Some of us are so excited if we get one applicant when we are desperate to fill a position in our offices. You are different. You understand that in our search for a stellar hygienist, you have to be selective, persistent, and you are not going to allow yourself to settle for just another person to clean teeth. Make sure you have read the other four parts before moving on. Today I want to make an argument for making sure that when you find those candidates that you ask the right type of questions. I want to do this in bullet point format and also give you some thought and considerations of why these questions and their answers are integral to finding that committed, friendly, compassionate, self-motivated hygienist with an ownership mentality. You should be able to identify the candidates that are up to the task. As an aside, I want to remind you that in our offices, the staff always had the final hiring go-ahead with any position. This even included the doctors who became partners in my offices. I cannot over emphasize that building a coherent team that is committed to your vision requires a high level of communication before you hire, during the process of vetting, and into the working interviews. Learn to partner with your staff to ensure that if they say yes to a candidate, they are also committing to making sure that the new hire will be successful during the onboarding process.
Here is quick list of question I would ask any hygienist before considering them for a position on my office team. Many of these questions are “quantitative” in nature. If you see some uncertainty in the answers, go back over the questions and get more clarity. If they do not know the answer, then it is probably the wrong person for the job.
- How many patients per day did you typically see in your previous office?
- I would hope to see the answer be a number of between 8-10 in a typical general dental practice.
- This is a perfect time to ask general questions about the demographics of their patients: Age, income, kids, and range of services. You can compare this to the demographics on zipwho.com to see if the office is different from the actual population for that location.
- What was your average production per day in your previous office?
- Keep in mind that we are looking for “net adjusted production”, and not gross production. Some hygienists do not consider the decrease in reimbursement that we receive from an insurance company. They may not even know the difference. Bad sign if they don’t actually understand this side of the business of dentistry.
- Goal would be about three times what they are paid.
- How were you compensated/paid in your previous office?
- Hourly, salary, per diem, hybrid, etc.
- Once a month, every two weeks, twice a month.
- Benefits: Insurance, vacation, education, uniforms, any other.
- Were non-emergency new patients first seen in hygiene or in the doctor’s chair in your previous office?
- This will lead to further questions and insights into how the previous office processed new patients. Change is sometimes difficult for staff and you need to know how they were utilized in their previous offices.
- Who cleaned and reset your room? Who sterilized and prepped your instruments in your previous office?
- Expectations are important and speak to entitlement and their view of the hierarchy in the office where they last worked.
- Every hygienist can easily clean and sterilize their equipment and instruments. I like the saying in Gold’s Gym: Pick up your own weights; your mother doesn’t work here.
- We are looking for committed team members that do not see themselves above doing “whatever it takes” and an eagerness to pitch and help other team members and their jobs. The last thing you need is a prima donna in your midst.
- Who did you help when you did not have a patient in your chair?
- Take the time and expand on the question. The talent in asking questions is to make sure that you do not dumb this down in a way that any of these questions could be answered in a yes or no fashion. Draw them out and get them to talk about their last job. You are tying to understand their relationship with other staff members as well as their view of what a “hygiene” position should look like.
- Who filled your schedule in your previous office? How did you help that person?
- We are looking for the extent that they performed their duties and how they interacted with their fellow teammates.
- How much responsibility did they take on for their own schedule?
- We are looking for someone that accepts the responsibility and accountability for their own performance.
- In your previous office, how much time was typically scheduled for an adult prophy with exam and x-rays?
- We are looking at their expectations: If they were paid hourly, they probably had one patient an hour.
- Can they understand time and money when it comes to scheduling a patient?
- Is there any reason that it was exactly an hour? Was time built in for a doctor who consistently fails to check the hygienist in a timely fashion so more time is added to compensate for their behavior?
- In your previous office, if new patients were seen initially in hygiene, how much time was booked on the schedule for that appointment?
- Certainly 90 minutes would be an upper level of time for an adult.
- If the doctor sees them first, this will indicate that they have not been involved in helping patients want what they need.
- In your previous office, did you see many children?
- What is the time set aside?
- Was the office attractive to having a wider range of ages and services?
- How do they feel about working on kids?
- Were you allowed to discuss problems you see in your patients’ mouths before the doctor arrived for the exam?
- We are now looking at the behavior and overall competence in partnering with you, the doctor, in helping patients say yes to treatment recommendations.
- What kind of documentation did you have to prepare for the doctor prior to the exam?
- They should document all existing conditions.
- Cancer screening.
- Probing on every patient.
- Recording all needed treatment prior to the doctor entering the room and should have discussed what the doctor might suggest as treatment as well as answering any questions the patient might have.
- Tell me about your hand-off of patients to the front desk team at your previous office.
- This is key to patient follow through and a skill set that needs to be developed in your office.
- There should always be specific protocols for this and it is necessary to understand how they functioned in their previous office.
- At what point during the hygiene appointment did you let the doctor know you were ready for an exam?
- Communication systems, protocols, and doctor/hygiene coordination will help you see if their past experience plays into how you do things now in your office or will there be extensive changes necessary?
- In your previous office, did you schedule the patient in your chair for their next cleaning appointment or was this done at the front desk at check out?
- Recall and reactivation are both key to a successful, profitable hygiene department.
- Ideally it is the hygienist’s responsibility to ensure that every patient schedules in the operatory before going to the front desk.
- How many new patients did you see per day/week/month?
- This will speak directly to the productivity of this hygiene candidate as well as the “business” and growth of the previous office.
- You job in moving hygienists to commission is to supply them with about 25-30 new patients per month per hygienist. Without this exposure to new patients, the transition will not work well.
- How many scaling and root planings did they do per week or month?
- We want to make sure that the hygienist has the competence to explain and have patients follow through on high level hygiene services. Supervised neglect will be the existing habit held by a majority of candidates.
- Why are you looking for new employment?
- We need to know what made them leave the last employer.
- What factors caused this: Doctor, other staff, systems, patients, drive time, office hours, etc.
- I would say that many times their reasons for leaving are common and revolve around poor leadership and/or pay. Make sure you are not one more office they visited and then left for the same reasons. This is a point of no return. Make sure you explore their reasons as well as their thought processes in your office.
We have only scratched the surface, but I think you can see how important the questions and their answers are to you being able to offer them employment in your office. This is how you Summit.
Michael Abernathy, DDS
972.523.4660 cell
[email protected]