecruiter.com or monster.com.  Here you will be able to type in what position you are seeking and some particulars to bring up the resumes to scan yourself — being able to connect with a qualified person quickly is never promised by a dental agency or a job board.  

There is another type of source to use for hiring prospects, and that is a cloud-based platform such as Cloud Dentistry, clouddentistry.com. Here you can access qualified applicants and use the tools to be able to reach out to them for an interview without going through an intermediary that is getting a commission. 

The best plan is to be proactive and have your best sources lined up ahead of the inevitable.  For same day or last minute help someone local such as the temporary dental agency may be your best bet.  Reach out ahead of time and become a client because they will have paperwork for you to fill out and signatures of the agreement.  You will also be able to submit a job description to the agency of the applicant that would fit your particular needs. The other sources will require at least a day or more to find someone qualified.  Verify the applicant’s qualifications, education, and skills for the job you need and also make sure the applicant has had a current background check and personal references verified.

Dental Billing Tips and News for Pros; Edition #137