As a dental practice owner, you already understand that finding and successfully hiring the right team member can make or break the success of your business. The current dental staff market is volatile and varies wildly depending on location. We have some clients who can’t find the right people and others who seemingly cannot find anyone at all. With these issues, it’s more critical than ever that when you do need to hire, you accurately identify the exact skills and personality to fit in your specific vacancy in your specific practice.
Luckily, there are ways to take the magic and mysticism out of the hiring process and move from struggle to strategy.
We utilize data from the Kolbe Model of Psychometric testing to give us additional and invaluable information on the doctor, the team, the practice, and exactly what skills and traits the perfect candidate should have to be successful long term.
What is the Kolbe System?
The Kolbe System is a psychometric assessment tool that reveals how someone naturally behaves when striving towards something. Because work is an environment where we are always striving, it’s an incredibly accurate way of seeing how someone will perform in a specific role over time. Think of it like this, while looking at a candidate’s resume will show you what experience they have and what they know how to do, a Kolbe assessment goes further into showing you how they are likely to do it.
For instance, you may be hiring a patient coordinator who has been successful in that role in an existing practice. So it would be understandable to think that they know how to do that, so they can also do that for you. Well, yes and no. If the practice they were working in is owned or managed by someone who is very high-level and hands-off, then the patient coordinator may have had a lot of autonomy in developing the case acceptance process. If you put that same person in the same position under a micromanager, the likelihood is that there will be stress, conflict, and ultimately failure. Not because the candidate has suddenly lost their ability to be successful, but because the needs of the environment were no longer a fit.
How the Perfect Practice Model Can Help You
Firstly, we use the Kolbe System to learn and assess the needs of the practice, practice management, and the specific role.
Secondly, we develop a specific ad to attract the right fit candidates and also craft an interview script that is designed to reveal as much as possible about each candidate.
At the shortlist stage, all remaining candidates complete a Kolbe Assessment. This provides additional data on how they fit within your practice, with you and your team, what they will contribute to your practice as a whole, and lastly, how they will likely perform on the job over time. Think of it as a way to take the guesswork out of hiring.
Armed with all of the extra information and data, it becomes much easier to choose the right candidate based on facts rather than just feelings.
Lastly, before the candidate starts, it allows us to deliver a customized onboarding program that both reinforces their decision to work with you as well as sets the stage and expectations on performance, practices, and behaviors in your practice. Imagine if a new hire showed up feeling confident and ready to roll as opposed to feeling nervous and unsure.
Performance over time is a function of culture. Culture is a function of communication.
Why is the Kolbe System valuable for dental practices?
By using PCI’s Perfect Practice Program, dental practices can take the guesswork out of hiring and managing individual employees and teams. By learning and understanding the precise and specific needs of your practice, it becomes much easier to find and recruit candidates with not just the right skills but also the right work ethic and personality to be a successful members of your team.
Simply put, the Perfect Practice Program, informed by Kolbe Assessment Data, allows you to match a candidate’s strengths to the role, putting the new team member in a position where they can succeed, and your practice can flourish.
