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When it comes to your Upper Cervical Practice, one of the most important steps you can take to grow your practice and help more people in your community is to develop the skill of hiring ideal team players.
Ideal team players up are humble, hungry, and smart. If you want to learn more about identifying these types of people for your practice read the recent article, I wrote on ideal team players.
But today we are specifically going to focus on hiring because there are still many Upper Cervical Doctors who are working alone without any team members, and they’re limited by their capacity.
There are also doctors who do have one or more staff members but need to hire another one to reach more people in their community.
So today we’re going to focus on three simple steps to hiring your first or next great team member.
The first step is to get clear on what you need for this position. The best way to do this is to create a position agreement.
A Position Agreement is basically a contract between you and a team member that describes what the position is all about.
If you want a template to get you started, I highly recommend you download our Hiring Resource Kit which is a free download and will includes much of what we discuss in this article and more.
The goal of the position agreement is to clearly lay out the responsibilities of the position and what it will take for that team member to be successful in that role.
The position agreement should include:
The position agreement should include the key results areas for the position and the key performance indicators which we will discuss below.
The position agreement should also include your company’s core values and any standards that you expect all team members to follow. There should also be a section for signatures for both you and your team members. If you do not currently have core values for your practice I recommend you download our Core Values Brainstorm to help you get started.
A KRA is the outcome or results that you expect a team member to accomplish in their position daily.
A good KRA includes the ongoing responsibilities of the position as well as the purpose and benefits of performing those responsibilities.
Tasks and activities that focus on one or more specific area are grouped together.
Whatever is expected must be in writing, reviewed, agreed upon, and signed by both the team member and the leader so there’s no confusion when something isn’t getting done.
Example:
For each KRA the team member should have at least one KPI to measure success.
A KPI is a quantifiable metric or measurement used to evaluate the success of a team member or team, in meeting objectives for performance associated with a KRA.
These are the metrics that matter for each team member.
Examples:
These KPIs can be measured daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly, and yearly.
When you set clear expectations with a solid position agreement that includes KRA’s and KPIs you will get much better results from your team members and they will feel a higher level of satisfaction in their position with your company.
Position agreements are essential when you are first hiring a team member to set clear expectations, but a job scorecard is an extremely useful tool to maintain the consistency of production from each of your team members.
A job scorecard takes your KRA’s and KPIs and breaks them down into approximately 3 key measurables.
These measurables should be tracked on an ongoing basis so that you and your team members know whether they are hitting their targets consistently.
This job scorecard should be reviewed regularly during weekly one-on-ones and should be part of your weekly team meetings as well.
We have a job scorecard template to help you with this as well.
After you get clear on what you need the next step is to find candidates for the position. You can do that through 3 main avenues:
Some of the best team members that we have ever found are through referrals from our existing team members. If you have an outstanding team member that is currently on your team, ask about friends of theirs who have the characteristics and experience that you’re looking for in the position.
You can also ask for referrals from friends and family and even your patients. You must be careful with patients though. Hiring a patient or a family member of a patient could get difficult if it doesn’t work out.
There are a variety of places where you can advertise an open position in your practice. Some the best that we have found for upper cervical practices include:
If you are not able to find a good candidate through a referral, we recommend posting to one or all three of these locations.
The last way to find good candidates is through recruiting services that include local training programs, junior colleges, associate programs, chiropractic colleges etc.
You can do a Google search for chiropractic assistant programs near you to find out what’s available in your area. You can also search for medical assistant programs near you.
Chiropractic assistant certification programs are usually offered at community colleges or medical assistant training facilities. Online or a hybrid of in-person and online courses are also an option.
You may be able to find good candidates through these types of programs.
When placing an ad for this type of position you want to have several screening steps set up within the ad itself.
For instance, you want to have something to make sure the person reads the ad and can follow directions to test their attention to detail.
Front Desk Position Example:
We are looking for an energetic, enthusiastic, and compassionate rockstar chiropractic assistant to join our growing team! If you love people and love seeing people get well and stay well, we want to talk to you! Call 555-1212 and leave a voicemail expressing your interest. Make sure you don’t talk for longer than 30 seconds on your voicemail or you will not be considered and include the word “rockstar”, your first and last name, your phone number and email address in the voicemail. Please follow that phone call with an email and put in the subject line “rockstar, your name”. In the email, express why this is the right position for you and attach your resume.
It’s important that you hear the voice of potential candidates before even looking at their resume. If they have an annoying voice or are extremely monotone, then they are likely not going to be a good candidate for a front desk position.
This type of ad will significantly improve your ability to get good candidates in for the initial interview.
The third step is to filter through the candidates that you have received through referral, advertising, and recruiting services by taking them through a series of steps including:
We recommend doing an initial interview in a group setting. For instance, let’s say you have 20 candidates for the position after running the ad and going through the initial screening to see if someone can follow directions and if you like their voice. Next you want to invite all of them to come for a group interview at the same time.
If you invite 20 candidates to a group interview at 1:30 on a Wednesday it is likely half of them won’t show up. So now you have 10 candidates in your front lobby, and you want to give them a basic job application that you can find online to get their information and you just want to see how they interact with one another and with other team members that you may have.
Once they all fill out the job application and you have observed them for a while you want to stand up in front of all of them and just give a basic explanation of what you do in your practice and what the position is all about. You can also share the position agreement with the candidates, so they know exactly what you’re looking for.
Next you want to bring them back to your consultation room or office for an extremely quick five-minute interview with you and anyone else you can have in that room. Such as your spouse, any other team members you have, friend, family member etc. anyone that you trust their opinion could be good.
The goal is just to see if you want to bring them back for a longer interview. Just ask them one or two questions to get a feel for how they interact with you and carry themselves in the room.
If you like them, I recommend giving them a DISC Personality Test for them to fill out before they leave. If you don’t just tell them thank you for coming in and that’s it.
At the end of that initial group interview, you will hopefully have 2-5 candidates that you can take to the next step.
The next thing you want do is to test their ability to do the job. Have them come in and work in your office for 2 to 3 hours and pay them. This will give you an understanding of how they handle the environment, interact with patients, your other team members, the computer, the phone etc.
The last step is to do a final interview and make your decision. By doing multiple interviews and having them work in your office for a short period of time it will give you the best chance of hiring an ideal team player.
After you hire them, the work really begins with onboarding them, training them on an ongoing basis, and helping them become successful in their role so that you can work together to help more people in your community.
