Improve Your Hiring Processes to Attract and Retain High Quality Dental Team Members

Art Wiederman, CPA: Hello everyone and welcome to another edition of The Art of Dental Finance and Management with Art Wiederman, CPA. I'm your host Art Wiederman. I am a dental division CPA at the CPA firm of Eide Bailly, located in Tustin, California, about 15 minutes from Disneyland. And I know that I open up for my regular listeners with a lot of the podcasts that this is the most important podcast you're ever going to hear, and this is the most important information. I think that today's conversation is going to be the most relevant and timely podcast maybe that I've done.

I talk to dentists every single day of my professional life, and by far, by far, the number one challenge excuse me, that dentists are having right now is finding and attracting dental team members. And my guest today, her name is Holli Perez. She is with a company called Direct Dental and she's out of San Diego. And we're going to talk about how to get your dental employee ads on Indeed or CareerBuilder or wherever you put it, how to get it to attract people and how just to attract people. So Holli's company does a lot more than just place ads for you. So we're going to talk all about the best ways for you to differentiate yourself and to get people to want to come to work for you, which is a big deal today.

But before we do that, a couple of things. Number one, make sure you go to our partner, Decisions in Dentistry website. 140 incredible clinical courses at a very, very, very reasonable price. Last podcast, it was just very, very reasonable. Today we're making it very, very, very reasonable. So www.DecisionsinDentistry.com. I am working with their founder Lorraine Kent on some really exciting projects which will be able to talk to you about coming up in the future. I don't know exactly what date this podcast is going to air. I'm speaking at the National Academy of General Dentistry meeting on July the 28th. So if this comes out before then and you're there, come and see me. I would really love to see you.

One major thing I want to point out to everybody. So we've been talking about the HHS Provider Relief Fund. And remember, that was $175 billion authorized by the CARES Act when the pandemic started in March of 2020. Boy, does that seem like a long time ago, right over two years ago. And most of you got 2% of your gross revenues in August, September, October of 2021, and then you got it. And that was phase two. And then many of you received phase three payments when you applied. Some of you received those phase three payments in November and December of 2020, 2021, I'm sorry, 2020. But some of you received those payments in January, February, March of 2021. So this is very important. You have B if you received more than $10,000 from this program, you are going to have to go on to the HHS portal, which you've probably already filed on, and you're going to have to report if you receive more than $10,000 between January 20, January one of 2021 and June 30th of 2021. So say you received $150,000 in February of 2021. You have between July 1st and September 30th to report on the portal. If you don't report by September 30th, given the behavior of the Department of Health and Human Services, very likely that they're going to ask you to pay that money back and they will lock you out of the portal on October one. So please make sure if you should check with your CPA financial advisor if you're having trouble. My phone number is 657.279.3243. My email is awiederman@EideBailly.com. So that's really important.

And also, if you haven't applied for the Employee Retention Tax Credit, you've got about another, oh, about another nine months to a year for 2020 and about a year longer than that for 2021. We've been talking about that all along on the podcast. Also, we're going to be having our webinar series starting in October. We'll get you more information on that great, great content on metrics and all the relevant management topics and tax planning in October, November and December. And we'll have a transition series, too.

Okay. With that said, I would like to get to my guest. Holli Perez is the the CMO and found co-founder of Direct Dental located in San Diego, California. And what their firm does is they assist dentists all over the country in helping them to attract employees. And we're going to talk a lot about today what it is that you should be doing. Do you just go and get a template and stick an ad on Indeed. And the whole world is going to call you. Well, after talking to Holli, I don't think that may be the best way to go. But anyway, that's we're talking about today. And this is a very, very relevant topic because everybody is having issues trying to find people hygienists and front office and back office. And so we're going to help you today to really, really drill down and figure out what's the best way to find people. So, Holli Perez, welcome to the Art of Dental Finance and Management.

Holli Perez: Thank you. Happy to be here.

Art Wiederman, CPA: How's the weather in San Diego today? Probably the same as it is here in South Orange County where I'm broadcasting from, huh?

Holli Perez: Yes, it's absolutely beautiful.

Art Wiederman, CPA: It is. So why are we inside? That's the first question.

Holli Perez: All work and no play.

Art Wiederman, CPA: I get it. Yeah, well, there you go. So, Holli, tell me about your journey a little bit about your career and how you came to be, you know, start up Direct Dental chair.

Holli Perez: I fell into the dental industry in 2012. I started working for a prominent DSO called Clear Choice Dental Implants. And from there I became a regional manager for another DSO and sadly in 2016 parted ways with that company and bought a dental staffing agency. So I've been doing dental staffing since 2016. Obviously prior to that as a regional manager, that's where I really learned about the challenges it is in finding good qualified dental professionals in this field, and that's since 2016 really was working contingency staffing. So, you know, finding temps and permanent placements for dental offices in 2020, we kind of flipped how we're doing everything and moved everything to an online platform.

Art Wiederman, CPA: So how many dentists? I mean, we'll let you talk about the company later, but how many dentists you work with and how many ads have you helped people place? Do you keep track?

Holli Perez: We're way beyond keeping track with that. We have served over 3000 dentists on our platform and the jobs combination of permanent and temporary jobs were well over 150,000 range for that.

Art Wiederman, CPA: That's about 150,000 more jobs than I placed for dental offices. So you're the expert today. So I want to get right into all the I have so many questions for you, Holli. I get these just challenges. I get once a week a doctor call. Nobody's answering my ad. Nobody's come in. So let's help everybody here. First of all, where are the best places to post job opportunities? And what are these job board companies wanting to see? Are they looking for them? It's like with Google, right? Google wants you to do certain things and if you don't do them, they penalize you. Is that work the same way with the job boards?

Holli Perez: Absolutely. Yes. So in this in this job market, posting your job everywhere and anywhere is really what you have to do in order to get applicants. And when it comes to the job boards, I would say Indeed definitely has the best response rate for applicants, but they become not very small business friendly in the last couple of years. It's very difficult to navigate and their pricing is very confusing. But what they are looking for is they have a certain amount of words that they want. They don't want your job post to look similar to everybody else's job post. They'll penalize you for that. And the other thing that becomes a challenge is what the dental professionals want to. So they're not necessarily reading your entire job posts, but the job boards want you to have X amount of words in the description duties, the name, the title of the job in the job posting multiple times. Well, dental assistants are probably only going to read the first one or two sentences, so you really have to grab their attention in the first one or two sentences in order to get them to apply to your job.

Art Wiederman, CPA: So how many I mean, how many where? We're not going to be writing War and Peace about the job and what kind of what kind of instruments we use. And do we have dexus or shek? I mean, we're not going to do that. So what how many how many words should we have? And, you know, talk a little bit about what the maybe the content of what the ad should be.

Holli Perez: Sure. So most job boards, 25 words gets you published on the job boards. But we do find that the job postings that average between 150 to 300 words have the best applicant ratios. And so those are seem to be that seems to be the sweet spot. Definitely you need to start your post off with the position title. If it's full time, part time, the pay rate that you're offering and then any benefits that needs to be big, bold at the top of your job posting for the applicants to see instantly. And then the job boards want you to follow up with location hours and a couple of bullet points on what they duties are, but just know that that's most likely not going to be read by the applicants.

Art Wiederman, CPA: So can we tell Indeed or CareerBuilder or whoever are going to post this? Can we tell them we want these words in bold? How does that work?

Holli Perez: Yeah, the templates are pretty user friendly, so you would just highlight the words that you want bold and there's a little button right at the top. You click bold and it'll make it bold for you and then you can publish it.

Art Wiederman, CPA: Okay, so, so we can kind of customize this any way we want. So, so give me a, give me a maybe a suggestion first, because you and I both know when you and I go on a website, when everybody goes on a website, I what's the average two and a half seconds that people spend on a website, then they go off. So it's probably the same thing here. What's the first sentence that do you have suggestions that say this is what your first sentence should look like? What would that be? Something like that?

Holli Perez: Yes, I mean, it depends on your position, but for an example, I would have full time dental assistant dash 23 to $26 an hour dash health insurance 401k paid time off that's how I start every major job post and I'm trying to do.

Art Wiederman, CPA: And you would put the hourly or daily rate or whatever that would be. And if it's a hygienist, we say two days a week or full time. Now, does that confuse people if you put focus? Time, like for a hygienist, if your office is only open four days a week because they don't know how many days your office is open, right?

Holli Perez: Yeah, usually, especially with hygiene, is because they are very picky, if you will. And so they like to know a lot more about the job before they actually apply to it. So if it's a hygiene job, I always suggest that you put the actual schedule that you want them to be working. I will also add, it's very hard to find full time hygienist right now. So if you do need a hygienist full time, I highly recommend putting a little asterisk saying if you can work two or more of these days, please apply. And then you might just have to have two different hygienist coming in because that's kind of where the market's at with that.

Art Wiederman, CPA: And you can maybe or maybe you get them on the phone and talk them into three days or something like that.

Holli Perez: Absolutely. Or they come and work with you two days, fall in love with your practice and decide they want to work with you over their other offices and join full time.

Art Wiederman, CPA: Yeah, I was I was reading some stuff on your blog about that, that maybe we want to put the position in several places in the ad. Why is that important?

Holli Perez: That's for the job boards itself. So if the job word Indeed or Ziprecruiter they see in your ad dental assistant three times, then they know of anybody which is dental assistant. They're going to prioritize that job over someone that only put dental assistant in once. And that's just the way their algorithms work.

Art Wiederman, CPA: Right? And do all the different job boards work pretty much the same way, or does Indeed have a different method than CareerBuilder or the other ones out there?

Holli Perez: They kind of all have their own little algorithm ticks that their algorithm wants and doesn't want. So you kind of do have to appease all of them. And so if you're posting to multiple job boards and making sure each one of your postings is slightly different, but this is how your job posts be that 150 300 words have the title of the job and they're a minimum of three times. Have a couple of bullet points of what the position is. Those are what pretty much all of them really like.

Art Wiederman, CPA: Okay, now I know some people. Oh, this is a tough one. So you're a dental office and you've got a team member that's not performing. So we're kind of looking for somebody on the what's it called, they write Confidential. How does a confidential job post work? Is that a good thing or a bad thing?

Holli Perez: It's viewed as a bad thing. Dental is, you know, dental hygienists, dental assistants will know that's exactly what you're doing. All this person's trying to let someone go so they marked as confidential. You'll still get applicants. So it's not the end of the world, but you're probably going to get about 18 to 22% less applicants than if you weren't marked confidential.

Art Wiederman, CPA: You know, I had a I had a client have a client who I did everything for this doctor. And basically one day he said, you know, Art, my associate, my long time associate isn't working out and I'm going to get rid of him. But, you know, I can't just put a board up, put something up on the dental society or this because, you know, we're in a smaller town and stuff. So we came up with this idea, see what you think about this. So my two best friends in the world, one is was a headhunter and the other is a civil engineer. So what we did was we put the ad up and it said, Please send your resume to Jay. I'm thinking of my friends named Jay Smith at gmail.com so nobody would know who that is. Right. And they would send the resumes and then my friend would forward the resumes to me, that's a little bit of a run around that, isn't it? Have you ever seen that done?

Holli Perez: We've seen it done, yeah. I don't know how successful you were with that.

Art Wiederman, CPA: Pretty successful. We've got a lot of people do that. So I never did that with the CPA firm. So but definitely.

Holli Perez: I would say with dentists, even when you post a job for a dentist, the dentist is still more likely to reach out to the office directly than actually apply. But other positions, like a dental assistant or anything like that, they'll just want to click Apply as opposed to go to their email and send over their resume. So it kind of depends on a position too.

Art Wiederman, CPA: Yeah. If it's a confidential. So that's a real issue too to deal with. So there are templates out there, right, Holli, that you can use to post in. So talk about templates to do the do the posting gods like them, do they not like them? I mean, what are they what do they think about all this stuff?

Holli Perez: Sure. In short, they hate them. So especially Google. Now, Google Jobs is extremely, extremely picky. And if your post looks too much like another post, they will not show either one of them. So if you're going to. But with that being said, templates are great. They give the office a up of how the post should be and should look. But you definitely need to make it your own. You need to add in those benefits, add in your hours, add in the location of your practice. And what's great about your practice, you have to make those templates your own. Because if your job looks like 100 other jobs, it's definitely not going to get shown to those applicants.

Art Wiederman, CPA: Okay, so let's talk about what you guys do. Okay. Obviously, you had what were you sharing with me? Your success rate was over. What was it? You gave me a 90% percentage. But what is your success rate in helping doctors to get applicants?

Holli Perez: Sure. So we're at 97% success rate in our staffing plans. So we kind of we have a self serve option that's impossible to know what our success rate is with that. I know it's pretty high, though, based on what we hear. And then we have our staffing plans where you work with a recruiter in order to find people. And for that we have a 97% success rate.

Art Wiederman, CPA: Okay. So let's say that, you know, and we're going to give we've got a lot more tips to give before we're done today, Holli. But let's say a dentist is, you know, really busy and they just don't want to deal with this and they want to hire a professional to help them with that. And so if I call you up and say, Holli, I'm desperate for a dental assistant, I am. You know, I haven't had one for two months. It's been really frustrating. And help. What? What? Walk me through how the process starts with you guys.

Holli Perez: Sure. So we have our self-serve option, which is definitely our most popular, and that allows you to post your own jobs. You can request temps. You can browse all of the candidates that are on our Web site. And when you post your own job, it does go across all of the major job boards for you. So indeed, Ziprecruiter, Google, Monster, CareerBuilder and about 100 other websites. And then we have an AI system in the background, figuring out where you're getting the most action from and making adjustments to your post so that you're getting as much action from the applicants as possible. And then we have our upgraded plans where if you're a dentist and you're just drowning, obviously most dentists are the clinicians and the business owners, which is extremely time consuming. And in this market you have to be really quick on calling the applicants. We try to get to all of our applicants within a 24 hour timeframe, less than that if possible. So we have dedicated recruiters that will post your job, get it across all the major job boards. We heavily sponsor it to even maximize the amount of applicants you have coming in. And then those recruiters are calling those applicants, screening them and scheduling them for interviews with you in your office.

Art Wiederman, CPA: Oh, so they're not you're not just you go way further than just we'll help you make a good ad. You're actually you're going to screen the people you're going to the calls are going to come into your call center. And you've got people who are trained to do this, which I think is pretty cool. And by the way, folks, as I've told you and every podcast I've done for three and a half years, this is not a paid commercial. This is this is information that's going to help you, because I'm hearing the desperation of my dentists. I mean, really I mean, I'm hearing stories, Holli, about people stealing and stealing team members from other dentists. You hear that, too, right? In the neighborhood.

Holli Perez: It's the Wild West out there. Absolutely.

Art Wiederman, CPA: I mean, in the last two and a half years. So you not only go ahead and help them come up with a really good ad that's going to catch them. But when the people call, they're not calling the office. They're calling you. Right?

Holli Perez: They're applying to the job. And we're logging in to see who the applicants are, and then we're calling them. And it kind of goes back to the tips. You know, you've got to kind of almost stop these people in a way. And when you do get them on the phone, you have to build rapport. So there's really kind of a methodology behind once you get the applicant on the phone, making sure that they're going to show up for the interview. I just was reading some stats the other day and it saying that 40% of applicants don't even show up for their interviews. I've heard that too. Yeah, which is just blows my mind. But we see it all the time. And so, you know, you kind of once they apply to the job, you have to call them, text them, call them, text them to get them on the phone. Once you get them on the phone, you need to really build rapport with them, make them feel like you guys have a great connection and that they're going to really love working with the office. You have to sell them on why they want to work with the office, and then that's what's going to get the applicants to show up for the interview. And then once they're there in your practice, it's up to you to really convert them into an employee.

Art Wiederman, CPA: Okay, I want to get more into this, but before we do that. I'd like to let you give out your contact information. Like Holli said, she's worked with over 3000 officers all across the United States. Correct?

Holli Perez: All across the United States. We're in a 47 states now.

Art Wiederman, CPA: Okay. We got to get you into 50, but we'll work on that. Okay. So what is the best way to get a hold? Should they call you someone else on your team? What would be the best way to get a hold of you?

Holli Perez: Sure, they can go to directdental.com to sign up if they want to try our self-serve plan. If they want to talk about doing one of our upgraded staffing plans, you can give us a call at 619.295.1002 and then one of our staffing coordinators will connect with you and get all the job details and tell you how everything should work.

Art Wiederman, CPA: So, you know, you keep saying self-serve and I keep thinking ice cream, that that's what I'm now in a now in an ice cream mode. Holli. So, you know, chocolate chip cookie dough is my is my downfall. What's your favorite ice cream since we're talking self serve.

Holli Perez: Mint chocolate chip.

Art Wiederman, CPA: All right. There we go. So I think, you know, with every job post, is there like a gallon of ice cream since it self-serve.

Holli Perez: In the office?

Art Wiederman, CPA: All right, you come to the office, I'm sure they'll hook you up with some ice cream.

Holli Perez: So when I get self-serve, I just. I'm you post. I don't stop. You call your own candidate.

Art Wiederman, CPA: But this is a futile attempt at humor, which I try on every show. And, you know, some people like it, some people don't, but it keeps it light. So before, you know, you talked about we're going to get into, you know, website and culture and how the staff is. What are some of the biggest mistakes, Holli, that you see dentists making and trying to advertise their job position.

Holli Perez: Just using a basic template without adding anything about their office, not including pay and benefits, assuming that. That just our basic job post is going to get them applicants. It doesn't work like that anymore. Only posting the job to one place. And you really need your job to be in as many places as possible. And you need to think outside the box. You need to talk to people you went to school with and see if they have any previous employees or utilize temp services in order to see if maybe you have a temp come in that you want and you want to hire. So you have all these different tools available to you and you need to use them as opposed to just posting your job in one spot with a very basic template that is not going to get you any action once you have candidates to come in and interview. The other big mistake that dentists and office managers are thinking that the person needs to sell them on why they should hire them. And that is no longer the case. When you get an interview in there, you really need to sell them. On why they want to work for you because they've got about six or seven other offices fighting for them, and so you have to know how to sell your practice, sell your team, sell the benefits, sell everything you can about your practice to make that person want your office over any other office that's offering them a position.

Art Wiederman, CPA: Do you help them with like, you know, verbal skills or who they should meet? When someone comes into the office, do you recommend that they meet with two or three team members or just the doctor, or how does that work?

Holli Perez: Yes, absolutely. And it's getting to that point now where especially, Janice, they're going to ask to meet with the other team members. And they want to know, is there a lot of turnover in the practice and are the benefits like the bonus plan? Is that really as legitimate as the doctor made it out to be? And mostly everybody is going to do a working interview. And if you're not doing working interviews, they're probably going to pass on the position, especially hygienist. They want to actually work in your practice, see if it is something that they can work at long term. And that also then gives them the chance to meet with the other team members, see how everybody works together on the team, make sure there's not a lot of turnover and all of that good stuff.

Art Wiederman, CPA: So the first accounting job, Holli, that I ever took when I was 16 years old, which that was back when the dinosaurs ruled the Earth. Let's see who was president back then. Who's 1970? 1976. 1977. I don't even remember who the president was. I think it was maybe Jimmy Carter. But anyway, so I went to San Pedro, California, you know, where San Pedro is? Near the harbor there in L.A. County, because I used to live up in the Long Beach area, and I interviewed with a one with a with a public account that back then they had public accounts, not just certified public accountant. His name was Larry Shipley and Holli. You know, the first question he asked me was like, So, Arthur, are you bright? Now, here's a thought about that. So if you ask somebody, are they bright? And they have to think about it. That would make me nervous. Wouldn't it make you nervous, Holli?

Holli Perez: Yeah, it's absolutely right.

Art Wiederman, CPA: So I immediately said yes. And then what he did was I kind of had a working interview back then when we did tax research instead of today, we do tax research, we do everything on the computer and it's all computerized. Back then we had these big black binders called CCH Commerce Clearinghouse, and he said, So I want you. I was 16 years old. Right. I want I want you, Arthur, to go figure out what is the definition of depreciation. And I went, I found it. So he hired me. And so I don't know if that's a question that you recommend you ask your applicants. Maybe in this market it may not be, but that was the first question I was asked. So. So when you're when you're talking to people, what kind of questions do you recommend? I mean, we you're going to help them with the ad. You're going to get it out there to the maximum exposure. You're going to help them word it properly. Yeah, like we were talking before, there's a lot of things you and I in life control, Holli. The Internet is not one of them, but we get them in. You're telling me you've got a 97% success rate of increasing the number of people that we can get to the plate. Now we get him to the plate. Any suggestions on some? You know, the first. You know, what's the Johnson Johnson commercial? You never get a second chance to make a first impression. Right? So what about some questions? What are we what are we asking this applicant?

Holli Perez: Sure. I always start off with building rapport. The questions I always like to know the answer to is Why are you on the job market? You know what? Why are you looking for something? You know? Is there something about their whole practice they were unhappy with? Are they a job hopper and just really getting a good feel for that for a dental assistant, since I love to ask what's your favorite procedure? And see how excited and in-depth they get about it, you know? And if they say, Oh, root canal, oh, tell me why and see how in detail they get about that procedure and why they enjoy it so much. That's going to really tell you about how much gusto are going to have working with you. And you kind of see their strengths from that question as well. And then you have your canned questions, strengths, weaknesses, all of that stuff. But I always recommend asking every single assistant that comes in, what's your favorite procedure? Because you'll learn a lot about them with that.

Art Wiederman, CPA: So now, now we're going to talk about the office and we're going to try and sell the applicant. Do you I mean, do you say maybe you set up like 15 minutes with the front office administrator and 15 minutes with an assistant, 15 minutes with the hygienist? I mean, depending on if it's appropriate, if there's a, you know, only one hygienist and we're adding a second, maybe it is appropriate and they can ask and stuff. So it and then at the end with the doctor, right.

Holli Perez: So if I if you're going to do a working interview, usually they're fine with the initial formal interview to just be with one person. Okay. But you can always ask at the end, which I think is a great question to ask at the end. Is there any questions about the practice that I haven't been able to answer for you? Or is there anybody in the practice that you would like to chat with briefly and just ask them any specific questions? And I think that's great. They'll most likely say no and Janice will probably want to talk to the current hygiene assets in the office or would like to talk to the office manager about the schedule. Most hygienist only want one patient per hour, which I think is necessary, anything short of that's very challenging. And so they just want to make sure before they even agree to a working interview, what the schedule is going to be like. And so talking with the office manager and getting that information would always be a huge plus.

Art Wiederman, CPA: Now I know that every single person who is looking at a new opportunity is going to check out social media and website and LinkedIn and Instagram. So talk about the importance, Holli, of the let's start with the website. I mean, is there anything you've I mean, again, you've dealt with thousands of employers. You've seen the good, the bad and the ugly. So what is it on a website that's going to be really good? And what is it that's going to be on a website that might have that employee, prospective employee say next, not interested?

Holli Perez: Well, outdated websites are really going to lead an applicant to not even want to apply or continue on with the interview if they're not checking it out, because then they usually think that the office is outdated. And so the website does really reflect on what people think your office is going to look like. And having your employees on your website is a huge plus because usually that shows that your employees have been with you a long time and long enough for you to put them on the website and keep them there. And then reviews from your patients. They want to know that the patients feel like they're being taken care of and happy that it's not just, you know, a dental mill in some capacity. So having your reviews on your website and your employees on the website, I would say the two top things as well as it being obviously an updated website.

Art Wiederman, CPA: And what about what about social media? Because I mean, everybody everybody's on social media. So how does that how does that work as far as the success or failure of a job application?

Holli Perez: Sure. Yeah. I've had I have a couple really amazing clients that their social media is so on par that I'll talk to applicants that have said I'm not even looking for a job. But when I saw that this office was hiring, I have been stalking them on social media for two years now and I had to apply to the job. And so if your social media content is useful, beautiful, appealing to the eyes and people want to follow you when it comes time that you need to hire, you're going to find that the dental professionals that have been following you are going to prioritize your job over someone that. Has a run of the mill social media presence, and posting your job on social media is always pretty huge too. You should always whenever you have a job posting on social media.

Art Wiederman, CPA: Yeah, we have we have a lot of I have friends in the. My audience knows that I know everybody in the well, not everybody. I keep meeting new people every day. But there are people I'll mention. One of them is Rita Zamora, my good friend who does social media marketing for dentists. And yeah, and then there's websites and there's, there's tons of people that do websites. So that's really important. Now I know that boosting on is important to talk about a little bit on job postings. So how does that work? I know I know that like when we send out boosting is done on social media to try and target certain areas. How does boosting work with a job application?

Holli Perez: Sure. So job boards work on clicks so they charge per click and that and obviously money talks. So the more money you're paying towards a job board, the more clicks that you're going to get from them. So if you're going to Indeed. And you're saying, hey, Indeed, here's $1,000, get me as many applicants as possible, they're going to as opposed to a dental office that's here's $100. So the more that you're willing to pay or boost your job with a job board, they're going to charge you per click. And that's what's really going to get your job seen because they then want you to get as many clicks as possible so that they can charge you as much money as possible.

Art Wiederman, CPA: So for and again, I want to first say no, me forget I want to ask you about different parts of the country because you work all over the country. So what would be a reasonable budget for a $1,000,000 dental practice with six employees, you know, two in the front, two in the back, maybe two hygienists? What would be a reasonable budget to say I'm that I should spend to boost with all of the different available platforms what would be a reasonable budget per job?

Holli Perez: Sure. So if you're going to Indeed which charges per click, you're probably it's going to break down for a dental office. That's all they're doing is posting their own jobs. They are not paying for a bunch of clicks nationwide or anything like that. So it's just you're seeing your dental practice. You're probably looking at $30 per applicant is what it's going to break down to be. And then that just kind of depends on your job post. You know, sometimes you're averaging a dollar 50 per click, sometimes it could be $3 per click. And that's why if you can work with the company that does buy their clicks in bulk and you know, not to sell myself or anything like that, but right now we're averaging about $2 per applicant because that's nothing.

Art Wiederman, CPA: That's nothing. I mean, in the.

Holli Perez: By something clicks.

Art Wiederman, CPA: Okay, so we might be able to not withstanding what we would you know, your fees are going to be it could be less than $100 an applicant for the actual boosting and part of that and stuff. So just sounds about right. I mean, it's not that expensive for the actual book, but that you say the boosting is really important, right?

Holli Perez: It's really important because, again, it's just it's both anything in business, the more money you're going to get, the business is going to get from you, the more likely they're going to boost your job. We don't operate like that. We operate under flat fees, so we don't charge per click. We just get our savings, then we pass it on to you. And if you're working with a company that charges per click, yeah, I would be prepared to spend about $30 pro can.

Art Wiederman, CPA: Talk about the application process because it sounds like you do more than just put a job out there. You're helping the doctor all the way through the process. Right.

Holli Perez: In some instances, if they're if they're going with our staffing plans, we absolutely do that.

Art Wiederman, CPA: Okay. So the application process, I mean, do you have an on do you have them apply online? Do you have them come to the office and sit there for 15 minutes and fill out? Like you go into a doctor's office and it's like your whole life history and who is your best friend in the third grade and stuff like that, right? What do you recommend on the application process.

Holli Perez: In a previous life when there is more jobs and applicants? Yes, we absolutely operated like that. In this world. We make the application process as simple as possible. So no matter what job board they're on, if they click on a Direct Dental job, it'll go straight to the Direct Dental dashboard. And from there you're able to keep notes on the applicants. But if we're doing a staffing plan, once they apply, we reach out to them as soon as humanly possible. We call texts, whatever we can do to get them. On the phone. Then we do a brief phone interview. Why are you on the market? This is where the office is located. Is it commutable for you? What are you looking for, pay wise? And then we go into great detail about all the great things about the office that we're looking to step forward and really kind of cement that they want to work there. And then we schedule them for an interview with the office.

Art Wiederman, CPA: And he tips Holli for the front office person or the hygienist or the assistant who's going to have that sit down for 15 minutes with that prospective employee. I mean, obviously, we want I think the message and I'll ask and answer my own question right is, is, you know, we want to be as positive, upbeat. We want to talk about the culture. I mean, what do you actually help the team in saying, okay, you've hired us and we're going to tell you kind of the things you want to be talking about with these applicants. Right. Do you get into that?

Holli Perez: Yes, absolutely. And we will even go so far that if we've sent you ten applicants and nobody's accepted, I'll call those applicants back and I'll be like, Why did you pass on this opportunity? The hard thing about a job is we're not there during the actual sit down interview, so it's hard for us to know where the office is losing that candidate if that seems to be the problem. So we see a trend where they're not able to hire within the first 5 to 7 applicants. We know something is going on. They're saying something weird during the interview or something like that. So we'll call the applicants and say, Why did you pass on this opportunity? And then we'll consult with the doctor on what we're getting back as feedback so that we can try to help improve their system.

Art Wiederman, CPA: Oh, that's real. That's huge. I mean, I don't. Don't you wish. Wouldn't it be nice if you're a dentist and a patient leaves your practice that that you could find out why. Right.

Holli Perez: And I think you should do that. When people leave our service, I always call, and usually it's because they no longer need to hire. And that's music to my ears. But we want to know why someone's leaving us and if they're struggling. And if I was a dentist, I would want to call up that my patient too, and know. But you need to know with applicants as well.

Art Wiederman, CPA: So talk about hiring temps. I know that's a big deal because if you can't hire somebody, you got to have unless the doctor wants to start cleaning teeth, you got to have a high or how is that how do you get involved that and what's the challenges with it are there are a lot of temp people out there who are with temp agencies or, you know, you're not a temp agency, right? Or are you.

Holli Perez: Agency? But we have temps. Yes. So you can also when you use our service and some people use it, it's just for temps. You're able to do temp requests and then our system will text out all of our temps in your area. Hey, this is the temp job. Do you accept or decline? And they can stop the job. Temps are tricky, but with this kind of what's the word called, this kind of economy, gig economy, if you will, is what they call it. We are seeing more hygienist temp than take an actual jobs nowadays. So there's a lot of fantastic, wonderful temps on the market and they just might not accept your permanent job, but they'd be more than happy to temp with you every Monday until you need until you hire someone or whatnot. But there's a lot of wonderful temps out in the field right now.

Art Wiederman, CPA: That’s interesting to me, Holli, because a lot of people, I think they want to have a know that they're going to have a solid income every month. You're saying there's a lot of people who just say, you know, when they call me, I'll come and work. And there are a lot of people out there these days.

Holli Perez: A lot of I mean, think about how popular Uber is in DoorDash and all of these work as you want to type companies are. And a lot of people in the dental professional profession have turned to that. So they know they can they can work full time as a temp if they want to. In this market, it's not hard to get temp jobs at all. So they'll work whenever they want. If they want a day off, they take it off. They don't have to worry about asking for vacation time and they can work as much as they want to or as little as they want to. And in this economy and with this younger generation, that is the freedom that they want.

Art Wiederman, CPA: Are there any skill sets that you're looking for, say, for a fine or a back office? I know that I've always thought that the best front office person, you know, if they don't have dental experience, either somebody worked in a restaurant or somebody who worked in a bank, because if you work in a restaurant, if you're a server, you have to be friendly to the customer. You have to be able to, you know, remember a menu, think on your feet, calculate things and be nice because you want to get a tip and bank. You know, they have to deal with the public and they have to be able to handle money. So do you have any kind of suggestions for what types of employees or what types of people are applying for the job shop? Yeah.

Holli Perez: It's challenging in dentistry because it is so specialized. If you need a back office assistant, they have to have certain certifications and hygiene for front office. It really comes down to if you can train, then I absolutely think finding someone that has just amazing soft skills, you know, they have a great phone presence, they can hold a wonderful conversation, they can build rapport with you easily if you're able to find someone with those soft skills and then train them if you can. I think where offices struggle is usually there's only one person in the front, especially private practices, there's only one person in the front. So when they hire, they need someone to come in that already has those skills which can make it challenging to hire someone outside of the industry.

Art Wiederman, CPA: You know, one of the things, Holli, that I have always I teach this to and I did it. I own my own and ran my own CPA firm for 33 years. I had I was very fortunate, my three wonderful cornerstones of my practice Pam Chamberlain, Debbie Sanders and Raquel Goyette. I'll mention them by name because I love them all dearly. They worked for me for over 30 years. And it's about the culture that you have in the office and, you know, you could hire somebody. But if the doctor is not very nice or the team is not very nice and the, you know, the culture is not very nice, but I always, you know, then you have a problem. I always said that I would hire attitude and I can teach skills. What do you think about that?

Holli Perez: I 1,000% agree with you on that, Art.

Art Wiederman, CPA: Not just 100, but 1000, huh?

Holli Perez: 1,000%.

Art Wiederman, CPA: I like that. I like that, Holli.

Holli Perez: Yeah, yeah. I mean, if it's between someone that is going to bring a wonderful light to the office that is smart and bright and can learn quickly, take a month or two to train them to where you need them to be instead of hiring in. Sorry if your name is Debbie, but like a Debbie downer that is just going to ruin everything but has all of the hard skills that you want them to. It's just not good for the overall health of the office to bring on somebody just because they have the skills but lacks the personality that you need.

Art Wiederman, CPA: So I know you're not an economist, but I've been I'm getting ready for my wife to be.

Holli Perez: Actually, I wanted to be in college.

Art Wiederman, CPA: And really.

Holli Perez: Working instead, and I regret it to this day. I wish I well.

Art Wiederman, CPA: Well, let's talk some economics here. So right now we're at midyear, okay? We're recording this right at the middle of the year. We've got high inflation. We've got the Federal Reserve raising interest rates. So probably going to raise them two, maybe three more times. And I've sat through several economic updates in the last two weeks. And what I'm hearing is that while unemployment right now is only 3.6% nationwide and again, it's different every state, what the Fed is trying to do, folks, is they're trying to cool the economy down. Everybody is spending money. I mean, airfares have gone up 50%. Food has gone up 20%. Gas has gone up 3,000%. I love it here. We live in California, right, Holli? The national average for gas is $4.86, maybe for a half. Maybe for a half a gallon of gas. Right. I actually I have a 15 year old car, Holli. It's an old Mercedes. It runs great. The check engine lights been on for three years. I probably shouldn't brag about that, but it's got 223,000 miles. It's a really nice, fancy 27 Mercedes. And I finally decided the other day, I'm not putting premium in any more because several people have said to me, I mean, yeah, but people are looking at the economy. So by raising the interest rates and by bringing inflation down what's happening and you even are starting to hear it now. Elon Musk yesterday said that he's looking at laying off potentially I don't remember who's a thousand employees or 10% of his workforce or something. Amazon is laying people off. So what you're going to see and this is where the Fed's got an issue, is that as they keep raising interest rates and they push demand down because they need to push demand down, so supply comes, you know, so it's supply and demand. All right. If I have more supply and less demand, the prices are going to come down and that's what they want. But everybody is afraid that's going to push us into recession and that's going to look at people being laid off. Right. Holli, you're my junior economist on the call. Right. Okay. So are you starting to see with all of this stuff the Fed's doing? And I know inflation is coming down, gas prices. I know if you saw in San Diego, here in Orange County, they're down about 20, $0.30 a gallon. I've seen that. So are you starting to see in the last month or two that maybe this job market is opening up a little bit? Are you seeing any of that? That was a long, drawn out, you know, ranting on mine to get to a question. But are you seeing any of that.

Holli Perez: Yes or no? So we are seeing an uptick of non dental professionals applying to our jobs, which is very frustrating and we try to weed them out as much as possible. But it's still very challenging to find dental professionals because there is such a shortage. So yes. The employment community as a whole. There's going to be a lot more people in the market. But in dentistry, I think we're going to continue. And it's estimated that we're going to continue to have the shortage of professionals in the field for at least another nine years. What about.

Art Wiederman, CPA: Nine years?

Holli Perez: Yeah, that's what they're estimating online. And that comes from 88. And so but what I do think is as the recession, if we go into recession, which I think we definitely are.

Art Wiederman, CPA: On its way, possibly.

Holli Perez: Dentistry we know does people tend to put their teeth on hold, unfortunately, when they're lacking money. So we might see the offices slow down and they don't need as many employees, which might put more people in the market. But the report just came out last month that it's still something around 40% of dental practices are trying to hire hygienists and dental assistants. So even if that comes down a little bit with there being over 200,000 dentists in working, there's still going to be a good number of jobs on the market.

Art Wiederman, CPA: Well, and I know that the ADA Marko I always mess up is named Marko Grujic, which I believe is the way it's pronounced. And Marko, I don't know if you listen to my podcast, but I screwed up your name, sent me an email and I'll pronounce it right the next time. He is like the chief statistics economist for the American Dental Association, and I've not had him on my podcast. I should put him on my list. And he says that about. 8 to 10% of hygienists have actually left the profession. So, you know, it is a big challenge and it's like we don't have a magic bullet here. But, folks, what Holli is able to do and it is just fascinating to me what Holli is able to do is to give you the best opportunity to get someone into your office and to hire someone and to get more people. Now, you know, you may get ten applicants instead of one, and maybe eight of them are not any good. But you just need that one. You know, that one winner. But it's about a smile. I always taught my boys, Holli, look at me. Look someone in the eye and give them a firm handshake. And, you know, and that happens, doesn't happen stuff. So we're getting towards about the end of our time. So I want to anything else that you want to mention about helping the doctors to hire? We covered a lot of ground today. Anything else that you guys do or that you're seeing in the marketplace or tips that you can give people that are going to do it on their own? Yeah.

Holli Perez: And you kind of just you kind of just mentioned it. It's definitely a numbers game in this market right now. So the more applicants you can get, the more likely that you are to fill your job. And so, again, direct on all we do, post your job on all the major job boards to try to get you as many applicants as possible. And if you're listening and you want to try our service for a discount and when you go to checkout type in promo code that art15 and we'll give you a 15% discount on your first month or if you're interested in one of our staffing plans. And that would be the art50. And we would give you a $50 discount on those staffing plans.

Art Wiederman, CPA: I love that. That's it. Okay. All right. We're changing that podcast so hard.

Holli Perez: And I realized what you did there was like the art of dentistry. And then I was like, His name's Art, and it took me much longer to get there. I got a really good giggle out of that.

Art Wiederman, CPA: You know, the only everybody in the world calls me Art. It used to be my mother would call me Arthur and my best friend calls me Arthur. I don't know why. It's just our code name, but anyway. But I go by. I go by Art. But the Art, that's it. Okay, I guess I. So now when you go and you basically download, it's going to instead of the art of dental finance and management with Art, just be the Art and you'll get what it is. I love that. So one more time, Holli, why don't you go ahead and give out your contact information and we'll make sure we put that in the show notes and how people can get a hold of you. Website, phone number, all that kind of stuff.

Holli Perez: The website is directdental, all one word, directdental.com. And if you want to reach out and talk to us about anything, then give us a call at 619.295.1002 and then one of our staffing coordinators will answer the phone. I answer the phone a lot, so I'll probably be the one talking here and we can just chit chat. We offer free consultations to any dentist that wants to call in and talk about what's going on with their staffing job. So even if you don't want to use our service, but you still want to run things by us, we'd be more than happy to chat with you about it.

Art Wiederman, CPA: One more question before I let you go, and I will ask you to kind of hang on as I take the show out for the afternoon. What about multiple practice owners, DSOs? Then someone owns five, ten, 15, 20 practices. Do you help them? I'm assuming you do. Do you have any of those? Do you have how does that how does that work? Do they always need people?

Holli Perez: Yeah, they do. Yeah. There I was looking at their stats and the idea is 50% of them are hiring for high Janice right now, according to the recent ADA survey, they just came out in June. And so we definitely do the our basic plan, the 129 plan that we offer is where you post your own jobs request hands, all of that that's per location. So if you need to add additional locations, we do that at a discount. Or if you're a larger DSO, we do offer slots where you would have X amount of jobs that you can post to any practice location that you need to. And we can definitely come up with custom plans for anybody that needs.

Art Wiederman, CPA: That sounds great. Holli Perez from Direct Dental, thank you very much for taking the time to hang out with me for a minute, as I mentioned earlier, as I take the show out. So again, folks, please remember to make sure that you go on to the website of our partner, Decisions in Dentistry magazine 140 continuing education courses clinical courses at a very, very, very reasonable price go to DecisionsinDentistry.com great website and you can see all their articles and a who's who of clinical experts with articles on everything you ever want to know about clinical dentistry. You're looking for a dental CPA. We at Eide Bailly are always looking for wonderful new clients. You must be nice if you're not nice, we're not interested. Joking aside. Well, that's pretty true. We want you to be nice. Just like you want nice patients. We want nice clients. And the great thing about dentists is that, you know, 99.99% of them are super, super wonderful, nice people. Holli is nodding her head as I'm looking at the computer screen. You know, our my phone number is 657.279.3243. awiederman@EideBailly.com, my mothership, the Academy of Dental CPAs, 25 CPA firms across the United States that represent over 10,000 dentists. We got it covered in pretty much every area and now including the great state of Alabama as our 25th member. And we're very, very proud to have them on our on our team at the ADCPA. www.ADCPA.org.

Make sure that you file on the portal for the HHS Provider Relief Fund. If you got more than $10,000 between January one of 2021 and June 30th of 2021, you need to file between July one, 2022 and September 30, 2022. If you got money after June 30th, you'll have to file, I think, some time before we all die. But you have to file. It's on the website, but there will be a phase for funding. So this wonderful thing that the gift that keeps on giving will continue to keep on giving into next year. And if you haven't applied for the employee retention tax credit, if you had a greater than 50% reduction in revenues in any quarter in the second in 2020, usually the second quarter of 2020 or a 20% reduction in any of the first three quarters of 2021 versus the first three quarters of 2019 or the fourth quarter of 2020 versus the fourth quarter of 2019. Member FDIC, HBO, ESPN goes on and on. I've been saying that so many times on so many podcasts and webinars. I can tell you qualify for a very, very nice credit for 2021. It could be as much as $7,000 per employee per quarter. We have been we've worked with well over 100 dental practices at Eide Bailly. And you know, we've gotten where we're I think we're approaching $5 million in tax credits.

So anyway, that was a great, great interview. Holli, thank you. Thank you so much and really appreciate you hanging out with me for the hour. And I want to thank all of you from the bottom of my heart for the wonderful comments that we get and for all of the great emails and for listening. I hope that we've been able to help you make your professional and personal lives more successful. Financial wise, management wise. We've got great, great guests coming up. And with that said, folks, this is Art Wiederman for the Art of Dental Finance and Management with Art Wiederman, CPA. Thank you for listening.