Heather Nottingham discusses the challenges in dental hiring, emphasizing the benefits of outsourcing to specialists for quality candidates and efficiency.
Resources:
About Heather Nottingham
Heather is the VP of Training & Phone Skills Instructor at All-Star Dental Academy. She is a former retail sales trainer and manager for Bloomingdale’s, Kate Spade, and Theory, and a top new patient coordinator for a multi-million-dollar high-end dental practice where she personally increased revenue by over a million dollars in less than 18 months. She has over 24 years worth of customer service, training, and phone experience, and designed the All-Star Dental Academy Phone Success Course as well as the GREAT Call® Process.
About Alex Nottingham JD MBA
Alex is the CEO and Founder of All-Star Dental Academy®. He is a former Tony Robbins top coach and consultant, having worked with companies upwards of $100 million. His passion is to help others create personal wealth and make a positive impact on the people around them. Alex received his Juris Doctor (JD) and Master of Business Administration (MBA) from Florida International University.
Episode Transcript
Transcript performed by A.I. Please excuse the typos.
00:03
Hi everyone, I’m Alex Nottingham, founder and CEO of Alstom Dental Academy, and I have Heather with me, Heather Nottingham. She’s a co-founder and she’s also the VP of training. We are talking about hiring, the hiring service and everything that goes along with it because many of you reach out and are interested in hiring. The step is to talk to one of our hiring specialists or Heather about the program, and it is pretty
00:33
I’m to the point and I have a little video in terms of how to get right to it. We’ll address those here, but here I want to be very comprehensive in our discussion about the hiring service. Heather, tell me, just to start out, because we’re going to answer all the questions that you spoke with hundreds of people about this. We’re going to get to that. The first step is, what is our hiring service? What does it do?
01:02
Where did it come from? We’ll kind of talk about the genesis of it. But even that, because we’re kind of going in the fly, the first thing is the pain. Because I believe for us to be motivated to make change, it’s either pleasure or pain. We get complacent with pleasure, pain moves us forward. And the reality is, in this hiring economy, it’s been very difficult. And it’s been difficult for years.
01:29
As you’ll talk about, we built this hiring service well before we had the pandemic and the issues with hiring. It was still difficult then. To be successful, we have to have great team members. And they have to be able to support our vision and what we want to achieve, not just punch a clock. And we’re finding now more than ever that it’s very difficult to find people and people that wanna be there that are bought in.
01:57
You know, we’re having issues of quiet quitting, that the despair where people are not putting the effort that they need to, the competition of finding talent, people that wanna be part of something. There’s a lot going on, and that’s why we built this hiring service to help dentists with that process. So Heather, tell me the genesis. Tell me how this all came to be. Yeah, well first of all, hi everybody. Nice to see you. And one of the things that I wanna start off with first is
02:27
who is all star, because I get a lot of people that reach out to us, know us, but then there’s also a lot of new faces and a lot of new offices that don’t know who the heck we are. And they’re like, what do you guys do? What are you all about? So, just to backtrack a little bit, obviously some people know our story, but we started off working with your dad’s practice, my father-in-law.
02:57
and his practice was struggling. They were facing financial difficulties. We came in and we helped out and we took the practice from a million dollars with debt and turned it into a- Facing bankruptcy, was it? Yeah, bankruptcy, exactly. To 2.4, over 2.4 million in less than 18 months. Paid off the debt, all of that. So that was kind of the driver for us to help as many offices as we could.
03:25
with customer service, phone skills, communications, scheduling practices, case presentation. So over 10 years ago, we created All-Star, which is our online training program to help with that. From there, we added our coaching options, seminars, events, things like that. So this way, you kind of have an overview of who we are if you didn’t know us before. Right.
03:51
the goal of all of the services that we built, because when you were working for my dad’s office, it was different, because when you were from Bloomingdale’s, they had systems for everything. And you’re like, what’s going on? Like, it’s just a zoo. And so with the building our pro, everything we build is in response to a need where dentists are suffering. We look at dentists as part of our family, because my dad’s a dentist, all of our family are dentists, right? So, or physicians.
04:19
I’m the attorney, the black sheep. And the story told, my dad always said to me, don’t be a dentist because he didn’t feel that that was a way to have a balanced life and make the money that lawyers and MBAs and all them were doing. But it was my dad’s opportunity where you and I were able to work with his practice. And I talk about this in one of our webinars that dental practice excellence, and I can put a link and provide that for you in the show notes. This is my background besides being a lawyer, but also
04:49
working for Tony Robbins as well. So my background, law, MBA, Tony Robbins, your background, Bloomingdale, sales trainer, and putting it all together was an amazing combination that helped my dad’s practice and now has helped thousands of practices over the past decade with All-Stradental Academy. But the whole philosophy for us is this, how do we give the independent practice the ability to compete in this world of corporate consolidation,
05:19
with the to compete with insurance companies, not that some take or not, but that you’re not beholden to that in the macro economic factors. So hiring was part of that and this whole thing. So tell us, so we built all these services, right, and about training and how to do it. But we got the question, which was, I can’t train, I can’t do coaching, because I don’t have the right team. Right. And they’d say, how do you find good people? I need I need you.
05:46
to come work for me? How can I hire you? And I said, well, I work for All-Star, run All-Star, you can’t afford me, but you guys have the best people. How do you have the best people? We would constantly get that question from dentists, office managers, team members, supply reps, different companies in the industry. Like, where do you guys go to find your people? Or how do you find good people?
06:12
And so finally that question was posed about six years ago by one of our dentists down here in South Florida, great dentist of ours. And he’s like, I have a very high end fee for service office, great customer service. I have a team member that’s retiring and I looked for somebody on my own. It was extremely time consuming for myself, my team. We found a replacement. That person lasted about a month and then.
06:41
I guess relocated, and then I looked for another person, that person ended up being a terrible fit for my practice. He’s like, at this point, I don’t like doing this. I don’t have the time to do this. Even if I had the time to do it, I’m not a good person to be, I’m not a recruiter. I like doing dentistry. My team’s busy, they get pulled into it, and then we’re either doing a poor job or we’re getting behind on helping our patients, which is what we like doing.
07:10
And so we said, let’s talk about what we can do to help you. So Robin Reese, she is our director of hiring. She has a 25 plus year background on hiring HR. She’s a certified Ben Erickson consultant. She started off the hiring service with us and we built the process, we built the system. And now it’s grown to such an extent that she oversees the entire hiring specialist division and all of our people.
07:40
making sure that they’re the best people. And it’s really the process that we follow for the hiring service is exactly the same process we use when we hire people internally. So we never recommend or do something that we don’t do ourselves. And that’s how we knew that it worked because we did it and we found good people. And so in turn, we just duplicated that process for.
08:06
our dental offices and dentists. This has been something that Robin has been doing for decades and she’s at Ben Erickson, one of their top consultants. They’re the top HR firm in the country. We work, we partner with them. And so it was just a happy marriage and that, hey, you do this. Right. And we have background hiring in the general space as well as dental and combining that. It’s been very, very successful.
08:33
So I’m glad you’re kind of speaking to that quite clearly. Yeah, and it’s not just about finding a person for the office. Sure. Because a lot of dentists, they don’t want just a person. Anybody can find a person. You can go on and deejay yourself and do that. But we’re all about finding the person that has the skills, the experience, as well as the right personality and fit for your office culture. You know that it’s.
09:00
You can train for skill, but it’s much harder to train for attitude and personality. So that’s something that we involve heavily in our process for hiring. And all of our hiring specialists, too, one of the key things that differentiates us from other companies and other businesses that do hiring, like recruiting things, is we are specifically hiring for your office. We’re looking for that that right person to fit to get along with the rest of your team.
09:29
All of our hiring specialists have worked in dentistry, have dental experience. So we had in the past maybe one or two people that didn’t have dental experience and they did not understand the nuances of what it takes to be in the dental office. They didn’t understand what the difference between a medical assistant and a dental assistant was or the job description of what they do.
09:53
So all of our hiring specialists have been former hygienists, former dental assistants, treatment coordinator, office manager, some have worked multiple roles in the practice. So when they’re interviewing people, they can get down into the weeds and the details of the job. They really know is this person gonna be a good fit for that particular office based on what they’re looking for. So that’s a huge differentiating factor that I wanted to point out. Well, I think even more so than this, the technical knowledge is a rapport.
10:22
But they know this person is like me. And so this makes the candidate feel much more at home and comfortable. And we’ll speak to that later as well of why it’s important to have that representation. The other thing, a couple of other points I wanted to point out, Uncle Jay, I give him a lot of credit. He’s a medical consultant, very, very successful. And he does hiring for medical.
10:48
And that’s where Robin and I spoke to him about starting this years ago. And he says, absolutely should do it. And one of the questions we get from, from dentists is saying, well, why should I train my team if I’m not the right team? So I train them and they leave, you know, what if I train them and they leave? And uncle Jay would say, well, what if you don’t train them and they stay? So it’s so critical that we’re always training and regardless, we’re going to have people, the right people, wrong people come and go.
11:17
But I think it’s important that we’re always training and that in that process you have help. The other thing is we talk about hiring service alternatives. There’s not a lot that do what we do that specialize in dentistry. That’s hard to find. There’s some that will hire a dentist and at the time of this recording between us, we do not hire associates, but we do partner with other companies that do that. We hire everybody else.
11:45
hygiene, assisting, front office, and so on. But one of the things is nobody wants to do this. And we’re gonna talk about this in our talk that should dentists do it or whatever, but nobody wants to do it. That’s why there’s not a lot of companies doing it because it’s not a fun activity. We get ghosted all the time. We deal with this stuff. The reason we do it is it’s part of the ecosystem of All-Star. Somebody’s gotta do it.
12:13
And we know many of you will be members at some point, don’t have to be, but we look for the long-term perspective. We take care of you, help you hire you, you have better people, you can train them and you can do more things with us. You can do more things in dentistry. So it just fits well with our model. But that’s why a lot of independent companies are not doing this. They don’t wanna touch it because it’s work that’s unrecognized, doesn’t pay as great, but somebody’s gotta do it. It’s important, okay? Yeah.
12:41
And also, like you could say, well, I could have my team member do it. I just got off the phone with an office manager about 20 minutes ago and she was overwhelmed, stressed out. She said they’re short staffed and she said the last thing that she has time to do is be going through resumes and following up with people and scheduling interviews to get ghosted, or as you said.
13:08
And she said, I don’t know what I’m doing. I don’t know what I’m looking for. Sometimes it’s also hard when you’re so close to your own office to like know what’s gonna be good for your office. And when you’re in desperation mode, you’re just looking to find anybody. So you might make a snap judgment and not go through all the steps and really see the red flags of the person. Whereas we’re gonna do the due diligence and make sure that we’re doing that. So one thing I wanted to.
13:36
point out is that we’re not a recruiting agency. We don’t have like a stable of ready and waiting candidates in a particular area. We are custom hiring exactly for your office. You tell us what you’re looking for and we’re finding that right person, right candidate for your office specifically for you. So just like your team would be posting the ads and doing all the things and I’ll go through the steps of what we do in a couple of minutes, we’re doing all of that.
14:05
You’re outsourcing that to us because we’re better at it. We have more time to do it and do it better. And a lot of candidates, a lot of candidates, because we talk to candidates all the time, especially the good ones. 50% of people that are looking for a job are already in a job. So it’s not like we’re getting people that are just out of work looking for a job. The people that are the good quality candidates are most likely working somewhere, but looking to make a change, whether it’s
14:33
commute time or they’re not happy with the office that they’re currently in. And so we’re looking for those ideal people and really making sure that we zero in on that. So one of the things that when you have candidates, one of the biggest complaints that candidates will say to us is that when I’m interviewing with other offices, the timeliness of other offices and the professionalism is not there.
15:03
So offices, because they’re so busy, they get resumes. Sometimes they take up like a week or two to get back to people. And when you have a good candidate that’s ready and that’s looking, they’re not just looking at your office. They’re probably looking at multiple offices. If you take a week to get back to them, they’re gone. They’re already gone. They’re not gonna be available.
15:25
They love the fact that we are very, because we are specifically working for you and we’re very quick to respond. That’s something that’s super important to us in that we get back to them quickly. We have a very professional process that we take them through. It’s not all over the place. It doesn’t look like a mom and pop type thing. It looks like you’re interviewing at a, like, you know, Ritz Carlton type environment, the way that we handle it. It almost looks like…
15:53
your office has this HR team or HR division that’s representing you. And candidates have told us that when they’re deciding between multiple offices, and they have this, you know, poor experience or less than ideal experience over here, and our experience that they’re having with our team, who are they going to go with? You know, they’re like, this is more professional, this looks like they know what they they have going on. And
16:22
Even in offices where we’ve had a team member deciding between two practices and one practice was offering more money to the team member, they still chose our dentist because our team talked the dentist up and like used the wow factor, sharing the sizzle if you will, that we teach in our training, where they’re really highlighting how special this dentist is.
16:46
and they’re being able to talk about the benefits of the practice and they’re quick to respond and it looks professional, a lot of times they’re like, well, this job over here is offering me a couple dollars more per hour, but I’d rather work for your office because of the whole experience and process behind it. So that says a lot for what people are looking for. Yeah, I like what you’re talking about. And again, this is where I think of the all-star service blend or lineup is that,
17:15
it’s like you’re leasing a hiring quasi-HR firm. You have to be careful. We don’t provide a complete HR. We do provide some to make sure you don’t get sued in some areas and we follow the state law. But in terms of guides or manuals, we can refer you to that. So we’re not giving legal advice in that respect, but we are trained to not make mistakes, okay? In terms of the hiring service and protected.
17:43
classes and so on. So it’s like you’re leasing your own hiring, a piece of it into what you do. Because again, back to what I’m saying, how do you compete with the corporate conglomerates is that you need to have something internal. You’re not gonna hire a full-time hiring person. That doesn’t make sense. So we wanna also make sure we always have this in our mind. We don’t step over dollars to get pennies. And…
18:13
As you guys may know, we’re married and I’m the cheap one, frugal one, and I’m always trying to get some deal. We had an issue recently when it came to selling a car, getting rid of one of our old cars and get a new car, and I wanted to sell to a neighbor. I was going to make $1,000 more. It became so much more work to do this. Heather’s like, that’s not right. The PETA factor. It doesn’t make sense. I said, you’re right, Heather. I’m going to drop $1,500, sell to the dealer.
18:41
It’s not worth my time, all that goes on, and I’m not good at it. Not just that, the amount of liability that could have came up because I didn’t do it properly, it’s not worth it. Same thing with all of you. This is one of the biggest questions we get is, why should I do your service versus doing on my own? And again, as an attorney who I’m just kind of designed to look for problems that occur.
19:10
you don’t want, first of all, when you have a layer between, even if it’s the same skill level, you have a layer between you and the candidate. There is a protection. There’s a paper trail. There’s a third party. There’s a level. There’s not a risk of inappropriateness and things that go on. So that’s there. Or things that were said that weren’t documented because you have a vested interest. Okay.
19:37
And so both parties feel protected with that, right then and there, you’re avoiding that. Not to mention, we do this all the time. Okay, we have case studies and research and proven results. You don’t, not what you do. And then you say, remember dollars and pennies, you’re producing your office. Because then I say, okay, doctor’s producing 500 to $1,000 an hour, fine. What about team member? I’m only paying them $20 an hour. Not really, they’re running a machine that’s producing thousands of dollars an hour.
20:08
So you can have them run your dental business, which is producing thousands of dollars an hour, or have them do something that they don’t wanna do that they’re not good at, and that they’re gonna be disappointed because people don’t show up and all those things. It doesn’t make sense to me if you are a smart business person to not outsource it. You should outsource it under most circumstances, unless you love doing it, you’re skilled at it.
20:36
and it is still worth your time. Now, if you’re skilled at it and love doing it and it’s not worth your time, you can oversee it. Now, here’s something very important. With our hiring service, it’s not like you give it all at us. I mean, we do, you’ll talk about, I wanna hear what we actually do in it, but we can work with you. If you wanna do some things and we do some things, that’s fine, we can work together with you. It’s not that it’s one or the other, all right? But you’re gonna realize that I don’t want that burden, okay?
21:06
I just want at the very end where I meet them in person and have to do the face-to-face interview. That I’ll do. The rest, let me go focus on dentistry on my team. So Heather, tell me, did I miss anything? Does that all make sense? Did I miss anything in terms of that equation? Yeah, that’s really good. And I also want to point out that hiring used to be a lot easier back in the day. Like I was just talking about this before, just like marketing used to be easier.
21:34
And we know marketing is definitely not easy nowadays because there’s so much competition. So think of hiring candidates like marketing. Instead of marketing for new patients, we’re marketing for ideal team members for the practice. So we want great quality patients and we want great quality team members to work for us because the better our team, the better they can support the patients and the practice. And-
22:02
Back in the day, I mean, even when we worked for your dad’s office, like you could just post something and you’d get so many resumes for no matter what position, hygiene, assisting, admin. It was just easy. And I was talking- Well, it was easy, but we still hired a bunch of crap anyway. Yeah, that’s true. That’s true. You went through, you had a lot of people, but there was so much turnover. Exactly. Because there wasn’t a system. Exactly. If he had a system, you wouldn’t have to. And he lost money from-
22:32
unfortunately a lawsuit, you know, because he hired, he didn’t have a hiring service hire and run through the questionnaire and process. So just technicalities you can be sued for. So it’s just silly to not do it like a business process. So yes, it was easier, perhaps more people would apply. What we’re seeing though, we still get a lot of applications from front office, especially if you open up the skill set.
23:00
But when you get a system in hygiene, it’s harder because they’re so specified in terms of skill set. So I just want to put a little button on that is, yes, you make more is not always better. It’s finding people that are good. And then part of our whole philosophy is when we hire them, help you hire, it’s how do you retain them? Much like our phone skills, we’re teaching you on providing a good phone calls, providing a great patient experience and having people retain.
23:29
When you hire somebody, you follow a process, they appreciate it, you have that level of care. They’re like royalty, we treat them. And then the chance of them staying is higher. That’s why we recommend, whether it’s All-Star or someone else, I mean, we’re the best at it. I would say the most affordable, best value is you’re training them. And onboarding increases employee retention, I don’t know, 75, 65%, it’s enormous.
23:57
and employees are expecting to be trained on the job. So we provide a lot, the All-Star platform, all the things that we do help support that process with respect to it. And I’ll tell you something, it is difficult out there, but it’s amazing. The practices that are doing great keep attracting great people. I wonder what that’s all about. At All-Star Dental Academy, we talk about the five steps to an All-Star practice, and the first one is your vision.
24:25
How strong is your vision of what do you want to create in your world? And I say this and I haven’t had a dentist disagree with me. I want to be in a practice where I go in, I look forward to it, I love what I do, the people love what they do, we make a difference in the world, I get paid well, no drama. Am I missing anything? No great customer service. So that’s what we’re looking to do. Why add more drama? Back to the car situation. I’m not doing that again. I realize mid thought, this isn’t very good.
24:54
I’m going to stop this because I see drama coming. That’s wisdom is knowing to say, no, let me let the accountant do it. Let me let the attorney do it. Let me let the hiring specialist do it. And I do what I do well, which is do great dentistry and build a business that I love. That’s all you should be doing. Listen, again, if it’s worth your time, you love doing it, you’re great at it, which is very rare, knock yourself out. You are the person right now listening to this discussion. If you love it,
25:23
and you’re great at it, okay? And it’s still probably not worth your time. Okay, so we established that. Now, one of the big questions is the cost. We’re not gonna talk about the exact price in this talk because as a time that we’re recording it, it may change. So we’ll provide a link with the current pricing. A brochure or something. A brochure or the, I mean, everything we’re talking about here, if you like the audio version that’s here, we can get a brochure. It’s the same thing as what we’re talking about here, maybe in written form.
25:50
We’re just, I want you to see kind of like what it’s like when you talk with us, what you’re gonna hear. So if what you hear is not, this isn’t for you, no problems. We have other things that might interest you. We also provide a great education on our podcast, on our website, alls Click podcast. You can see, I think we’ve even categorized all of our hiring interviews with Robin Reese, our hiring service director. And we teach you.
26:19
hiring versus recruitment, the five steps that all start hiring. We give you a bunch of tips. We’ll teach you. We’ll give you here’s how we do it. We’re training you all the time on that. Tons of free content. We also have other free webinars. We’re all about giving away as much great knowledge as you can because it isn’t about .. because here’s the trick. It’s not about knowledge. Knowledge is not power. It’s potential power. It’s only when you put it into action. But for some of you, the knowledge will be enough and you can act, but most can’t.
26:48
Otherwise, All-Star wouldn’t exist, right? So we know the secret, which is you have to know the playbook. We give that for free. But then what we do is the hard stuff, how to implement it. OK? So that’s all there. So with respect to the cost, we’ll provide you a link with the recent pricing. We have a member price. That’s those that are part of our membership. And just so you know, with our membership, it includes our online program, training program at the top in the industry.
27:17
It includes our discounts on hiring, on events, and you also get access to our All-Star Buying Club, where you will save upwards of $20,000 to $30,000 a year on average our members are saving by doing it. Because again, back to our point, we want you to be able to compete with the corporate giants out there. Look, we work with some DSOs that do it, we say DSOs that are doing it right, we support those that are,
27:47
a service base, but they’re smaller. But there’s a vast majority that are just trying to get to the cut everything quality of service. We don’t work with them. They have in-house hiring. They have in-house training. They don’t, in my opinion, do it right. They’re more about the just the bottom line. Money is important, but we also believe about training with integrity. It’s about making a difference in the world. So so anyways, my point is you have a membership price that comes with all these things, and then you have a non-member rate as well.
28:17
And so I just want to point it out there, I’ll put a link. So Heather, now that they can go check out the price, that’s not even the issue for many of them. So it’s an hourly rate, right? Tell me about that. Yeah, so I really want to get into the meat of like what we do so that we establish the value of what we do. Cause that’s the biggest question people are like, what do you do? What’s involved in this?
28:43
So I said before, we don’t have a stable of ready and waiting candidates. We’re literally finding somebody specifically for you, for your office. So when somebody is interested and they want to engage with us, they’ll typically reach out to us. I will schedule a call with them if they’re wanting to learn more, talk about their their practice needs. The first thing that we have you do when you’re ready to get started is fill out our hiring questionnaire. It’s an online questionnaire.
29:11
pretty comprehensive. We wanna know who you are, who your office is, what are your vision, what is your values, different things about the practice so we can really talk you guys up when we’re working with you to potential candidates. Then we also wanna know, tell us about your ideal team member. What type of position do they have? What is their job description? What are their hours gonna be? Are there benefits? And we have you fill out something called core competencies.
29:40
The core competencies are a list that we give you of the top personality types that we take from the Drake P3 assessment. And they’re different personality types that you’re going to pick your top five that are most important to you. And as we’re doing the interviewing process for these candidates, we’re looking to see does this person have that outgoing extroverted factor or are they loyal or, and we’re
30:08
doing things in the ad, in the interview, in the phone interview to see if they have those. That’s really important because that’s what a lot of offices aren’t doing. They’re just looking, do they have this many years of experience, do they have that many years of this or that? And that’s great, but that typically doesn’t make for a lasting team member. You wanna make sure that…
30:30
they’re gonna fit in with the office culture, that they’re gonna have the right personality. So if you’re looking for somebody super extroverted and that has that woo factor, and we have somebody that is interviewing that they have all the experience, but they don’t have any of that, that’s gonna be very frustrating for you to hire that person for your office and it’s not gonna work out. So we’re looking for people that match all of those things. So you fill out the hiring questionnaire, we have you fill out a hiring agreement.
30:57
Once those get sent in, they come directly to our team. And then we get you connected with Jackie or one of our hiring specialists to do an intake call. The intake call is usually about 20 to 30 minutes. When we’re doing the intake call, we have done some research beforehand. So we are looking to see how your practice looks online. Because what’s the first thing a potential candidate is gonna do when they’re looking to see if they wanna work with you?
31:27
They’re gonna look at your website. They’re gonna look at your reviews. They’re gonna look at your social media. So we’re looking at all of those things to make sure that those look good and that your office looks like a good place to work. We are also investigating what are the going rates for your area? Are you competitive with what you’re offering for your pay? How many other offices in your area are looking for candidates for that same position? What are they offering?
31:55
Are you competitive with those offices? So we can see, are there two offices that are also looking for an admin person in your area? That’s not very much competition. If there’s 30, you better be at the high end of that range because otherwise you’re not going to get, so we’re gonna educate you and inform you on that. Once you’ve met with Jackie and she goes over your questionnaire, she is going to then get you over and assign you to your hiring specialist. That hiring specialist is going to
32:25
take a look at your ad if you have an ad for that position and they’re gonna revise it. If you don’t have an ad, it’s fine. We will create one or we have them for all of the different positions. But we’ve been doing this long enough to know what works and what doesn’t work. The algorithms on social media, on the job boards are very finicky and if you do not have the right number of characters in your ad, if you don’t have the right…
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way it’s formatted or keywords. Again, it’s like marketing. So we’re gonna be doing all of that. So that’s a big question that comes up is how are you guys different from us just posting on Indeed? If you’re posting on Indeed, for example, it goes into, it’s like the marketing person. Are you gonna do a good job marketing your own office if you don’t know what you’re doing and how to write what keywords and what job description and how long to write it and the sizzle factor, putting things up that are gonna attract
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quality people that makes a huge difference. So we’re gonna be doing that. We are going to be then making sure you approve of it. It goes live. And then once it goes live, the resumes come to our team, to your hiring specialist. They are going to immediately and quickly go through those resumes and see of all these people, who is the most skilled and qualified, they’re gonna immediately go after the best people.
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The people that are not qualified are gonna get a thank you, we appreciate you reaching out, but it’s not the right fit type of thing and we keep moving them along. That’s something that offices take forever to do. It’s like you have all these resumes, now you have to go through them. We rate them in order of criteria, who is the most qualified to least, we throw out the least qualified, we’re going after the best people. Then once we go after those people, we’re looking to immediately schedule them for a short.
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five minute phone interview to verify their information. And do you understand what you’ve applied for? Are you a good fit? We move them along to then, if they’re qualified, to the Zoom video interview portion, which gets recorded. And the recordings of the best of the best people get sent to your office. So you’re not dealing with the BS of all these team members that may or may not be good. We’re literally narrowing it down and doing all the grunt work.
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to then send you the best people. And this is the exact same process, like I said before, that we do here at All-Star, because I’m busy, we’re running the company. I don’t have time to be going through resumes of our candidates and looking. So they literally will send me the resume of the person, they will send me the phone interview questionnaire, and they’ll send me the video. Here’s four people. Tell me which one you like the best. I’ll watch the video. I watch…
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The videos are usually about 10 to 15 minutes. Alex has patience to watch like two minutes. I’ll watch the whole thing because I’m looking for red flags and certain nuances in the candidates, but it’s really helpful to see that because you can see how they present themselves on camera. We ask really tough questions. We ask different scenarios. We ask specifics about their job to see if they really have the experience they say they are. So we’re vetting these people.
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way beyond what your office is probably capable of doing before they get to you. Then once you get to that phase and you see the interviews, you can say, I want to meet with these two people. And then we connect them with you. You can do a skills assessment or working interview, whatever you decide to do. We are negotiating behind the scenes, the pay, the hours, the benefits. We’re going back and forth. We’re the liaison between
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your office and the candidate. So you don’t have to sell your own practice and talk yourself up, we’re doing that. You don’t have to negotiate pay because that can be awkward, we’re doing that. We’re doing all the behind the scenes stuff. And then once the person you’re like, yes, I wanna move forward with this person, they’re great. And most dental offices tell us that the people that we hire for them are literally the best team members that they’ve ever had. Like hands, you know.
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whatever, bar none. So there, we’re finding really good people, so much so that multiple times they’ll come back to us again and again, not for, oh, this person didn’t work out, but because you found me the best person for an office manager, now I need an assistant, or now I need a hygienist. I don’t wanna do it again. You guys did it better than I could ever do it. So we check their references. There’s an optional credit check and background check. There’s an optional personality assessment.
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But we handle all of that. We help you write the offer letter if you need us to, once they verbally accept. And then finally, we provide an onboarding checklist specific for that candidate’s position for what they should be doing the first few weeks to few months on the job to be effective. So we’re helping you guys out with, we’re great at training, practice management, all of that. We’re giving you that for their position to say,
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these are the things that they should be doing. When I started working at my father-in-law’s practice, there was absolutely no onboarding process whatsoever. I came in from Bloomingdale’s, being used to having an onboarding sequence, and I’m like, what’s the onboarding protocol? And they’re like, ah, you just sit down at the computer and you figure things out and you make mistakes and we’ll tell you you’re doing it wrong. And I’m like, but that’s gonna be frustrating for somebody that’s not pushy like me to go around and ask people for help.
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That’s if you don’t have an onboarding, you’re gonna lose people because they’re not gonna feel confident in what they do. They’re not gonna feel like this is the job for them and then they leave. So we provide the onboarding checklist, but certainly like Alex said, we wanna make sure that they’re not only doing that, but they’re doing some sort of training to continue to make them confident and effective at what they’re doing so that they stay happy. I think this.
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I don’t know if it was like you said, 72%, 82% people are likely to stay for an average of three years or more if they’re onboarded and continuously trained. So that’s the entire process from start to finish. I wanted to just like cover it all so you see like all the work that is involved in it and we’re answering stuff like if things come in at night on the weekend, I mean, you know, with not like 12 o’clock at night.
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it’s more than you or your team is gonna be able to do that we’re on top of it. And when we’re focusing on your office, when we have that hour of time, we can get much more done in an hour than your team is gonna be able to because they’re stopping, they’re getting interrupted, the phone’s ringing, they’re checking a page. They’re not gonna be able to do what we can do in an hour. So an hour, like you said, is much different for us than it is for the team.
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narrative, that beautiful monologue. I think about practices listening to this, watching this, is what you’re doing anything like this, even close? No. I mean, I’m impressed. I mean, I didn’t even know because look here’s- I’m not available to be hired. No, well, we have, it’s not just Heather, we have tons of people that want to be hired from us. And that’s part, a whole nother I can get.
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off on that whole tangent about recruiting people to your cause versus hiring. We did a whole webinar or a podcast on that. But part of the issue with today’s economy is people want to be part of something. And that’s what we’re creating here at All-Star, that it’s not about us. It’s about a movement of all of you. But just listening to that, Heather, it even isn’t about you anymore.
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because you just did a great job. Yes, you are impressive speaker. You did a great job outlining that entire process. You don’t do it. It’s the hiring team that does it. Yes. And they do great. And it’s amazing, of course, but it’s amazing because just as you’re listening, as CEO of All-Star, we have multiple divisions. I was overhearing the hiring service division talking about one of their meetings led by Robin. I don’t even know all of them.
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And it’s amazing the culture that they have there, how much they care about their clients. We had one doctor that said, one of our hiring specialists, I wish she could work for me or work longer, work for me. It’s amazing. So the importance of that is that I’m delegating. I’m not doing it all. I don’t have to be, I know I trust people that can do it better than me and can lead that. And that’s how the organization can grow. The same thing for you.
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So that’s part of doing what you do well. Dentists, you have to produce and you have to lead your practice. And if you hear something, this goes to your vision of creating that wonderful life and practice. If you hear someone can do it better, more efficient than you, you do it. I mean, I’m just listening. I’m blown away. It is amazing the process because
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As Heather said, I don’t have patience to sit down here and listen to that long, I wanna get right to it. And like that 15 minute discussion, I’m like, I was very patient. And I’m like, wow, I’ve never heard that before. That’s really cool that we’re doing that, nice. All I care about, guys, is where I’m at, is I just want results. I see people are getting results and I’m happy. I don’t know what they’re doing. I know the big picture. But Heather has just gave you an insight into the detail of what she knows. But even she’s not doing it. It goes even deeper.
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Our coaches and consultants got to take a peek at Robin’s systems over there at hiring. It was like, wow, it’s amazing how systematic you guys are. I want to do that. So another thing too that occurred to me is that by doing this hiring process, you’re going to see how a professional does a program, any program. You’re going to learn.
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This is how you run businesses. This is how you build businesses. So you have to go beyond the commoditization. Besides A, this is, we already covered how it’s a much better use of your time to use us. But besides, there’s a lot of things that you will learn throughout the process to be a better business person, to do the things that you want to do to avoid the drama. The other thing is you have to be mindful of the cost of turnover. Turnover.
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on average, according to Ben Erickson and other HR firms, is one to three times the cost of the employee. So an entry level employee of $40,000 is going to cost you $40,000 to $120,000. And you go, really? And the hiring itself is cheap. It’s cheap. We’re not expensive. We’re not. And I’ll ask you how long it takes in a moment. The problem is it’s going to be a lot more expensive if you’re doing it because it takes you longer.
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the offices see like they hire and then it doesn’t work out. Right, well and then if you continue, that’s part of the cost. Yes. The patients not having the service, the inefficiencies and mistakes. So it’s not having that position fully optimized. It’s costing you a lot of money. Again, this whole idea, stepping over dollars to get pennies. So Heather, as we start to wrap this up, because this is very detailed, we talked about the costs, got right to it. And the reason I wanted to talk about that
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early on is because, look, here’s the thing. The reason why we’re doing this lengthy discussion is because you’re busy, Heather. I mean, this hiring service, we barely advertise. And it’s off the hook, matter of fact, want to go. And you do not have time to meet with every person. And let me clarify that. We don’t have a time to meet with everybody who may or may not be interested. If you’re interested in doing the program,
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We have a lot, we have people that will make the time to spend time, but we don’t have time to go over what does it cost? You know, how long does it take? I mean, that’s why we’re doing this video. We wanna give you everything that you would get on a call and more, because I’m on the call, but you get me too, whether you like it or not, and you get Heather, you get all the, and if you’re like, I like what I’m hearing, let’s go ahead and move forward because it’s hour by hour, meaning you can stop it every time. And we did that for a reason. We did that because we don’t wanna be stuck with you and we don’t want you stuck with us.
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You see? So it’s like, we want to just make sure you have all the information. This is a very, very busy department. And we are using our hiring service to hire more people, because it’s growing exponentially, our hiring service, because it’s so needed. But in part of our growth, as you can see, we don’t have the people power. We’re investing the people power in serving you, not in dealing with, I may or may not be interested. So this is where we have this discussion, where you get
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all the information you need in education. Does that make sense? Yeah, and a lot of people, like you said, they’ll ask, you know, what states do you guys work in? So we’re a virtual company, so we have people all over the place. We don’t need to be like right in your area. We work with all different areas. So only the US, not Canada or other areas, unfortunately. Entire US, including Alaska. Yes, and so it doesn’t matter where you’re located. We’ve worked with offices in the
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busiest location in Manhattan. We’ve worked with tiny rural Montana and everything in between. So we’ve pretty much worked with most states. So that’s a question that comes up. Another question that comes up is, how long does it typically take to find a team member? Because you guys charge hourly. So that is the most popular question. It’s also one of the more tricky ones to answer because every office is totally different.
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Even two offices that are located in the exact same area, you know, town, like might have two totally different needs. So it varies, it can vary from how much experience you’re looking for a person to all the different factors. So the number that we typically give out for the average amount of time is about 20 to 30 hours to find a person. Now, if we’re looking for multiple people for your office, it doesn’t multiply times.
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20 to 30 for each person. We can get more done more efficiently if we’re looking for multiple people in an office or multiple positions. But it’s like that. Again, there’s all different people that fill in on that spectrum. We found treatment coordinators for offices in as little as eight billable hours. Sometimes it can take six months to find a hygienist. Now, one of the things to keep in mind is that length of time doesn’t equal billable hours. So,
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Hygiene can take, usually it’s the hardest to find for hygiene because there’s so few hygienists and so many people looking. But because of that, you’re not gonna see a huge volume of resumes coming in. You’re not gonna get 100 resumes when you post the ad. You’re gonna get a couple here and there. So it’s our job to really make sure that we’re maximizing the quality of those interactions versus quantity. So it might take a couple months, but.
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we’re really focusing on quality and maximizing each person we get. Right. So it’s not going to be a ton of hours right out of the gate with that. And you are being provided the information as you go, the hours as you go. You are involved in the process. You’re going to see the work. It’s not like, oh, what just happened? I spent this money. You are you are you are being abreast to the process as we go along. And so it you know, you see the value is what’s happening because it comes to.
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Listen, it’s very simple, guys. We gotta wrap this up here. It’s very simple. It’s either your time or our time. You get ghosted, we get ghosted. You see the value, you don’t see the value. It’s very simple with respect to that. And so like Heather said, front office is a little easier, then it gets harder with assistants, hardest with hygienists. Just because it takes longer may not mean it’s more time, it just means there’s not as much activity. We’re there to help you. We either do it all for you up to the interview where you get to see them.
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or you work with us. Like I said, very popular program. I’m gonna put a, we’ll put links and call to actions of what to do next, right? Heather talked to you about filling out that form, getting going, and you also, Heather or one of our hiring specialists can be made available at once you begin to kind of get you started. And like I said, everybody, it’s hourly. So you can try it for a couple hours. You don’t like it, stop, we’re moving on to the next one.
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You’ll see our reviews, you’ll see our reputation. Go online, see also General Academy, our reviews, perfect reviews, we stand by it. We want you happy, we’ll do everything to make you happy. And part of that is we’re very careful who we take on. We’ll let you know whether it’s first come first serve, but if we don’t think we can help you, we’ll tell you. We’re not gonna take that because we don’t want a bad review, we want you happy. We’re gonna work with people that were here to help each other, not to pull a fast one on anybody.
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This is something, our goal with hiring has always been that hiring will help empower you to be able to do what you love to do, train and treat people. We have the best training in the world. We’re there to, we’d love to have you as a member. If you, many of you may be members that are listening, we’d love to have you be a member and participate. Regardless, that’s our mission. Heather Nottingham, VP of Training at All-Star Dental Academy. Thank you so much for being on this discussion with the group. I hope you.
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found it useful and helpful. Any questions, certainly reach out. We’ll make sure if we didn’t answer a question that we answer it. And then you make sure you take that quiz of everything we covered and everything she said here on today. No, just kidding. No quiz. Let’s change my mind. No quiz. Okay. Thank you, Heather. Thank you, everybody else. Thank you. Until next time, go out there and be an All Star.
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We hope you enjoyed this episode of Dental All-Stars. Visit us online at allstardentalacademy.com
