How to Avoid Making the Worst Hiring Mistake of Your Life

Episode #305 with David Harris

Hiring without due diligence will cost you your time, money, and mental health. To teach you how to make better hiring decisions for your practice, Kirk Behrendt brings back David Harris, CEO of Prosperident. From drug tests to social media, David gives you the best tips to weed out bad candidates early on. Want to know the habits of time thieves and embezzlers? Listen to Episode 305 of The Best Practices Show for more of David’s advice!

Main Takeaways:

Hiring the wrong person is costly — in time and money!

Weed out unsuitable candidates as early as possible.

Dental practices need to do drug tests and background checks.

You can't reliably do background checks yourself!

Broaden your applicant pool and don't hire in a hurry.

Don't give predictable questions in interviews.

Check applicants’ social media pages.

Don't use phone numbers that applicants give you. Google it yourself.

Confirm exact dates of employment, not approximate dates. Look for gaps.

Ask former employers about applicants’ final positions.

Also ask if they would rehire them.

Use a reference number in the application to test if they follow instructions.

Require applicants to record a brief video as part of the application.

Make applicants invested from the beginning.

Standardize your application form so that you're not influenced by visuals.

Verify credentials and check photo IDs! And check IDs when they're not ready.

Involve staff in the interview process.

Be upfront about the scrutiny applicants will be under.

Quotes:

“If you put 200 dentists in a room and you asked them, ‘How many of you enjoy hiring staff?’ I'd be very surprised if anything more than two hands went up. Dentists hate this job. And like any job that you hate, when a shortcut magically appears in front of you, you're really tempted to take it. And that gets you into trouble when you're clearing snow off the roof of your house and you take shortcuts, and it equally gets you in trouble when you hire staff.” (05:33—06:06)

“The reality is that most dentists make hiring decisions with less information than they should have. And the part that should get their attention is that, in most cases, that information is right there in front of them, and they just either didn't realize that it would help them or didn't realize how easy it was to get full information so that they can make a good decision.” (06:43—07:07)

“If you want to play the HR lottery and hire people blindly in the hope that they turn out okay, when you're wrong — and I'm going to say “when” here as opposed to “if” — you're going to dump a lot more time into that than it ever would've taken you to vet this person properly at the beginning.” (08:03—08:26)

“About 70 million Americans — so that's one in four adults — has a criminal record.” (08:33—08:39)

“We’re entrusting dental practice employees with money, with protected health information, with sharp instruments. We just need to know a little bit more about them than traditionally dentists do.” (10:06—10:23)

“There is no website you can go on to and pay $50 and have it reliably tell you whether or not somebody has a criminal record . . . Unfortunately, it’s not something you can do yourself and go to some website and get the answer.” (12:22—12:59)

“One of the mistakes that a lot of people make is that they're hiring in a hurry. The reason that they're hiring in a hurry is that somebody leaves on short notice, and then the poor doctor is starting from zero and trying to build a relationship with somebody that they're going to hire and do it all within 48 hours. And that's never a good idea.” (15:01—15:24)

“In your life, when you meet people who...