Are you struggling to recruit the right clinicians for your allied health practice?

In this value-packed episode, Gerda Muller breaks down the exact nine-step framework that has helped practice owners double their recruitment success rate.

Discover how recruitment has evolved beyond simply posting a job ad and hoping for the best. Learn the three critical phases of successful recruitment – Advertise, Selection, and Offer – and the essential steps within each phase that you can’t afford to skip.

In this episode, you’ll learn:

• Why traditional job ads aren’t enough in today’s competitive market.
• How to create a “killer job ad” that stands out from the crowd.
• The importance of social proof in attracting top talent.
• Why passive advertising is dead (and what to do instead).
• The five-phase interview process that prevents costly hiring mistakes.
• How to leverage the seven key motivators to attract and retain the right team members.
• The game-changing “irresistible job offer” strategy that doubled recruitment results.
• Critical contract conversation guidelines.
• Pre-onboarding strategies to prevent last-minute candidate dropouts.

If, like many others, you’ve been trying to recruit for 12 months or more without success or you’re just starting to build your dream team, then this episode provides a practical roadmap to becoming an employer of choice in the allied health industry.

Plus, get access to a free in-depth training on “Becoming an Employer of Choice” to dive deeper into these strategies.

Don’t miss this essential episode on finding and securing the right clinicians for your practice – ones who align with your vision, culture, and goals while contributing to your practice’s profitability and success.

Special Bonus:
If you are ready to dive deeper into these strategies then be sure to access Gerda’s in-depth training on “Becoming an Employer of Choice” which she is making available for FREE to you as a listener of Episode 2. You can get that HERE.

Who This Episode Is For:
• Solo practitioners wanting to hire their first team members
• Group practice owners scaling their business
• Established owners optimizing operations
• Clinical Team Leaders or Practice Managers engaged in recruitment

Connect with Private Practice Success & Gerda here:

• Follow the Private Practice Success Facebook Page
• Follow Gerda on Instagram
• Connect with Gerda on LinkedIN
• Join the Private Practice Success Facebook Group – exclusive to practice owners.
• Email Gerda @ gerdam@private-practice-success.com

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 Do you prefer Reading to Listening? Find the full transcript of Episode 2 below.

 

Episode 2: Nine Steps to Achieving Recruitment Success in the Allied Health Industry 

Well hello there amazing private practice owner. My name is Gerda Muller and you are listening to the private practice success podcast. And this is episode number two.

Today, we’re going to talk about the nine steps to achieving recruitment success in the allied health industry. Now, if you cast your mind back to episode number one, you would know that I took you through the seven secrets to private practice success.

And secret number three was to hire your ace team. So today really follows on from that specific secret. Because you cannot have a group of private practice, without amazing clinicians there to assist you in servicing the clinical clients that come through your practice doors. Right now, there are group practice owners that are having amazing success with their recruitment.

Similarly, there are group practice owners that are really struggling to recruit. Very recently, I actually spoke to a group practice owner and, and this is actually not an isolated conversation, but this person said, you know what, Gerda, I’ve been trying to recruit for the last 18 months. So I have just stopped trying, because it is futile, it’s a waste of my time, my energy, and the money that I’m throwing towards ads for recruitment.

And the thing is, it doesn’t have to be that way because right now people are having recruitment success, but, and this is a really big but, it requires much more than just throwing an ad onto one of the advertising platforms that is not good enough.

In fact, there are nine steps that you would need to follow to achieve recruitment success in the allied health private practice industry. An industry where there is a lot of competition right now for clinicians because the demand for clinicians is high. But the supply of clinicians is low. So as a result of that, it’s a highly competitive market when it comes to recruitment. It just is what it is.

And then as a private practice, we also need to compete with public mental health, as well as other NGOs ,that have deeper pockets behind them when they go through this process. So we have to take responsibility if we want to get recruitment success. And today I want to take you through the nine steps that I believe are absolutely vital if you want to achieve recruitment success.

Defining Recruitment Success

So what is recruitment success? Because you can recruit somebody, doesn’t mean it was a successful hire. You have to recruit somebody that is going to be a great fit for your business, which means that they need to see the vision that you have set for the business. They need to know why as a team you’re going to work every day, getting up and going to work and doing what you do best.

They need to see that vision. They need to be aligned to the mission in terms of what we’re going to do to get there. We need to have a common goal of making a difference, changing lives, and creating impact. That person that you’re bringing on board also needs to be a great fit to the culture that you are creating and might already have built within your business.

They have to tick a lot of boxes. They also need to be a profitable hire for your business. There is no use recruiting when you are making a loss on a roll. That just means you are creating more headaches for yourself down the track. And I don’t want that for you, which is why today I’m going to share with you the nine steps.

We are going to take a big picture, birds eye view of the nine steps and what I’m going to do in the show notes. I’m going to provide you with a link to a training I did where I actually deep dived into these nine steps. So if you want more details on the nine steps, then check out the show notes. The link will be below somewhere, you will find it. So check it out. It’s called becoming an employer of choice and will give you a lot more detail. But before you commit to watching that training, I’m going to take you through the nine steps and we’ll give you an idea if that is something that you need to spend time on. Okay, so let’s get started.

The recruitment process as a whole consists of three equally important phases. There’s the advertise phase, there’s the selection phase, and then there’s the offer phase. And within each of those three phases, there are three distinct steps or tasks that you need to do. And that’s going to give us our nine steps in total.

The Advertise Phase

So we’re going to start by looking at the advertise phase. So this is where you’re actually advertising for a role. And for a lot of us, that’s going to be a clinical role. Now I will say this, these same steps will also apply to administrative team members.

Step 1: Create a Killer Job Ad

The first step that you would need to complete as part of the advertising phase is to create a killer job ad. So ask yourself this, are you still writing a standard job ad that looks and sounds like every other job ad out there. You might even have looked at the other job ads and just, you know, done a bit of copy and paste because isn’t that how job ads get done in our industry? You look at what other people are doing and then you just reverse engineer and do that for your business?

The thing is, if that is your strategy, you aren’t going to have a killer job ad. You are not going to be able to stand out from the 20, 30 other jobs that go up onto advertising platforms every day. Every day. You need to stand out. So ask yourself this, when last did you actually review your job ad? Are you still using the same job ad that you used 2, 3, 4, 5 years ago?

Does your job ad differentiate your job opportunity from the hundreds of other job opportunities out there? And does your job ad clearly state your employee value proposition? If not, then you probably need to address this. The answer here is obviously to write your own killer job ad. A job ad that covers the essential 11 pieces of content that you need to have in any job ad.

Now, I’m not saying you’re going to be writing a novel because 11 might sound like a lot, but it is 11 essential content pieces, but it has to be really succinct. But you need to cover all those aspects in order to allow a potential candidate reading through it to self-identify as the right fit for your practice team and your culture, so you become that employer of choice. Hence the name of the free training that I’m going to share with you. So that is the first step. A killer job ad.

Step 2: Provide Social Proof

The second step is social proof. Ask yourself this, are you providing sufficient social proof during your recruitment process, allowing you to showcase who you are as a business and a team. Or do you just expect potential applicants, you just trust that you are who you say you are?

Unfortunately, I have spoken to way too many clinicians that tell me that they saw a job ad, it looked amazing, they took the job, and within one to two months, they were left feeling really disillusioned with workplaces who promised the world and failed to deliver. So many clinicians find themselves, therefore now not trusting fancy job ads that’s out there.

Yes, I said you need a killer job ad. I’m not saying you need a fancy job ad that promises the world and then you don’t deliver. You absolutely have to deliver. But because a lot of people have experienced promises that weren’t followed through, the onus is now on us. If you want to be successful in recruitment to showcase some social proof to say that, yes, I’m not only just saying this in the job ad, but here I’ve got evidence to show that we actually do what we say we do in the job ad.

So the answer here is for you as the business owner to provide high quality social proof that will truly stand out from other job ads. Okay, so you need to think about how you could do that? How can you showcase what it is that you are also putting in your job ad? Because the communication that you’re putting out there onto the internet, into all the places, needs to be consistent. It needs to be aligned.

Step 3: Reactive VS Passive

Next, we’re going to look at active versus passive. So this is the final step and this is step number three as part of the advertising phase. Think about this. What is your idea of the word advertising? You know, do you write up a job ad and then chuck it onto one of the advertising platforms and then you wait.

It’s like, okay, I’ve ticked the box. I’ve written the ad. I’ve paid some money. It’s going to be there for like 30 days. Now I just need to wait for the applicants to come through. Unfortunately, the days that that is how you advertise is long gone. That is how we used to do things in 2012.

There are just too many job ads out there right now for you to follow this type of, I’ve done it, now I’m just going to hope that somebody sees it. That is passive advertising. What you want to do, if you want to be successful, you need to engage in active advertising, alright. You need to take an active approach, which means the goal here is to get as many eyeballs on your job ad as possible. Rather than just hoping that the right person will see it. Because hoping is not going to attract top talent. Not if you want choice in your recruitment process, rather than just hiring anyone who’s registered and who has applied.

You have the responsibility to choose the right person for your business, for the culture, for the rest of the team, and for the clients. And therefore you need choice and therefore you need to actively get the right eyeballs on your job ad. So that was the first phase.

The Selection Phase

Phase two is the selection phase. This is where we want to select the right person. Now during selection, there’s going to be three steps as well.

Step 4: Appropriate Responsiveness

The first step here as part of the selection phase is appropriate responsiveness. If you’re taking more than three days to get back to any job applicants in the current market, then you run the risk of losing out. Unfortunately, there are a lot of desperate practice owners out there who are just handing out job offers left, right, and centre, because they are so eager to build a team, because they probably have a wait list of clients right. And they are driven by this innate desire to help people. That, that’s what we are. We are helpers, which means that very often they are just making job offers without thinking through the long-term consequences of it. And therefore people will be taking those job offers, meaning that you’ve got less choice if you are not responsive as part of that process.

Now, I’m not saying become one of those desperate practice owners and call somebody within an hour of getting the application that is just absolutely cringe, and we’re not going to do that. Instead, what you want to do is you want to approach this with the appropriate level of responsiveness. You need to initiate contact in a timely manner that doesn’t scream, I’m desperate, okay.

That’s not how you start any relationship. Not a personal one, not a friendship one, not a romantic one, and most certainly not a work related one. So you really want to make sure that you’ve got a clear script to easily copy and paste it and use that as part of that process to respond to people.

Step 5: The 5-Phase Interview Process

Okay, so step number two is part of the selection process is what I like to refer to as the five phase interview process. Now, I have seen some extremes of the years when it comes to practice owners and how they run the interview process. On the one hand, you’ve got people that just go, hey, let’s just go out for a cuppa, have a chat and let’s see if this is going to work out.

And on the other hand, there’s some people that do two-to-three-hour interviews, and then of course, everything in between. For most practice owners, though I would say like in the middle, middle section, the interview process consists of a face-to-face interview or potentially these days is interview, you know, and then if you guys hit it off and it goes well, the practice owner will then give this person a job offer.

Now, I’ve spoken to a lot of practice owners who regret not having invested sufficient time and effort into this stage of recruitment. For example, a really important part is reference checks. Now, there’s a lot of arguments for and against it. I still believe in doing reference checks and I have my reasons for it.

And it most certainly is one of the five phases of that interview process. I can tell you, when you skip through steps, it will come back to bite you. It happens each and every time. The answer here is that you want to create for your own practice, a robust interview process, a process that’s efficient, that’s effective and that you will follow each and every time.

You really want to standardize your interview process. Because that’s the only way to compare apples of apples and oranges with oranges by having a set process in that manner, which will allow you to make the right decision. Because the wrong decision will cost you time, money, and energy, and freaking lots of it. It is not worth it. It is much better to just take your time and follow the process.

Step 6: Key Motivator Identification

The third step as part of the selection phase is the key motivators. You might have heard that there are seven key motivators that determine why a person will choose a specific job and why they will continue to stay in a specific job.

I love the seven key motivators and this is a concept developed by Jade Scott from GrowthRx, and kudos to her because this stuff works. It works on very similar principles as the love languages. You know, if you love languages, you do a little assessment and then you find out what is your top two love languages and your default love language.

And the same is true for your key motivators. There’s seven in total. When you do the questionnaire, you will find what is the top two for this current team member, or even a potential team member. And if you know what somebody’s key motivators are, it means that you can now focus your interview conversation on those two things.

So rather than wasting time talking about all seven, you just talk about the two that matters to them, and how your practice can satisfy those two key motivators for them, really making this a win-win scenario for the both of you. So what you want to do, to be clear, is to create a recipient informed, data driven process for identifying the key motivators of your prospective team when you are recruiting and also your current team, in order to retain those team members.

The Offer Phase

Finally, we have the offer phase.

Step 7: The Irresistible Job Offer

The first task within the offer phase is what I call the irresistible job offer. So ask yourself, what does your job offer look like right now? How do you make your job offers? I’m guessing it’s probably a phone call. But what do you do then? Do you send them an employment contract or a contractor agreement if it is a contractor, which I don’t recommend, by the way. Do you send them a one- or two-page job offer? Just spelling out the role and the pay. Maybe when their start date is. Or does your offer letter present you as an amazing employer? One who’s going to look after them and one who understands their drivers. Or does it just say, you’ve got the job, this is when you start, let’s go.

Obviously you want it to be better than that. Instead of just the run of the mill job offer letter, you want to compile what I refer to as an irresistible job offer. I’ve personally created a five-page irresistible job offer for my own group, private practice, and take it from me, our recruitment results doubled once we started using it. I cannot even count on the one hand, if even one, the amount of people that have said no to a job offer that we gave them, because the irresistible job offer does its job. It just works. And it’s probably one of the best things I’ve done in terms of elevating the recruitment outcomes that we got at my own group private practice.

Step 8: Contract Conversations

Then the second step as part of the offer phase is what I like to refer to as contract conversations. So the natural next step after someone accepts your job offer, so you give them your irresistible job offer, they go, awesome, thank you very much. Next step is the contract conversations. So for clarity, the job offer doesn’t have the employment contract. That is the next step.

Once they say yes to the job offer, then we give them the more detailed employment contract in the case of an employee or contract agreement in the case of a contractor. So those are your legal documents. They are generally around eight pages long in the case of an employment agreement, and it’s around 18 pages long in the case of a contractor agreement.

Now, imagine being a new graduate, and you need to sign one of those. That’s a lot of words, and it’s a lot of where it’s generally written in very formal terms, and if it’s a contract agreement, there could be a lot of legal jargon in there. So it can be pretty overwhelming when you read it for the first time.

I know as a practice owner, when I read them for the first time, it’s like, what I need to read this like 10 times for me to just remember what’s in there and to actually get what this all means. You want to remember that your clinicians aren’t lawyers. If you are going to expect them to adhere to these contracts, you need to ensure that they know what they are signing.

Just like you can’t skip over informed consent and confidentiality discussions with your clinical clients, you cannot skip over contractor conversations. So here you need to make sure that you’ve got a clear process for engaging in contract conversations with your potential new team members.

Step 9: Create Commitment

And then the final step, step three of the offer phase, is create commitment. Okay, so we’ve got that signed contract in our grubby little hands. We’re really excited. We open up the diary. We start booking clients and you know, it’s like, okay, we’ve got like a three, four week on ramp to get clients booked in. We are so excited. And then what happens? This has happened to so many people. A week before the start date, you get an email that says, Oh, sorry, I’ve accepted another offer.

And it’s like the emotions that come over you, the disappointment, the shock, the surprise, all of the emotions, the Oh my goodness, what I’m going to do with the clients. We’ve just booked in all these people. And it’s really hard when that happens because generally there’s a lot of clients that needs to be managed, that needs to be called, that needs to be apologised to, needs to be either booked in with someone else, and a lot of practices don’t have somebody else to just book them in, which means they might need to go back on a wait list or be referred out. Which is just as hard because a lot of other practices are also fully booked with wait lists, right?

So you, you want to avoid this from happening and how do you avoid this? By creating commitment during that period between signing the contract and the start date.

And this will require you to actively engage and actively involve your new team member via what I like to use and call is my pre onboarding process. We’ve got an 18 point checklist that we use, that we go through during that period. And it’s specifically designed to create that commitment, because I want to know if we start booking in clients, that those clients are going to be seen.

I hate calling up a client and saying, I’m sorry, yes, we promise that you, you know, the time is right, and we’ve got somebody available for you and now you can’t see them anymore. That’s the worst phone call to make, right? And yes, I’m not making the phone call, reception does it, but it’s just as hard for them and it’s hard for the clients to hear. And so we want to avoid that as much as possible, which means that we need to actively have a process in place, to keep them engaged and create that commitment.

Alrighty. So that was the nine steps to achieving recruitment success within the private practice, allied health industry. I hope that was a value.

Don’t forget if you want to deep dive into this a little bit more, the link to the Becoming an Employer of Choice webinar training, which I think went for maybe an hour, maybe a bit shorter, maybe a bit longer, but it’s in there. I’m making it available to you for free. Feel free to check it out.

Alrighty, thank you for tuning in. And as always, remember that I am here to help you build a practice you can’t stop smiling about 🙂