How to Hire Your Dental Dream Team

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Podcast Transcription:

Dr. Hornbrook: Hello, I’m Dr. David Hornbrook, the Clinical Director of Education and Technology here at Keating Dental Lab in Irvine, California. We’re in for a treat today in our weekly Dental Up podcast, because we have a special guest, Claudia Lovato. Thank you for being here. Claudia Lovato : Thanks for having me. Dr. Hornbrook: This is going to be very cool, because we’re going to talk about something that we really haven’t addressed in the past, something that as a practicing clinician, I have a practice, as you know, things that not only I, but our listeners have to deal with almost every day, but certainly many, many times in their career. That’s really hiring, training, and maintaining good team members. Claudia’s been in the dental industry since 1995. She was a dental assistant, an ortho assistant. She grew up in Flagstaff, Arizona. Actually I don’t know if you know this but I have half a thumb. A lot of people in the industry say, “How are you doing without half your thumb?” I’m fine. Flagstaff is where they tried to put it back on and it didn’t work, but I love Flagstaff, it’s so nice. Now you live in Gilbert, Arizona, outside of Phoenix, where it’s 110 degrees right now, and you spend a lot of time in Minnesota. Claudia Lovato : Minnesota, yes. Dr. Hornbrook: Minnesota, where you picked up a little bit of your accent. Claudia Lovato : Most of my adult life in Minnesota, long enough to say my Os funny. Dr. Hornbrook: Good. Good good good. Claudia, let’s talk about some of the things that you do. You have the Dental Assisting Academy, through Dentaltown. We chatted a little bit before we actually went online, about what you’re doing to make it affordable, not only for young men and women that want to go in the dental industry and don’t want huge student loans, but also an avenue for maybe me, who … Let’s talk a bit about this, and that’s this myth that I as a dentist, if I want a new dental assistant or a front office person, I have to only look at dental personnel, because in the past … The other day I was at the bank and there was some angry customer at this teller, and she was young and pretty and vibrant. It wasn’t her fault, it was nothing she did, but she handled it so well. I turned to my friend, I said, “I want her to work in my office.” He’s a dentist, he goes, “Yeah, but she doesn’t have any dental experience.” Let’s talk a little bit about what you’re doing with the Dental Academy, because someone that’s already got the people skills, they know how to interact with people that are satisfied and dissatisfied, how can I take that person and train them? Claudia Lovato : First of all, you want to make sure that you’re recruiting the right type of person. Take the person, the bank teller. That’s where you got to keep your eyes open and you always have to be looking for talent, and it’s not dental talent, it’s people skills and personality. Like you said, you saw someone handle a really difficult situation, a high pressure situation, and handle it with grace and style. That’s what you’re looking for, because the skills can be taught, we know that, we’ve all went through the training, went to dental college. You’ll get that, you’re going to get that, but you can’t train for that. You can’t train for grace and style, you can’t train for personality, and so you really want to find that star, someone that just lights up the room and handles things gracefully. Dr. Hornbrook: I’m interviewing now for a dental assistant in my practice, and all the things that when I went to your website and I went to your Facebook to look, I thought, “I’m not doing that right, I’m not doing that right.” You talked almost like a profile that you’d set up on a dating site that you want to make sure you get the right person, because we could go to Craigslist, we could go to some of these dental sites, and all the ads are the same, “Looking for a vivacious, a people-loving dental assistant with great skills and three years’ experience.” It’s like, “There’s 30 of those ads, what’s going to separate me from those other 29 doctors?” Let’s talk a little bit about that, because I like that analogy that you used. We’re setting up, so I want to put an ad, because just like you get calls every day, I get calls, and I’m not the expert, “Do you have a good ad for a dental assistant?” It’s like, “No. In fact, mine sucks, and I need a good one.” You get those questions all the time. How would you answer that? “Hey, Claudia, Dr. Hornbrook. Can you shoot me over an ad for a good dental assistant?” Claudia Lovato : I cannot do that for you. I have no ad for you. Dr. Hornbrook: All right, cut. New guest, new guest! Tell me why you would respond [crosstalk 00:04:26]. Claudia Lovato : First of all I’d say, before I can find your perfect match, someone that you’re going to have to spend a lot of time with, I need to know the personality of your practice and your style, because I can find a talented, skilled dental assistant for you, but they might not gel with the personality of your practice. When we talk about profile, setting up a profile, or profiling your practice, what we want to know is, if it were a living, breathing person, would it be a grandma that bakes you cookies, it’s just a place a comfort, a place of peace, is it a kindergarten teacher that gives you a hug every day and just makes your day- Dr. Hornbrook: Or Brad Pitt or a supermodel. Claudia Lovato : Yeah, exactly, or a gremlin. On any given day if it’s cute and cuddly but depending on the schedule falling apart, it can turn into chaos. I need to know, you need to know what your practice personality is, and if you love it, then let’s go with that. If you’re not happy with that, what do you want it to be, and then who do we look for to fit in with that. Dr. Hornbrook: A lot of it’s the training of the dentist too. Claudia Lovato : A little bit. Dr. Hornbrook: The whole mission statement and what’s your profile of your practice or who are you, so that I can find someone for you that fits in. I always hear there’s a shortage of good dental personnel. Is there a shortage of good dental personnel? Claudia Lovato : There is, and that’s why I think dentists, when they’re recruiting and they’re hiring, they need to expand what they’re looking for and they need to really look at it from a different perspective. For instance, we tend to want to, even in the dating … Let’s say we’re single and maybe we went through a divorce and we’re trying to go on this dating site. Our default, without realizing it, is to be attracted to the same thing that didn’t work for us. You just let someone go or someone just quit, and then you’re trying to bring someone else in, and oftentimes people are just hiring the same person, different name. Also we tend to think, “This is how I operate, this is how I practice. I need someone just like me.” Just like you might be great if you’re a superstar, you have a great bedside manner, you love the patients and you like communicating, not all dentists are like that. If you don’t have that, you need to attract the opposite of you as a buffer, to pick up that slack and fill in the gaps where maybe you don’t have that connection with your patient. It’s just human nature to want to attract like-minded people. Sometimes that works and sometimes it’s a hard pill to swallow, it’s like maybe you need to find a little bit different personality to add to your practice. Dr. Hornbrook: There’s again a couple other things you do, the Morado Institute where you’re basically training dentists, or their teams as well, to be hiring experts and how to. I think you brought this up initially, and I apologize, I’m going all over the place, one is hiring, the other is training, and then maintaining- Claudia Lovato : Mm-hmm (affirmative), retaining. Dr. Hornbrook: … and retaining these people, because, I told you earlier, my dental assistant’s been with me 21 years, my office manager 18, my other dental assistant almost seventeen. There must be something I’m doing right that I could not explain to anybody else, but I think that’s part of it, because you hear dental staff’s jumping around all over the place. Claudia Lovato : Absolutely, and turnaround is so expensive. Forget the emotional part of it and the frustration and the drain on productivity, it’s just so expensive, and as far as, that’s why all the pieces have to be in place, because you can recruit a good person, but if your training system isn’t there, they might not stay, they might be keeping going on interviews while you’re training them. Anybody that’s worked in the dental field knows training is overwhelming. The dental team doesn’t always have time to really go through things with you, so you cry on the way home and you’re not sure if you want to go back. You can recruit a good person, but if your training system’s not there, you could lose that person. Then as far as retaining them, like with your employees, you’ve obviously created an environment that they don’t want to leave. That’s what everybody- Dr. Hornbrook: I pay them a fortune, I think that’s what it’s all about, and I don’t throw in too much [crosstalk 00:09:05]. Claudia Lovato : I’m sure that’s not it. Dr. Hornbrook: Let’s talk a little bit about this Dental Assistant Academy. I know that what you’ve tried to do is create an environment through Dentaltown where it’s very affordable, because it’s expensive. I had a friend whose daughter went through dental assisting school and it was $15,000 or 20,000, they get out and they make $11 an hour. Claudia Lovato : They’re paying until their kids are in high school. Dr. Hornbrook: Yeah, which is ridiculous. Claudia Lovato : Student loans, or defaulting on loans. Dr. Hornbrook: Yeah, it’s not like going to even some trade schools, you go to [crosstalk 00:09:35] trade school and you make $80 an hour or something. You’ve created this academy, tell me a little bit about that. Claudia Lovato : What we did is I was approached by Dentaltown, by Howard Farran, to create a dental assisting program. The way that came about is I taught at a couple colleges in the Phoenix Valley area and Howard would come out and just get my students really jazzed up. He’s so generous. He’d come out and he’d lecture to my students. He thought, “Gosh, there’s a need for an online program on Dentaltown.” The dentists were asking for it and just begging for an online course that they could train their new hires. We created it and at first I didn’t want to do it, I thought, “This can’t be done. It’s just online,” and online schooling wasn’t really mainstream yet. Dr. Hornbrook: How long ago was this? Claudia Lovato : That was about three, four years ago. I really waited for technology to catch up, and it did. Now we have a program, I created a really stellar program, I’m really proud of it. The only problem is, with online schooling being new, the regulatory agencies like the Board of Education for each state, they’re not sure how to regulate online courses, and so sometimes we fall in the gray area, sometimes we fall exempt from the licensing, and then some states don’t even want you to come into their state and sell to their residents. We kicked a hornet’s nest with that, and I think the main reason we did, because of the price. We priced it under $2,000. Dr. Hornbrook: Let’s go back to my bank teller, another example, this has been several years ago, I was at Denny’s with my sons when they were little. Our waitress was unbelievable. She’s running, she’s got too many tables, she’s got irate customers, yet she always had a smile, she dealt with everyone. I thought, “That’s who I want in my office.” Someone like that I could say, “Listen, you’re awesome in front of people, you don’t know anything about dentistry, you’re probably making $8 an hour now, there’s a potential future in dentistry. Here’s an opportunity. Me maybe, as the dentist, I will pay you for the training, at $2,000.” Claudia Lovato : What you could do is hire that person, and you have the system in place in your practice, because I’ve provided it to you. If you hire this person with no dental background, I basically give you the course and full instruction [inaudible 00:12:02]. I give the student access, a password, and they access their course curriculum, their textbook, exams, tests, everything they need to learn to have the foundations for dental assisting. Dr. Hornbrook: Hopefully it’s up to date, it’s not- Claudia Lovato : It is very up to date. Dr. Hornbrook: … [crosstalk 00:12:18] and IRM buildups and [crosstalk 00:12:21]. Claudia Lovato : They have to cover that, sorry. All the new stuff’s in there too. I was really excited about this textbook because it is up to date. Dr. Hornbrook: We have an opportunity now to hire someone great and train them. How long does that program take them? Claudia Lovato : The program, it depends. If someone’s training on the job, so let’s say you hired the bank teller and you went through the system and you said, “Claudia, how do I do this?” my suggestion, my recommendation would be to go through the training part and have the student do two to three hours in the morning of the online study, and then the rest of the day hands-on skills in the clinic, and within three months max, they’d be done through the program. Dr. Hornbrook: Then get their radiograph license? Claudia Lovato : Yeah, it’s a prep course for it. They could apply to DANB to take the DANB RHS exam, and the course covers everything. Dr. Hornbrook: They could be a full-fledged dental assistant in three months. How awesome is that? Claudia Lovato : Absolutely. Dr. Hornbrook: Let’s talk a bit about the mistakes. Let’s talk about two mistakes, because you’re in a lot of dental offices, with your TRM, your training program, so you see people doing things right and you see people doing things wrong. I’m a list person, so let’s talk about three things, and again, I didn’t set you up for this so you might have to think about it a little bit, three things that you think dentists or the office manager, what they’re doing wrong as they’re looking for or they’re recruiting. The next is, and I’ll prod you on this, is what are potential hires doing wrong? We had a woman they sent the … I live in San Diego, but still, we’re a professional office. Her resume she sent was awesome. She comes in and literally she was just from the beach. She had sandals on, she had her backpack. Our office is pretty sophisticated. We look at each other and it was like, “Well, that one’s gone.” Claudia Lovato : First impression. Dr. Hornbrook: Yeah, and it’s absolutely crazy. First let’s talk about the mistakes that I would be making. I’m trying to recruit someone right now, we’re not having a lot of luck getting this new dental assistant. What would you say are probably the mistakes that I’m making? Claudia Lovato : I’m not sure what your ad says and I’m not sure what you’re doing to recruit, but I’ll tell you- Dr. Hornbrook: I’ll tell you what probably most other people are using. Craigslist. Craigslist and our local Patterson and [Shine 00:14:49] rep, “Find us someone good.” It’s, “We need a great dental assistant that communicates well, loves people.” It’s a fluff thing that everyone writes, right? Claudia Lovato : I don’t want to go work for you. Dr. Hornbrook: Yeah, that’s why I need help. That’s why I need help. Claudia Lovato : I want to go work for the guy that’s team has been with him for 26 years. Dr. Hornbrook: I want to say, “They’re a stable team. Dental assistant’s been with me 20 years. They love me, I pay well.” Claudia Lovato : Sure, absolutely, because I’m looking for my new home, my new work home, and I don’t want to go somewhere that the staff’s grumpy and nobody’s happy there. If I were interviewing, I’d show up and anybody who was giving me a tour, “Do you like working here?” If the staff says, “I love working here,” “How long have you been here?” It’s a two-way street. Dr. Hornbrook: In my ad you’d bill on the strengths, any office end strengths, so the fact that I have a stable staff, been with me 18, 21 years, modern facility, does a lot of cosmetics. Claudia Lovato : Yes, room for growth, always learning. I think people want to feel valued and always be growing in their career, so you’ll do that with them, you’ll promote that. Dr. Hornbrook: If my practice was doing a lot of surgeries or implants, we’d want to focus on things that are skills that will attract people, just like a dating profile. Claudia Lovato : Exactly, like a dating profile. Sometimes you need to put your deal-breaker on there, your [bugaboo 00:16:20]. Dr. Hornbrook: What would the deal-breaker be? Claudia Lovato : It depends. What’s your deal-breaker? Showing up in beach clothes? Dr. Hornbrook: Yeah. I would say the person that doesn’t show up to the interview on time. Claudia Lovato : That’s important. Dr. Hornbrook: That’s gone, boom, because I’m a huge time person, even though we made you wait today, I apologize. Claudia Lovato : I can hang out here all day. Dr. Hornbrook: You were on time. You were on time. Other mistakes I may be making, one is my little fluff ad that I picked up online that’s crummy, so that’s one, it doesn’t set me apart. Let’s say for some reason though, you decide that because I’m in your area, that I’m one of the 10 that you decide you’re going to go ahead and shoot the resume to. You come to my office, what mistake might I make then? Claudia Lovato : Might you make? How do you interview? What are your questions? People can get through an interview and they can fake it. They can fake it until they make it. We tend to ask yes or no questions, we ask really easy questions that are easy to fudge. If you really want to know how someone handles something, say, “On a scale of one to 10, what would you rate yourself for that scenario?” and then they give you a number, “Why do you give yourself that number?” What you’re doing is you’re extracting information that normally you can’t get out of them, and it catches them off guard, because there are so many sites, you can Google “how to get through an interview,” you can get through the trick questions, but when you ask someone to rate themselves and give you a number and then you push them, “Why?” they open up and they’ll give you more information. Dr. Hornbrook: Should the dentist be doing the interview, or the office manager? What do you think is the best way to handle that? Claudia Lovato : It could go either way, what your preference is. A smaller practice, some dentists are doing their own HR, so it’s okay either way, but just make sure that the person doing it knows what they’re doing and knows how to get that information. One of the things in my hiring system that I have is personality evaluation, like an assessment. Dr. Hornbrook: Which one do you use for that? Claudia Lovato : I created it. Dr. Hornbrook: You created it, okay, because we’ve used the DISC Profile in the past. Claudia Lovato : How do you use that? How does that work for you? I sound like Dr. Phil, “How’s that working for you?” Dr. Hornbrook: It worked really well for me because I’m a DI. For those that don’t understand that, I’m a dominant personality, but I’m very social. The thing, I have no C and no S, which means I’m such a big picture person that I don’t really want to know what’s in that cabinet, I just want to know that I have all the stuff I need to do when I need to do, and I am not going to put the crap away in that cabinet afterwards. I’m just not going to do that. My dental assistant is an SI, or IS really. She’s got a bubbly personality, that’s the I. She loves people, people love her, but she loves to help. She loves to make things neat. Then my accountant is, and my front office person is a C because they’re number crunchers. They want to know, “If you have 10 patients, you’re going to need 20 slide projectors for the day and you’re going to need this many needles, and this and this.” I don’t want to know that stuff. It’s worked well in the past. Remember, I haven’t hired in a while, so I haven’t had to do that. Claudia Lovato : You haven’t had to do it. Dr. Hornbrook: Although I’m looking for someone now. Claudia Lovato : I’m not utilizing the DISC system, but my test that I do, I hate to call it a test, it’s just an evaluation, I created questions that, they just catch you off guard. The one for the practice profile, it goes through a series of, “If your office had a personality, would it be a grandma, a kindergarten teacher,” things like that, and you don’t know why that question’s there, but in the big picture I gather that information to figure out the style and the character. The same thing with screening, screening evaluation. I figure out if a person is self-centered or outward-focused, because you really want someone that’s patient-centric and not self-centered. I ask crazy, odd questions that don’t make sense, but I can figure out if you’re a self-centered person or if you tend to think of others first and you’re always ready to volunteer to help out when needed. Those things can weed out candidates before they even get to the interview process, so that saves you time. Dr. Hornbrook: Where does Facebook fit into all this? I’m trying to tell my sons that, “You’re never going to erase Facebook.” Claudia Lovato : Facebook’s huge. Dr. Hornbrook: Whatever you put in now, 20 years from now when the IBM exec wants to hire you for the National Sales Manager, they’ll say, “When you were 17, your Facebook was doing this or that and you shouldn’t have been doing that.” Do you recommend, as a hire, so I get this application, resume, Claudia Lovato, that I just go on Facebook and see what kind of person you are? Claudia Lovato : Absolutely. Google, everything. Dr. Hornbrook: Do everything I can? Claudia Lovato : Everything you can. It’s really funny because now, I do it all the time, and I find even with my dental students, my dental assisting students, they get ready to go extern and go get hired, they want to get hired, and I do it for them and they’ve got pro-pot memes all over their Facebook and they’re pro legalizing marijuana. I don’t care what your personal preference is. Part of me wants to say, “Take it down, because you’re not going to get hired. Just because you can doesn’t mean you should.” Then part of me says, “That’s a treat, that’s a gift, because if I’m trying to hire, I want to see what your Facebook says, don’t clean it up for me, leave it just like it is because I’m going to see it.” Facebook’s huge. Dr. Hornbrook: I would think so, even after the hire. I used to have a dental assistant that was a partier and she was young and fun, a huge energy, very, very fun, but every Monday, her Facebook thing, and she friended some of our patients because they’re good, and she’s getting drunk in all these clubs. Claudia Lovato : That’s tricky. Dr. Hornbrook: It was like, “We can’t be doing that.” It’s the professional and the personal profile on Facebook as well. Claudia Lovato : You have to be careful with that. It’s a good tool when you’re recruiting and hiring people and you get a resume, you look them up. It’s also important after you’ve hired to have a policy for social media. That’s huge, because you don’t want your employee … I think it’s okay if they friend patients, because that’s great, but there has to be a policy. You can’t be posting beer pong pictures. Dr. Hornbrook: Yeah, there is a fine line. Claudia Lovato : You can’t be standing on your head at a kegger with the hose in your mouth. Dr. Hornbrook: You better take those down right away. Claudia Lovato : That’s for private, just take a selfie for that. Dr. Hornbrook: Do you teach your dental assistants in school a little bit about the social media and how it could- Claudia Lovato : Absolutely. That’s a thing, what I’ve learned. I’m not in the college now as we speak, because when we put the program online I had to … It’s a conflict of interest between those. Dr. Hornbrook: This is the schools you were teaching before? Claudia Lovato : Yes. I honestly spent more time teaching the soft skills than I did the dental. It’s there and we went through it, but it was such a huge learning experience for me with these young people, where their work ethic was. I’d spend my first week of school with them locking them out of the classroom, and the dean would be knocking on my door, “Do you realize you have 19 students lining the hall out here? It’s a fire hazard.” I go, “Yep, they’re late. They’re not going to interrupt my lecture.” “You can’t do that. They’re paying for this program.” I’d say, “Yeah, they are. They’re paying to learn how to be dental assistants, so they’re going to learn how to be on time.” Dr. Hornbrook: Which is a life skill. I have two teenagers, all the time, “I think we said 5:30.” “Oh yeah, when you said 5:30 I thought you meant like 6:00.” No, I meant 5:30. Claudia Lovato : It’s not a suggestion. Dr. Hornbrook: “It’s kind of close to 5:30.” It’s not even close to 5:30, it’s 6:00! They play by little different rules sometimes, which as an educator, especially for you because you’re dealing with a younger group typically than I am, is the whole millenials and the X generation, how they value things in their life, whether it be employment, whether it be people, whether it be reward systems. Claudia Lovato : That’s a huge piece. That’s where I think dentists are struggling with this whole hiring process, because this new generation is not like the old-timers. I’m one of the old-timers, and it makes your job hard to manage. They’re hard to manage, they can be. Your expectations are up here because you have … What’s your oldest, longest employee? Dr. Hornbrook: Twenty-one years. Claudia Lovato : Twenty-one years, their work ethic, you don’t even have to have a conversation about it probably. You hire someone new with this newer generation and you’re frustrated because you have to teach them things that they should already know, and so it’s a challenge. Dr. Hornbrook: Yeah, or they text you that they’re running a little late, versus calling and saying, “Something’s happening,” which is [crosstalk 00:25:53], right? Claudia Lovato : Yeah, and that’s another policy thing. Dr. Hornbrook: Or they carry their phone in their scrubs or their clinic coat, because they live in a world of the phone, right? Claudia Lovato : That was part of my training at the college is your phones went in the basket. If you cannot be separated from your phone for four hours, you’re not going to make it in the dental field, because you can’t be on your phone. You can’t have it in your pocket, it’s too tempting, put it away. Dr. Hornbrook: That’s a huge problem. Maybe it is a problem in my office and I’m not paying attention, but I hear that from colleagues where they do, they have a basket in the staff area where you come in the morning, you throw your phone in the basket, you can check it at your break, check it at lunch. If there’s an emergency, they call the office. Claudia Lovato : Call the office number, absolutely. Dr. Hornbrook: Yeah, absolutely. Let’s talk a little bit about what … You’re dealing with all these young people that, they either owe $2,000 or more or less, whatever it is, and they’re looking for a job. What do you think motivates these people? Because I’ve heard when people say, “They’re not always motivated by money,” but they are motivated by money to some point, but there’s other things obviously that motivate. As we look at someone that’s 19 years old, or 25 or 30 years old, and that’s within demographics that you deal with all the time, what are some of the motivating factors that they would choose one position over another? Claudia Lovato : Honestly I think that everyone wants to feel like they’re working in a fun environment, that coming to work, they’re not going to dread coming to work. We work hard, but we enjoy what we do, we love it. They’re looking for a place where they can learn, grow, they’re valued, they’re respected, and they actually enjoy being there. Even this newer generation, I think they want that too. They don’t know, but once they get in there and … Because I’ve had some really difficult students. I had students that I thought, “This kid’s not going to make it.” You teach them and get them excited about dentistry and then all of a sudden they’re your number one top student. It can be done with this newer generation, but it’s all about getting them excited about dentistry, as excited as you are about it, and then catch them doing something good and giving them the pat on the back and a thumbs up and the fist bump, because they like that. Everybody wants to be validated. I think those are big things, besides money is the motivator. Dr. Hornbrook: Yeah, and people want to feel important and cared for and liked and appreciated. I’ll tell you a funny story about a interview I did one time. It used to be my office manager, Andrea, who’s been with me, again, 18 years, she would weed through them, because I don’t have time to sit there. I’m like this, “You worked where?” “Yeah, I worked at Hallmark, I sorted cards for five years,” like, “Great.” I don’t have time for that really. She would weed through and she’d say, “I found three people.” They’d come in for a working interview and I’d either like them or not. It would work out that way. It was about five years ago and we were looking for a dental assistant. I said, “This is what I’m going to do is, we can teach them dental assisting skills, that’s the easy part, put a matrix band on, put this away, whatever, I want people skills and I want them to be great in an environment that potentially can be stressful,” because that’s where you’re going to shine. I said, “I want you to go ahead and weed through these people, and when you find five that fit the bill that we could hire here, we’re going to have a group interview.” I heard about this or read about it. They had all these people and the whole team had interviewed them separately. I said, “Which one did you like best?” They said, “This guy, we actually liked a guy.” I’m the lion of my den, and I thought, “Wait a minute, do I want another man, another male now? Because I’m the lion of my den,” not Cecil of course, but a lion of my den. I said, “I don’t know.” They said, “You told us that we get to choose,” because I said, “After the group interview, whatever you choose, I’m going to go with.” Everyone said, “I don’t know, we liked this guy best. We liked this guy best.” Then the group interview came. We have a conference room down the hallway. There was five of them and my entire staff, and so all the applicants interviewed at the same time. They were all around the table. Now they’re under stress, they’ve got to out-perform. I was down in my office, I didn’t partake in this, and I thought, “Great. Another hour they’re going to come back and they’re going to tell me that I’ve got another lion in my den,” and I’m stressing about this a little bit. They did the interview and they asked some questions, “What if the patient was upset?” and then people had to respond in front of people they were competing with the job. They came back and I said, “All right, when does he start?” They said, “We actually didn’t like him.” I said, “What do you mean you didn’t like him? I thought everyone liked him.” They said, “When he got stressed he had this weird tic, and so as we asked him, he was doing like this, and we could just imagine the patient says, ‘How come this crown is $300?’ and he’s kicking like this because he’s stressed out [crosstalk 00:31:03].” I’m the only lion in my den. It was a cool concept I think. Have you ever done anything like that? Claudia Lovato : I like that, yeah, absolutely. Any time you can put the candidate in a scenario where it’s a little pressure, you want to keep it fun and lighthearted, but you do need to figure out how they handle pressure, and that’s definitely a pressure cooker right there. He didn’t make it, he cracked. Dr. Hornbrook: It was good. I would’ve had a twitcher in my office. Claudia Lovato : That’s funny. Dr. Hornbrook: We’re going to wrap up. I call these treadmill podcasts, which is about 30 minutes, and in Orange County here it’s half of your commute podcast. Where you are is not quite as bad unless you go up north of Scottsdale. You’re doing a lot of really cool things. I really like this Dental Assisting Academy because I think it gives an opportunity for young men and young women who maybe aren’t going to be usually college-bound or maybe they want to get out of a career, but they have an opportunity to affordably I think have a great career. I think a dental assisting or any team member, I think that’s a great career actually because there’s so many variables, it’s never boring, as long as you have a good boss and a good team that you work with. I think it’s awesome. I applaud you for that. Claudia Lovato : Thank you. Dr. Hornbrook: If, again, listeners or viewers are thinking, “I have a niece, or a cousin or a nephew or something, that would like to get into this,” as of now, they could definitely get a hold of you at Claudia, C-L-A-U-D-I-A, at Morado, M-O-R-A-D-O. Claudia Lovato : Right now it’s not open to the public. Dr. Hornbrook: How about a dentist though? Claudia Lovato : A dentist, yes. Dr. Hornbrook: That’s what I’m saying. Claudia Lovato : That’s what [crosstalk 00:32:35] as a dentist. Dr. Hornbrook: As a dentist, I could get a hold of you and say, “I need some help here.” Claudia Lovato : Yes. My recommendation for someone like you, anybody, by the hiring system, it’s going to show you how to do your practice profile, write an ad that works, that’s going to attract the right person, screen your people, figure out if you’re even on the fence about training someone without a dental background, or maybe it’s your babysitter that just graduated from high school. You want to contribute, give back to the community, train somebody, give them an opportunity, you’ve got this hiring system, and with that comes the Dental Assisting Academy, but we changed that up. We put it in a private sector for dentists only. Dr. Hornbrook: How would they get that hiring packet? Claudia Lovato : You would go to the Dentaltown page, Dentaltown.com, and I’m not sure if it’s going to be on the Continuing Education page. Previously our dental academy was its own page, we had a landing page on Dentaltown. It pains me that that’s not there anymore. It will be back but it won’t be the Dental Assisting Academy, it’s going to be the hiring system for dentists. That’s what you’re going to do, you’re going to compete with corporate dentistry the way they recruit talent. Dr. Hornbrook: Because they do recruit talent that’s non-dental and they have great training systems. I absolutely know that. Claudia Lovato : That’s what I’ve done, I’ve created that, but I’ve also added that recruiting, hiring, the screening, and then the training and how to keep them. You got to go through Dentaltown to get that. Dr. Hornbrook: If it’s not up in a month when someone wants to, can they get a hold of you and you can lead them that direction? Claudia Lovato : Absolutely. Dr. Hornbrook: It’s at Claudia at Morado? Claudia Lovato : The best way to get a hold of me is [email protected]. Dr. Hornbrook: Claudia- Claudia Lovato : Dot dental assisting. Dr. Hornbrook: Dot dental assisting, all one word. Claudia Lovato : At Gmail. Dr. Hornbrook: Gmail.com okay, that’s what I was looking for the last two minutes. Claudia Lovato : You caught me off guard. Dr. Hornbrook: I want these people to figure out, “How can I get a hold of this?” because I’m thinking all the time, and not necessarily money, but the time that I’ve wasted on Craigslist or ads somewhere I think [inaudible 00:34:45] makes sense to me, because I want to be able to recruit a good employee based on my profile. People that go on Match.com or eHarmony, they’re hiring people to write profiles for them. A friend of mine just got divorced and now he’s got a bunch of dates because he hired someone to write the profile for him. Claudia Lovato : Are those gals going to be surprised when the real guy comes out? Dr. Hornbrook: Actually he’s a catch though, I think that’ll be all right. Claudia Lovato : I’m kidding, I’m joking. Dr. Hornbrook: That’s how they can get a hold of you. Then the cool thing too, as we talked about earlier, and you alluded to throughout the program is you do have a training team in place where once I hire these employees and I want them to integrate with my existing employees and I want to make sure my team goes the highest level possible, you have systems in place to help me with that as well? Claudia Lovato : Absolutely. What I created with this hiring system is, let’s say you have an HR person or an administrative person in your practice, you’d want to have them be in charge of this whole thing. You’d be involved, of course you’re going to want to go through that interviewing process if you choose, but your administrative person’s going to have … We actually train the trainer, so when you get this system, it’s a package where there’s printable downloads, they’re customizable. If you already have some of the things, don’t use it, but we really give you everything you need, to put in a binder and just take your new hire through this whole process. It’s fully customizable. What that does for your new hire, for instance, like Walmart, Taco Bell, if you get hired at Taco Bell, they won’t even let you make a taco or ring someone up unless you’ve sat and watched all these videos and gone through this system, or at Walmart, they don’t let you hit the floor. At dentistry, we just throw our new hires to the dogs. Dr. Hornbrook: “You can make temporaries?” “There’s one in there [inaudible 00:36:40] bridge. Good luck.” Claudia Lovato : “Knock yourself out.” Dr. Hornbrook: “I’ll be in my office on Facebook.” Claudia Lovato : “Then while you’re at it, make sure your social skills are good and you’re giving good customer service to your patient.” Dr. Hornbrook: “Give anesthetic too, in case the tooth wakes up.” Claudia Lovato : That’s where we went with this system. I created something that’s going to rival Aspen Dental and how they train people. They can’t be the only ones that get to do that. Dr. Hornbrook: I totally agree. I think it’s cool, I was looking at your bio, is that you’re not someone to hire and say, “Write me an ad.” You’re creating a system’s in place that if I’m going to hire someone else in a year or two years or this one doesn’t work out for some reason, that I don’t have to call you again, “Hey, I need another ad.” I know I can do that. You’re going to make me a hiring expert, or my team a hiring expert. Claudia Lovato : Absolutely, whoever wants to do it, you, your team, I’m going to make you a hiring expert, I’m going to give you everything you need to do that, corporate style. Dr. Hornbrook: We need to compete with corporate dentistry. Claudia Lovato : That’s right, they can’t have all the fun. They can’t have all the talent either. Dr. Hornbrook: No they can’t, and they can’t maintain the talent or retain the talent. Claudia Lovato : That’s what they’re missing in their system. Our system, it has that. Dr. Hornbrook: I hope this was fun, we’re going to go ahead and wrap up. Got anything else you want to wrap up here? Claudia Lovato : That’s it, I just wanted to make sure we clarify the Dental Assisting Academy on Dentaltown is no longer open to the public, it’s now the hiring system, and it’s being sold to dentists as a training tool with the entire hiring system. Dr. Hornbrook: It’s going to be dentists and their teams that are going to be watching it, so they’re going to be interested in that. I hope you enjoyed this as much as I did. This was awesome. She flew out from Glendale, Arizona just to spend some time with me, which I think is so awesome, because we could’ve done this on Skype or we could’ve [crosstalk 00:38:24], wouldn’t have been nearly this much fun. Claudia Lovato : This was so fun. I could hang out here at Keating Dental Lab all day. Dr. Hornbrook: You can. Could you clean my opportunity over there or train someone here to clean my opportunity? Claudia Lovato : I almost did earlier. Dr. Hornbrook: I like it. I like it. If you want to get a hold of Claudia, it’s [email protected]. Great resource for all of us. I hope you enjoyed today. This was something a little different, which was a lot of fun, and certainly applicable to all our dental practices. If you haven’t heard our podcasts in the past, you can go to either our media website, which is www.dentalup.xyz or you can go to iTunes, just go to Podcasts, search DentalUp, all one word, and we’ve got about 13 of them now. We had a lot of fun, I hope you enjoy. If you’re in the Irvine area or about five miles from Disneyland or Newport Beach, feel free to drop by Keating Dental Lab. Hope I see you soon.