Let’s face it, hiring a new staff person is a complete pain in the ‘you know what.’
It all starts off innocent enough but just like trying to buy a new car or house, the perceived ease of the process quickly fades as the sea of options candidate – all exhibiting strengths and weaknesses – begin to blur into one another.
If you are in the market for hiring a chiropractic assistant, use the following tips to help you smooth out the process and more quickly get dialed in on the person that best fits your needs. If you aren’t currently hiring, save this for next time you are. It will save you time and effort.
THE MISTAKE
The mistake people make often is that they want to cast such a wide net and reach everybody they can, so they’ll put something like, “Front desk receptionist needed; pay flexible; bonuses and incentives. Contact Rick at ______ …” The primary problem you encounter with an ad that general is that because it’s so broad and appealing of an offer you’re going to get everybody applying for that job.
Unless you are in an area or economy where finding any potential employees is tough, the goal should be to already begin filtering candidates with your ad.
THE FILTER
Let’s dive in a little deeper and look at 4 inclusions every ad needs if you want to whittle down the interview pool a little and make your process easier and much shorter!
Mention Chiropractic. You really should mention ‘chiropractic’ to prevent dealing with someone that has worked for a medical doctor or has hated chiropractic for 20 years and so would not be a good fit for your clinic.
Additionally, you’ll maybe find someone who has been a chiropractic patient or who has worked in chiropractic clinics and has a lot of experience and a lot of love for the profession.
State The Specific Location. If you’re in a small town this may not be important but if you are in a big city or metro-plex area, this becomes critical to rule out people that will just tell you that they live too far away once you are on the phone with them. Guess what? You just wasted 10 minutes of phone time to find out they aren’t a good candidate.
You don’t need to divulge your address but come pretty darn close.
State the Negatives. This is one most people miss. You don’t want to go through the whole process of getting the resume, talking to them on the phone, bringing them in for an interview and then saying “by the way…this requires you to stay until the last patient is gone which could go a half-hour or most beyond the hours I listed in the job ad. Oh, and you are required to attend health fairs every other Saturday.”
You may have just wasted everybody’s time if the interviewee has 3 kids at home and it’s not even possible for them to handle those hours. Let them know in the ad about anything and everything that is outside of what most people consider the social norms of being employed.
Now this is not to say that you don’t also include all the positives about the job because that is an essential component to temp the best candidates. Rather, just be sure to balance the awesome parts of the job with the potentially ‘negative’ components of the job in your ad.
E-mail Responses Only. The days of needing to give out your office phone number and handle a rash of calls are long gone. Sure it’s still important to make and receive a few phone calls with candidates you are strongly considering to see how they speak and sound; but that’s putting the cart before the horse. Nowadays you can first get a good idea by first having them ‘please email interest with resume.’ This allows you to look at their email address (partygirl@_____.com may not be a great option), and examine their personality and grammar skills (“Ths job stil open?” may also not be a great candidate).
I actually have a separate Yahoo! email address I use only for hiring so I don’t clutter up my own inbox and also so I can respond to inquiries without divulging my own email address.
While an ad in the newspaper is still a viable way to find your next star staffer, in light of the filtering parameters noted above, I definitely prefer listing the job online. One of the reasons I like the online ads best, besides that they’re utilized more for job searches, is because you have a lot more flexibility with how much more information you can put in the ad for your advertising dollar. That is, if you can’t place it for free!
