How to Overcome Dental Staffing Challenges—with Dr. Michael Neal

Welcome back to another episode of the Dental Boardroom podcast. My name is Drew Phillips and I'll be the host of today's episode, our esteemed guest, Mr. Michael. I'm sorry, not a mister. This is a doctor, Dr. Michael Neal. Welcome to the show, Dr. Michael Neal. How are you today?

I am doing terrific. Thank you so much for having me.

And Dr. Neal isn't just a practice owner. He's got a really cool product that he's going to introduce our listeners to today. Couldn't be better timing as we all across the dental universe are having tons of staffing and issues and staffing considerations that need to be taken into account. And that is what Dr. Neal specializes in with his group called Build my team. So, Dr. Neal, why don't you just give us a general overview of what you've been working on with this, this group called Build My Team and then we'll go from there. Sure.

We've created a way to hire people in healthcare practices without using resumes or interviews. And the way we do that is using an assessment process that determines what the candidates are good at, what their natural strengths and talents are. And we utilize those natural strengths and talents through a very fine filtering, automated filtering mechanism that we created to determine who the great A, players, B players are for your practice. The whole thing's done for you as a service. So with essentially one consultation call, a practice can figure out who they want to hire, advise our team members of who they want to hire, and we do the rest for you. Write the job description, get as many candidates as possible by publishing through 22 different job boards and then refine those candidates down to the ones that we absolutely know can do the job and send you the finalist candidates for review. And the whole thing is done for a flat fee, not some outrageous dollar amount tied to their salary or anything like that. So that's the quick run through.

Quick, that's, that is a quick version. So we're going to dive into a little bit of these pieces here. So, you know, AI automation, whether it's robotic, process automation, et cetera, big buzz around these words right now for sure. When you, when, if I'm the candidate that is potentially going to be entering these, these forums. Entering. Yeah. What type of data points are you collecting for these people? And are they, are they fill in the blanks or are they multiple choice?

No, it's a different approach altogether. We have a text based system. So once our team writes the job description for our clients, it's published out to 22 different job boards. As soon as that gets published, candidates can apply. And the moment they apply, within five seconds, their cell phone buzzes with a text message. This is all done via texting. So they get a text message for the sole reason that they. An email or any other mechanism. They won't even remember what job they applied for. That's how brutal it is. So we start off with the text message, they click it, they're asked to complete our assessment process, and right off the bat, about 25% of them don't move forward. We lose those people in the application process intentionally. They do not waste any time. The next thing they do is they answer our healthcare mindset. And we determine which of the candidates have a service mindset. Who wants to help in a dental practice, or for that matter, any other practice who likes to take care of patients, that type of thing. Next thing we do is we measure their speed of learning. And that's critical because if they're not learning very quickly, you'll never train them. And if they learn too quickly, they're not going to stay. It's not a challenging enough position. So there's a sweet spot for that. We also go through. We look at how they like to work with team members, what motivates them, how they handle stress, for example, which is critical for different positions within the dental practice. And we're also looking at a bunch of things like how far are they located from your practice? Can they actually work the hours, yes or no? There's 10 different questions that we're asking specifically around your practice that will determine if the candidates move forward or not. Now, when that's all done, we reject approximately 97% of the candidates that apply. That's how specific this is. And the finalist candidates are sent a video interview. Our team interviews them through the video interview, and then only at that point do we send over the absolute A and B players for the practice to review.

Beautiful. And then what type of job? Specific. So if I'm, I'm thinking, you know, I'm a treatment coordinator, sure. Right. Do you guys get into the nuances of that specialized position and.

Yeah, we sure do. So each position, you can imagine an algorithm. So, for example, each disease requires a different type of treatment. Well, that's how we think in terms of clinical stuff. But in terms of the, the positions, what we're looking for is certain types of strengths and talents are terrific matches for one position, but they may not be the best match for another position. So I'll give you an example of that. A front desk Coordinator, somebody who's really warm and friendly. Are they going to be a terrific person on the billing side of things? Probably not. You know, there's usually what we would talk about is that a biller is not a great front desk person and vice versa. Two completely different strength and talent profiles. So each of these positions has an algorithm, if you will, as to what makes a terrific candidate for that position and that's specific to the job. So as their applying each of those algorithms gets tweaked essentially through our entire application process and then how much of.

A tailoring, like I'm assuming that like by position type, that you guys have some sort of general framework that you work from and then based on the client that you're servicing, they may have some specific needs that they sure do, may cause some customization to that more standard template. And then you guys are adjusting your algorithms accordingly to service the needs of that particular person. Is that fair?

You absolutely nailed it. In terms of it's not only the positions, but each practice is different. So for example, a very high volume practice is going to require people with a higher stress tolerance, let's say more of a low volume concierge type practice. During our initial consultation call with a practice, that's one of the things we find out is just what type of practice are they in? What is a doctor looking for essentially? And what will make that candidate successful over the long term?

And then does your team help provide any guidance? I mean, a lot of times I wouldn't say that that question's a hard one for them to answer.

Well, it's not only that question, but the answer is yes. Guidance is part and parcel in what we do. For example, a lot of practices want to hire one person that'll do, let's say, six different things within the practice. One person who can do six roles in the practice. Well, that doesn't really work in real life that well. So what our team does is helps our clients, especially the new clients, whittle that down into a primary role and let's say a secondary role, because there's always some ext time in the practice. So we know we're looking for, let's say a person in the primary role. But by the way, keep your eyes open if there's something you know that you think would be a better fit for, let's say, a secondary role. I'll give you an example. In our practice, I'm an eye doctor and you might say, well, what does an eye doctor have to say about dental practice, private practices are all the same. We're nine different types of private practices in the US And Canada. The private practices, the way that they're structured is essentially very close to identical. We all have front desk, we all need to get paid, we all have people who help the doctors, et cetera. And when we're looking at how that's all structured, it's extremely similar, whether it be dental or let's say, an eye care practice, Cairo, that type of thing. Now, specifically to when they're applying in the practice, let's say, for the primary and secondary role. Give you an example. In our practice, which we have exact statistics on, almost exactly 50% of the candidates that apply don't end up getting that particular job. I'm talking about the finalists. The reason being is that their talents and strengths are better suited to a different position that we might have open in the practice. Okay, so they might apply for X. And through our build my team process, we would find out that, yes, they're an okay candidate for X, but they'd be fantastic at the second, you know, at Y job type thing. And so by doing that, we're able to move them internally within the practice to something they're just truly exceptional at. And that's a good example of the type of advice that our team members will give our clients.

I love what you're doing, and I think that you're, you're taking a really cool and unique approach. How did you get the right amount of data to feed this algorithm to kind of be able to formulate these assumptions and within the broader scope of what you're doing here?

Well, we started out with a couple assessments that were much better than an interview and a, you know, and a resume, resume type process and just got better and better. We refined the assessments, we removed some. This isn't just one thing. This is a seamless battery of assessments that only takes about 15 minutes for the candidates to go through. Imagine an orchestra. You've got a bunch of individual instruments, and when they're all put together, you make music. And that's what we've been able to develop all through an automated texting process. So the other part of the answer to that question is simply feedback. With each of our clients, we really do require as much feedback as possible. And that is used to constantly tweak the algorithms. So I'll give you an example. Out of all the people that apply for a particular job, on average, statistically, only 5% of those make it to the video interview process. And out of those people who do the video interview, approximately. Out of everybody that applies, approximately 97% are rejected on average. So we kind of built a machine that finds the A players out of all of the different candidates that apply.

What got you fired up about this in the beginning? What made you sink your teeth in and create a passion around this?

The exact opposite of working with A players. Polar opposite. We were hiring the wrong way. We were hiring based upon empathy and trying to help people. Just like we would treat patients. It was a terrible thing. It was awful. We would hire wounded puppies. We would hire people who just wanted help getting their act together. We were not looking for performers, you know, anybody.

My heart just goes out to anybody who's. Who's stuck in that situation right now because it is extraordinarily difficult to, I would say bordering on impossible to get a person like that up and running as a high performer in your practice. So I'll give you an example. When we started with the Build My Team process, we used to have 14 people in our practice. We replaced all but two, which I know sounds aggressive. However, we did replace all but two. We're now operating with 10 people in the practice, and our gross income went up 50% in that period of time. And our net income more than doubled in the same period of time. So you think about that operating with four less people. How's that possible? Well, there's only one way it's possible. We have A players on our team, a couple B players, and everybody chips in to get that done. And, you know, that is something that I'm incredibly proud of. But. And here's the but. We did not start there. We started pretty much at the exact opposite of that.

And then what do you do once you've successfully find these A players to create culture and, you know, in an environment that retains them as well?

Sure. Well, getting the right people on the proverbial bus is job number one. Getting them into the right seats on the bus is another layer of challenge. With the practice and the clients that we have that worked with us for years, it becomes kind of second nature. There's always some type of turnover in a healthcare practice. Folks leave, and there's nothing you can do about that. What you have to be completely prepared for is folks to give your notice and then take action immediately to get those positions filled. And that's what Build my team, specializes in. So we would have a conversation with the practice owner and, you know, what did you like about this person? What didn't you like about this person? And it's Essentially an opportunity to upgrade the person going into that role.

So how do you guys solve or how do you try to solve for the supply issue? Right. This algorithm works great when there's applications. Right. But if we have zero applications or we have trouble getting people, you know, to show interest.

Yeah.

Do you guys have a way of trying to go target people as opposed to being more, a little bit more passive and letting people come to you?

Yeah. I would say there's two things mainly that. I would say three things. Three things mainly that we're looking at. One is our team writes the job description. We're writing job descriptions with very specific language, looking for people who want to make a contribution to that type of practice. Second, we publish it out to 22 different job boards. It's an incredibly wide reaching job ad. So it's just not going out to the, you know, one or two job boards and nobody can manage publishing it out that, that much. That's why we have automation. And the third thing, quite simply, and I'll be very frank about this, there are some clients that we're not a good fit for. If a practice is not treating people well or even reasonably, that's a real challenge for us because those folks, I mean every person we place is guaranteed for 90 days no matter what. So in a practice where they're not treating people well, those folks leave. And the focus for a practice like that shouldn't be on the team members, it should be on the leadership of the practice doing things differently and learning from those, from those experiences. And you know, sometimes we help with that as well.

I can see that being part of almost your interview process for a client. Right, understood. And then I guess back to the targeting aspect of it. You know, writing the job description helps. In fact, actually let me ask you a couple questions here on the job description itself because I don't have all of this data to a B split test with like you do. What are some job description bullet points that you found to work? Well, maybe I'll kind of give you an example of some of the ones that we've been playing with. As with myself and my clients being more specific on the hourly rate or salary rate and then ultimately depending on the position and the supply demand forces that at play there, you know, potentially going above market intentionally on and stating that that is the bottom level of that pay range and the upper level of that pay range and sometimes getting rid of ranges altogether because I feel like ranges at times can subconsciously to the candidate signal that this person's Going to bring me in, waste my time and give me the bottom end of this range. So I'm just curious some of the things that on the. Because I think the job description is incredibly important. So what are some of those areas in that job description that you find that your team does well and how that's helped?

Well, the job description is part of it. How we respond to the candidates is another part. So I'll start with the job description. We don't put anything about salaries in the job description. None at all. We talk about contributions, impact, the younger generation, which is highly represented within our healthcare practices. They want to know what impact they're making. So we talk a lot about how you can help these patients with very specific language that is great for the people that are reading the job descriptions. Most of them don't. Most of the people applying for these are looking for the titles of the job description. And so we have some secret sauce that we use for those types of things. And then on top of it, the really great candidates are blown away. And we hear this over and over again. They're blown away by the responsiveness of our system. Now, I don't think a lot of them realize it's highly automated, but even we do have customer service on the back end behind this automation for candidates who need it. And they're always getting fantastic responses and fast. So what does that do for our clients? It differentiates them dramatically. You will get a response from Build my team when you apply for your job at 3 in the morning on a Sunday. That means that your practice is better than any other practice they're applying to. Quite simply, when a practice is viewed by a candidate as highly decisive, and I won't say aggressive because not aggressive, but assertive, they're very responsive and decisive. That separates you from all the other practices because most practices out there right now take a long time to get back to a candidate. So I'll use an example. When in my practice, if we have to fill a position once the video interview is done, Build My team sends it over to our practice manager and she's going to review that within an hour or two. It is like number one priority to take a look at the information that's provided by BuildMyTeam for the candidate and then reach out and get an interview scheduled. Our practice still does in person interviews. We know the candidate can do the job. That's not a maybe. We like to pick the person who would be the best fit and sometimes, like I said, they're switched from one position. To another. So we do that in person, but they're always done extraordinarily quickly. We do not wait two to three days to schedule an interview. If they can come in that afternoon, they come in that afternoon and there's been some pushback on that. While you're seeming too aggressive, you're seem like, no, absolutely not, categorically not. Those days are over. You cannot drag your feet on hiring a players. They will go elsewhere, they already have other job offers, they've already got stuff in their own pipeline, they're gone. If you seem indecisive, they don't want to work for folks who can't make decisions reasonably quickly. Not, you know, off the cuff or anything like that, but make good decisions reasonably quickly. And so that's one of the things we've changed essentially since COVID to get the people who are those a players in the door of our practice and our clients practices and get them to make decisions on moving forward with them.

Does your automations, does it let them know if they're part of the 97% that's not being selected?

They have no idea about any of those types of numbers. No, they just know where they're at in the process.

Understood. And then when the process tell, when, when in the process do they get notified that they're no longer in the running for this? Is that when the job position's filled?

No, we have essentially a great big enormous funnel. So if they don't make it through our healthcare mindset, which is the first step in our process, and they don't have a healthcare mindset that they're not interested in serving others, then they exit at that point. It's all done very gently with great language that thanks them for their time. If they move forward from the mindset to the speed of learning, where we're measuring how fast they learn, if they are super smart, they'll continue. But if they aren't learning very quickly and they're learning very slowly, they'll exit the process. Because in healthcare there's just no room for people who can't learn under a certain threshold, we'll call it. Stuff's changing all the time. I mean, look in an average dental practice and tell me that the job is identical to what it was last year. Good luck. There's no such thing. Right. So you always have to have some level of learning and that's one of the things we're screening for so that the candidates can be successful in your practice and it just goes on from there. As we move through each of the different steps.

Got it. So you are letting them know that they are no longer in the running at each. Whatever they needed to be let go as whatever, whatever part of your filtering process, they do not pass.

Yes, we sure are. Yep.

Okay, cool.

And that's only fair to that. Yeah, yeah, that's only fair to them. Everybody gets treated extraordinarily well through this process. And what we also see, we have candidates who leave us reviews for Build My Team. And one of the things they, they really love is how much they learned about themselves through this process. It's, it's kind of an odd thing to hear back from candidates, but the really great candidates love this stuff because Imag their perspective. Your practice is so diligent about picking out great team members. I cannot possibly wait to work there. You must have an amazing staff. That's what their perception is.

Help me understand, like, maybe I just need to remove some of my own preconceived biases here. But if an A player is out in the world searching for a job and they've been in that role for a while, I feel like salary and wage and certainty around what that potential position is going to be offering is important to those types of candidates. Whereas, you know, entry level assistant or here and there, like they're just looking for something, obviously mindset and work ambition, all those things that you're capturing. Lovely, right? But just curious how you guys are getting around the wage piece. And have you guys looked at the data to see if we might be missing some potential candidates by leaving it off?

Well, we asked 10 different, what we call knockout questions as part of this process. So one of the questions, and I'll read it word for word, what hourly income are you hoping to receive at this place of employment? And they have to answer that with an open ended answer. So, for example, one of the candidates I'm hoping to receive at least $17 an hour. Now, the dollar amount doesn't matter per se. What does matter is that that's in the realm of what the practice can move forward on. So if they say they want to get paid $50 an hour as a front desk assistant. Okay, next. We can all agree on that, right? If they want eight bucks an hour. Whoa, hold on. That's just as big of a red flag. That person is absolutely desperate. And so there's like all things, there's a sweet spot in the middle. And for example, if a practice wants to bring in that person who said 17, let's just say, for example, a practice is Willing to pay up to 20. Well, what our team would suggest is you bring them in at 18, provide a path so they can advance to $20 an hour. You immediately get a tremendous amount of goodwill from that person. It costs you a buck an hour, which is minimal, but they're going to work the tail off for you because you did something for them. You gave something to them that they didn't expect. And that's just a terrific way for a practice to find out those kind of nitpicky answers that don't have to be asked in an interview. And it also removes the mercenaries from the equation. You know, the folks who will leave your your practice because a dental hygienist job offered 50 cents more an hour. I mean we heard that all the time, things like that. Because remember, these candidates aren't just applying at your dental practice, they're applying at an eye care practice, a chiro practice, a general medical practice. They don't discern the difference. What they're looking for is healthcare. They want a stable paycheck and they know that healthcare is going to allow them to feed their family. You know, they're not digging holes for a living. They're sitting in a nice comfortable air conditioned office and they get to talk to people all day. Not such a bad gig. But they don't necessarily care if it's dental or another type of practice. So that's why it's very important that we take a long hard look at those types of things.

Do you have any examples of some success stories that you'd like to share through some of your clients leveraging the product?

Yeah. Where this becomes very powerful for a practice is where in terms of specifics, we see this all over the place. When a practice owner realizes that they can fill each of the positions that they need to within a reasonable period of time by somebody who's terrific. Translation, the team isn't going to hold you hostage anymore. I mean, if I go back to before build my team, oh boy. We would be held hostage by a team member for everything because you needed them. You absolutely had to have that a player stay in your practice or the whole thing falls apart because they're surrounded by a bunch of people who weren't doing much of anything. What this does instead is it allows you over time to focus on getting the great team members in. And then quite honestly, you got to take a long hard look at the people who aren't performing. You get them a position elsewhere or just exit them from your practice so that they can get A position elsewhere that they're fantastic at. And so by doing that over time, what you end up with is a practice that's filled with A and B players and, and performers. They perform in your practice day to day, they come in in the morning, they use their strengths and their natural strengths and talents all day and they go home at the end of the day thinking, well, that wasn't so bad. You know, that's pretty cool. We got to help all these types of people, that type of thing. That's who we're bringing into the practice here. And so when you have a private practice set up like that, you can do things that you just couldn't think of possibly achieving in the past. And my practice is a great example of that. As I said, we went from 14 people down to 10 with a 50% net increase and doubling the net income. It sounds too good to be true. That's what we did. And it took us around 18, a little over 18 months to do that with the team members. And the numbers just grew from there.

We support eos, which is a business development eos. Yes. Anyway, they always preach about paying a players as two people and then they'll work as three and you're, you know, you're 10 to compared to 14 formula kind of lines with that methodology.

Well, what we, we get it one step better than that because a lot of the people we're bringing in don't have experience. Now sometimes that freaks dentists out when they hear that it shouldn't. And I'll tell you why. They walk into the position, they're automatically good at what they do. They pick this up very, very quickly. They love what they're doing, they love the opportunity. You do not deal with enthusiasm problems with these folks. So now it's not just a job to them, this is a new career. And in a lot of dental practices there's tremendous room for advancement. You know, they could start as a dental assistant, go through hygienist training, you know, all kinds of stuff like that. So when we bring these people in, you're not paying them like a, you're not paying them twice as much. A lot of times you might be paying them less or, or something similar, but, but it's a new career for them and they love it. It's a completely different approach that works incredibly well for non licensed positions. That's where our absolute sweet spot is. And as I said, we've been able to demonstrate this throughout the country, all kinds of practices.

So you're actually in fact increasing the labor market within all of these verticals, because you're going after great people as opposed to people with. With prerequisite skill sets.

Yes, and you nailed it. And in dentistry, one of the number one things we hear from dentists is the labor pool is recycled. It's just constant recycling of the same people over and over again. And the mercenaries amongst them will leave for 25, 50 cents an hour or more. That's ridiculous. You can't win that game. As a dentist, you need to change the game. And that's where our approach comes in. We're bringing in people who just are completely outside the profession, can do the job incredibly well. And I'll tell you, in most cases will be better than the team members that they're coming in around. That changes things in a hurry.

I believe that. And what's the lead time usually for you guys in terms of client signs up and then hiring process is completed, someone is hired. Just curious if you have some data points there.

Well, it completely depends on where they're at in the country. So, for example, urban versus rural, the number of dental practices. So the saturation of the dental practices, you know, if it's a dentist in the middle of nowhere, that's one thing. If there's, you know, 10 of them on a particular road, that's challenging. We're generally in the realm of four to eight weeks for a position. However, I'll give you an example. Practices that sign up with us have to be prepared to move quickly. Fastest we've ever done this was for a surgeon who sent us a text. I quote, I need a heartbeat. That was Sunday night. Okay, look, don't do that. That was terrible. But that's what we got. And we had a person in there on Wednesday and her first day was Thursday. Now she's still with him years later. So that's an extreme example. But it can happen that quickly because remember, this is all automated, but generally we're looking at between four to eight weeks. But remember, when our team sends an A player over, you gotta jump on them because they're applying to all kinds of other practices.

Let's talk about rural for a moment. What have just your general experience has been for your rural clients, and what are some things that they can do to give themselves some better chances and better odds?

Right. So I am the case in point. Rural example we're in, Our eye care practice is in Holly, Pennsylvania, thriving metropolis of 1100 people. People. We don't have a talent pool. We have a talent puddle. And it's about 3 inches deep. It's brutal. So you know, if any of the dentists listening to this are saying, boy, that sounds like our area. This was born in this area, the number one thing we do is you forget about bringing people in with experience. You absolutely forget about it. It's, I gotta tell you, from a statistical standpoint, experience is a bit of a red flag. Okay. Now this is something that separates our approach from a traditional hiring method. And especially in dental where there are so many mercenaries and folks that are recycling these jobs. We want people who can come in that can be trained within a couple of weeks and are trained with all the right habits. We don't have to undo stuff. Getting a new team member to come in and you have to focus the first couple weeks on undoing things if they have experience and then getting them onto your, your systems and processes. Every practice has them. So when we bring in a smart, ambitious, enthusiastic candidate without the bad habits, they're up and running in a fraction of the time. Simply put, you didn't have to undo a whole bunch of stuff. And they don't have those nagging bad habits. They have your habits because that's all they know.

I love that. And then does your company stop at the procurement process or like you, because you mentioned a lot of these, these, these things sort of post getting the person that you're looking for, which is I would imagine, process related documents to get people onboarded and in their role, quickly removing bad habits. Are there, are there any training sessions that you guys do as part of your service post that or do you guys have a recommendation? How do, how do you guys help people become more well rounded in general on the hiring process?

Well, our job is to provide as much value as we can to our clients. I mean that, that kind of goes without saying. I think that what our consulting folks at Build My Team do is they will help the practice, get the person, these A players into the positions, figure out exactly which position that they need to be in and then provide a bunch of advice on how to work with those candidates. Because remember, we know a massive amount about these candidates after they've gone through this. We can tell you how they're to best motivate them. We can tell you what kind of working environment they like. We can tell you what their ability to sell is, is or not sell. Their stress tolerance. Some have it, some don't, all those types of things. So here's this fantastic candidate. Here's how we would suggest you work with them for them to be incredibly Successful. You don't have to change everything you do in a practice, obviously, but they're just a couple of things per person that would really make a big difference for them. And that's one of the things we love to share with our clients.

Love that. Absolutely. We use the Colby scores here, but I think that that's really, really important.

And.

Well, Michael, it was really awesome getting to know you, getting to know your product a little bit better. Are there any last words that you have for our listeners that you'd like to share? Things that. How did we find you? Things that you want us to know? Anything and everything.

I think that, first of all, find us@buildmyteam.com and I think the main thing is that you don't have to do this alone. The stress that you're under, your practice manager is under. I mean, think of what you would do with the time you had if you could send an email or pick up a phone and have somebody do all this for you. And all you're doing is picking from the two or three final candidates that are amazing. And out of those people, you can't go wrong. So think of what that's worth to you. And the good news is that we have two different ways that we move forward with clients. They're very inexpensive. A lot of times folks are kind of shocked by that. And it's all based upon a flat fee. It's not perfect. It's not based upon the salary of the person you're bringing in. So we give you unbiased advice on how to do that and basically maximize your profit for the practice. So that's what I'd say. Give us a shout. @buildmyteam.com you can schedule a consultation call with one of our consultants, and they love to help practice this and get awesome people new jobs.

That wraps up another episode of the Dental Boardroom podcast Best Till next time.