4 Tips for Screening Potential Dental Assistants Before Hiring

Dental assistants can make or break your dental practice, and this makes it important to screen them so that you only hire the very best. This process may seem daunting if you’ve never done it before, but it need not be. With a few helpful tips, you might actually be able to do screening of dental assistants like a professional and hire the best without a lot of hassle.

1. Do a Thorough Background Check

To begin with, do a background check on any dental assistant that you’re thinking about hiring. This check should bring up any possible charges that they may have had in the past. It’s crucial that you know the kind of person you’ll end up working with alongside your patients so that you can have a good idea about who they are as a person. In this case, be prepared to deal with the information that comes up, which could be something like a sentencing for trafficking marijuana. The smallest sentencing in this case in Texas is a $2,000 fine and 180 days in jail.

2. Find Out How Much Experience They Have

Next, make sure that the dental assistant you hire has ample experience for the role you want to hire. In this case, you’re going to be in a better position to gauge how much money would be a fair compensation for them. As such, you can work out other financial implications and details such as the contribution to make to their SEP IRA if they end up with one. In this case, you’ll be interested to learn that business owners can actually contribute up to 25% of the compensation of an eligible employee to it.

3. Talk to Them About Computer Skills

In this digital age, you can’t ignore the important role that computer literacy plays, so make sure to find out the computer skills of the dental assistant you’d like to hire. This can save you a lot of time that you may have had to spend on teaching the new hire how to do basic tasks on the computer, including storing and retrieving various crucial details as necessary. The best hire should be competent in this regard so that they can do a good job, learning while working as well. In the end, they should be able to find out things such as that the global market for teeth whitening is expected to reach $8.21 billion by 2026, according to Statista, and verify such information by making sure about the source and more.

4. Discuss Their Strengths and Weaknesses

Last but not least, talk to the potential new hire about their strengths and weaknesses. They should take this opportunity to share with you the areas in which they’re the most comfortable, as well as areas in which they feel like they need a bit more time to perfect. This will make it easy for you to know what you can task them with and be confident in their delivery, and what they may need to be walked through the first few times. As long as they’re fast on their feet and they can learn new techniques and other things in a short time, it will be worth giving them a chance. If they have a weakness that’s too much of an issue for you, move on to the next candidate until you find one with whom you feel most comfortable.

These four tips should allow you to have more success when screening potential dental assistants before you hire them. As a result, you can be assured of a more fulfilling outcome which will save you time and money in the form of turnover. That’s because you may not have to hire a new dental assistant in a short time to come afterward.