Page 64 - The Dental Entrepreneur

The Dental Entrepreneur

“Give me more than I expect, and I’ll

give you more than you expect. I can

afford to increase your pay if you
increase my profit. If you do only half
as much as expected, you’ll last only

half as long as expected.“

Earl Estep DDS

CHAPTER 10

Staffing

One of the most critical aspects of any dental practice is staff selection. Nothing can propel
you to success faster than surrounding yourself with the proper people and conversely nothing
can assure terminal mediocrity than having the wrong kind of people in your organization. I
have several unconventional views concerning dental staff and I believe this approach merits
some consideration

Experience Dental Personnel

It makes perfect sense for someone new to the dental profession to believe that in order to
access potential employees an advertisement of some type placed online or in a newspaper. I
want to offer an alternative approach that more efficiently will secure the type of individual that
is necessary for the high level of customer service that can keep your practice securely in the
fee for service arena. I can tell you right off the top that attracting and hiring “experienced”
dental personnel for a new practitioner can be extremely difficult. I absolutely dislike the group
of “recycled” dental personnel that responds to the employment ads looking for a better deal.
These individuals carry with them all types of dysfunction. Many are lazy, calculating and
overall misfits to put it mildly. The attraction of working for a new dentist is appealing in the
respect that they can “train” the new doctor in all of their bad habits. Many are totally money
oriented and shopping for a better deal. They could care less about the service oriented
culture that you are attempting to create. They only care about what they can get out of you. I
don’t like being so cynical, but if you insist on having experienced people, be forewarned that
the pool of potentially excellent people is very small. As far as the concept of hiring
inexperienced people in the dental office, do not elevate dentistry to a level which it is not. We
are not splitting the atom here. Anyone can be trained to do any function in a dental office with
great skill and efficiency.

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