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Professional Courtesy Thomas Giacobbi, DDS, FAGD, Editorial Director Dentaltown Magazine

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Asking the Right Questions


Thomas Giacobbi, DDS, FAGD
Editorial Director,
Dentaltown Magazine
Ask dentists who own their practices and they will tell you that their least favorite aspect of ownership is "dealing with staff/HR issues." This might include hiring, firing and intraoffice controversies. For my money, hiring the right people from the outset prevents a host of other staff issues.

There is no easy answer to this conundrum as some offices might not have many qualified candidates and other offices might not appeal to the best candidates. In order to give yourself the best opportunity to make a good decision, start with quality information on every candidate.

Many dental offices make the critical mistake of starting their hiring process with a fax number or e-mail address. Their employment ad asks candidates to send a resume blindly, without knowledge of your practice and candidates fear that their resumes might never be reviewed. Think about it. Are you really too busy to spend a little more time on this critical decision? Reviewing resumes to screen applicants is very ineffective because many people in the dental profession are not familiar with the formalities of resume preparation.
I have hired many great dental assistants who've had poor resumes and two of our best treatment coordinators never worked in the dental industry! While a resume is a common bit of information to gather, it might cause you to overlook a good candidate who gives a poor first impression on paper. Instead, you should start with a conversation on the phone.

In our practice, I screen all applicants via telephone and then I will make the determination to request a resume or schedule a face-to-face interview. You can learn loads of information from a candidate in a short phone conversation and it also gives your potential teammate the opportunity to learn about your practice.

When candidates arrive for an interview at my practice, they are greeted by staff and given a tour of the office. At the conclusion of this tour, candidates are seated in our consultation room and they are asked to complete an application. Applications allow you to collect the same information on each candidate and they give you the opportunity to obtain information that does not appear in the average resume.

Of course, your application must comply with all local, state and federal employment laws. Application blanks are available from many sources and can be customized to suit your needs. When I put my application together years ago, I used many different sources to create something that I liked. One question has always stood out as our favorite (See Figure 1).

You will be surprised to learn how many applicants fail to answer this question correctly. Read the directions carefully and you will see that items should be ranked 1 to 12 and the question implies that you should use each number once. When a candidate puts "1s" and "2s" next to all the choices, you must wonder how well they follow other detailed directions. If candidates complete the question properly, you know they can follow directions and the information they provide can also tell volumes about their values as an employee.

Every office will have its own best solution to the challenge of hiring great team members, and I hope this information will help you to improve your hiring process. If you have a specific question or problem you would like addressed in a future column, please send me an e-mail: tom@dentaltown.com.
Dentaltown Magazine
September 2025
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