Using Job Websites to Efficiently Staff the Dental Practice

Using Job Websites to Efficiently Staff the Dental Practice. Photo courtesy of Tayjowkup/stock.adobe.com.

To my fellow dental professionals—what is the most critical issue you are facing in your practice? My guess is the staffing shortage. We need to discuss it from a different angle. Let us talk from more of a nuts-and-bolts way on how to use the website Indeed.

One of the many hats I wear is that of a recruiter. Currently, I am recruiting in the dental field for several positions, and I want to share with you the things the recruiters will almost never tell you.

Dental professionals do not often use LinkedIn to find jobs. Different platforms seem to be more popular depending on the industry, and for the dental industry, it is Indeed.com. However, before I go there, I want to share my experience on Facebook dental groups. I belong to 6 of them here in Ohio. In them, I posted a question about whether your practice has a Sign-On Bonus. There were some extremely negative responses, and this was a receptionist group which shocked me. People thought it was unnecessary to do Sign-On Bonuses “when you can just give them a little more than the minimum wage and that is fine.” I am not sure why a receptionist group would discourage these bonuses, but I am a guest in their house so I kept my mouth shut.

I posted the actual jobs on Facebook, to which someone took terrible offense to the posting. I said that it was a “unique practice,” and it is. Their niche is dealing with anxiety-Free and sedation dentistry, which sets them apart from other practices. Well, you know where it went. I apologized as my goal is not to offend anyone, but my apology looked like I was doubling down even though this is an incredibly special practice. Again, it was not well received. I consulted with an expert in social media advertising, and we looked at the postings. Eventually, the expert recommended that I not engage any further. I notified the practice, so they were aware this had happened, but even the practice thought it was overblown. Let us hope I am not offending anyone now with this example, but it is a learning opportunity.

My point in sharing is that when you get negative feedback on Facebook, apologize. Do not bother with explaining and do not double down. Learn from my mistake. The good news is that positive comments will push negative ones down as time passes.

Let’s turn our focus to the job-posting website Indeed. If you see that there are reviews for your practice, make sure you read them. This practice I am working with gets 5 stars every time, but some comments have been routed to the wrong practice that has the same name. No, I am not joking. Contact Indeed and work with them to get this resolved. Check this periodically to know what your patients are saying and to make sure they are actually your patients.

With Indeed, we were not getting any traction. So, this is what I did to fix that:

• Sponsorship:We were on the old system of per day/week/month advertising. I decided to try $15 per day. The recommendation was $38. You should follow what the recommendations are for how much to sponsor a job. This determines how often and who sees your advertisement. I was resistant to the new system where you get charged per application. You have 48 hours to reject an applicant, so make sure someone is going on Indeed every day to keep up. You can click accept, download the resume, contact the candidate, screen them, and then decide if they are an acceptable candidate. 48 hours is key, because if you do not do anything, you will get charged on the per application basis after 48 hours. If you do not consider weekends, you will run into problems. On weekends, you could pause it as no one will be in the office to check it, but, every time you pause a posting, you run the risk of changing the cost per application. I kid you not, this week, I was being charged $177 for a dentist applicant. Not on my watch. I called and spent 5 hours and found a way to have it only be $10 per applicant. This is very time-consuming and tedious work. My guess is that you do not have enough bandwidth in a dental practice to pursue this. You might want to use a third-party recruiter to assist.
• Sign-On Bonus: This specific practice has their head on straight. They increased the salaries and have generous sign-on bonuses This is a challenging time for staffing as you know. Does seeing “Dental Office Manager- $5000 Sign-On Bonus!”grab your attention? I received 43 applicants in 24 hours when I posted that. However, this is a big problem for Indeed as it goes against their policy to have anything other than the name of the position posted. I cannot go into detail on how to get around this right now, but a good recruiter can assist with this.
• Multiple cities: If you have a position that is traveling between offices or have 2 offices who both need a hygienist, do not post this in the title. Make 2 job postings so that you can advertise in 2 different cities. You must have an address of your office to advertise. I was hoping to use “Cleveland” to draw more applicants, but it is not possible, because none of our offices are in Cleveland.

So, what was the outcome?

In 24 hours, we had these applications:

1. Dentists-2
2. Surgical Assistants-5
3. Receptionists-28
4. EFDA-8
5. Assistant Office Manager- 43

Here is the secret sauce, for those who have read this far—the phone number for Customer Service at Indeed is 1-800-475-4361. This is a gift from heaven that I want to share with you. It is so difficult to find numbers for these platforms. You do not want a robot. You want someone who can dig deep and help you understand how to be more efficient and find candidates quickly. If you are looking to find staff quickly, spending money is how to find applicants. I now have 3 positions filled.

By understanding how Indeed works on the back end, having a third-party recruiter who has the time to research this and keep redoing the postings until they are correct, and to stay on top of them so you do not get charged for ones you do not want, gets results. Sign-on bonuses and increased salaries grabbed attention in this extremely competitive field.

I know this has been a lengthy article, but for those of you frustrated with finding employees, you are welcome. Let me know your thoughts by emailing diana2@discussdirectives.com.