Learning From Hiring Mistakes

00:00
Welcome to Dental All-Stars. I’m Alex Nottingham, founder and CEO of All-Star Dental Academy. With me is Robin Reese, the director of the hiring service at All-Star Dental Academy. We’re talking about learning from hiring mistakes. Please welcome Robin. Hi, Alex. Glad to be here. Glad to have you. We were just at Disney, right? Disney World with the team. We were. What a magical experience it was. It was a magical experience. That would be a good podcast. Anyways, we’re going to wrap up this episode with a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit

00:29
on for a different topic. So learning from hiring mistakes, that’s a very useful way of looking at things, right? So the whole idea that we learn from our mistakes versus just continuing to make mistakes or the idea of opportunity versus failure, that whole type of situation. So Robin, tell me about this subject matter.

00:55
Well, as you and I, Alex have talked before along with clients, this could be a enormous piece to go over. But what we most often tend to focus on is looking at other practices and saying, wow, they have a full team. They’re so successful. They never have anybody leave. And unfortunately, that is not the

01:22
the story anymore. That is not our reality. And most conversations that we have with hiring clients is they’re so focused on, oh, this was terrible. This was not a good fit. Where did we go wrong? They don’t really take time to kind of debrief. They’re really focused on the setback versus turning it towards a success.

01:49
and they think somehow, somewhere they failed, maybe they haven’t taken the time to figure out why didn’t this work. Maybe they’re anxious to just quickly put a body in that position because they don’t wanna be short staffed for very long and all of these are very valid concerns. But what we wanna do is we wanna turn that setback to success and really put the focus on the future and what do we learn from

02:18
Either did we not adequately onboard this person? Did we not provide the training that this person needed? Did we make assumptions because they brought experience to our practice, but we weren’t clear in what were the expectations for this position in our practice? And those are really the main points that we talk to hiring clients about of what

02:47
happened so that we don’t repeat it. And like I said, many are just not in a position to take time to really flesh that out and figure that out before they jump right in. The person is leaving or we’ve we’ve decided to end the relationship and we’ve just got to jump right in and start hiring again. So there are components that can help set this person up for success and that really starts with reviewing

03:13
If somebody was already in the position, why didn’t it work? And then build on the job description, which we talk about in our other hiring podcasts, it’s the recipe for success. Now we need to really figure out what those ingredients are to make that recipe. And it starts with understanding what didn’t work.

03:37
I like to use some sports analogies and there is Kara Lawson. If you’re college basketball, you might recognize her as working at Duke University. And she talks about the life. She’s not just teaching her players the basketball skills, but she’s teaching them a life skills and that they’re yes, of course you want to win. Yes, you always want to go out and give your best and there are going to be times that you don’t do that. And so you really have to learn.

04:06
how to handle those hard losses, how to handle when things don’t go well, because it’s not always gonna go out there and win. You’re not always gonna win every single game. And as much as you can, and as much as you do, you really have to learn and have that resilience to go out into the world and understand it’s not always gonna be rainbows and unicorns as much as we want, or Mickey Mouse and Minnie Mouse as we just experienced.

04:35
Um, the other sports analogy I heard recently that kind of resonated with this subject matter was, you know, don’t let a loss beat you twice. And that is when a relationship doesn’t work out, when you, you do all the right things and the new hire just doesn’t, you know, click or just doesn’t get, um, everything that you’re trying to teach them or train them, or maybe it’s a long-term team member.

05:04
Don’t beat yourself up twice. Learn from it, acknowledge it, but learn from it. Figure out what can we do differently for next time to set this person up for success and go from there. Don’t belabor it, don’t keep going back to it, don’t keep saying why this person, oh, and this is another thing she did or didn’t do, or this is another thing he said all the time, which drove me crazy. Don’t let a loss beat you twice.

05:33
love what you’re saying. And I think it rings so true. We were just talking about that just yesterday. I’m driving down from Orlando and just this emotional intelligence that you have mastered quite a bit. And it’s like Heather and I are always like, how does Robin handle this? He’s so cool and sweet about it. And sweet, yes, sweet, but also professional. And you just, it’s this idea, I love what you say, you’re beating yourself up twice, or really you didn’t even beat up yourself first. You got hit.

06:04
but then you’re hitting yourself again. It’s like, it doesn’t make sense. Something happened, it didn’t work with your expectations. You make an adjustment, you get back to work. It’s not how many times you get knocked down, it’s how many times you get up. We’ve heard this cliche, but it’s true. And I think that’s what you’re sharing with us is that if something doesn’t go your way, don’t belabor it. And it’s so easy to do that, it really is. Like yesterday, what wasn’t even my mistake, any frustration.

06:33
So I’m here, here I’m at the Ritz. I’m a little disappointed in the service. I want to talk about that in another podcast. I’ll make a note about that. But we gave them the valet number, apparently. We’re waiting for a half an hour. We go back, they never got the number. Now we wait another half an hour. And so I can see like it’s about to get the car and I started to complain and I’m like, is this helpful? It happened, move on. It’s not, nothing I’m gonna do is gonna change the situation.

07:03
move on with it, consider it, and also use it as an example from a podcast. Because the Ritz is known as great customer service, but they lack some areas. And, and, and I’ll riff off this for a moment because it makes a lot of sense and come back to this because you’ve got to be so consistent throughout your entire customer service experience. That’s what we teach of All-Star from phone skills and advertising to converting the phone call to case acceptance. Everything has got to be the same.

07:32
And even the hiring service that we have that you are the director, it’s all about high level customer service. We call it white glove service. The candidate gets white glove service. And if you are hiring and it’s not quality, it’s not potential. One of the biggest problems we have is not just the candidates, it’s the doctor’s responsiveness and team and the quality that they run through. If you’re giving that impression, how does this set up?

08:02
The practice, this is somebody, I don’t know if we talk about sometimes, but I think about it, this is somebody who you may be paying a million dollars over the life of their career, and it’s gonna make millions of dollars for your practice. And it’s haphazard, there’s no systems. And I think that, so there’s two levels to this, Robin. There’s the levels of what do we do when there’s a mistake? And how do we handle it? What’s our approach?

08:32
But I think even before that, what can we do to mitigate mistakes? Do you have a process? And most don’t. If you follow our podcasts and our materials, we give away our process. Well, the structure of it, the five steps to hiring. But there’s a lot of subsets to it. And then there are also, I mean, when you look at the formula, you gotta have the formula, but then you have the right people doing it.

09:01
You gotta stick to it, and it’s gotta be something you do. That’s why dentists, you refer often to specialists because that’s what they do. So I think you have to first step back and say why these mistakes happen. So I’ll talk about the area of, well, why are you doing it to begin with? We’ll talk about that, but people wanna hear about it, Robin, they wanna know, do it yourself. So with these mistakes, let me ask you this. What are the common mistakes that are happening

09:31
doctors hire because I don’t really think there’s a lot of mistakes that happen with what we do because we have a system That goes on but what are the mistakes that you see? With people that are doing it themselves and hiring what are the common mistakes? Great question Alex and I would say the first thing that comes to mind Is they’re not clear about the person that they need in the role So they haven’t either had the job description or they haven’t

10:00
really clearly define the expectations. They just hope and wish that the next person they like, not even who’s qualified, but the next person they like is gonna be able to do the job. So I think that’s the number one mistake is not being clear on what this role is and the expectations that they want from this next new hire. I think the other mistake.

10:26
practices will make, especially in this very tumultuous hiring environment is make a knee jerk decision right away without doing employment verification or a background check. They like the person they interview really well, the resume looks awesome. They want to hire them and bring them on board. But we know we’ve heard some stories recently, where that has

10:53
backfired on practices that made those quick hiring decisions, which is why we always recommend giving a conditional offer letter and making sure that even if you do bring on the person before those those verifications are done, that you have an opportunity to rescind that offer if things don’t turn out, bad references.

11:19
employers don’t want to, previous employers don’t want to give any information, background checks that have some very concerning previous history. And we know past behavior is a good indicator of future behavior and so we want to make sure that we’re dotting the I’s, crossing the T’s, and making sure that people are making good hires.

11:42
from not having expectations clearly defined to hiring too quickly without doing your homework and doing the background check. And then I’d say the third thing is they’re just not prepared. They don’t have the time, they don’t have the energy. And so their hiring process is hit or miss. You mentioned earlier about responsiveness. That is huge for candidates. We’ve lost for clients.

12:10
some really good applicants because they were getting multiple offers and we get it. The practice is busy and the doctors, you know, focused on patient care and the office managers focused on managing the office. But we really do need that responsiveness and that’s what we’re there for. So we can be responding to candidates as soon as possible. And they really.

12:33
appreciate that and we get so many thank yous from applicants, even when we decline them and say, you know, you’re not a good fit for this position. They’re like, thank you so much for letting me know so I can continue on my search and I’m not wondering, you know, what happened to my application. So I would say those are the top three mistakes that practices will do when they hire on their own is not set those clear expectations. They’re too quick without doing their homework.

13:02
and then they’re haphazard in their process. You know, what kind of turns out to me is, yeah, all of them do, especially the quick decisions because it’s so nice to have a, some time between making decisions and when you’re too into it, it can be, you know, you want it to almost be resolved now, it’s a problem.

13:32
And I know here at All Star. There’s always a sense of urgency. And I think that it’s important to have where you’re not too invested. I mean, where you have people to protect you from yourselves. Right? Like I can give you a very easy investment strategy that will double your money every seven, eight years, pretty much guaranteed. And there’s really very little or no risk. The problem is, can you stick with it? And that’s why people pay financial advisors.

14:01
one to 2% because it protects them from themselves. Do you have the time to look into that? That’s it. It’s not even time. They protect you from yourselves. That’s their number one job. They’re not gonna find anything different. But the same thing as having professionals around you. They give you a sense to make sure, were you clear? Were you prepared? Did you do it right? Did we skip any steps? Because every time we make a bad hire without following the steps, because look, you can still follow all the steps and it doesn’t work. And I think to me, that’s a mistake. It’s not even a mistake.

14:30
It’s a failure, not on you, but it has failed. It’s part of the numbers game, and you go back to it and you learn from it. But it wasn’t a mistake, you follow the process. Now you don’t wanna make, it’s like anything, if you use sports analogies, oh, don’t drop that pass, or don’t miss that ball, it was right in the strike zone. It’s called low-hanging fruit, or they call it a softball. You gotta hit that one, you really do. And so those are unfortunate, unforced errors. And then,

14:59
It’s also in the situation. So I like to pick on myself sometimes, I’m not picking myself, but self-reflect that I have a great team like you and others that when I have these popcorn ideas, which was what you call them, is that they have enough time to settle in and everybody can kind of think about it more and they become more viable over time when done appropriately. Because I tend to push, push too fast and then I have people that will slow it down and do due diligence. So that’s where this whole

15:28
you know, with the mistakes come into play. So if you’re going to do what Robin is saying, the converse is be clear, be mindful in your decisions, be prepared, make sure you have the resources. Now, one of the areas in hiring in anything you do, and this is good stuff because I mentioned this in prior podcasts, probably six months ago or a year, but I’m bringing it back. And it’s these two questions you have to ask yourself. Are you good at it?

15:57
and do you enjoy doing it? Okay, and actually there’s a third. Is it worth your time? So a dentist might say, or anybody on your team, are you good at hiring? Maybe you are. Probably not, but maybe you are. Do you enjoy it? Probably not. Maybe you do. And then the last catch all is, is it the best use of your time? If you’re a dentist and you’re crushing it, right?

16:27
which you should be, and I’ll tell you, and if you’re not crushing it, where hiring is a good use of your time, you can use some of our self-funding coaching to resolve some of that, okay? So in most scenarios, it doesn’t make sense. So for me now at All-Star, I do the accounting. I’m really good at it, not all the accounting, not the bookkeeping, but the big picture stuff, and I’m good at it, I do enjoy it, helps me make good decisions at the company, is it a good use of my time? It is. I need to know.

16:57
as the CEO, the profit, the balance sheet, where the company is going, but I delegate payroll. I don’t wanna deal with that. I delegate the details or the large deposits, and then I oversee it. So if there’s somebody who’s better than me at it, they need to be doing it, okay? But there’s not, I have people better than me, Robin, and they weren’t at my level, and that’s the best use of my time for the company. Now dentists, office managers.

17:25
Is this what you love? Are you enjoying it? Is it the best of your time? If not, it’s better to have someone work with you. I’m an attorney and I’ve represented myself at least once and I lost and lawyers will say, it’s a fool when the attorney represents themselves, essentially, don’t do that. Always get representation. And with respect to hiring, what I say is,

17:56
Again, you go through that three prong question and you say, is it something that, again, I’m good at it, I enjoy it, it’s a good use of my time. And by having, we talked about at the beginning, that white glove service, having somebody professional work with you, protect you from yourself, and they’re better at it. And here’s the other thing I wanna say about our hiring service, is it’s collaborative. It’s not like you hand it off and it’s done. It’s you have firepower with you. So,

18:25
I like when you mentioned mistakes. I’m gonna bring this full circle Robin is there are mistakes, clear, quick decisions, not prepared. When you’re working with a coach, which is the hiring service, that’s doing it for you, all those are kind of, you’re not gonna be making mistakes. Does that make sense? We’re gonna help you avoid making them. Avoid making mistakes. We still have clients who say, no, this is what I wanna do. And we absolutely support that with the understanding

18:54
you know, this scenario could go multiple ways as long as you’re prepared, doctor. And the reason I say that, and I don’t want to make this a pitch for the hiring service, but it kind of is, but I’m just as a business person, that’s where I’m coming from. Everybody that’s listening, I’m saying as a business person, think like a business person, think about running a business, not just like the mom and pop thing where we do everything. And again, it’s sometimes you have to, but when you, when you have,

19:24
principles that guide you and you say what am I looking to build and Where can I? Bring in support and I would I would put in the same. It’s interesting Robin people that do Your hiring service are often people that do coaching Because they realize that I need to surround myself with professionals that will get this job done Well and correctly, okay

19:51
Give an example, we were talking to our mastermind doctors and they work with a, we will often refer out for associates, a dentist. We do anything but associates at this point. And he spent like 15,000 for a lead, a couple leads. And it was worth it. And he got an associate, didn’t last, but he’s like, that was worth it. Versus him trying to go hunt out there and stuff like that. And it’s like, that’s a lot of money it sounds like, right?

20:17
I mean, it’s penny. And another client shared with us that they paid $40,000. And it was worth it. No associate. Oh, they got nothing. Who got nothing. Right. And luckily reached out to us. We were able to connect him with some resources that we recommend and having a much better experience. I guess I would say this. You don’t want to make unnecessary mistakes. OK.

20:45
So if you’re going to do it yourself, be clear on what you’re doing. Don’t be too quick to hire and be prepared. Overall, I’m saying for anything you do, put together a great team around you, whether it’s hiring, whether it’s accounting, whether it’s coaching to help you. And I love Ben Erickson, which is a great HR firm that you’re a consultant for. And the owner and the CEO there said, don’t step over dollars to get pennies. A key perspective. Does that make sense?

21:16
Absolutely. Awesome. Robin Rees, I love this topic, learning from higher mistakes. And again, this can be any mistake that you make, is don’t, it happens, don’t beat up on yourself, don’t belabor it, get back to work. And if something isn’t working, we’ve heard the Albert Einstein, Albert Einstein, what was it, his quote,

21:45
over and over and expecting a different result. Don’t do it. All right, so remember to follow us on all the channels, Spotify, Apple, YouTube, share with your friends. And until next time, go out there and be an all-star. An all-star.