Recruiting qualified individuals for your optometric practice is vital to ensuring that your practice runs smoothly and your patients are treated with the care that they deserve. But recruiting can be a long, complicated process that may result in selecting a bad candidate for the role. If the candidate isn’t the right fit, you might add to the stress of your optometric practice which could result in higher turnover rates.

Whether your practice is trying to hire to fill a recently vacated role or looking to bring in some extra help to meet the needs of your growing practice, you need to properly screen candidates to ensure that when you finally make a hiring decision, it’s the right one. Below are tips for recruiting quality talent for your optometric practice.

How to Find Top Talent For Your Optometric Practice

Write Better Job Descriptions

If you’re having trouble finding a candidate that matches what you’re looking for, then you might be using a sub optimal job description. With the right job description, you can attract candidates that better match your requirements for building a qualified team to enhance the patient experience.

When writing the job description, match the job title with the role, include the responsibilities, and list the required skills the candidate must have.

Improve The Interview Process

Having an established hiring process will save you, your staff, and the candidate a lot of trouble since they will know what is coming next. However, just because you have an established process doesn’t mean that you’re guaranteed to hire top talent. You must improve your process as you learn more about what you need for each role, maybe after each interview.

One way to improve the hiring process is the streamline it by asking better questions in the beginning. Make sure you're on the same page about things you cannot change such as salary, benefits, and hours. Asking better questions will reduce the need to have multiple interviews to fill the role with the right candidate faster.

Check References

You wouldn't buy a TV without looking at the reviews first, so why make a hiring decision without checking the candidate's work references? Asking for work references will give you a chance to hear from the candidate’s previous employer. Try asking the candidate’s references some of these questions to verify information and get a better judge of the candidate’s work history. Doing so might help you uncover red flags.

Hiring isn't the only part of your business that you need to plan for. Here's a guide on making a 5 year plan for your eyecare practice.