"Hiring Backwards" - A Revolutionary Model for Dental Staffing (feat. Dr. Mike Neal)

In Episode 17 of “The Dental Domination Podcast,” Dr. Mike Neal, founder of Build My Team, discusses the importance of hiring and retaining the right staff for dental practices. He shares his own experience of facing staffing problems and how it led him to create his staffing agency. Dr. Neal explains the hiring process used by Build My Team, which focuses on assessing candidates’ mindset, speed of learning, and natural strengths and talents. He emphasizes the importance of hiring based on these factors rather than solely relying on resumes and experience. Dr. Neal also highlights the impact of this hiring strategy on retention rates and the overall success of dental practices.

Learn more in the show notes.

Takeaways

• Hiring based on mindset, speed of learning, and natural strengths and talents leads to better retention rates and overall success in dental practices.
• Traditional hiring based on resumes and experience often results in hiring candidates who are not the right fit for the job.
• Being decisive and proactive in the hiring process is crucial to attracting and retaining top talent.
• Build My Team uses an automated assessment process to identify candidates with the right mindset and abilities for each position.

Transcript

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All right, welcome back to the Dental Domination podcast. My name is Dan Bryan. I'm the co -founder at Dentalscapes. I am not here to talk about dental marketing today though, believe it or not. I'm actually here to talk about something that I believe is probably pertinent for the majority of listeners, those that own their own dental practices, and that is staffing, dental staffing specifically. And obviously we are in a time of great upheaval and turmoil within the marketplace. And so... I don't think there's much more pertinent topics to dig into today than really dental staffing. And so I'm really excited to dig into this with a very special guest we have on today, Dr. Mike Neal. He is the founder and owner of Build My Team, which is a staffing agency for healthcare practices. He's actually a practicing optometrist himself in Hawley, Pennsylvania, a rural practice there. And I know Dr. Neal, you actually started Build My Team back in 2018 after experiencing some staffing problems yourself. So if you don't mind, would you introduce yourself here in a minute and also sort of share with us and our listeners what kinds of issues you were facing that led you to create this new agency? Yeah, you betcha. So welcome everybody. I'm a practicing OD, meaning optometrist. And what does that have to do with a dental podcast or dental marketing? Well, what that means is essentially all of our practices have very similar types of problems when it comes to a team and similar opportunities on solving those problems. So this all got started with my practice, which was a staffing disaster back in, 20, before 2018. we were hiring wrong. We were hiring based upon what people said they were capable of doing, what the resume said they could do and interviewing that type of thing. What we ended up doing was, getting so frustrated with the existing process and the results that it generated in the, you know, we were just hiring wounded puppies. I mean, we were hiring people that were trying to nurse back to health, trying to be doctors about it. Empathy was. wasn't one of the main things. And, and it was, it was just categorically disastrous. the results that, that it gave us were awful. And I was in executive coaching at the time with a, an organization called strategic coach. And I looked into how they were, essentially doing their hiring. that got me looking into the four seasons, Ritz Carlton, Disney, those types of organizations and how they did their hiring. What I realized is they were hiring completely opposite to how we were. in our practice and we were doing everything essentially upside down and backwards. Yeah, you talk about hiring backwards. So what does that actually mean in practice? Sure. So what we were looking for, you take all the applicants, we wouldn't get that many. We'd take them and we would try and figure out who was great at the job. What those other companies were doing is they did upside down. They got a lot more applicants and they figured out who could not do the job. Exact opposite of how we were doing it. And the ones that were left are who they sorted through. And so what that led to is build my team building a system, which essentially, Our team members write the job description for our client practices. We publish it out to 22 different job boards and we get a lot of applicants. That's what we're used to. From that point, our automated system will send a text to the applicants. They get it within about five seconds of applying for the job and it starts them through our assessment process. And this is all done from their cell phones. The assessment process first tests their mindset, make sure they have a healthcare mindset. They like to serve people, take care of people. They do not have entitlement, all kinds of stuff like that. And that's critical because otherwise you're just dealing with people who are applying for a job. The entire bell curve, essentially. So, open -ended questions? I'm just curious. they're based upon a field of science called psychometrics. And there's all kinds of different ways to tell things about a person without directly asking them. because for example, if you ask a person, if they have great stress tolerance, when they're applying for a front desk job, you will a hundred percent get yes. They might be shaking like a leaf and sweating at the time they give you that answer, but they're going to say yes. And so what we're able to do is determine if that's actually accurate or not. After the mindset assessment, the next thing we do is we take a look at, what they are capable of in terms of their speed of learning. And we want people who can learn quickly, but not too quickly. And they also have to be able to learn quickly enough. We are looking for people for these positions based upon natural strengths and talents and not experience and not resumes. So when they apply for these positions, they have the right mindset to be successful. They learn quickly so that they can be successful. and they pop into these positions with the natural strengths and talents for each position. And each of those are different, of course. Yeah, so once you once you partner with a practice on the actual recruitment and sorting through the applications, what does the process look like then? Does the practice itself handle the interviewing and the hiring process? Or are you involved in that stage? What does that kind of look like taking it to the next step? Once they go through our assessment process, we know generally more about them than they know about themselves. We can determine their stress tolerance, how they like to work with people, their detail orientedness, how they follow process or don't, God forbid. Each different position has different algorithms behind it as to what makes a person terrific. So for example, terrific front desk dental person or dental front desk person. sorry, dental assistant, biller, those types of things. And what our system does is it outputs what's called an insight report. And this is a PDF that our consultants will send over to the practice and it tells the practice all about this person, but not from a resume standpoint, it's what they're actually good at. From that point, the final candidates in the entire process go through a video interview. And this video interview is conducted by our team. It's automated and a one -way video interview. And they're asked a bunch of questions that they record their answers using our software and it's sent to our team for evaluation. What they're looking for is not whether they're white, black, pink, green. It doesn't matter if they're male or female, nothing like that. We're looking for how they answer the questions. So by the time they get to the point of being sent one of these video interviews, we already know they can do the job. We're 97, 98 % certain of that, depending on the position. What we're looking for at that point is to determine how they would represent your practice. We want to make sure that, you know, depending on the position that they are, either assertive enough or not too assertive. Are they outgoing? Are they more straightforward? Are it all depends on the position as to what we're looking for. And, we want to see how they're dressed. Are they taking this seriously? Are they eloquent when they're speaking? Are they colloquial when they're speaking? is there all kinds of slang involved? All that type of stuff factors into the decision and. That's the also the check and balance against just an assessment based process. And so when that's all said and done, the cream of the crop gets sent over to your practice. And up to that point of practice usually has less than an hour's worth of work in the entire process. So if they want to, they can interview the people in person. Most do some practices. Don't they say, you know, have that person show up on Thursday, that type of thing. So it's up to the practice. But the key point is that they have virtually no time involved. at that point. Absolutely. So I have a question. I want to go back to something you've said a couple of times and it's just, it's really interesting. And I think sort of gets to the heart of what you're doing and your philosophy, but you said, you know, a couple of times now you don't hire or look to hire based on resumes or based on experience. So I guess my question is, does experience count for anything? Are you ever evaluating whether or not say a DA has worked in a dental practice previously or. or whether or not a front desk person has any direct experience, you know, handling reception or that sort of thing. What's the deal there? we do, however, it's not what you think. In order to get to the point of our team opening up a resume, they have to go through the entire process. And we're very specific about that because otherwise what we're doing is we're sending you over, candidates that we know cannot do the job, but have experience doing the job. The reason they're jumping from one dental practice to another is that they didn't work out at any of those practices. And so we have to be extremely cautious about that. Now keep in mind, this only applies to unlicensed positions. The hygienist, the F does, obviously dentists. We're not involved in the hiring of those positions. We're talking about the administrative team, the billing team, even practice managers, but not licensed positions. And so experience for most of what I'm talking about is more of a red flag than it is a solution. statistically speaking, over these positions. So now another question I have that I think will resonate with some of our listeners is that obviously the hiring market right now in dental is insane, but retention is also an ongoing challenge. And so what's sort of the difference in terms of the retention rate that you see adhering to this hiring strategy versus sort of your traditional judging on experience and resumes and that sort of thing? What's the real value add there as far as retention goes? Well, that's a great question. It's tremendous, vastly different. And the main reasons being we're asking people to be themselves. Okay. And what you're asking in the traditional approach is asking them to be who you want them to be. These are markedly wildly different approaches because we're hiring based on natural strengths and talents. They roll into the position. They learn extremely quickly. They do. what they don't think is special and what you and the rest of your team are like, holy cow, that person's going to be great at this job versus somebody who comes in via a, more of a resume and traditional approach. They don't have all of the natural strengths and talents. So it's hard for them. It's work for them. And you can just imagine when something's hard and when it's work and stressful, the retention plummets. Whereas we take people from outside of, Generally outside of dentistry, bring them in. They think, my God, this is a terrific job. I get to sit in an air conditioned office for most of the day in front of a computer. Nobody's yelling at me, throwing at things at me. I'm not having to dig holes for whatever it might be. It doesn't matter. The point is they walk into the job capable of doing the job, enjoying it because it's not hard for them. and yet they are exceptionally productive. I mean, these are a players and B players that we're bringing to the table. These aren't folks at the C or D player level. And that's the power of our assessment process and filtering those types of folks out. Yeah, now let's talk about culture really quick because culture is obviously important in the recruitment process. You want to make sure that they're going to be a good fit for the individual sort of personality of the practice and the other team there. You know, obviously team based care is so important now building building a high functioning dental team means, you know, adhering to the practice culture. How do you gauge that in the recruitment process and how do you also recommend that the practices once they. are handed off these qualified candidates, how do they gauge that in an actual interview? Sure. So it starts off with a consultation call with our team members. We want to hear everything about your practice. That's how everything starts. We want to hear the good, the bad, definitely the ugly, any of the problems you're having, why you think you're having those problems. It needs to be a blunt, direct and incredibly honest and candid conversation. That's where our team members turn around and say, now I know how to help this practice and how to bring the proper people in. So it's not just, you know, completely computer based. Although our process is exceptionally automated. We are with these finalists candidates. We know that they can do the job, but which would be the best candidate for your particular practice? And when our, our clients are very honest and communicate as much information as they can about that, our team members, they find it straightforward. And by the way, you got to keep in mind that let's say a dental practice is hiring once every month or two, our team members will have filled multiple positions per day. They are just at a completely different level of doing this on a routine, regular basis. And they get very, very good at this type of thing because our company does one thing exceptionally well, and it does it over and over again. We don't have multiple ways that we service our clients. And so the more that they can be honest with our team members internally, the better the results are. What's the typical timeline from consulting with your team to actual placement? What does that look like? So from the time of the order, most positions are anywhere around the four to six week level with exceptions on both sides. The fastest we've ever filled the position. and this was early on in the company is that I got a text from a practice. boy. Sunday night. we posted the job Monday morning, had applicants. They ran through the process. Person was figured out by, Tuesday evening. They showed up for work on Thursday. That's the absolute fastest this has ever happened. Can't really beat that. Yeah. yet ridiculous. Usually about four to six weeks, generally. Okay, awesome. And so for practices that may be interested in working with you or, you know, going through this system, what does the process look like? So, you know, what is the financial model look like for you? How does it actually work? Yeah. So when a practice wants to work with us, the hop on the website, build my team .com schedule a consultation. All phone calls with the clients are scheduled, for the initial one so that we have the dentist full undivided attention. cause we all know how that works in a practice, you know, everybody's, pulling at them. So they start off with a schedule call. And as I said earlier, we want them to be completely honest, candid, blunt. Do it from your car if you need to we've had clients start crying because the stress is so high We're here to help I mean that we do one thing exceptionally well as I said and that solved these types of problems we can Reliably and predictably bring these a players on to their team So it starts off with a call then we create a job description For the practice we publish it to 22 different job boards the candidates start coming in immediately and they receive a text message within five seconds of applying for these positions. That starts the assessment process. They go through the assessment process and then at the end of it, we send over the, the A players to the practice. Now there's one thing I forgot to mention earlier in the four to six weeks on average, what the practice has to be ready for is if we find somebody early. Okay. So what I mean by that is an A player, when we send them over, you have to reach out to them right away. I, in my practice, it's within an hour or two. We literally stop what we're doing to reach out to them. The reason being these A players want a decisive workplace. They want somebody who knows what they're doing. Doesn't have to mold decisions all day long. Can, can show them that they're a leader, a decisive leader, and they want that type of environment to work in. You get back to somebody after a week, they're gone. They're absolutely long gone. Those days are over. They're absolutely over. So for one tip for any practice is just to be vastly more decisive about moving forward with, with candidates. And, so for example, in our practice, somebody comes in first thing in the morning from build my team, cause bill, my team does the hiring for my practice. What our practice manager will do reaches out within the hour, two at the absolute latest and tries to get them in that afternoon for an in -person interview. Super assertive. you know, the days of being more choosy and not wanting to appear to candidates that you're, you're assertive gone, throw that out the window. It is doing you a massive disservice. Yeah, absolutely. Now, just as far as what this looks like in practice and what a successful practice looks like when they're, you know, adhering to these hiring, this hiring philosophy, what does a good retention rate look like? You know, when you evaluate a practice and its performance, you know, a lot of dental practices, obviously right now are having a hard time keeping talent. So what is, what does a healthy practice look like from that standpoint? Well, it's hard to throw a number at that because it depends on a bunch of factors. Like for example, let's say you're located near a military base. That's the first thing that comes to mind. And you're going to have perhaps spouses that are working in your practice and they just up and get transferred by no fault of their own or otherwise. Contrast that to a place where there isn't a lot of opportunity and team members tend to stay for a very long time. We, the team members that we place into practices are vastly better at staying in the practice because of what I said earlier with they're using their natural strengths and talents in the position. so our, the people that we place in the practice, the percentage of time that they stay, you know, is it a year, is it two years? It's vastly longer than what a practice is used to. And, and we want that, we don't want high turnover in a practice for the simple reason being that for our company, when we send somebody who's an absolute superstar, Who do you call next when you, when somebody leaves, you call us again. And so we, we end up taking over this process of hiring for, for most of our clients, permanently. And that's what our goal is, is to, to learn your practice so well that, you can send us an email, phone call, text message. You know, I need a person at front desk. Here's what I liked about the last person. Here's what we can improve on, for the next person. And then our team is off to the races. That's great. Now what does the pricing model look like for practices that might be interested in working with you? Sure. So first of all, it's much more in, I, I, I'm hesitant to give exact numbers because, we, we basically want our potential clients to call. And I'll tell you why. first of all, the numbers are less than you think. And there's only, two different models of working with us. one is, per higher price. So if you just want one person at a time, that's a, Fixed number it is not based upon their salary or anything like that I don't like that approach at all because we're trying to get you the best value highest quality person for the best cost essentially that we can the other is a membership model where there's a very small monthly fee and Much reduced price per hire and that's for practices that want to move forward with us on a regular basis so between those two It costs approximately half for us to do it for your practice versus what you're spending to do it yourself. And that's so long as you're efficient about it. So if you're inefficient, the numbers are even better than that in terms of the value. And one thing I wanted to mention too, most practices to go end to end hiring somebody put in less than an hour's worth of work. Okay. So you have that consultation. It might be 30 minutes. It might be about an hour, but then you sit back and you wait for the applicants to come in and us to send you the people. And there's a, an email update once a week to tell you where things are at. but you're literally our process, and our system is so automated that candidates can apply in the middle of the night and get responses in the middle of the night. Okay. So your practice is hiring 24 seven when you work with us and that makes you much more competitive. than the dental practice down the street. Sure. Well, Dr. Neal, this has been such a great conversation and it's fascinating to learn about how you're doing recruitment and hiring differently. And I can see the value and I can understand that idea of working backwards essentially in hiring and not hiring based solely on experience and the resume, which is obviously something that is sort of ingrained in us naturally to do. I love this. I love the inspiration from Disney and Four Seasons and I think you're definitely onto something. So what can folks listening today, what can dentist owners do to engage with you to start the conversation? What's the best way to get ahold of it? So if your average day to day is stressful, your team members driving you nuts, you don't have any hair left on your head. I mean, you can tell from my video that I went through it all. Call us, go to buildmyteam .com, schedule a consultation and just start talking. We're here to help. We're here to serve your practice. And we do this not only in dental, but we do it in 10 different healthcare fields around the country and in Canada. Private practices are all super similar. We have this completely figured out and dialed in there's no reason to do it yourself anymore And as I said, we're we cost less than what you're spending now So imagine a an environment where you go into work each day and you are excited about your team members That's what we can produce for you. So build my team comm set up that phone call and we start there Thanks so much. Dr. Neil and I will put all that information in the show notes if you're just joining us for the first time I hope you've enjoyed the dental domination podcast. Thank you all for listening so much Thank you. Dr. Neil for taking the time if you liked what you heard today Please take a moment and review us on Apple podcasts or Spotify or wherever you get this show And thanks so much for listening and thank you so much. Dr. Neil I hope to stay in touch and I I look forward to connecting with you in the future Same with me, Dan. This was fantastic. Thank you so much. Awesome. Thanks, Dr. Neal. Take care.