7 Quick Tips When Hiring For Your Practice

Many pediatric practices don’t have a high degree of comfort when it comes to hiring and placing the right staff members into the right positions.

Initial practice setup, replacement staff, and staff expansion require time, effort, and a solid strategy. As physicians are trained in medicine, running a business can be a new experience, including running a smart practice.

From financial planning to personality matching, issues can arise that affect not only the hiring process, but also the heartbeat of your private practice.

Here are some high-level tips to consider when looking for new staff. Each of these tips can be further researched to meet the needs of your practice.

• The ratio of support staff per FTE physician
• The percentage of gross revenue spent on support staff salaries
• The current employment market
• Practices may need to adjust their target staffing levels based on whether they employ nurse practitioners or physician assistants
• Hire for the long-term to avoid office turmoil

3. Meet with your existing staff to determine what they deem most important as part of their employment package. Is it flexibility? Pay? Vacation time? Other benefits?

4. Keep the needs of millennial applicants in mind. Based on a report by Deloitte, millennials will make up roughly 75 percent of the global workforce by 2025. They may also represent your patient families!

5. Define a standardized interview process to assure each candidate is evaluated equally and involve trusted staff members in the interviewing process.

6. During the interview process look for:

• Team Player Personality: does the candidate fit into the current office culture?
• Motivation: does the job seeker show passion and tenacity for the role?
• Passion beyond experience: does the candidate strive to do more than the job experience states?
• Difficult situation: can the candidate explain special work situations that required finesse?

7. Depending on job role, validate credentials of candidates; this includes medical coding verification checking, criminal background check and professional references validation.

Pediatricians are trained to care for patients, yet to maintain their practice independence they need to consider human resources needs, including hiring. A solid and committed staff creates a positive patient experience, and is a key ingredient in the success of your practice.

For more information, please see these additional resources:

• The Deloitte Millenial Survey
• How to Hire the Right Medical Office Manager 
• AAP: Factors to Consider When Hiring an Administrator 
• HireRight Employment Screening Benchmark Report