Starting a medical practice was probably a very challenging experience. However, as you gain patients, you may need to embark on another important aspect of growing your business: hiring workers. While this shouldn’t take nearly as much time or effort as the overall startup process, you’ll still want to pay careful attention to it to help ensure that you’re hiring the appropriate staff. How can you hire workers for a medical practice?
Know What You Need
The list of positions that you need to fill may depend on your specific situation. Some you may wish to hire include a medical assistant, receptionist and individuals to handle billing and recordkeeping.
Research Salaries
Overpaying for employees won’t help your bottom line. And you may face a limited applicant pool if your offer is low. Research salary statistics in order to come up with a fair offer for each position that you plan to fill.
Solicit Resumes
Solicit resumes through job postings, word of mouth and/or other means. Depending on economic factors in your area, you may be overwhelmed with the number of responses you receive.
Screen Applicants
If you’re in a position to hire, you probably don’t have too much time to interview applicants. To limit the time spent on this process, it would be helpful to weed out unqualified applicants before picking up the phone. For instance, if you receive 50 resumes and 20 of them don’t meet the basic requirements, you could immediately eliminate them from consideration.
While screening those who are qualified will likely be more challenging, one way to do so is to hold phone interviews. You can briefly interview each qualified applicant via phone and invite the most promising individuals in for more detailed interviews.
Interview Applicants
Once you’ve decided which candidates to invite for interviews, it’s time to decide which one to make an offer to. The questions you ask them may partially depend on the position. As an example, take a look at a few questions that Monster recommends asking candidates for a receptionist opening:
- A question about their previous experience in this type of job
- How they handled a difficult situation with a patient
- Questions about their desired schedule and whether they can work additional hours, if necessary
- The type of system they used to maintain accounts, if applicable
- What their main responsibilities were
- Whether they like interacting with others
Outsource
If you don’t have the time to hire workers or would rather have assistance with it, consider outsourcing the process to a staffing agency. You’ll pay a one-time fee to the company once you bring someone onboard, which usually ranges from 10 to 25 percent of the employee’s first-year earnings. Regardless of which option you choose, be sure to contact an attorney if you have any questions about the legal aspects of hiring in your location.
