Don’t Hire Just Anyone, Hire Someone Special!
As a motivational and keynote speaker on hiring great support and administrative staff for healthcare practices, it’s my rewarding task to guide practice managers to not hire “just anyone,” but to hire someone special.
How Can I Be Sure?
In leading breakout sessions for practice managers and medical professionals on hiring, the most common question I receive is, “Mike, how can I be sure I am hiring the right person for the front desk or bookkeeping or scheduling or any other important task, and not just some body?” Here are a few pointers.
The conventional wisdom is that hiring must be made with at least two qualities in mind: a customer service orientation and the ability to sell the practice itself. The term “sell” is broad and runs the gamut from reinforcing the excellence of the practitioners to explaining why the patient shouldn’t be cancelling their appointments. However, those attributes should be the most basic of expectations.
A Customer Service Training Speaker must lead to personality. If the practice manager is unmindful as to the make-up of the clientele of the practice, it is difficult to find personalities compatible with the practice itself. Here is where the practice manager must also be cognizant of bias she or he brings to the hiring process.
For example, a somewhat staid practice manager close to retiring who has seen younger partners enter the practice may reject a bubbly and outgoing personality without being fully cognizant that the practice’s demographics have changed to much younger patients.
The Numbers
To hire support employees who lack tech savvy skills on the most modern medical practice software will weigh down all aspects of the practice, whether billing, record keeping, bookkeeping, accounting, scheduling or basic communications. The lack of these skills also will weigh down every other individual in the practice. I am just touching on the basic skill levels here. In addition, more highly trained support people will have the advantage of being able to train and advise employees in place as to new techniques, new software, and greater efficiencies.
Along with tech-comfort must also come the ability to multi-task within that bandwidth. Multi-tasking is a term many firms have parroted going back decades. But what does it truly mean besides an expected interview question? In today’s rushed practices with complex interactions between practices, insurers, scheduling, communications and billing, one employee may work more efficiently than several did in years past; however, that “one employee” must be facile enough to go from skill to skill, platform to platform.
There are things to feel about future employees that are not so easily defined. We can tell a future employee that our healthcare practice demands administrative skills and meticulousness in any job they undertake. However, notice how that employee has come to the interview. Is she or he engaged, interested and fully invested in working for you? Does the future employee ask questions? Are they organized? Do they take notes?
Turnover resulting from a poor or even a toxic fit may cost tens of thousands of dollars in re-training. Do it right the first time.
Mike Hourigan, Keynote and Breakout Speaker on Healthcare Practice Hiring
For more information on Mike Hourigan’s Healthcare Industry Motivational keynote presentations, call him today at: (704) 875-3030 or fill out the form below.
