What Job Candidates Fail to Ask
One of the unfortunate trends we’ve witnessed in therapy clinics over the years has been a high turnover rate amongst new hires. There can be many contributing factors, most on the part of the job candidate themselves, but some on the part of the clinic performing the hiring. It’s something that most participants seem to neglect. Yet, they may not identify the problem until they’ve been hired and suddenly regret their choice.
Why You Should Require That Job Candidates Be Discerning When Selecting a Clinic
Let’s imagine a common sequence of events. An aspiring therapist has recently finished school and is ready to seek a full-time job as an occupational therapist. They search for clinics in your area and line up a few interviews, one of which is with your staff. Per this candidate’s understanding of the usual interview protocol, they answer your admin’s questions about schooling and experience, availability, and more. Then, they simply wait for a call about a second interview, which would presumably be with you, the clinic owner. The same process happens again, with you asking most of the questions. If it goes well, this therapist accepts your offer because your clinic is most convenient to their home, or for any number of other practical reasons.
What’s wrong with this scenario? It sounds like standard procedure, right? Let’s take another look:
If the steps above happen over and over, you are likely to end up with a clinic full of therapists who are completely in the dark about what it’s really like to work for you and what you expect. Are they aware of your specific policies about documentation, communication, and compliance? Have you communicated anything about office culture? Do they understand what their responsibilities are when it comes to providing you with credentialing documents?
If new hires aren’t aware of these details and how they could affect their day-to-day treatments, anticipated pay, and time commitment, you may both be in for a rude awakening.
Hiring therapists is about more than just filling a vacancy. It should be about discovering the best fit for you and for them, so that your therapists are ultimately happy with their jobs long-term. When they struggle with new or surprise regulations, problems tend to develop beneath the surface and you could experience some unexpected losses when people decide to quit.
The way to ensure that a particular candidate is a good fit is to engage in due diligence as their potential employer. This means encouraging them to do the one thing most therapist job candidates fail to do.
Open the Floor and Encourage Therapists to Ask Questions in an Interview
It’s wise to facilitate a smooth relationship with new hires from the first point of contact and make sure you have employees who truly want to show up and work hard. The most logical time to initiate open communication is during an interview.
Interviews are critical for most jobs, but especially in the therapy industry. The employment experience can vary widely across clinics of all sizes and specialties. Having worked in one clinic does not mean a given therapist knows how any other clinic operates. If this is their first therapist job, it’s even more critical to communicate how they’ll be expected to perform and engage with the rest of your staff. The first and/or second interview is your opportunity to present specific policies and the nitty-gritty reality of the job.
If it’s not already standard procedure, make sure that you or a designated person you trust are the only ones conducting interviews. Assuming a job candidate fails to ask critical questions themselves, here are some factors we recommend bringing to the forefront.
Cover the critical demands of the job, as well as any non-obvious rules that are specific to your clinic:
- Do you have mandatory documentation rules, such as requiring that all therapists sign and close documents within 48 hours of treatment? What are the consequences of not following this rule (i.e. delayed pay)?
- How do you monitor HIPAA compliance? Will there be mandatory HIPAA training?
- Are there additional procedures home-based therapists must follow?
- Does a therapist in your clinic need to be familiar with how to use an EMR? If they have any EMR experience, ask what they did or did not like about it, and apply this anecdotal data to future EMR decisions for your clinic.
- What is your payroll schedule? When does the pay period begin and end, and when should they expect the first paycheck? What issues could arise that could affect you being able to give them a full paycheck (i.e. documentation is late, credentialing is dragging because they are not being responsive, etc.)
- Who is responsible for credentialing? What documents will therapists need to provide, when, and to whom? They need to stay in concert with whoever is doing their credentialing. Explain how, if they do not provide the necessary credentialing information quickly, this will affect their ability to treat, file a claim, and thus, earn a living.
Create Clinic Policies That Make Hiring Easier
Of course, in order to communicate policies like the above, you must have decided upon and implemented them across your practice. Ideally, these internal policies will support credentialing and other critical tasks that foster a staff of happy, busy therapists.
Should you be overwhelmed at the thought of the time and energy it takes to implement positive hiring practices, remember that outsourcing other tasks like billing is possible and often smart. When you free up yourself and your trusted admins, you can make smart decisions about whom to hire.
Hiring therapists can be one of the most critical responsibilities you have as a therapy practice owner. At Clinic Connection, we understand the risks you take every time you bring someone new onto your team. That’s why we’re here to advise you about smoothing out all these processes, including credentialing. Reach out to us for personalized advice for growing your therapy practice.
