Are you ready to take your dental practice to the next level? As we approach 2024, it’s time to start thinking about your recruitment strategies.

With the demand for qualified dental professionals on the rise and competition getting tougher, it’s important to have a solid plan in place. In this blog post, we’ll explore some of the most effective dental recruitment strategies 2024 that will help you find and hire top talent for your team.

Whether you’re looking for a new dentist, hygienist or support staff member, these tips will give you an edge in attracting and retaining the best candidates. Let’s dive in!

The increased number of the older generation who require more care, the greater number of employment and access to dental insurance, population growth, and increasing referrals from medical doctors to dentists have generated the demand for dentists.

But against this demand, there is not enough availability of dentists, and due to this, patients have to wait longer to get an appointment with dentists.

As per the report, 94% of patients do not have reservations about visiting dentists.

To reduce this waiting time, dentists are looking to hire dental hygiene experts and assistant dentists, but they are facing challenges in recruiting.

According to a May poll, from the American Dental Association, 80% of hiring dentists are experiencing recruitment challenges for multiple positions including dental hygienists and assistants, administrative staff, and associate dentists.

The shortage of dentists has reduced the practice’s capacity, hindered the practice’s ability to accommodate more patients, and created a bottleneck in the dentistry industry. 

To conquer these consequences of a shortage of dentists, and reduce the waiting time for patients to get an appointment, here we are going to discuss some dentist recruitment strategies. These strategies will help you to ramp up your Dental recruitment process and will fetch you the best suitable dentist.

10 Best Dental Recruitment Strategies 2024

dental recruitment strategies 2023

1) Invest the necessary time

You must have so many pending tasks and many unattended appointments, and you are eagerly waiting for some dentist to join and assist you as soon as possible.

But don’t choose the candidate in any haste.

Take enough time to finalize the candidate. As the person you are going to choose can either be your asset or liability, make sure he/she be your asset.

2) Align your values

Make sure the hiring process mirrors your practice philosophy. Establish a process that will exhibit your practice’s vision and values. This will fetch you the candidate who echoes those core values easier. 

Don’t compromise on your values just to fill up the vacant position. The person you hire will have a great impact on you and your practices. 

3) Write quality and optimized job postings

Make your ads more conversational and inspirational. Give enough reason to your prospects to apply for the job. 

Along with listing out your expectations, and required qualifications for the post, it should also answer the question that “Why they should apply for this position”.

As per the Glassdoor survey, 60% of respondents reported that they consider perks and benefits before they accept the job offer.

List down all the benefits that they would get, namely competitive compensation, work-life balance, professional growth, number of leaves, etc if they would join you. 

4) Use technology

In today’s technologically dominated world, using some tools will avail you of the datasets of your prospects at your fingertips. They can make a big success of your email marketing campaign, as they offer you an accurate and updated dataset. These datasets broaden your reach among your target audience. 

Not sure where you find such datasets? Ampliz is the best place where you can find 98% accurate, reliable, and authentic datasets of the target audience.

 Ampliz holds extensive datasets of all healthcare professionals including physicians, pharmacists, nurses, dentists, cardiologists, etc.

5) Referrals from your best employees

Out of all modern marketing techniques, word of mouth is still an irreplaceable marketing technique. It fetches you the results more than any other marketing technique will. As per the DSO’s report, 50% of their hire is from referrals.

And that’s why compel your various employees to refer some candidates. Your best employees have a network of the best professionals. For this reason, tell them to post about the vacancy on various social media platforms. 

Also to fuel the fire, announce some bonus to the employee who will refer a certain number of referrals, and finally lead them to accept a job offer.

6) Run ads on Linkedin, Facebook, and Google

Various social media platforms have become indispensable dental recruitment tools. Dental professionals, like dental associates, and new grads are on social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn. 

Leverage this opportunity and broaden your reach by running ads about the vacancy on these platforms.

7) Reach out to past candidates through the applicant tracking system

Along with finding new prospects, contacting the old ones will also be helpful for you in your dental recruitment process. In the past also you must have posted about the job, and many dentists had applied for it, but didn’t get hired. 

You can contact them also, but only if you have maintained a proper applicant tracking system. With these people, chances of conversion are high, as they already had shown interest in working with you in the past.

8) GPR post-doctorate department

These people are always looking for jobs to get hands-on experience with the things they have learned in the residency program.

These people will be best suitable if you are open to hiring a fresher candidate.

9) Post on dental associate job boards and hiring websites

Your most potential candidates always check dental associate job boards and hiring websites for any new postings. Even they must have signed up for regular updates about the jobs.

So posting about the vacancy on these platforms will notify them and make them take quick action. Moreover, different job boards have been created with different job board templates which makes them even more useful when it comes to creativity and effectiveness for your company.

Some of these job boards and websites are:

  • Dentaljobs.com
  • Dentalsposts.com
  • Dentalworkers
  • American Association of pediatric dentistry
  • Ziprecruiter.com
  • MyDentaljobs.com etc.

10) Interview process

Ask the right set of questions to get to know your candidates well. The questions you ask will tell you a lot about their technical as well as their soft skills. You can ask questions like

  • What are the biggest opportunities you see in dental practice?
  • How do you handle challenges and conflicts
  • Who is your typical dental patient and how do you address their needs
  • How do you handle patient concern
  • How do you handle conflict with coworkers

Conclusion

Thus, these strategies will help you to find the right candidate for your practice. If you will follow these hiring strategies and look for the employees through proper channels, you will have far more success getting connected with the right dental employees for your open position. 

Hiring the right dental position is a must, as it will directly affect your business success and ROI.

FAQs On Dental Recruitment Strategies 2023

1) When you should consider hiring new dental professionals

As an owner of your dental business, you must be concerned about patient care and their satisfaction more than anything, and that’s why you should know when you should let go of someone and when you should hold on to them,

These signs which indicate the need of new hires are:

  • Sloppy work
  • Incorrect diagnosis
  • Consistently late or absent
  • Rude to customers
  • Lack of proper record keeping
  • patient’s complaints

2) How much do dental practitioners charge?

The national average salary of dentists is $164,010 a year, for hygienists, this salary is $77,090 a year. You should keep this in mind and research about the salary that is offered in your local area.

3)  How to get connected with fresh dentists?

To hire fresh dentists, you should approach dental schools and use their job boards, or get connected with your alumni school.

Some of the sources are:

  • American Student Dental Association Facebook group
  • the University of Texas, ASDA
  • Boston university dental career network
  • University of San Francisco job boards